kottke.org

...is a weblog about the liberal arts 2.0 edited by Jason Kottke since March 1998 (archives). You can read about me and kottke.org here. If you've got questions, concerns, or interesting links, send them along.

kottke.org posts about cults

 
rating: 3.0 stars

Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple

Even though I wasn't that familiar with the whole Jim Jones/Jonestown story, I felt like they rushed through the early parts of the story...might have worked better at 2 hours than at 90 minutes. The ending is great, a well-paced mix of personal narrative, photography, audio, and video from the last fateful day of over 900 people. After the movie ended, I was trying to imagine what would happen if Jonestown (or to a lesser extent, the Branch Davidian thing or Heaven's Gate) occurred today. Religious cult leader brainwashes all these people and then kills 900 of them in the South American jungle, including a United States Congressman? CNN, et. al. would got nuts for a start...I don't know if 72 pt. type on their homepage would be enough. The blogosphere would probably go supernova as well.

The American Experience site has more information about Jones and the film. Check your local listings as well...you might be able to catch the film on PBS sometime in the next week or so.

By Jason Kottke    Apr 12, 2007    crime   cults   jimjones   jonestown   movies   murder   religion

kottke.org, quickly...

The best way to get a sense of what kottke.org is all about is to head to the front page or check out some random entries from the archives.

Looking for work?

See more on the Job Board.

Tags, tags, tags

Many posts on kottke.org have been "tagged" with keywords, which activity results in collections of related posts like sports, infoviz, or best of.

Recently popular tags (last 3 weeks)

this is a metaphor for something (5)    The 2000s (8)    post updates (37)    video (734)    science (629)    photography (817)    books (731)    food (659)    art (387)    music (402)    lists (638)    movies (1062)    weblogs (354)    sports (484)    NYC (693)

All-time popular tags

movies (1062)    photography (817)    video (734)    books (731)    NYC (693)    food (659)    lists (638)    science (629)    design (610)    sports (484)    music (402)    art (387)    business (381)    best of (368)    TV (367)

Useful favorites

photography (817)    economics (199)    lists (638)    best of (368)    infoviz (163)    food (659)    NYC (693)    firstworldproblems (4)    cities (135)    restaurants (187)    video (734)    timelapse (2)    interviews (255)    language (272)    maps (231)    fashion (162)    NSFW (62)    remix (204)

Random tags

themuppetshow (2)    giselebundchen (2)    hipsters (4)    MLB (12)    The New Yorker (74)    Brazil (6)    henrymiller (2)    open source (7)    Christian Marclay (6)    dannyboyle (3)    robertparker (2)    edge (3)    Brad Pitt (19)    Showtime (5)    zadiesmith (3)