echai

This film is remarkable if not in the originality of it's content, in the pacing and presentation of the information. Consequently it is a potent and affecting educational piece and a perfect introduction to the history of the study of Mayan civilisation, and for more seasoned scholars a feast for the eyes in the cinematographic depiction of famous sites such as Palenque. This film ought to be the staple introduction to all schools in the world regarding this rich, mysterious and long misunderstood culture.

Most significant in this film are the reconstructions of archaeologists and artists to first discover and document the famous sites (eg the Lid of Palenque), how they travelled and what equipment and techniques they used in order to document and better understand the obscure creative legacy remaining in stone carvings and architecture and other artifacts. In addition to this are re-enactments of Mayan ceremonies and every day activities which are feasts for the imagination in visualising the every day existence of this remarkable people.

All in all a joy for those with even the slightest interest in ancient cultures! I take my hat off to the Canadian and other teams who contributed to this production.

The only gripe is that the information documented is very basic and I did not learn anything new which I may have done had the production been stretched to two parts or feature length but hey, it's a TV show and does very well for what it is.

One of the greatest films ever made - doesn't really make up for the rest of cinema about war (at least in the English language), almost all of it being propaganda or spectacle, one or the other. This film for a rare moment treats its audience with the intelligence we deserve - yes we know Hitler was a nutter and there's plenty of evidence to display what occurred during those crazy years in Germany. We don't need a lifetime of fiction and non-fiction slating him as a Demon. This realistic account will remain a definitive account of this war cabinet's last moments - if only more filmmakers were able to do this factual justice to important events of human history. I wonder when someone will make a film based on the work of Anthony Sutton who's research in the sixties documents demonstrable evidence of Wall Street and the Banks of England funding the development of the military infrastructure of Germany in the thirties and forties.

Just finished watching this after finding out about it searching for some films to download on a DVD info site. Immediately piqued my interest. This author started being obsessive with all kinds of conspiracy theories about a year ago, and now starting to cool off a bit. Because of the chaotic nature of the sheer volume of information, I've not been active in the slightest, except sometimes in conversation. Previously I was completely ignorant - I didn't watch TV, I wasn't really aware of the 'alternative media' or conspiracy theories. I've never been a reader of newspapers. I heard some of my friends talking about David Icke YEARS ago, not in a positive way, had no idea who he was nor did I bother finding out. The same friend had mentioned about some book about the NASA moon landing being a hoax but then it didn't really interest me. Due to not taking notice of history or current affairs I wasn't aware of much, that's a consequence of my personal development, or lack of. I was super socialised, like most of the people in my place of Birth, England, and the UK. In 2007 I met a guy at the 'Sunrise' Festival, he was talking about money and banking - he gave me his myspace (called 'what is money and where does it come from') It had all the classic stuff, Aaron Russo, Gordon Maxwell. A few months later a slightly down-and-out and under confident Russian man in London gave me a DVD of Alex Jones (ENDGAME), and I another who had shown me early 911 documentaries. They didn't mean much. However Jones' film caught my attention and I started reading about eugenics - I got Edwin Black's seminal book 'War Against the Weak' in fact. I'd also come across his video for his book 'IBM and the Holocaust' in 2003 on guerrilla news network (.com). Eventually I threw myself into almost 24/7 reading on the internet, ordering books, watching videos, reading all kind of wacky websites - we all know they are all out there. Then eventually things started to gel and patterns started to emerge. I went to see Icke talk in Brixton in May 2008, and I pretty much fell for his spiel. I don't like him anymore but I OVERSTAND what it's about due to that process of investigation. We humans are very susceptible to suggestion, especially if we are looking for answers. In hindsight, I'm glad I went through those early stages, and later stages, and now, my knowledge is starting to galvanise, to crystallise. Icke is for sure right about some of the historical stuff he talks about, on a basic level, but the new age and paranormal can be a bit much for this material plane. So after a week or so of Icke - still utterly convinced that there were crazy unseen forces controlling humanity from within, I moved onto Alan Watt - he would be interesting to make a film about. I listened to hundreds of his podcasts over many many months and ended up extremely lacklustre, paranoid and obsessive. That guy (the best description I found on some forum was 'the thinking man's David Icke'.) is amazing in his endless knowledge and information. However he is profoundly manipulative with his conclusions. I believed it. I saw that he was using similar techniques to cult or new age religious leaders. However, some of the details he talks about, using unique language not like other 'truthers' are DEMONSTRABLY true, as he cites UN and other think tank and NGO documents, and papers and books by history's greatest movers and shakers in the Anglo American establishment. As a consequence I now have an enormous interest in history, the occult, psychology, political science and economics - and I know a great deal about them from a non-conventional perspective which I would never have had, had I not gone through this phase as a 'conspiracy theorist'.

This film here is mainly focusing on Jones, who I am constantly in two minds about but eventually, I think he's genuine.The interviews are sensitively done and are quite intimate. It's easy to see how a viewer could be drawn toward pity on their behalf. It's a shame because realistically, once one goes through the obsession of a 'theorist', some of the things you learn are completely and demonstrably true. It becomes obvious and this is a little worrying. Conversely also, the 'dominant reality' to which we subscribe is largely contrived. However the overall behaviour and tactics and psychology of the 'truther' are not compatible with those of us who live in the 'dominant reality'. I have TRULY discovered the meaning of Orwell's term 'doublethink' because I now DO it for the first time, on the daily. Does that make me schizophrenic? Not necessarily *phew* Explaining how I think is not easy at all, I've not learned to articulate the perpetual irreconcilability. All I can do is advise you, the reader to develop critical thinking and to not subscribe to the toxicity of the dominant reality nor to become a religious devotee of unsubstantiated paranoid delusions. It's a fine line. Great film, lets see more like it. Start learning and kNOWING instead of having your convictions inculcated into you through osmosis (mass media). Other information on these subjects can be found on a podcast debunking conspiracy theories available on iTunes/audio podcasts/history/'the conspiracy sceptic' and I also listened to an short LSE lecture (LSE website) by David Aaronovich about his book 'Voodo Histories'. I do recommend a few listens to Alan Watt at Cutting Through the Matrix (.com) - it's an amazing source of history but be careful with it. It's up to the individual and their philosophy if they have one whether the events are utterly manipulated, inevitable, chaotic, or a combination of all of them. For those who care and are smart they will develop a process of individuation, a philosophy and begin to see with eyes unclouded.

There's only one thing to say about this series - get it now! Of course you've probably seen it if you're even reading this but if not then sort it out.

I'm not going to write a review, there are plenty available, this is the internet. I've said all that's important already. Only thing is there aren't enough stars to rate Miyazaki's work on IMDb.

Incidentally you may want to read the English short sci fi novel called "The Incredible Tide" by Alexander Key upon which this series is based.

This animation series appears to be a prototype for Miyazaki's film Laputa: Castle in the Sky - at least its chief characters Pazu and Shita are based on Conan and Lana of this series.

Also check out Sherlock Hound, all of Masterpiece Theatre series and the amazing 1968 collaboration featurelength animation 'Horus Prince of the Sun' by Miyazaki and Takahata.

I just realised I've been using IMDb for years now and I've never reviewed my favourite film. By favourite I don't mean something I like for now, I mean this film is so supernaturally perfect that there is never another animated experience going to touch it. This is obvious because I am never going to be a child again; I saw this film on ITV in the early nineties. I was 12 which is the age group this film is directed at, I'm also male, the gender that this film is intended for (the overwhelming majority of Miyazaki's protagonists are female). Consequently this film indelibly inspired my childhood psychology and I am forever indebted to Carl Macek (sp?) for producing the English dub of this film which is far superior to the Di$ney production which is not even funny - I've never even been able to watch that one - of course subtitled is the only way ultimately however the Macek version is SO good (the voices almost exactly corresponding to the original Japanese actors) that this version is available on the Japanese DVD! It's not available on any distribution in an English-speaking country. Go figure.

There are hundreds of competent reviews so I'm going to put some trivia here, not that I'm the definitive archive of information for this film.

First up I'd like to agree with the reviewer who stated that you need 20 out of 10 to review Miyazaki's films - they are so in their own league that they make almost the whole catalogue on IMDb combined pale into insignificance.

The fascinating story with this film is that Miyazaki based the countryside around Slag's Ravine (Pazu's town area) on the Welsh mining communities. He visited Wales for a few months in the early 80s (might be late 70s) just after one of the great mining strikes. Being an avid supporter of the student socialist movements in the sixties he felt their plight. The fight between the townsfolk and the pirates at the beginning serves to illustrate this empathy with the working man. The countryside and the clouds especially in this film remind me of where I grew up as his film depicts a fantasised version of the rolling hills of the midwest British Isles.

The island is of course from Swift's genius satirical novel of the eighteenth century - the story in Swift's book is, deliberately, ridiculous. In Castle in The Sky, Miyazaki weaves together myths such as Atlantis and the Tower of Babel - I think the architecture in addition is based on Peruvian ruins though I'm not sure, someone told me that.

Anyone who gets round to reading this review and who likes this film REALLY will want to check out Miyazaki's epic series Mirai Shounen Conan - Future Boy Conan - based on the short sci fi novel 'The Incredible Tide' by Alexander key (novel is available online). Conan is basically a prototype for Laputa's Pazu and Shita. In addition you may not be familiar with his earlier work for Masterpiece Theatre - some of his key frame animation. He also did key frame for Sherlock Hound - this has some of the finest backgrounds I've ever seen too. Also check out Miyazaki and Takahata's first feature film Horus Prince of the Sun (1968) - amazing by today's standards in fact. What else... Gauche the Cellist and The Flying Ghost Ship - though they're pretty rare.

This film is such a gift, I don't know what we'd do without it with all this other crap storytelling around, this is like an oasis. Arigatou Miyazaki-sensei!

I saw this mini series a couple of years ago after searching on the internet and found this film adaptation from Canada (I live in England) and I though 'great' so I bittor... err... obtained a copy and watched it all - I'm not sure how - in abject horror.

Now there are numerous comments here - the majority in fact - which will tell your if you even got to reading THIS review, why it invokes such horror. Now I'm not a fan of Le Guinn, I've only read the first 'Wizard' book, not even the series. It follows a young wizard called Sparrowhawk through his life's trials as he sails around earthsea, a fictitious archipelago from ages old. It's a fairly straightforward story. However, it's such an extraordinarily exquisite and authentic experience it's emotional simply through the quality of the composition of the narrative itself, story content aside. I'm not an obsessed fan, I just know when something is really good, and this TV production ON ITS OWN was the typical trash you see on TV every day (except I quit watching TV in 1999 so I don't have to suffer) - in that sense it's fairly normal, and OK production. But in comparison to the story it's allegedly based on it's such an immense, indescribably travesty that, - well, I can't describe it. It should never have been made. They should have made a film of some talented unknown young (or old) fantasy writer in Canada instead.

Why should this matter? It doesn't really does it. However as one previous reviewer said, quite rightly: "...its almost impossible for filmmakers to make a movie about a loved book without disappointing their fans." I have to disagree with other texts in this 'genre' however - Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and Narnia - all clearly with staggering budgets of course and various contract obligations obviously in the case of the irritating though opportunistic and hard working Rowling. They did stick verbatim to the story lines.

Anyway I don't have time to slate this really, I'm only reviewing it to give it the one star it doesn't even deserve to take the average rating down, it's much too high because of all these people who don't know any better reviewing it without having knowledge of the book. I know, it's anal, in any other case I'd really not bother, Rowling, CS Lewis (the g@y tw@t, I wish his publisher had sacked him) Pullman, even Tolkein, any book, I don't really care, I'd enjoy the book, and/or enjoy the film, or not. However there's something kinda special about this book - not spectacular, just really tight storytelling. Well you can read it and find out. This TV adaptation is agonising.

My main beef is that, Lord of the Rings aside (obviously) This book, A Wizard of Earthsea, is the most worthy of making into a really long, really expensive film - more than anything by CS Lewis or Rowling (she seems to have taken the main premise of her Potter books FROM Wizard of Earthsea in fact, the magicians school.

Rant over. If you've not seen this production, never see it, watch Moonacre or Stardust or something, and buy Le Guinn's books.

I have to agree with all the other reviewers here - some very good reviews except for the two who went to premier and seem to have left them starstruck (moonstruck?) and ebullient about the use!! of!! exclamation marks!!!

In some ways, like CS Lewis and JK Rowling the narrative in the book (which I only know the story from the film) does seem to have a particular patchwork quality, many elements from old fabrics sewn together. Of course this is how stories have always been written not to mention the inherent structure needed for a story to be successful, a structure that has existed since language. So some of it seemed a bit old but that's what you need to sell something to a sometimes fickle audience. It was so great looking however that it almost made up for it. The sixth star of this review is for costumes, the seventh for set pieces so it's a 5 star really. The metalwork was particularly ornate.

The performances were all pretty much architypical regarding the actors previous casting, though it was interesting seeing good old Gruffudd getting grumpy again. It's true that Curry had little screen time though he was very antagonistic - but soon calmed down at the end (it is a children's film after all). The chef and the nanny were great and I liked the young guy who played Robin.

The animals (magic ones) were present as always, the obligatory unicorn and the lion from CS Lewis - though this lion was cooler that Aslan, he was BLACK. Having never seen or thought about a black lion before, this is now my favorite animal. Apart from bunnies. And I'm sure he could have kicked Aslan's ass (I've never been keen on CS Lewis and his stories have always annoyed me since I was a child but hey, we gotta live with them cos he was Tolkein's mate and he was well connected to get his rubbish printed and because of its popularity many people think it's actually good).

Sorry, rant over.

So it you're a parent - definitely get this for your children, you'll probably be able to bare watching it over again unlike horrific Di$ney films &c. If you're and adult ans you liked Stardust and Compass, you'll probably like this too, though it's not quite as good though it's better than Terabithia, which is just a children's film really.

I'm glad the fantasy films are back, there was a real dry patch in the nineties. But the key question is - WHEN is someone going to make a proper film of The Wizard of Earthsea? (I know there is a Canadian TV movie - it's awful - and the Ghibli film 'Tales From Earthsea', but it's not a proper telling of any of the books and it's directed by Goro and not Hayao Miyazaki so it's not even that good. Ah well. Read that Wizard of Earthsea if you've not, it's pretty much the foundation for Harry Potter and maybe Pullman's books as well though I'm not sure. Wizard of Earthsea is the greatest magus-topic novel I've come across because it's authentic. The thing is the mass will always desire the crass... *sigh*

Not bad at all. I've never been a fan of WWII films but recently I've become obsessed with reading about the war as there are so many intriguing things especially as we move chronologically away from it more and more things become declassified such as the occult obsessions of the Third Reich, the NAZI connections to NASA's space race, the development of flying discs by NAZI scientists, the immense funding of the Third Reich by the Bank of England and bankers on Wall Street, the development of IMB's punch-card systems to single out the 'inferior types' (which to this day IBM whinge they had no idea about) and more known things like the influence of Darwinism on National Socialism in the early 20thC, and more specifically the horrific application of the pseudo 'science' of eugenics, a term coined by Darwin's nephew Francis Galton. If I'd have learned all that in school I might have been more interested in history - of course it's not convenient to tell everyone the whole truth so many of us 'allies' are in the dark about the facts that some nutters in Germany were funded, influenced and inspired by the Anglo-American establishment. Then of course if the people of the time had known this it would have vastly damaged morale and the war may have been different... who knows. Anyway Europe was destroyed leading it to be rebuilt into this fabulous integrated trading 'blok' of the E.U. making the road to global governance much easier. - Clearly it's pertinent to add the Nazis and Hitler and Himmler took perfection of the species through negative eugenics to an insane level, quite unlike the eugenics societies of the United States and Europe. Of course hopefully the new global system will be benevolent and will address the enormous issues running amok - such as the corporation, the real Terminator, or golem, or monster which we've created...

All the things which are insubstantially mentioned above are demonstrably documented in various interviews, papers, and books - most notably the works of Anthony Sutton, Edwin Black, Richard Weikart, countless RIIA, CFR, League of Nations, United Nations and other sources writings over the last couple of centuries.

Anyway I digress. It would be nice to have a film about all the really interesting stuff like what I mentioned above but it's never going to happen, I'd have to make it myself - all we have is the conventional vastly boring due to huge omission of vital details history, or the conspiracy psychos. But as a piece of conventional history this does the job fine - it is indeed a compelling story of Herr Stauffenberg and the internal resistance. I read about the event in the book 'Agent Zigzag' - well worth checking out - and so when I saw there was a new film of course I was compelled to check it out. It's quite humorous to observe that half the cast from Pirates of the Caribbean are here - and an appearance from Eddie Izzard is always a nice change from seeing him trannied up telling jokes on stage. I'm always in two minds about Tom Cruise because it doesn't seem like there's ever any real emotion there. It would have been nice to have some consistency in the accents, even if everyone tried to make a subtle attempt at German sounds - but maybe this could have been insulting, I don't know. It would have been nice to have more German actors but as a commercial Hollywood film it's never going to happen is it. They have to ensure popularity and remuneration on the release.

This film is well worth watching for those interested in the history and those who are not. These kinds of films are singularly important to counter the massive propaganda throughout the whole 20th Century demonising the German people as a whole and to clarify that the maniacs who ended up taking control for all those years were not supported by their whole institution - which ultimately was the downfall and internally brought down or rendered ineffective the secret services, the military, civilian and governmental systems from complete adherence to the cause of Germany. And what a relief to everyone who lived to tell the tale.

Other films viewers of this may be interested in and have been referred to by other reviews are 'Der Untergang' (Downfall) and 'Die Welle' (The Wave) - the latter which is a German retelling of a social experiment carried out by a Californian teacher and his class in the sixties (seventies?).

I've had my fair share of deliberately exposing myself to awful films with my film student friends in college in the nineties but this was RIDICULOUS! I can't even be bothered to say anything insulting about it, it was so befuddlingly bad. I mean - it was BAD. Not bad meaning good but bad meaning bad. All I can say is I'm glad I bittorrented it and didn't buy it or even waste time watching it on TV. I watched it in two sittings (the first one I fell asleep and I was sitting on a swivel chair). Gladly, spawnyjoe, zipper69, and JL have outlined the main aspects of awfulness so I needn't revisit them again. I suppose as an excuse it WAS made for an American audience, and indeed the performances weren't even up to the standard of bad UK TV, they were more like performances of westerners in an 80s HK film like Jackie chan (who usually seem to just be extreme sports guys or random English teachers or porn stars or something). I guess you can't blame the actors for this, the script sucked and the director was clearly out to lunch. The setpieces looked like they were made in the Blue Peter studio at the BBC. The explosions were OK though and the soundtrack was pretty good too - for that alone it gets two stars instead of one. It's a shame because I remember the series being pretty good - but then I was about twelve when I last watched it. Stay away from this at all costs and trust me, the time reading one of these reviews which save you from the time wasted watching the film is time well spent.

There isn't much I can say about this film which wasn't summarised by the reviewer mstomaso but I can say it had a profound affect on me. I felt nauseous near the end and it wasn't what i'd eaten - i found parts of it a little dramatic but hey, there's how you rate the success of a film, especially a commercial release; on how much it can manipulate your emotions.

I agree with what mstomaso said : "(The two Middle Eastern boys who play the brothers in this film give Oscar-worthy performances, unfortunately I can't get their names out of IMDb easily)"

Out of all the performances in the film I felt theirs very strongly! But will it happen? Could be asked aside How possible is it that N America will review its foreign policy for the better? I'm not expecting a reply to those questions until they answer themselves! Watch and enjoy, nice to see such a widespread movie to be more like what film is capable of!