Did you see "Fahrenheit 911" ?
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Did you see "Fahrenheit 911" ?
| Tue, 06-29-2004 - 1:31pm |
Did you see "Fahrenheit 911" ?
- No
- No, but I plan to
- Yes
You will be able to change your vote.
| Tue, 06-29-2004 - 1:31pm |
You will be able to change your vote.
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The last time anyone listened to a Bush, they were lost for 40 years! Looks like we're doomed to "wander" ano
I think the half truths and lies have been covered pretty extensively through various media sources, so I will opine mainly upon the quality of the film. Most of it was grainy, which I think he did for effect to give it a kind of "old documentary" feel. Some of it was lighthearted, but not enough of it to keep audience members in their seats.
Some of his points were just plain stupid and boring, for instance he tried to get congressmen to agree to "send their children" to Iraq to fight in the armed forces. I am sure that everyone in the audience was aware that parents do not "send" their children to war, that the choice is the "child's". This was an old Vietnam era propaganda tactic since at that time there was a draft. If does not apply today so it just came off as stupid.
He spotlighted a woman from Flint, MI who actually played two different parts in the film. She is interviewed at the beginning of the film about something and then she reappears later in the film as a proud mother of two soldiers who is very patriotic who doesn't understand the anti-war crowd. Then her son dies in a helicopter crash and she experiences this epiphany about the war and now opposes it. I found it completely impossible to believe that her son died between the first and second interview with Michael Moore. I'm sure the the scene with the American flag and the distrust of the "anti-war" crowd was all set up after the death of her child. I do understand and empathize with the grief of any mother who has lost a son, but I had a hard time understanding why this would make her turn against the war. Her son did not die in any battle. He was in the service and could have been in a helicopter crash anywhere, including the United States. This sad story was just too contrived, imo, to be believable.
Moore does have a good sense of humour, and if he had relied on that more this film would have been better. When he tries to be serious he comes off more as a conspiratorial idiot. The movie seemed like it was never going to end, and several people left before it was over.
Edited 6/30/2004 3:22 pm ET ET by iminnie833
The last time anyone listened to a Bush, they were lost for 40 years! Looks like we're doomed to "wander" ano
The length wasn't that bad, but the attempt to make everything appear to be a conspiracy theory got to be a bit tiresome after the first hour.
I said this before but here I go again, I love this line too funny!
What get's me is what he(fat boy) said in Europe on more than one occasion when they intervied him about the movie, "That all as in all americans are the most stupid people on the planet".
So, is that his real feelings about why he made the movie?
What Mel Gibson tried to do with ‘The Passion” - emulate grief and pain, but only truly succeeded IMO, when the wonderful actress, who played Mary, was onscreen; Moore does from the moment real people express their grief, pain and confusion. Reality TV producers could only wish to have this level of intensity and reality!
I intend to see this film again and I recommend it without reservation! IMO anyone from a military family, as I am, will appreciate much of this film.
Yes, the Bush campaign should be worried about this film!
http://messageboards.ivillage.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=iv-elinthenews&msg=6725.230
This film is being hotly debated on the In the News Board:
http://messageboards.ivillage.com/iv-elinthenews
C
Hey Gem069!!
Welcome back to the board!
Miffy - Co-CL For The Politics Today Board
Hiya Car_al!
Welcome back to you, too!
Miffy - Co-CL For The Politics Today Board
The left wing is distancing themselves from this film as fast as it can. I was surprised to read this review from known leftist Richard Cohen in the Washington Post:
Baloney, Moore or Less
By Richard Cohen
Thursday, July 1, 2004; Page A23
I brought a notebook with me when I went to see Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" and in the dark made notes before I gave up, defeated by the utter stupidity of the movie. One of my notes says "John Ellis," who is a cousin of George W. Bush and the fellow who called the election for Fox News that dark and infamous night when the presidency -- or so the myth goes -- was stolen from Al Gore, delivering the nation to Halliburton, the Carlyle Group and Saudi Arabia, and plunging it into war. A better synopsis of the movie you're not likely to read.
Ellis appears early in the film, which is not only appropriate but inevitable. He is the personification of the Moore method, which combines guilt by association with the stunning revelation of a stunning fact that has already been revealed countless times before. If, for instance, you did a Lexis-Nexis database search for "John Ellis" and "election," you would be told: "This search has been interrupted because it will return more than 1,000 documents." The Ellis story is no secret.
But more than that, what does it mean? Ellis is a Bush cousin, Moore tells us. A close cousin? We are not told. A cousin from the side of the family that did not get invited to Aunt Rivka's wedding? Could be. A cousin who has not forgiven his relative for a slight at a family gathering -- the cheap gift, the tardy entrance, the seat next to a deaf uncle? No info. And even if Ellis loved Bush truly and passionately, as a cousin should, how did he manage to change the election results? To quote the King of Siam, is a puzzlement.
I go on about Moore and Ellis because the stunning box-office success of "Fahrenheit 9/11" is not, as proclaimed, a sure sign that Bush is on his way out but is instead a warning to the Democrats to keep the loony left at a safe distance. Speaking just for myself, not only was I dismayed by how prosaic and boring the movie was -- nothing new and utterly predictable -- but I recoiled from Moore's methodology, if it can be called that. For a time, I hated his approach more than I opposed the cartoonishly portrayed Bush.
The case against Bush is too hard and too serious to turn into some sort of joke, as Moore has done. The danger of that is twofold: It can send fence-sitters moving, either out of revulsion or sympathy, the other way, and it leads to an easy and facile dismissal of arguments critical of Bush. During the Vietnam War, it seemed to me that some people supported Richard Nixon not because they thought he was right but because they loathed the war protesters. Beware history repeating itself.
Moore's depiction of why Bush went to war is so silly and so incomprehensible that it is easily dismissed. As far as I can tell, it is a farrago of conspiracy theories. But nothing is said about multiple U.N. resolutions violated by Iraq or the depredations of Saddam Hussein. In fact, prewar Iraq is depicted as some sort of Arab folk festival -- lots of happy, smiling, indigenous people. Was there no footage of a Kurdish village that had been gassed? This is obscenity by omission.
The case against Bush need not and should not rest on guilt by association or half-baked conspiracy theories, which collapse at the first double take but reinforce the fervor of those already convinced. The success of Moore's movie, though, suggests this is happening -- a dialogue in which anti-Bush forces talk to themselves and do so in a way that puts off others. I found that happening to me in the run-up to the war, when I spent more time and energy arguing with those who said the war was about oil (no!) or Israel (no!) or something just as silly than I did questioning the stated reasons for invading Iraq -- weapons of mass destruction and Hussein's links to Osama bin Laden. This was stupid of me, but human nature nonetheless.
Some of that old feeling returned while watching Moore's assault on the documentary form. It is so juvenile in its approach, so awful in its journalism, such an inside joke for people who already hate Bush, that I found myself feeling a bit sorry for a president who is depicted mostly as a befuddled dope. I fear how it will play to the undecided.
For them, I recommend "Spider-Man 2."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A19320-2004Jun30?language=printer
Even though he is wrong implying that the reasons that we went to war was the weapons of mass destruction and Hussein's links to Osama bin Laden with no mention of the 17 UN resolutions that Saddam broke, he is right on the money about the film.
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