TotalTelly.co.uk

Devoted to Popular, Cult and Retro TV

What The Bleep Do We Know!?


RRP: £19.99
Our Price: £4.85 (subject to change)

Editorial
Amazon.co.uk Review

What the Bleep Do We Know? is a lecture on mysticism and science mixed into a sort-of narrative. Marlee Matlin stars in the dramatic thread, about a sourpuss photographer who begins to question her perceptions. Interviews with quantum physics experts and New Age authors are cut into this story, offering a vaguely convincing (and certainly mind-provoking) theory about... well, actually, it sounds a lot like the Power of Positive Thinking, when you get down to it. Talking heads (not identified until film's end) include JZ Knight, who appears in the movie channeling Ramtha, the ancient sage she claims communicates through her (other speakers are also associated with Knight's organization). What she says actually makes pretty good common sense--Ramtha's wiggier notions are not included--and would be easy to accept were it not being credited to a 35,000-year-old mystic from Atlantis. --Robert Horton, Amazon.com


Rubbish
Review date: 2008-09-07 Rating: 2 out of 10

I am interested in cutting edge science. Unfortunately this isn't it. I did some physics at first year university and even I can see that the makers of this DVD either intentionally mislead or totally misunderstood quantum physics.
I even googled the (only) physicist in the film and found out he had been misrepresented.
I'm sorry but while I can see it would be easy to be seduced by the messages in the film, the underlying claim of evidence, of the support of physics to those views, is complete rubbish.

This film includes a 'talking head' giving evidence - at the end it describes her as channeling a 10000 year old person from Atlantis. How anyone can take this seriously I don't know.


Similar Products

Reviews


This DVD makes you stop and think
Review date: 2008-07-07 Rating: 8 out of 10

If you're interested in psychology, parapsychology or just the workings and potential power of the human mind then this DVD will be interesting viewing. I watched this with an experienced lecturer in Psychology who agreed that many of the vignettes here would be useful for discussion in the classroom. Some parts are a bit 'risqué', so selected viewing and a bit of discretion would be worthwhile.

I'm aware of the controversy about this product due to its source (the 'ramtha' thing). However, personally, I couldn't care less about someone's religious beliefs and there's no proselytizing here.

This underground cinema hit is not a film - it's more a series of acted-out and illustrated scenes combined with documentary-type input to help demonstrate points. The 2 DVD set also includes a raft of useful extras.

There are big name contributors here from the world of science and psychology (some from 'The Secret' for example). Issues discussed include quantum physics and how the human mind works to programmes and habitual thinking (usually in a negative and damaging way).

The study of the human mind has been described as the new frontier of the 21st century and 'What The Bleep Do We Know?' is a thought provoking contribution to this subject. Is this a net contribution? Well, you'll need to decide that for yourself.

This is a real mixed bag... but lets not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Review date: 2008-06-14 Rating: 6 out of 10

I thought this DVD, which I borrowed from a science PhD friend, was an interesting introduction to Quantum Physics for the layman. It's very accessible, which is part of it's appeal. You don't need a degree in physics to understand it. I found it intriguing, as many people who have given it 5 stars also did. So why only 3 stars?

I watched it with a discerning mind and found it left me enthused but with lots of questions like "Did that mass meditation experiment really take place in Washington, and if so, what kind of meditation was it?" and I did feel that the mystical female's comments were out of sync with the scientific nature of the rest of the talking experts.

I was disappointed to discover that there was so much controversy surrounding this DVD and that in the process of it being made into an accessible DVD it had been dumbed down to the point of being "pseudoscience" and distorted, in particular to fit in with mystical the mystical views of a very bizarre cult who seem to have financed it.

There are lots of lessons to be learnt, mainly don't believe everything you are told, even about science! Everything we learn through the media (newspapers, TV, DVDs like this) is MEDIATED. It's been edited by a person or persons who will present the story (news, science, anything) from a certain point of view. No two newspapers will present a story in exactly the same light and can often vary wildly in their portrayal of the same event or piece of news. That's one of the things they teach people on all these media studies courses. A DVD of this length was never going to give anything other than a very basic view of highly complex theories. I just wish someone like the BBC or Open University had been able to make a programme about Quantum Physics that wasn't dry and theoretical but made it exciting and accessible and relevant to our lives, as the makers of "What the Bleep" seemed to do, but from a relatively unbiased editorial standpoint i.e. to inform and educate rather than to manipulate, as it seems "What the Bleep" has done. (Has such a series been made or an accessible book been published by reputable scientists???)

The problem with things like "What the Bleep" and "The Da Vinci Code" is that people are easily manipulated by a well told story, even if that story is only half true. I am always amazed at how many people take things at face value and do not engage their critical faculties or judgement or who would see the makers as having the answers to life's spiritual questions and would trustingly investigate the "mystical cult" (which sounds frankly bizarre - channelling ancient spirits from nonexistent continents - outer body experiences???) promoted by some of the people who spoke on the video. I am bemused by the existence of such cults and the bizarre stuff that some people believe an so would be concerned at impressionable people going to the website, getting the newsletter and possibly being sucked in by a cult. Who knows... By all means, go ahead and watch the DVD and see what all the fuss is about, and let it enthuse you about science. But then go on and read works by real scientists if it really floats your boat. And if you really must watch it, whilst the jury is still out on the makers of this film and what the proceeds go towards, try to do like I did and borrow it from a friend or get it second hand so you can make up your mind without worrying about funding cult activities.

And I think it's important not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Quantum Physics can be interesting and I know books are being written, for example, on how the view of reality forwarded by Quantum Physics has closed the gap between science and certain religious traditions like Buddhist Philosophy. I just don't know as yet how accessible these books are (whether I'll need a degree in Theoretical Physics and Buddhist/Eastern philosophies in order to understand it).

I'm torn as to how to rate this. I think for sheer entertainment value and the fact that it opens peoples eyes to Quantum Theory, that little understood branch of physics, I can understand people rating it as a 5 but for the nasty aftertaste that it has left in my mouth which has led me to ask myself if I've been manipulated or hoodwinked, it can be no more than a 3.



New-Age Pseudo-Science Fluff - Terrible Whether It's Being Watched or Not
Review date: 2008-06-10 Rating: 2 out of 10

I'm not really sure why I'm bothering to review this film. Except that I heard a woman on the radio the other day referring to this film as if it were a source of knowledge. This concerns me. It (like creationism/ID) is another example of the scientific illiteracy in the US. I'm not going to try to catalog the silliness of this film, but I'll hit some of the "high" points.

The main feature of this film is a series of talking heads that spout sound bites that are meant to sound "scientific" and mysterious and amazing. I'm not surprised they don't identify them; why should we listen to anything these people say? They provide no data and make many bald-faced assertions that are false, misleading, and unsupportable. They spout fluff like: "this requires a whole new science," "we can't explain X," "if you look into it carefully, it's so strange that there's just no way science can explain it," "Heisenberg himself said ...," "scientific experiments have shown ..." [why do they never cite the journal article for these "amazing facts?"], ad nauseum.

All this "information" is supposed to make you think (at least this is the message I heard):
1. Dualism is true [it's not]
2. You can create your own reality by conscious will [you can't]
3. You can time-travel, change the form of matter, etc. [you can't]
4. Science actually doesn't support naturalism; but rather some kind of new-age spiritualism/mysticism [it doesn't; scientific knowledge supports naturalism in every detail]

The silly non-sequiturs include, primarily:
1. Certain very strange things happen with matter at the subatomic level, therefore they can occur at the middle-world scale of our bodies. For instance: the fact that you can't measure both the location and velocity of a subatomic particle at the same time means that the middle-world objects around you don't exist until you observe them. [We experience is the SUM of trillions of motions of subatomic particles that actually does act just like we perceive it does, on our scale. The fact that you can't localize an electron does not mean we don't understand the macro (middle-world) behavior of matter very exactly. People in China do actually exist and live their lives whether you observe them or not. You may be ignorant of them; but that has no causal effect on their actual existence.]

2. "X" is deeply perplexing or difficult to understand, therefore it's a "mystery," therefore something supernatural must be going on, therefore that's somehow comforting. ["X" includes (of course!) quantum physics, human consciousness, the subatomic world, etc. These things are perplexing because our brains evolved to help our DNA replicate in our "middle-world" of objects from the size of sand grains to mountains (as opposed to the atomic/subatomic or very large (stars/galaxies/the universe) scale.) The subatomic world is completely different from middle-world, as is the very large. We only needed a useful (for propagating DNA) model of the world in our consciousness, not an accurate model of all reality. Your or my lack of intellectual skills does not warp space-time, nor does it imply or require ANYTHING about the nature of reality.]

3. Science doesn't have the perfect model of how sub-atomic and astro-physical scale events behave, therefore your brain creates its own reality and you can travel backward or forward in time, walk on water or whatever. [Do I need to even comment?]

4. The mathematics that describe the physical world have a time scale (dimension) that mathematically allows "motion" in both directions. Therefore we can time travel using our minds. And the corollary: the direction of time seems real; but is arbitrary and we can't prove why it goes the way it seems to us that it does. [The first statement is trivial, since math always allows this. There IS a real direction to time: It is most forcefully pointed by the increase of entropy of the universe as a whole.]

6. In the past we used to think that the earth was flat, then we thought it was round, now (in the post-modernist miasma of the film) we can't be sure that it really IS round, since we were wrong about it being flat. [Again, there is a direction to our accumulating real knowledge of the world. We do know that the earth is round and revolves around the sun, it's not a guess. And it will be round and revolving long after we are gone.]

The "dramatized" parts, that purport to show Marlee Matlin making some kind of "spiritual journey" replete with time-travel and Matrix-like special effects, are just amazingly lame. This film isn't just lame, it's supine. It doesn't need a cane or a walker, it needs a complete ICU. The acting is abysmal, as is the dialog.

This film purports to address the "Big Questions," like, why are we here [it's not a question that requires or deserves an answer], how did we get here [we evolved from earlier mammals in Africa], the meaning of life [if there is one it's: replicate your DNA], the nature of consciousness [If you actually want to learn something, please read "Consciousness Explained" by Dennett and Pinker's books on consciousness]: you know, the usual suspects. But, again, it just lamely tries to make it all mysterious and pseudo-scientific by innuendo. This is the very worst kind of new-age fluff and pseudo-science magic that tries to replace the comfort of religion with the comfort of some other sort of supernatural delusion. As science has found actual, useful, verifiable knowledge about the world/universe/life, the magical "explanations" of religion have been replaced. But most people seem to desire the comfort of religion, mystery, whatever. This film is the kind of thing that results. Don't fall for this snake oil. Read some books of real science instead.

What the bleep is this about?
Review date: 2008-05-12 Rating: 2 out of 10

This is, quite simply, nonsense of the highest order and the entire point can be summarised in two words - think positively. That, ladies and gentlemen, is it and you read it for free here without forking out on the DVD or paperback. If only I could award minus stars, find the director, and demand two hours of his life in servitude for wasting two hours of mine ...

'What The Bleep Do We Know?' is a prime example of pseudoscience at work and mixes pop psychology, New Age spirituality, and throws in some very bad misrepresentations of quantum physics to make it sound good. It might appeal to some - the kind of people who phone psychic hotlines (why don't they call you?) and would never date a Saggitarius - but it is rubbish of the highest order and I say that as a lecturer in physics.

What you're doing when you pay for this DVD is put money into the hands of people who really want your money. In exchage for this cash they'll make you feel uplifted and happy by telling you nonsense. Buy a parrot instead ...

Product Details/Specifications


Actor(s):
John Ross Bowie
Marlee Matlin
Elaine Hendrix

Creators:
Marlee Matlin (Primary Contributor)
Elaine Hendrix (Primary Contributor)

Director(s):

Recording label: Revolver Entertainment
Manufacturer: Revolver Entertainment
EAN: 5060018488493
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 2
Format: PAL,
Release date: 2005-09-26
Audience rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
Region code: 2
Running time: 200 minutes
Language: English (Original Language)

Add to Cart

© 2006 Darren Hester, DesignsByDarren.com, Some Rights Reserved.
Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional