Hottoceame The Age of Commercialism

Protraph Lack of good storyline.

Ploydsge just watch it!

Numerootno A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

rzajac A fine mockumentary production which reflects faith in good old, down- home, painstaking hard work and passion.No idea why this languishes in the IMDb 6.x ratings doldrums; I can only guess it has to do with a kind of genre "offset"; like there's a ceiling for the cred due to any mockumentary.This is a marvelous production; and I'm not just trotting out that word gratuitously: I literally marveled ceaselessly from beginning to end. Productions of this nature are burdened with an expectation of almost supernatural ingenuity, and this flick carries that burden with a kind of iron-fisted grace. It's tough satirical medicine, reaching over the wall of your sensibilities to surprise you and get a dark chuckle out of you, and seems to do so with finesse and agility. It's a rollicking cavalcade of expositional ingenuity.Lovely tech work; sound, editing, emulation of "period" media, and all the rest of it.The only (possible) remonstrance might be in the area of acting: There's lots of either bad acting, or skillfully rendered bad acting by wonderful actors. And this contrasts with direction of "real" persons (typically on-screen historical experts, or politicians) which is done with aplomb.Check it out!

Theo Robertson The writer/director of CSA Kevin Wilmott is black . I thought I'd point this out to guard my back . I also thought I'd mention that I seeked out this film because it received a rave review on Richard Schieb's Sci-Fi movie review page which can be accessed on the external reviews of this page . I feel the deep need to do this simply because CSA is a film of such biting , brutal bleak and brilliant satire featuring an America that still enforces slavery that it'd be very easy to be picked up wrongly by saying I laughed outloud at a great many scenes . Often it was nervous laughter and this was no doubts Wilmott's intention . I did feel very foolish at the end credit scenes . Again this was no doubt Wilmott's intention The premise involves the South winning the American Civil war and Abraham Lincoln being jailed as a war criminal . With great credit Lincoln is portrayed as an opportunist who wanted to get his hands on the South's cotton fields and one suspects Spilebergs upcoming bio-pic starring Daniel Day Lewis might just miss out this very important detail . As it stands history takes a diverted path where the USA become The Confederate States of America ( CSA ) and all the fall out this involves . The biggest divergence being that slavery is not abolished The story is told as a mockumentary by the " British Broadcasting Service " which hints as how unsubtle CSA is . Credit to the makers because at the outset we're shown a public information film called Why We Fought which does give a rather Eurocentric view of America then we start the documentary proper and everyone will be jumping on the outrage bus at one point . Try suggesting a scenario where " Union forces flee in the face of British and French fire " and you'll get the impression red necks aren't going to enjoy this as much as they were hoping . Of course African Americans will take the brunt of the outrage via stereotypical portrayals but if you've seen BIRTH OF A NATION then you'll realise this is an attack on moral climates of early 20th Century America . And it's the Hollywood sections that are the most scathing and unsubtle which is not a criticism . Quite the reverse because these are the most identifiable parts of the mockumentary to an international audience - Hollywood where men are men , where myths are made and where Europeans with a brain shake their head . The mockumentary is cut with advert breaks and trailers for spoof TV shows such as " Runaway " a send up of COPS complete with banjo music . This type of brutal and scathing satire outdoes the ones seen in the ROBOCOP movies As much as I can praise CSA in its witty satire where it fails very badly is in its alternative history aspect . For example if a scenario is created it can be clumsily forgotten about as in America creating a South American empire but later on we're told the rest of the world has brought in sanctions against the CSA because of its attitude to slavery which means the government has to bring in rationing ? In reality America is more than self sufficient in food and raw materials and widening this to South America means more food supplies so why introduce rationing ? There's also illogical ridiculous aspects such as women never having a vote in this alternative America and at the same time an America crippled by sanctions and citizens on rations this alternative America can still fight wars in Vietnam and lead Operation Desert Storm and land men on the moon In summary CSA is a very memorable mockumentary . It's unsurprising that there's a lot of mixed reviews on this page . Some people will have seeked it out on the grounds that it's an alternative history documentary and they'll be slightly disappointed in it . I certainly enjoyed the satirical aspects of it only to feel foolish when at the end when the " satire " was slightly closer to home than I thought it was . I will point out that I do realise that the photos of dead native Americans and lynched blacks are in fact real photographs and that William Wilburforce deserves to be remembered more than Abraham Lincoln

dartleyk the film asks us to accept a fictional historical setting- in every respect, then applies modern morays to its fiction, but it doesn't work to be calling circumstances racist that were commonplace, accepted and legal; social morays do not easily or logically transcend centuries; that's one of the best things about them: they change; extreme example: how stupid the Egyptian builders were because they didn't use steel; steel is now; stone was thenand the next step in this line of thinking is PC cleansing, cutting the n-word from a really good brit war movie (the dam busters) because it's the name of the black dog- when the context is the real flight leader guy Gibson and his real n-name dog

Michael Waddell I've always loved alternative histories (i.e., "The Man in the High Castle", the first 2 seasons of "Sliders," etc.) and this movie is another great example of this genre.The movie is presented as a BBC documentary written in the present day of this "parallel universe" about the history of North America starting when the South won the American Civil War. The thing that makes this movie so great is how realistic it is. With a few minor exceptions, the screenplay resists the temptation to caricaturize its characters and instead presents them in a way that is believable and historically appropriate.This movie also does a very good job of making slavery more "real" to a modern audience by placing it in a more familiar setting. It can be easy to dismiss some of the horrors of slavery because they occurred during a "less civilized" time. By translating these to their modern equivalents, that psychological distance is virtually eliminated.With the exception of some low-quality special effects and green-screen work (due to the fact that this was a relatively low-budget film), I have no reservations about recommending this movie to everyone.