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| 5/17 |
| 2004/5/17-18 [Politics/Domestic/RepublicanMedia, Politics/Domestic/President/Bush] UID:30260 Activity:very high |
5/17 Time Magazine reviews "Fahrenheit 9/11":
http://csua.org/u/7c1
\_ Wow, before reading this I predicted to myself, "I bet Time
gives it a great review, while desperately trying to spin his
sad excuse journalism. Remember, it's not libel, it's "Hard
Hitting Journalism." Man, I must be a prophet or something.
\_ Ever heard the expression "people see what they believe?"
\_ Yep, sounds like Michel Moore to me! But seriously, read
this time "review" and tell me that's not exactly what it
says.
\_ I have not seen it either, but I have decided on the basis
of no evidence whatsover that it is trash. In fact, I don't
even need to see it, since I get all my opinions straight
from Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. I don't know why Time
magazine is even still allowed to stay in print, it is so
obviously run by terrorist loving America haters.
\_ You have a village of people who only tell lies. You ask
them about politics. They make a documentory...
\_ Ummm.. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle. Just to make it clear for
you, the fact that I think Michel Moore is a partisan
liar, doesn't mean I don't also think Rush Limbaugh is a
partisan idiot. I just predicted this "review" would be
Time giving Moore a blow job, and I was 100% right. Does
that pickle you?
\_ Your words scratch the backs of my eyes.
\_ My feet hurt... with DESTINY!
\_ You killed my fish!
\_ why do you think he's a "liar"?
\_ Just like Rush, he puts his personal political
agenda before any kind of truth. He twists facts,
figures, and statments to make his "documentories."
\_ yawn, all of us should rent his movie, Bowling for
Columbine, which I still haven't seen, and form
our own opinions.
\_ Moore is a lot closer to PJ O'Rourke than
Rush Limbaugh. -tom
\_ Moore seems to see himself as a world changing
moving and shaker and opinion maker of some
great importance. Rush is first and foremost
an entertainer and sees himself as such. You'd
know that if you'd ever actually listened to
his show.
\_ Moore makes movies, and has for a long time,
and all of them from "Roger & Me" have tried
to have a humor/satire approach, and they've
all basically addressed aspects of "big
greedy corporations" and their politician
cronies. Rush runs a political talk show
with constant commentary on everyday
politics and unwavering support of Repubs
and attacks of Dems. Your assessment is
exactly reversed.
\_ BZZZT! I was talking about how they
see and talk about themselves. I said
exactly that. Try again. The political
talk show host primarily calls himself
an entertainer. The movie maker makes
himself out to be a world changer of some
importance. (That was the recap for the
semi-literate among us).
\_ do you have any idea what distinction I'm
making? -tom
\_ tom, no one cares what you're making.
\_ Have you ever actually seen any of his movies?
\_ I was sick that day.
\_ On an unrelated note, this is the first time I've seen a popup that
got past both Opera and Firefox. (Though Opera's "block all popups"
stopped it.)
\_ It's not a popup _window_, just a stylesheet layer.
\_ I can't find the word "window" in my comment. I _can_ find
the word "popup" in the source for the page.
\_ I like how none of you possibly might have considered the idea that
this is a _film review_, and thus is simply one person's subjective
opinion about its quality as a _film_. Even _Triumph of the Will_
is considered a classic simply by virtue of its qualities as a film.
Maybe if the movie was an incredibly gory retelling of the
crucifixion, that would have occured to you?
\_ It really burns the Right that the film has generated so
many extremely postiive reviews from so many people already.
\_ bah. they're used to moore. wait till next week when every
dingbat thirteen year old in middle america starts asking
his or her parents about catastrophic climate change.
then we'll hear some whinning from the motd brownshirts and
their ilk.
\_ Not really. It's standard liberal media anti-Bush rhetorical
self love. We're used to it. Why do you think we're
especially 'burned' by yet another example of the exact same
thing we get flooded with every day by your PR division?
\_ As usual, not a single real criticism of Moore's skill as
a filmmaker or polemicist, just bitching about the
non-existent "liberal media."
\_ I've posted tons of evidence of the liberal media. The
better the links and the more detailed my criticism of
your drivel, the faster it gets deleted. Go vote for a
self proclaimed war criminal and feel good about it.
\_ Which of course is par for the course on the motd for
both sides. Moore is a lying bastard and a raving
nutcase, of course, but he can tell the Big Lie better
than most (including Franken, et al). Conservatives
have the embarrassment of Rush to deal with as well as
others. On the motd discourse is dead, and sound bites
rule. It won't stop until it comes down to knives. |
| 5/17 |
|
| csua.org/u/7c1 -> www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,638819,00.html Monday, May 17, 2004 A few years ago, Michael Moore spoke with then-Governor George W Bush, who told the muckraker: Behave yourself, will ya? Moore has made trouble for so many powerful people he has become a media power of his own. He can even make celebrities of mere movie reviewers: When his latest cinematic incendiary device, Fahrenheit 9/11, had its first press screening Monday morning, American critics emerging from the theater were besieged by a convoy of TV and radio crews from networks around the world who wanted to know what they thought of Moores blast at the Bush Administration. Earlier this month, the company ordered its subsidiary, Miramax Films, not to release the film. Moore says that his lawyer was told by Disney CEO Michael Eisner that distributing it would harm the companys negotiations for favorable treatment for its Florida theme parks from that states governor, one Jeb Bush. Harvey Weinstein, co-chair of Miramax, is now trying to buy the film back from Disney and to fashion his own coalition of the willing -- other distributors happy to profit from Disneys timidity. The result of this internal agita will be to raise the profile and, most likely, the profitability of Moores film, which he still hopes will open on the July 4th weekend. Fahrenheit 9/11 -- the title is a play on the Ray Bradbury novel (and Francois Truffaut film) Fahrenheit 451, about a future totalitarian state where reading, and thus independent thinking, has been outlawed -- has news value beyond its financing and distribution tangles. The movie, a brisk and entertaining indictment of the Bush Administrations middle East policies before and after September 11, 2001, features new footage of abuse by US soldiers: a Christmas Eve 2003 sortie in which Iraqi captives are publicly humiliated. Though made over the past two years, the film has scenes that seem ripped from recent headlines. Last week, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld visited Iraq and, to the cheers of his military audience, defiantly called himself a survivor (a word traditionally reserved for those who have lived through the Holocaust or cancer, not for someone enduring political difficulties). In the film, a soldier tells Moores field team: If Donald Rumsfeld was here, Id ask for his resignation. Moores perennial grudge is against what President Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex: the collusion of big corporations and bad government to exploit the working class, here and abroad, for their own gain and in the process deprive citizens of their liberties. The Bush Administrations Iraq policy is handmade for Moores grievances. Bush and his father have enjoyed a long and profitable relationship with the ruling families of Saudi Arabia, including the bin Ladens. The best-seller House of Bush, House of Saud by Craig Unger, whom Moore interviews, estimates that the Saudis have enriched the Bushes and their closest cronies by $14 billion. Politicians reward their biggest contributors, and the Bushes are no exceptions. but when Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador who is close to the First Family, dined with the President in the White House two days after the attacks, the mood was collegial, not angry. In the Iraqi ramp-up and occupation, the Administration has rewarded its Saudi and Texas supporters with billions in rebuilding contracts. As Blaine Ober, president of an armored vehicle company, tells Moore: the Iraqi adventure is good for business, bad for the people. As he sees it, 9/11 was a tragedy for America, a career move for Bush. The attacks allowed the President to push through Congress restrictive laws that would have been defeated in any climate but the war on terror chill. Fahrenheit 9/11 shows some tragicomic effects of the Patriot Act: a man quizzed by the FBI for casually mentioning at his health club that he thought Bush was an asshole; Two Bush quotes in the film indicate the Administrations quandary in selling repression to the American people. One: A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, no doubt about it. Moores argument is that the US is currently being occupied by a hostile, un-American force: the quintet of Bush, Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft and Paul Wolfowitz. Moore is usually the front-and-center star of his own films. Here, his presence is mostly that of narrator and guiding force, though he does make a few piquant appearances. While chatting with Unger across the street from the Saudi embassy in Washington, he is approached and quizzed by Secret Service agents. John Conyers that no member of Congress had read the complete Patriot Act before voting for it, he hires a Mister Softee truck and patrols downtown DC reading the act to members of Congress over a loudspeaker. Toward the end, he tries to get Congressmen to enlist their sons in the military. The interviews with young blacks and a grieving mother in Moores home town of Flint, Michigan, are relevant and poignant, but they lack the propulsive force and homespun indignance of the rest of the film. Fahrenheit 9/11 is at its best when it provides talking points for the emerging majority of those opposed to the Iraq incursion. In sum, its an appalling, enthralling primer of what Moore sees as the Bush Administrations crimes and misdemeanors. Fahrenheit 9/11 may be seen as another example of the liberal media preaching to its own choir. But Moore is such a clever assembler of huge accusations and minor peccadillos (as with a shot of Wolfowitz sticking his pocket comb in his mouth and sucking on it to slick down his hair before a TV interview) that the film should engage audiences of all political persuasions. He found real work deconstructing the Presidents Iraq mistakes. Mary Corliss has covered the Cannes Film Festival for Film Comment and other publications since 1974. |