If you've seen Fahrenheit 9/11, ask & discuss it here.

[ThreeCircles]

As your good friends Steve often states:

YAWN!

 

[kbeverina]

Umm...so you can't?

 

[ThreeCircles]

Originally posted by kbeverina
Umm...so you can't?

How about you answer why (and how often) you take quotes out of context?

 

[kbeverina]

Originally posted by ThreeCircles
How about you answer why (and how often) you take quotes out of context?

Exactly once, as far as I can recollect.

Your turn.

 

[ThreeCircles]

Originally posted by kbeverina
Exactly once, as far as I can recollect.

Your turn.

And, why?

 

[kbeverina]

Originally posted by ThreeCircles
And, why?

Already answered that one--to get your attention.

Your turn.

 

[kbeverina]

I'll give you a few minutes to compose your thoughts.

 

[ThreeCircles]

Originally posted by kbeverina
Already answered that one--to get your attention.

Your turn.

Ah! Yes, you really should apply for a position at Faux News. You're a shoo-in!

Here's mine:

The connections between w, the Saudi's, and the Carlyle are too many for my comfort. Somehow, I don't find it in the best interest of this country. Could just be me! But, here's a deal. Prove to me, without a doubt, that the connections mean nothing, nothing at all, and I'll still vote for Kerry for 100 other reasons! Do we have a deal?

 

[kbeverina]

Originally posted by ThreeCircles
The connections between w, the Saudi's, and the Carlyle are too many for my comfort. Somehow, I don't find it in the best interest of this country. Could just be me!

What connections are you talking about? What specifically?

But, here's a deal. Prove to me, without a doubt, that the connections mean nothing, nothing at all, and I'll still vote for Kerry for 100 other reasons! Do we have a deal?

I can't disprove anything unless you tell me what I'm supposed to be disproving. I don't know what "connections" you're talking about and I don't know why they bother you.

I'm not trying to convince you not to vote for Kerry. I'm responding to something you posted. You posted a link. I don't understand why. Please explain.

 

[Elwood Blues]

Originally posted by goofygirl

Saw the film today and was glad I did. The war is not about terrorism, not about 9/11, its not about freeing Iraq, its about money. (or oil, which translates to money eventually).

The American soldiers are dying for dollars. Dying so that Bush's rich oil buddies with investments can get richer.
What a disgrace.

Where's the proof? And using MM as a reference won't cut it with me. Something a *little* more independent.

 

[Elwood Blues]

Originally posted by rcyannacci
First, I can't speak to all of MM's film since I've not seen them all.

Second, when I do see a MM film, I don't go looking for "truth" or "facts." Even when I read newspapers, listen to NPR, or watch the evening news, I accept that these reports may only be giving a portion of the whole story, may be coming from a particular position, may be proven incorrect with new knowledge, etc.
I went to F911 to hear MM position, to see things that I haven't encountered in the news, to take a moment to reflect on the national and world situation. If this scares you or means we are all in "big trouble," so be it.

Again, I leave others to the minutia of fact checking and philosophers to debates about truth.

Now YOU scare me. You go to see a "documentary" by MM but don't look for truth or facts? And you'll leave the minutia of fact checking and debates about the truth to others? So can I assume since you might believe that your other sources are incomplete (at best) you try to fill in the blanks by seeing a MM flim? How is that possible if you don't go looking for the truth or facts?

Don't you see how odd that is and how anything you state that you "got" from the movie has little if any significance?

 

[rcyannacci]

Elwood Blues-

I can't stop you from interpreting my actions as odd, scary, or insignificant. My primary interests lie in the arts and humanities, so it's likely that my expectations of a "documentary" are wildly divergent from yours. Instead of being scary, shouldn't a critical engagement with the film be at least more comforting than "blind acceptance" of one man's perspective or belief in one version of truth?

If you are really interested in the types of critiques I find interesting and engaging (that have nothing to do with fact checking), check the two articles in Sunday's NYTimes Art section.

The first is by Frank Rich: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/11/arts/11RICH.html

It critiques the cultural relevance of F911, and I am certain it brings up some points that you can agree with, especially since it takes issue with many liberals' overselling of the film as significant. Of course, it also takes issue with conservatives' bashing of the film, giving it much more power than they should. What's even more interesting to me is Rich's argument that Spiderman II may be the film which is more indicative of the "national pulse." Fantastic article.

The next is by A. O. Scott: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/11/movies/11SCOT.html

It brings up the interesting question of how films such as F911 and the Passion "have the power to influence political debate, to engage issues of paramount public importance and even to influence the course of events," and how they have tapped into the desire among citizens to have cimematic experiences that provoke and challenge us.

 

[septbride2002]

I would love to read these articles but do not want to pay to become a member of the NY Times. Is there anyway you could post the articles?

~Amanda

 

[rcyannacci]

Oops, didn't think about that. Thanks Amanda. Here's the Frank Rich article:

FRANK RICH
Spidey Crushes 'Fahrenheit' in 2004

Published: July 11, 2004


THE Michael Moore explosion is now officially unbearable. It's not just that you can't pick up a Time Warner magazine without seeing his mug on the cover. Or turn on a TV news show without hearing another tedious debate about the accuracy of "Fahrenheit 9/11" — conducted by the same press corps that never challenged the Bush administration's souped-up case for invading Iraq. What's most ridiculous is the central question driving the whole show: might a hit documentary swing the November election?

Both political camps seem to be convincing themselves that the answer is yes. Either that, or they are overstating the movie's power to overcompensate for their worst fears. The right is sufficiently panicked about George W. Bush's slippage that it's trashing "Fahrenheit 9/11" to the absurd extreme of likening it to a training film for al Qaeda (according to MoveAmericaForward.org) and a defense brief for Saddam Hussein (Ann Coulter, who else?). The left is so worried about John Kerry's lackluster candidacy that it is overselling the success of "Fahrenheit 9/11" to fill that vacuum, as if Mr. Moore could serve as a surrogate for the vague and charisma-challenged nominee. (That job will now fall, and not a moment too soon, to John Edwards.)

"It has the potential of actually affecting the election, and if it does, it will change the world," said Rob Reiner of "Fahrenheit 9/11," echoing Eli Pariser of MoveOn, who said his members regarded the film as "the `Star Wars' " of its genre. "We literally sold out Peoria, Illinois," bragged the movie's distributor after its opening weekend. So what? Illinois is a safe Democratic state already, and even Peoria is not particularly Republican: Bush-Cheney beat Gore-Lieberman by a mere 251 votes there in 2000, fewer than the 544 votes siphoned off by Mr. Moore's candidate at the time, Ralph Nader. "The sky's the limit on this movie," Harvey Weinstein, a co-owner of the film and a prominent Democrat, told The New York Times. If so, the sky is falling.

"Fahrenheit 9/11" is, as we keep being told, the most successful non-IMAX documentary of all time. What that means is that its ticket sales are whipping the bejesus out of "Winged Migration" and "Spellbound." But by any other Hollywood standard this movie, while a bona fide surprise hit (especially in relation to its tiny budget), is not a blockbuster or must-see phenomenon (except to its core constituency). Of course, it is pulling in some Republicans, and you can be sure that the sighting of each and every one will be assiduously publicized by Mr. Moore. ("There was a Republican woman in Florida unable to get out of her seat, crying," he told Time.) But with a take of $61 million by the end of its second weekend, "Fahrenheit 9/11" will have to sweat to bring in even a third of the $370 million piled up domestically by the red-state polemic to which its sectarian appeal is most frequently compared, "The Passion of the Christ." If voting at a multiplex box-office constitutes any kind of straw poll, then Mr. Bush has already won re-election. By a landslide.

But he hasn't, of course. The latest actual polls show the president with an approval rating below (in some cases well below) 50 percent. The election is both too far away and too close to call. And that's why a movie like "Fahrenheit 9/11," with its relatively narrow sampling, may be no more a reliable index to the mood of the country than the Literary Digest poll of 1936. It was so skewed by the demographics of its similarly self-selected participants that it gave Alf Landon a 14-point spread over F.D.R.

If you want to find a movie that might give a more accurate reading of the national pulse, it isn't hard to do: just take a look at "Spider-Man 2," which is now on a pace to outdraw Mr. Moore's film and maybe every other film this year — in every conceivable demographic. It may not be on the radar screen of the Washington pack busy misreading the electoral tea leaves of "Fahrenheit 9/11" 's box-office receipts. No one is shouting about it on Fox. But with an opening five-day take of some $152 million — next to $128 million for the most recent Shrek, $125 million for Mel Gibson's Christ, $124 million for the last Frodo, $109 million for the last Harry Potter — "Spider-Man 2" is front-and-center for most everyone else.

It deserves to be on its merits, by the way. It's hard not to fall in love with "Spider-Man 2." It's not only better than any other movie based on a comic book — not the highest bar to reach — but it's also superior to all the other so-called franchise movies, in which colossal budgets, presold brand-name characters, computer-generated effects and oppressive merchandising conspire to make the product at the center of the marketing blitz often seem as disposable as that new razor concocted to sell you a new line of blades. "Spider-Man 2" is a product of that egregious process and yet it has a delicacy almost never seen any more in the big-ticket juggernauts sent our way by media conglomerates. It thrives on nuance. It's human even to the extent of replacing the standard-issue camp villain of the first "Spider-Man" movie (Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin) with Alfred Molina's brooding Doc Ock. Its characters live in a real world that is recognizably America, not the landscape of a video game

Unlike the sunnier first "Spider-Man," which was released two summers ago but conceived before the terrorist attacks, the new one carries the shadow of 9/11. As the story shifts from Queens into Manhattan, the city becomes a much more vivid presence. The director, Sam Raimi, dotes on both the old (the Empire State Building in silvery mode) and the new (the Hayden Planetarium), on both the dreamily nostalgic (a fairy-book Broadway theater seemingly resurrected from an Edwardian past) and the neighborhood of our freshest wound (the canyons of Lower Manhattan). The movie is suffused with a nocturnal glow of melancholy that casts its comic-book action in an unexpectedly poignant light.

The writers who set the story against this backdrop include the veteran screenwriter Alvin Sargent, whose credits go back to "Ordinary People," and the novelist Michael Chabon, who memorialized the Marvel Comics gestalt in "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay." They're grown-ups, as is not always the case with this kind of Hollywood product. (Mr. Sargent is in his 70's — an almost unheard-of anomaly among employed screenwriters these days.) In "Spider-Man 2," they seem determined to remind us that it is a civilization, not merely a crowd of extras, that is the target of attack. The hero, Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire), turns to poetry to woo his girl next door, Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst). She is an actress appearing in "The Importance of Being Earnest." They are both watched over by Aunt May (the transcendent Rosemary Harris), whose every utterance bespeaks literature and history.

This is a world worth saving, but the superhero who can save it is no Superman. He's a bookish nerd racked with guilt and self-doubt. "With great power comes great responsibility" is the central tenet of his faith, passed down not from God but from his Uncle Ben (Cliff Robertson). He takes it seriously. Spider-Man wants to vanquish evil, but he doesn't want to be reckless about it. Like the reluctant sheriff of an old western, he fights back only when a bad guy strikes first, leaving him with no other alternative. He wouldn't mind throwing off his Spider-Man identity entirely to go back to being just Peter Parker, lonely Columbia undergrad. But of course he can't. This is 2004, and there is always evil bearing down on his New York.

The extraordinary popularity of this hero on the Fourth of July weekend might give partisans on both sides of this year's political race pause. As a man locked in a war against terror, Peter Parker could not be further removed from the hubristic bravura of Mr. Bush and his own cinematic model, the Tom Cruise of "Top Gun." There's nothing triumphalist about Spider-Man; he would never declare "Mission Accomplished" after a passing victory, and his very creed is antithetical to the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war. But neither is he a stand-in for John Kerry. Whatever inner equivocation he suffers over his role as a superhero, he stops playing Hamlet when he has a decision to make. Nor does he follow Mr. Kerry's vainglorious example of turning his own past battles into slick promotional hagiography.

Whatever light "Spider-Man 2" may cast on the dueling, would-be heroes of our presidential race, however, it is not going to change the dynamic of the election any more than "Fahrenheit 9/11" will. As far as I can determine, there's only been one national election in which a single piece of moviemaking may have made some slight difference in a close campaign. That was in 1948, when Hollywood studios, eager to curry favor with Democrats who might have been offended by a previous pro-Dewey film, banded together to exhibit a 10-minute pro-Truman documentary (in the guise of a Universal newsreel) in all the nation's movie theaters. The stunt was pulled off in the last six days of the race and, with no real competition from television, reached a captive audience of some 65 million Americans at a time when the entire population was only some 146 million.

Not even "Spider-Man 2" can gather a crowd that large in the fractionalized American cultural marketplace of 2004. But if it or any movie cannot move an election, its box-office triumph shows us something about those who will be doing the voting. "Spider-Man 2" is an escapist movie that serves as a rebuke to what its audience wants to escape from: a pop culture that is often too shrill and an election-year political culture that increasingly mimics that pop culture. It takes us away from cable news screamfests and toxic campaign ads no less than it delivers us from "Dodgeball." It gives us a selfless wartime hero unlike any on the national stage, and it promotes a credo of justice without vindictiveness. This year that appears to be the heretofore missing formula for capturing a landslide mandate in red and blue states alike.

 

[rcyannacci]

And here's the Scott article:

A New Market for Bravehearts?
By A. O. SCOTT

Published: July 11, 2004


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.

 

[KarenC]

A while ago there was a discussion about whether or not F9/11 could be considered successful or not...this should put that in perspective, From the Box Office Guru:

Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 held up well dropping 32% to an estimated $11M in its third weekend and watched its cume surge to $80.1M after only 17 days of national release. Adding 286 more theaters this weekend, the Lions Gate/IFC Films release averaged a solid $5,470 from 2,011 locations. Fahrenheit 9/11 has now grossed more than any of Disney's releases have this year.

 

[wvrevy]

lol...I particularly enjoyed this part of that post:

Fahrenheit 9/11 has now grossed more than any of Disney's releases have this year.

Yeah...The film's a complete bust Yet another brilliant decision by Eisner and company.

Oh, but hey...The conservatively backed "America's Heart and Soul" finished a resounding...um...27th...With a whopping $2,000 per screen (no, that's not a misprint...it managed less than two grand per screen)

 

[Elwood Blues]

Originally posted by rcyannacci
Elwood Blues-

I can't stop you from interpreting my actions as odd, scary, or insignificant. My primary interests lie in the arts and humanities, so it's likely that my expectations of a "documentary" are wildly divergent from yours. Instead of being scary, shouldn't a critical engagement with the film be at least more comforting than "blind acceptance" of one man's perspective or belief in one version of truth?

When I want to see a movie from whatever perspective I decide I'm in the mood for, be it just a fun time or something a lot deeper, I'll go see Spiderman 2 or Schindlers List.

You can watch F911 and get whatever you want out if it but to say that you didn't go to get any truth or facts out it leaves you little room to comment on it's accuracy. That's all I'm saying.

And Frank Rich is not much better than MM, he's just not was well known.

I'm not familiar with the other person so I can't comment on what they have to say.

[/B][/QUOTE]

 

[ggarriso]

I saw this movie and I can say with all honesty that it is complete trash.. MM is a self-loathing piece of garbage.

In one of the more telling scenes he shows Iraq supposedly the day before the bombings. People are happy and eating in cafes, playing on playgrounds, etc.. He fails to mention that at any point their dictator could drop some gas on them or if they look at someone funny they will get their head cut off..

Watching the movie three kings last night brought a good point to life. Bush (Sr) was critisized for not staying to help fight Saddam, well Bush (Jr) helped defeat him and gets critisized anyway. You see with these liberal morons there is nothing a republican president can do that will be correct.

MM makes this point for me numerous times throughout the movie. First he says we shouldnt have troops there at all, then it is we sent too few troops..

Of course a good quarter of the movie is dedicated to stupid little jabs at Bush. Watching him get his hair done before a press conference, etc. When we all know that Democrats and Republicans alike have this treatment. It was these stupid jabs that the audience howled is agreement with. It made me sick. They seem to forget the disgrace that their last president brought to the country and to the office.

There are a number of complete lies and misguidance in this movie. I would recommend anyone that actually likes the country they live in to skip this movie.

 

[wvrevy]

Originally posted by ggarriso
I saw this movie and I can say with all honesty that it is complete trash.. MM is a self-loathing piece of garbage.

In one of the more telling scenes he shows Iraq supposedly the day before the bombings. People are happy and eating in cafes, playing on playgrounds, etc.. He fails to mention that at any point their dictator could drop some gas on them or if they look at someone funny they will get their head cut off..

Um...The gas was over a decade ago, and we've found no evidence that he still had that capability, so you might want to just stick to the cutting off of heads (and boy, that's declined quite a bit, hasn't it )

Originally posted by ggarriso
Watching the movie three kings last night brought a good point to life. Bush (Sr) was critisized for not staying to help fight Saddam, well Bush (Jr) helped defeat him and gets critisized anyway. You see with these liberal morons there is nothing a republican president can do that will be correct.

Hmmm....Yes, you conservative morons can't seem to get it through your teeny-tiny little minds that it is no longer 1990, and Saddam wasn't a threat to anyone, much less currently occupying an ally.

Originally posted by ggarriso
MM makes this point for me numerous times throughout the movie. First he says we shouldnt have troops there at all, then it is we sent too few troops..

What, you mean he says we shouldn't have gone in, but if we did we should have done a helluva lot better job ? Gee, that doesn't seem like such a tough concept to grasp, particularly for such a big-brained republican as yourself.

Originally posted by ggarriso
Of course a good quarter of the movie is dedicated to stupid little jabs at Bush. Watching him get his hair done before a press conference, etc. When we all know that Democrats and Republicans alike have this treatment. It was these stupid jabs that the audience howled is agreement with. It made me sick. They seem to forget the disgrace that their last president brought to the country and to the office.

Yeah...'Cause the current guy sounding like a stuttering moron in every press conference is certainly a wonderful image as well But hey, I am sure Repugnicans wouldn't stoop to taking cheap shots at a president, huh ?

Originally posted by ggarriso
There are a number of complete lies and misguidance in this movie. I would recommend anyone that actually likes the country they live in to skip this movie.

And there it is...If you luv Amurca, you won't watch nun of this stuff

Spoken like a true Hokie How's Marcus doing these days...lol