Did you see "Fahrenheit 911" ?

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2004
Did you see "Fahrenheit 911" ?
522
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.


 

The last time anyone listened to a Bush, they were lost for 40 years!   Looks like we're doomed to "wander" ano

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iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2004
Sun, 07-11-2004 - 9:02pm

That wasn't a news conference. The WH press corp follow the president wherever he goes & shout questions at him when there is a break in play. Remember Clinton shouting answers from his golf cart & Bush 40 & Clinton early in his first term answering questions in their jogging shorts?

Renee ~~~

Renee ~~~

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2004
Sun, 07-11-2004 - 9:16pm

That's hardly a

Renee ~~~

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-31-2003
Sun, 07-11-2004 - 9:37pm
Sure. But Bush has arranged it so the only regular chance the press gets to ask any serious questions at all is during these silly photo-ops. That way, he's not asked as many serious questions. They should "interrupt" him. The clip was a perfect capsule of his entire dealings with press - charm & avoid.

<>

Avatar for baileyhouse
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Sun, 07-11-2004 - 10:22pm
Screw it whren you and this board are just not worth the anger. You made a comment once about being such a great debator in highschool. Posts like this make it pretty hard to believe. Bullying people a making Personal derogatory comments about someones parenting skills is not debating. Sad thing is you are a smart person but you seem to feel the need to hurt with words even when NOTHING that person has said has anything to do with you. I think you are afraid whren, afraid that what you have believed in for the past 4 years has been a lie so you go after those who disagree with your way of thinking and you appear to get some weird charge out of hurting me. Well I done being your victim. No need to have me pulled from this board, I'm doing it myself.


Edited 7/11/2004 11:12 pm ET ET by baileyhouse
iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2004
Sun, 07-11-2004 - 11:26pm

Since you seem to have a problem with me, it's probably for the best.


Just for the record, I did not comment on your parenting skills, and I wouldn't even if I knew what they were.


My comment was about your attitude towards children in

Renee ~~~

Avatar for car_al
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
Mon, 07-12-2004 - 3:36am
I saw the movie for a second time because my octogenarian mother decided that she had to see it. Her grandchildren, who love that she emails them from her own computer, had told her how great it was and recommended it to her. I, on the other hand, did not encourage her to see it, because she tends to be conservative and isn't a fan of MM.

Well, I had two surprises:

First, she liked it very much and

Second, it was just as thought provoking and powerful the second time.

C

Avatar for car_al
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
Mon, 07-12-2004 - 3:48am
Here’s a really interesting article on the dynamics involved in the success of “Fahrenheit 9/11” and of “The Passion”.

C



July 11, 2004

A New Market for Bravehearts?

By A. O. SCOTT

AS of this writing, "Fahrenheit 9/11," having won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, having landed its director on the covers of both Time and Entertainment Weekly, having dominated talk radio, the op-ed columns and the cable blusterfests for the last month, has just concluded its second weekend in theaters, where it has made more than $60 million so far. By the time you read this, that number will have grown, as the movie, which became the top-grossing documentary ever by the end of its first day of national release, ascends toward the $100 million mark.

By any available measure, and whatever you think of Michael Moore or "Fahrenheit 9/11," these numbers represent the climax of an extraordinary story: a filmmaker, shunned by a major studio, uses his contentious celebrity and his controversial subject matter to turn his movie into a major news story. Arguments rage and opinion hardens before most people have had a chance to see the movie. Once they do, the controversy grows hotter as the grosses expand. Film critics, meanwhile, scratch their heads, alternately bemused and amazed to witness the affirmation of something they often say and rarely believe: that movies have the power to influence political debate, to engage issues of paramount public importance and even to influence the course of events.

But what may be most remarkable about "Fahrenheit 9/11" is that it is the second movie released in the last six months to generate this kind of attention. It has become something of a commonplace to note the symmetries between Mr. Moore's movie and Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ," and to see them as equal and opposite cultural phenomena, converging on the public from the left and right ends of the ideological spectrum. Their similarities, however, are if anything more striking, and not only because the main character in each case is a fellow who went into his father's line of work.

For an R-rated political documentary to make $100 million would be a show business anomaly, surpassed in strangeness only by an R-rated scripture-based foreign-language film making three times that much. It is unlikely that either picture signals the beginning of a trend, since the success of each was leveraged by the stardom of its maker. But Mr. Moore and Mr. Gibson did not succeed simply through their fame or their knack for using the news media as an engine of publicity. It was clear long before anyone had seen a frame of either "Passion" or "Fahrenheit" that what audiences would witness was the uncompromised, unfiltered vision of a strong-willed, stubborn and bloody-minded director.

Is it too idealistic of me to think that this freedom from compromise is part of what attracted audiences? Perhaps more than ever before, the movie studios are ruled by timidity, anxiously tailoring their releases to avoid giving offense. Yes, they sometimes engage in the mock-provocations of sex and brutality, but these tepid buttons are pushed much less forcefully than they were 30 years ago. For the most part, movies, intent on maintaining an illusion of consensus, tread cautiously around the thornier thickets of our civic life. Homosexuality no longer need be euphemized out of existence (though it's best not to place too much emphasis on the sex part), but abortion can scarcely be mentioned. War can be depicted with unvarnished savagery, but also with lump-in-the-throat speeches about valor and sacrifice (and also with period costumes to camouflage any uncomfortably topical implications). The social injustices of the past are ringingly opposed and soundly defeated, enforcing the view that the present is a land of eternal sunshine. Above all, the local multiplex follows the code of an old-line country club, in which religion and politics are not to be discussed.

The justification for this kind of bland cowardice is economic, and follows a marketing logic that is hard to refute. Why risk alienating potential customers? But the movie-going public can be alienated as much by boredom as by distaste, and it may be that the studios should be more afraid of our indifference than of our anger. At the moment, we are in a state of spiritual and political agitation, and while we may still be looking for entertainment to distract us or calm us down, we also clearly have an appetite for entertainment that does the opposite, that focuses our attention and raises our blood pressure. We worry about the health of the body politic and the state of our immortal souls and, at least some of the time, we want a culture that responds to these concerns. In other words, we are willing to pay good money to be provoked, enraged, exalted and challenged.

I'm aware that, in saying "we," I'm being somewhat disingenuous — maybe even hypocritical. Because the popular responses to "Passion" and "Fahrenheit" have not only challenged the conventional wisdom of the risk-averse Hollywood studios; they have also shaken the assumptions of a great many film critics, this one included. Critics, however democratic our tastes, however accessible our prose, however ignorant our views, are part of a culture of expertise, and it is the prerogatives of this culture that populists like Mr. Moore and Mr. Gibson delight in attacking. Their films provoked a great deal of hand-wringing: from biblical scholars who questioned Mr. Gibson's interpretation of the Gospels; from political commentators who attacked Mr. Moore's rhetoric, and some of his facts; and in both cases from movie critics who were uneasy about the directors' methods.

This unease, I suspect, arose partly because "Passion" and "Fahrenheit" were difficult to classify and, loath as we are to admit it, critics often prefer movies that resemble other movies. But "Passion," with its unrelenting violence and its horror-movie effects, did not seem to play by the austere rules of cinematic spirituality, any more than "Fahrenheit," with its boisterous blend of mockery and outrage, obeyed the sober imperatives of documentary.

It is proper for critics to be concerned with such things, and I certainly would not disown anything I've written about either film. But it is also proper, and healthy, for audiences to overrule our anxious, qualified judgments, and to respond to movies like these with more heat and more passion. The basic critical function of consumer advice, in any case, is overridden when movies become part of a larger debate, which may also be hard for critics to deal with, since it threatens our authority.

Which is, all in all, a very good thing. Movies are a democratic art form, and democracy, at its most vigorous, can ride roughshod over polite opinion, responsible judgment and cool appraisal. When that happens, we should relish our discomfort, and gratefully acknowledge that, sometimes, hotter heads prevail.

http://nytimes.com/2004/07/11/movies/11SCOT.html

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Mon, 07-12-2004 - 5:21am
<<"If MM said rob a bank then I guess kids should do it according to you.">>.....OY! Nó

Djie

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-16-2004
Mon, 07-12-2004 - 11:27am
Where are the stories of the thousands of Iraqi civilians killed and maimed? Stories of the hard life in Iraq since the war? Those stories aren't told on the American mainstream media! Do you complain about those omissions?

I think MM's move gave a small dent on presenting the 'other view' in comparison to the one-sided view the media provides.


Edited 7/12/2004 11:50 am ET ET by nicecanadianlady

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-16-2004
Mon, 07-12-2004 - 11:36am
That's still stealing. The money ends up with the wrong moviemakers, since it's not just the movie theaters that makes money. That's doesn't say much about your ethics...

I personally think everyone who does that should get fined if caught.

People preaching morality to others, yet not doing what they preach..

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