Onlinewsma Absolutely Brilliant!

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

John Smith karaoke was really good, i liked the story and how it developed...kept me watching. cold lazarus was awful, i could not follow the story because the production and acting was horrible...the British really suck at doing science fiction..it was like the 70s version of doctor who...but i am writing this after only watching the first episode. i am fast forwarding now to get to albert finney's role in this ugly thing, maybe he can save it...but i doubt it. I don't understand how there could be such a disconnect between the karaoke and cold lazarus productions. i can't imagine the writer could have had such different visions of the two, so how did the people involved with actually bringing the written story to TV, misinterpret the writing

johannes-kemppanen This mini-series was shown on Finnish TV on last Christmas. What brought me to watch it was a picture on a TV guide magazine and the premise: "scientists are trying to recover memories from a frozen head." OK... As a fan of sci-fi in general I did some searching on the Web and was impressed enough to decide that I would spend some 4 hours of my precious Christmas holiday watching this one. I wasn't disappointed.Cold Lazarus tells the story of a group of scientists in the future who are trying to recover memories from a hundreds-of-years old frozen severed head of a screenwriter Daniel Feeld, a character who was introduced in the earlier mini-series "Karaoke". (Which was also shown on the day before "Cold Lazarus") The man died to cancer in "Karaoke", but apparently he decided to get his head frozen.The future world is a truly strange place where giant media empire controls the people. It seems truly unethical to make entertainment from a dead man's most painful memories. (Including very disturbing images of sexual abuse as a child.) Then there was also this group called RON (Reality Or Nothing) who fought with weapons against the media. Interesting analogy to today.Technical quality was overall very good. The special effects were fine, although some set pieces and especially props had a "cheap" look on them. That didn't bother me too much."Cold Lazarus" is always worth watching.

McGonigle This miniseries is a fitting capstone to a brilliant and unique career. In Karaoke, Dennis Potter gave us a heartbreakingly personal look at the end of Daniel Feeld's life; A writer of surreal musical miniseries for TV feels like he is losing control over his written work, both literally (as his words break free and get spoken by real people surrounding him) and metaphorically, as the director of his latest screenplay tries to refashion it in his own image.In Cold Lazarus, the situation is somewhat reversed. The setting and basic storyline are, by comparison to Karaoke, quite impersonal. The sci-fi "dystopia" is well done and entertainingly campy, with some real strokes of brilliance (the "Reality or Nothing" terrorists who fight the media's dominance), but it's hardly as personal or unique as a typical Potter drama's set-up.But ironically, the struggle that Daniel Feeld (now only a head, frozen for four hundred years) faces in Cold Lazarus is far more personal, as he literally loses control of his own life and is forced to re-live his own painful memories, without the ability to edit them or filter them through his own creative processes.The metaphor is set up for us by Feeld's dying words, which we hear in the first segment: "No biography". While Dennis Potter always drew from his own life to a large degree in his writing, he apparently did not relish the idea of other writers attempting to pick through his real life.Fortunately for us, though, he was (as always) not nearly as reticent about interpreting or re-casting his own life for us. As a contrast to the sci-fi sequences, he presents us with our final glimpse of childhood in his beloved Forest of Dean, in a series of flashbacks that may even as personal as any of the similar scenes in The Singing Detective.The first time I saw Cold Lazarus, it didn't really grab me, but since seeing it a second time, its story and ideas have stuck in my brain to a huge degree. As I say, it is truly a fitting "final opus" for one of the most distinctive and creative writers of the 20th century; hopefully one day soon, this work (and many more of Potter's creations) will be available on DVD.

ryokan-2 Stendahl's idea that fiction holds more truth than any written "history" is, or will be, aptly applied to Dennis Potter's _magnum opus_, "Cold Lazarus." Even recent merger news makes the "Total Universal Entertainment Corporation" seem more a reality, as does the recent "State of the World" report. We've much to learn from our artists, the fewer there are, day by day. All those who love literature should be grateful that such a one as Dennis Potter left us these gems for television, among the few there have ever been, or will be.... Look upon "Cold Lazarus" with a somber and reflective mind, for the future is by no means, "out there...."