obsession boyfriend i'm psyched     i'm dreading enemy

(need an explanation?)

advertisements


A Hole in the Head and Urine: Good Health (review)

Put on your magnetic bracelet, gaze into your crystal, and align your chakras. Now you're ready to journey into the world of "alternative" medicine and pseudoscience devotees director Eli Kabillio explores in these short documentaries. Hippies looking to expand their minds take the concept a tad too literally in A Hole in the Head, engaging in the ancient practice of skull trepanation, which involves drilling a hole in the skull right through to the brain. Trepaners claim it increases the blood flow to brain, resulting in an energy rush, a druglike high, or a more relaxed attitude toward life. Adherents of uropathy say much the same thing in Urine: Good Health, asserting that drinking one's own urine (I know: yuck) or even injecting it directly into one's own veins (double yuck) is like vaccinating yourself against every malady known to humankind, from acne to AIDS and everything in between. Doctors and surgeons and other experts interviewed in both films agree that neither trepanation nor urotherapy make the slightest bit of scientific sense, and do no good (but probably also do little harm). But from the research librarian who avers that there had to be a good reason why Neolithic medicine men cut bits of their patients' skulls out, and so we should too, to the nun who preaches the Biblical support for gulping down your piss, the capacity for the human mind to fool itself into believing the weirdest and more unsupported things is astounding, and will leaving you shaking your head in wonder. Pit logic against "consciousness expanding" and pharmaceutical conspiracies, though, and you only need one guess which one will come out on top. Kabillio's too-balanced reportage makes it clear that he gives more credence to crackpots than they deserve, and that he's not entirely convinced that reason and science merit the final word.


more below the ad... scroll down...


A Hole in the Head
viewed at home on a small screen
not rated
IMDB

Urine: Good Health
viewed at home on a small screen
not rated
IMDB



Bookmark and Share

who I am


I'm MaryAnn Johanson: writer and ponderer in New York City who drinks too much wine and thinks way too much about such inconsequences as movies, TV, books, and the meaning of life.
[email me]

• contributor, Film.com
• member, Online Film Critics Society
• member, Alliance of Women Film Journalists
• member, International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences
• visit my scratchpad blog, MaryAnnJohanson.com
• read my Doctor Who fan fiction

photo by David Speranza

(postings feed)

Add to Technorati Favorites

monthly archives

recent screenings and hot movies

just opened
red for no Pineapple Express
red for no The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2
box office top 5
green for go The Dark Knight
red for no The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
green for go Step Brothers
yellow for maybe Mamma Mia!
yellow for maybe Journey to the Center of the Earth
top limited releases
red for no Brideshead Revisited
Tell No One
yellow for maybe The Wackness
green for go American Teen
green for go Mongol
coming soon
green for go Tropic Thunder
green for go The Perfect Game
green for go Bottle Shock
red for no Fly Me to the Moon
yellow for maybe A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
now playing
red for no Swing Vote
green for go Stealing America: Vote by Vote
green for go The X-Files: I Want to Believe
green for go Boy A
green for go Man on Wire
green for go Hancock
yellow for maybe Hellboy II: The Golden Army
red for no Space Chimps
yellow for maybe Felon
green for go Wall-E
green for go Wanted
red for no Meet Dave
green for go The Visitor
yellow for maybe Death Defying Acts
yellow for maybe August
red for no Harold
yellow for maybe Up the Yangtze

2008 screening log

new on dvd

08.05
green for go Nim's Island [buy]
green for go The Counterfeiters (Die Fälscher) [buy]
red for no The Killing of John Lennon [buy]
red for no When I Find the Ocean [buy]
green for go Doctor Who: The Five Doctors (25th Anniversary Edition) [buy]
green for go Doctor Who: The Time Meddler [buy]
green for go Doctor Who: Black Orchid [buy]
green for go Star Trek The Original Series: The Complete Second Season (Remastered) [buy]
07.29
green for go The Band's Visit [buy]
green for go The Deal [buy]
green for go Kirikou and the Wild Beast [buy]
green for go Stargate: Continuum [buy]
green for go Freakazoid: The Complete First Season [buy]
green for go Robin of Sherwood: The Complete Collection [buy]
green for go War Games: 25th Anniversary Edition [buy]
green for go Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism - Fox Attacks Special Edition [buy]
07.22
yellow for maybe 21 [buy]
red for no Heartbeat Detector [buy]
green for go Spaced: The Complete Series [buy]
red for no Big Dreams, Little Tokyo [buy]
green for go Comedy Central's TV Funhouse [buy]
green for go Robot Chicken: Star Wars [buy]

advertisements

search

Google
flickfilosopher.com
web
Powered by
Movable Type 3.36