Greg Palast Movies

The 2000 presidential election -- marked by an extremely narrow margin of victory, troubles with ballots going missing, and mechanical problems with poorly designed paper ballots in the state of Florida -- led many pundits to debate how effective the mechanics of voting had become in America. However, many who have set out to "solve" these problems have in fact only made them worse; many commonly used electronic voting systems are significantly less accurate than their mechanical counterparts, a number of them offer no hard-copy backup of the votes cast, and one of the largest manufacturers of electronic voting machines, Diebold, is headed by Walden O'Dell, a man who told attendees at a Republican fund raiser in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president (George W. Bush) next year," leading many to question his objectivity and if certain problems with his machines occurred entirely by accident. A growing number of political activists are looking to the 2008 presidential race as a test of whether fair elections are still possible in the United States, and the battle to see that all votes are accurately counted and election laws are properly observed is explored in the documentary Stealing America: Vote by Vote. Filmmaker Dorothy Fadiman weighs the evidence that political influence may have been used to leverage presidential election results in certain states, that a significant number of voters may have been illegally prevented from casting a ballot, and that the latest generation of electronic voting machines could be easily susceptible to tampering. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Based on author and activist Greg Palast's book of the same name, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy takes a hard look at the role of business in the American justice system and alleges that many companies' motives are not only impure, but a detriment to society as a whole and a testament that the U.S. may not be as free a country as many believe. Among the companies profiled are Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, the Goliath drug company that Palast claims knowingly exported faulty drugs and medical equipment to third world countries, as well as DBT, which contributed largely to the infamous Florida felon's list that kept thousands of African-American voters away from the polls in the hotly contested state of Florida during the 2000 election. ~ Tracie Cooper, Rovi

Directed by Robert Kane Pappas, Orwell Rolls in His Grave questions whether the bleak, feverishly regulated world of author George Orwell's 1984 is no longer a dire fictional account of government power gone wrong but a creeping reality of recent American media trends. The film focuses on the media's least covered topic -- itself -- in an effort to trace the process by which newsworthy stories are either dismissed entirely or distorted into something more politically suitable for the heads of various media conglomerates. It also studies how influential politicos became responsible for an industry that was largely created in order to keep political abuse in check. Among the interviewees include legal scholar and former L.A. prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, film director and author Michael Moore, and Danny Schechter, a former producer for ABC and CNN. Pappas also covers the expansion of the news media and examines whether the onset of competitive 24-hour news stations has actually led to a nationally less informed public. ~ Tracie Cooper, Rovi

Independent filmmakers Richard Ray Pérez and Joan Sekler direct the political documentary Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election. Narrated by Peter Coyote, this 50-minute film examines the controversial occurrences in Florida during the 2000 presidential election leading up to the eventual administration of George W. Bush. The filmmakers examine what went wrong before, during, and after the disputed election decision. It explores the topic of voter rolls, ballot design, vote recounting, and the actions of the Supreme Court. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi