Robert Crook: SoapFilm

Sat, 12 May 2007 20:27:29 GMT

Film review

Spider-Man (played once again by Tobey Maguire) meets his alter-ego in "Spider-Man 3." (Um, Superman met his alter-ego in "Superman III." Does this mean that by the third superhero movie we're all out of ideas?)

Spider-Man 3

When I read the first reviews of "Spider-Man 3" I thought: "Great. Another 'X-Men III': too busy, too chaotic, not bothering to take the time to develop its new characters."

But the problems with "Spider-Man 3" are nothing like that. "Spider-Man 3" is busy (except for the few times that it drags a bit), but director Sam Raimi makes sure that even the average American brain can keep up with the storyline, and only two new characters are introduced, the quasi-villain Sandman (a.k.a. Flint Marko, played by Thomas Haden Church) and the definitely villainous Venom (a.k.a. Eddie Brock, played by Topher Grace). (Well, there also is an animated black goo that comes from outer space and that amplifies its hosts' aggressive sides, but I don't know that I'd count it as a character.)

The characters of Sandman and Venom aren't that complex and so it's not hard for Raimi to develop them, and only one major character is killed off in "Spider-Man 3" (I won't say who), so "S-M 3" is no "X-Men III," in which major characters are killed off right and left and in which cool new characters are introduced to us but are frustratingly underdeveloped.

But "S-M 3" makes a mistake that "X-Men III" doesn't make, and that's looking back too much at its two predecessors. In retrospect you realize that you're in for it with "S-M 3" when the opening credits contain stills from "S-M" and "S-M 2." And the romance between Peter Parker/Spider-Man (played by Tobey Maguire) and Mary Jane Watson (played by Kirsten Dunst) -- which includes the love triangle completed by Harry Osborn (played by James Franco) -- is progressing so agonizingly slowly that while watching the new scenes of "S-M 3" you feel like you're still trapped in "S-M" and/or "S-M 2."

It was time for Peter Parker/Spider-Man and Mary Jane to tie the knot in "S-M 2," and in "S-M 3" Mary Jane should be having little Spider-Babies already (would that be the pitter-patter of eight little feet? And would Mary Jane give live birth or create an egg sac? The imagination boggles). But Peter Parker still can't even pop the question in "S-M 3."

Speaking of Mary Jane, I'm surprised that the National Organization for Women hasn't boycotted "Spider-Man 3," because probably my biggest problem with the film is how it relegates women to the status of rather whiny, weak creatures who just want to be acknowledged for their (insignificant, non-heroic) contributions, too, and who are in perpetual need of rescue from men (whose contributions, of course, are significant and are not only heroic, but are superheroic).

Mary Jane's main role in "S-M 3" is to whine about how Peter Parker doesn't notice her troubles and concerns and to need to be rescued by Spider-Man when the baddies capture her in order to attract and then, they plan, to kill Spider-Man.

A new female character, Gwen Stacy (played by Bryce Dallas Howard), has it even worse than Mary Jane: Her main role in "Spider-Man 3" is only to serve to make Mary Jane jealous when Spider-Man first rescues her and then gives her the same upside-down kiss that he once gave Mary Jane.

I realize that Spider-Man was created when that's all that most women did in most superhero comics: Serve as the love interest to give the male superhero a human side (and a pain in the ass) and to be used by his nemeses as ready bait by their abduction (which is never difficult).

But in this day and age, couldn't Raimi give a major female character something more interesting to do than to be in need of being rescued when she isn't too busy pouting that the superhero didn't notice that she had such a shitty day?

What's Cat Woman doing these days? She wasn't killed off at the end of the second "Batman" flick. She kicks ass. She doesn't doesn't depend upon men for her sense of self-worth and well-being, so she doesn't pout that they don't notice this or that, and she certainly isn't need of being rescued. (Oh, yeah -- Batman is DC Comics and Spider-Man is Marvel Comics... Oh, well...)

All of this said, "Spider-Man 3" aims primarily to entertain, and it does that; its mission is accomplished. And, as I said, my worst fear, which was that "S-M 3" would be too busy and too chaotic, was not realized; "S-M 3" is easy to follow.

But I didn't know, going into "S-M 3," how much it would rely on "S-M" and "S-M 2," and so I didn't know that watching "S-M 3" is way too much like watching either of its two predecessors.

I give director Raimi props for injecting genuinely touching scenes into "Spider-Man 3." Peter Parker/Spider-Man comes to tears several times in "S-M 3" (usually over the prospect of losing Mary Jane) and it's good to see that the superhero has a heart. But unfortunately, these heartfelt scenes are tanished by pseudo-emotive, preachy scenes, such as how the film ends with Peter Parker/Spider-Man lecturing us, a la Dr. Phil or some other charlatan, on how we are the product of our choices, blah blah blah.

And as cute as Tobey Maguire can be, and as much range as he has, from the tearfully sensitive Boy Scout Peter Parker to the over-the-top-cocky alter-ego that the black goo from outer space creates in Peter Parker/Spider-Man (the extraterrestrial goo later creates Spider-Man's nemesis Venom), after "Spider-Man 3" I'm all spidered out.

And when a movie pokes fun at the movie merchandising that its predecessors inspired, including Halloween costumes and stuffed superheroes -- as "Spider-Man 3" does -- isn't it time to stop?

Will there be a "Spider-Man 4"?

Truth be told, after "Spider-Man 3," I don't much care.

My grade: B-

P.S. I couldn't help but notice in "Spider-Man 3" that the subplot in which Flint Marko's/Sandman's motivation for his dastardly deeds is not greed, but is to obtain the money that his young, seriously ill daughter desperately needs in order to recover from her illness seems to pave the way for Michael Moore's documentary "Sicko" (which I've also seen as "SiCKO"), which is about the wealth -- er, health care industry in the United States, and which is slated for release late next month.

Surely Flint Marko, were he a real person, might have been interviewed by Michael Moore for "Sicko."

Tue, 05 Oct 2004 04:15:26 GMT

Film review

GOING UPRIVER

A lot of people probably will dismiss the new documentary "Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry" as pro-Kerry propaganda and won't see it.

It will be their loss.

"Going Upriver" is no more pro-Kerry than "Pumping Iron," the 1977 documentary also directed by George Butler, is pro-Arnold Schwarzenegger. In both movies, Butler presents his subjects and leaves it to us to decide what to make of them. (That said, the serious, studious, duty- and service-minded younger Kerry shown in "Going Upriver" is in stark contrast to the arrogant, duplicitous, dictator-praising, pot-smoking, frolicking-with-bimbos younger Schwarzenegger shown in "Pumping Iron.")

More than it is about John Kerry, "Going Upriver" is about the Vietnam War and how things haven't changed much since the Vietnam War, how history repeats itself. While Butler draws no overt comparisons of the quagmire in Vietnam and the current quagmire in Iraq, it's difficult, as a thinking audience member, not to draw the comparisons.

In "Going Upriver," for instance, a younger Kerry, on Dick Cavett's television talk show and in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, relates how young American men in Vietnam continued to die not because the war was accomplishing anything, but because President Richard Nixon did not want to be the first U.S. president to go down in history as having lost a war. Saving face was more important to the Nixon regime than were the thousands of American lives -- and the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese lives -- that were being lost in Vietnam .

If you think that Vietnam is just ancient history, let's revisit what "President" George W. Bush said just Thursday night, during the first 2004 presidential debate:

First of all, what my opponent wants you to forget is that he voted to authorize the use of force. And now says it's the wrong war at the wrong time at the wrong place.

I don't see how you can lead this country to succeed in Iraq if you say wrong war, wrong time, wrong place. What message does that send our troops? What messages does that send our allies? What message does that send the Iraqis?

No, the way to win this is to be steadfast and resolved and to follow through on the plan that I just outlined.

Note that Bush's argument -- which he thought was so fucking clever that he repeated the phrase "the wrong war at the wrong time at the wrong place" or a close variation of it throughout the rest of the debate -- is not whether or not the Iraq war is the wrong war at the wrong time at the wrong place. His argument is that to acknowledge that the Iraq war is the wrong war at the wrong time at the wrong place would be a public-relations problem for him and his regime.

So fuck the truth. Fuck the troops. Fuck the Iraqis, fuck the entire fucking world. This is all about saving face for the Bush regime. Let's all just pretend that the Bush regime's unprovoked, illegal, immoral, imperialistic March 2003 invasion of Iraq was not a colossal fucking mistake, because the United States of America and its leaders are incapable of making mistakes.

To answer Bush's rhetorical question of what message it would send to acknowledge that his regime's war in Iraq is the wrong war at the wrong time at the wrong place, I imagine that many, if not most, of our troops, our allies, the Iraqis and the world would love it if the the Bush regime would actually fucking admit its many, many mistakes. (Hell, even just one mistake!)

Because only after a mistake is acknowledged can it be fixed.

We Americans need to acknowledge our mistake of having allowed the Bush regime to take over the White House without having been elected, and we can acknowledge that mistake on Nov. 2 by voting the lying, thieving, murderous Bush regime out of Washington. Our troops, our allies, the Iraqis and the rest of the world would be delighted to hear that message from the American people, that we acknowledge our mistake and that with legitimately elected President John Kerry we intend to fix what the Bush regime shamelessly, needlessly, criminally broke.

I won't rehash "Going Upriver" because it contains so many gems that to describe them all would ruin the surprise. You need to see it, and if you want to read more about it before you go see it, you can visit its Web site.

I will remark that "Going Upriver" thoroughly discredits so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ringleader John O'Neill -- who is a Vietnam veteran but who never served with Kerry -- for what he is: A deer-caught-in-the-headlights right-wing nutjob who was recruited by the Nixon regime to try to discredit Kerry.

Just as Butler does not tell us, but rather shows us what a true American hero Kerry is, Butler does not tell us, but shows us what a raging assbite O'Neill is. Television clips and film footage don't lie.

I had thought that "Going Upriver" would simply rehash images that I'd already scene, but the film shows mostly film and television clips and pictures that I'd never seen before (and made me wonder why I hadn't) and it fleshed out what I already knew about John Kerry.

Perhaps the most poignant part of "Going Upriver" is the film footage of Vietnam veterans tossing their medals over a fence in a symbolic act, an act to show that they believed that in Vietnam they fought for nothing, that their comrades were killed and were still being killed for nothing, and thus their medals meant nothing to them.

I've read about the medal-tossing, but no written account of it that I've read does it any justice; one has to watch the film footage to gain a real understanding of what happened. Rather than a spiteful, anti-American hatefest, as the Bush-lovin' AmeriNazis would have us believe it was, the medal-tossing was a cathartic expression of deep sorrow over young lives lost for nothing except for the pride of stupid white men and resentment that the federal government run by said stupid white men had lied about the war in Vietnam, just as the Bush regime has been lying about its war in Iraq. (That anyone should criticize the veterans for doing whatever the fuck they please with their own damned medals pisses me off, especially the fact that most of the critics of the medal-throwers would never put their own precious, hypocritical, chickenhawk asses in the way of a bullet.)

While I have long known that John Kerry, whom I have seen speak twice here in Northern California and whose hand I shook at one of those events, is a good man who will be a great president, I walked away from "Going Upriver" filled with a whole new appreciation for what Kerry has fought for and for what he still fights, and an unexpected appreciation of how vitally important the Vietnam War remains to this day, a deep understanding that it's not ancient history.

If Bush hadn't pussed out of Vietnam, if he had gone like Kerry went (Kerry volunteered to go) and had witnessed what Kerry witnessed, there is no way that he could so blithely suggest during Thursday's presidential debate that saving face for his regime is more important than saving Americans', Iraqis' and others' lives.

"Going Upriver" demonstrates that like the Vietnam War was, the Second Bush War in Iraq is the wrong war at the wrong time at the wrong place -- and that John Kerry, like he was during the anti-Vietnam War movement, is the right man at the right time at the right place.

My grade: A

Tue, 10 Aug 2004 04:23:43 GMT

In a still from one of many true-colors-revealing clips shown in "Fahrenheit 9/11," George W. Bush tells what CBS News calls a "diamond-studded $800-a-plate crowd" at an October 2000 fundraiser: "This is an impressive crowd: The haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elites; I call you my base." (This is supposed to be funny, and the "have-mores," all or most of whom are white, all laugh.)

"F9/11": The second time is as good as the first time

Today I saw "Fahrenheit 9/11" for the second time. (I saw it when it was released on June 25 and reviewed it here.) I wanted to see it on the big screen one more time before it is supposed to hit DVD next month, just in time for the presidential election on Nov. 2.

An advantage of watching Michael Moore's excellent documentary again is that the first time you watch it you're hit with a lot at once, and the second time you have the opportunity to more thoroughly digest the film.

After my second viewing of "Fahrenheit" today, I have come to two inescapable conclusions (based not just on "Fahrenheit," but also upon what I know of the Bush regime's actions of the past four years):

1. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are traitors. They and/or family members and friends, business associates and/or campaign contributors have personally profited from the Bush regime's unprovoked, immoral, illegal and imperialistic March 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, which had absolutely nothing to do with the post-Sept. 11, 2001 "war on terrorism."

To add insult to injury, the Bush family for years has had close business ties with the Saudis, and the Bush family and the Saudis have both profited from Gulf War II through their financial interests in the Carlyle Group. Think about it: "President" Bush gets a memo on Aug. 6, 2001, that Osama bin Laden (originally of Saudi Arabia) is determined to strike within the United States -- soon. Bush is on vacation, so he doesn't do shit. Although 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia and not one of them was from Iraq, the Bush regime shoves its March 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq down Americans' and down the world's throats.

Almost 1,000 American military personnel and thousands of innocent Iraqis have died in order to make Dick Cheney's Halliburton and the Bush family's Carlyle Group -- and the Saudi elite -- even richer.

As governor of Texas, George W. Bush was big on the death penalty.

While I am generally opposed to the death penalty, I would not at all be opposed to the death penalty for George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and the others within the Bush regime who clearly committed treason: Lying to the American people and to the world in order to conduct a bogus war for their and their associates' war profiteering, which resulted in the unnecessary loss of thousands of American and Iraqi lives.

I have also concluded that those who support the treasonous, murderous BushCheneyCorp will inhabit A Special Place in Hell, right next to The Special Place in Hell for Bush, Cheney, et. al. Exactly how hot the BushCheneyCorp's aiders', abettors' and supporters' Special Place in Hell will be will depend upon the degree of their support for the treasonous, murderous BushCheneyCorp.

2. Michael Moore has helped to do something that the clueless, impotent Democratic Party has been utterly unable and/or unwilling to do during the past four years: Rescue the nation's heart and soul from the darkness of the Bush regime, which took advantage of a national tragedy to perpetrate crimes of its own, resulting in even more death and destruction.

How Moore goes on in the face of attacks from even so-called "liberals" who have never lifted a fucking finger to help anyone I have no idea. I would love to have just a fraction of Moore's fortitude.

Whether or not the Democratic Party has redeemed itself from its complicity in the horrors of the second Bush regime is way too early to judge. Right now the Democratic Party has a lot of help from the likes of Moore, MoveOn.org, Air America Radio, Howard Dean's supporters, bloggers, et. al., et. al.

Fact is, the reason there are so many groups and individuals helping out the Democratic Party for the 2004 presidential election is that we all have seen how impotent the Democratic Party has been since it rolled over and played dead in late 2000 when the Bush regime stole the election in Florida.

We knew that left on its own, the Democratic Party would likely fuck up yet another election, so we couldn't -- and didn't -- leave the critically important 2004 presidential election solely to the Democratic Party, which certainly during the past four years hasn't earned our progressives' allegiance.

I don't think that the Democratic Party could win in November if it weren't for the help of the likes of Michael Moore and MoveOn.org and those, like me, who are on loan from the Green Party -- yet, of course, the crusty, incompetent, out-of-touch Democratic Party operatives who should have resigned long ago (which is most Democratic Party operatives) will take all of the credit should the Kerry-Edwards ticket win, as I suspect that it will.

The rhetoric of the Democratic National Convention last month sounded great, but until the Democratic Party actually returns to what it used to be, that's all that it is: Rhetoric.

And if the Democratic Party is to continue to win elections past this November, it sorely needs to be reformed, and that reform is unlikely to come from within.

Thu, 08 Jul 2004 18:56:07 GMT

Look who's on the cover of the July 12 issue of TIME!

If you don't want to buy the issue, you can read the articles on Michael Moore and "Fahrenheit 9/11" here.

And here's something fun from Moore's Web site:

Letterman's Top 10 List: Top 10 George W. Bush Complaints About "Fahrenheit 9/11"

10. That actor who played the president was totally unconvincing.

9. It oversimplified the way I stole the election.

8. Too many of them fancy college-boy words.

7. If Michael Moore had waited a few months, he could have included the part where I get him deported.

6. Didn't have one of them hilarious monkeys who smoke cigarettes and gives people the finger.

5. Of all Michael Moore's accusations, only 97 percent are true.

4. Not sure -- I passed out after a piece of popcorn lodged in my windpipe.

3. Where the hell was Spider-Man?

2. I couldn't hear most of the movie over Cheney's foul mouth.

1. I thought this was supposed to be about dodgeball!

Tue, 06 Jul 2004 05:58:35 GMT

'F9/11' caught in Spidey's web

Michael Moore's scathing anti-Bush-regime documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" was the second top-grossing movie of the holiday weekend, bumped from its No. 1 spot by "Spider-Man 2."

Not surprising, as 2002's first "Spider-Man" is one of the top 10 highest-grossing movies of all time.

"Spider-Man 2" grossed almost $116 million, "Fahrenheit" grossed $21 million and No. 3 "White Chicks" grossed $12 million over the holiday weekend, The Associated Press reports.

"Fahrenheit," which opened nationwide on June 25, has taken in a total of just over $60 million, the AP reports, adding that "Fahrenheit" "could become the first documentary ever to top $100 million."

"Doubling its theater count to 1,725, 'Fahrenheit 9/11' held up strongly despite the onslaught of 'Spider-Man 2,' which debuted in 4,152 cinemas," the AP reports.

Mainly, I'm just happy that "Fahrenheit" beat "White Chicks" again.

(I saw "Spider-Man 2" today. My grade: "B+." They could have cut out 15 or 20 minutes of exposition and nothing would have been lost. I won't be seeing "White Chicks"...)

Update (Sunday, July 11, 2004): "Fahrenheit" dropped to No. 4 in its third weekend. Not bad, actually, for a documentary in the age of "reality" television.

This weekend's top five movies, according to The Associate Press, were: No. 1: "Spider-Man 2," with a gross of $46 million; No. 2: "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy," $28 million; No. 3: "King Arthur," $15.2 million; No. 4: "Fahrenheit 9/11," $11 million; and No. 5: "The Notebook," $6.53 million. ("White Chicks," in case you were wondering, came in at No. 6, with $6.5 million.)

"Fahrenheit" so far has grossed just over $80 million and is on its way to becoming the first documentary to hit the $100 million mark, the AP notes.

Tue, 29 Jun 2004 02:56:02 GMT

This looks like just one stupid white male protester, but every one of the trillions of cells that comprise his neo-Nazi body oppose that fucking Commie pig Michael Moore and his satanic, anti-American, terrorist-lovin', freedom-hatin' pack of lies that was the highest-grossing movie of the weekend!

And this protest of obvious geniuses is twice as large! (Photos of stupid white men terrified of dwindling white male power "courtesy" of pabaah.com. "PABAAH!" stands for "Patriotic Americans Boycotting Anti-American Hollywood!" [Yes, that's a real association of right-wing nutjobs; I couldn't make up something that stupid.])

MASSIVE protests against 'F9/11'!

I've been surfing a few of the anti-Michael Moore/anti-"Fahrenheit 9/11" Web sites. I almost feel sorry for the terrified stupid white men who comprise the majority of the anti-Moore/anti-"F9/11" crowd. ("Almost" because they are neo-Nazi asswipes who came from hell to try to eliminate everyone who doesn't look like they look and believe what they believe, and it's hard to feel sorry for neo-Nazi asswipes who came from hell to try to eliminate everyone who doesn't look like they look and believe what they believe.)

Free Republic high-mindedly lets you know that that "We note Mr. Moore's constitutional right to free speech" -- but join us in our effort to silence him anyway! Lovely peeps, the freeps.

Move America Forward -- whose name can be confusing, since its goal is to Drag America Backasswards -- "argues":

Last week we asked Americans who found in Moore’s movie “Fahrenheit 9/11” an attempt to undermine the war on terror, to let movie theater operators know about their objections. Think about it… If you walked into a Wal Mart store and saw they were selling merchandise that attacked the military, our troops and America’s battle against Islamic terrorism, wouldn’t you complain to the store manager or write a letter and ask that they not sell that product because it was undermining our national effort?

Gee, I'd have a comeback, but you just can't argue with airtight logic like that! They're right: Michael Moore is an enemy combatant who should be shipped off to Guantanamo yesterday. John Kerry, too!

Move America Forward, the right-wing nutjob group you hear about the most where attacks on Moore and "F9/11" are concerned, is based here in my hometown of Sacramento, where they're having absolutely no discernible affect on the film's wild success. Funny. (Rush Limbaugh also got his start here in Sacramento, which, believe it or not, is actually moderate to liberal, with an apparent smattering of right-wing nutjobs here and there.)

You can read Move America Forward's sick and twisted manifesto here. The group's central lie is that the left wing is against the U.S. troops and the effort to eradicate terrorism.

For the record: The left wing opposes the way our troops are dying for no good reason whatsoever, but are dying for the profit and greed of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their cabal of plutocratic campaign contributors who are making billions of dollars off the unprovoked invasion of, the unnecessary destruction of, and the U.S. taxpayer-funded reconstruction of Iraq. The only people who are benefitting from the Bush regime's venture in Iraq are people who are already filthy rich. Thousands of Iraqis are dead, hundreds of American troops are dead, the U.S. taxpayers have been fucked up the ass, and future generations of Americans have been fucked because not only has the Bush regime created a record-smashing federal budget deficit with its appallingly irresponsible tax cuts for the rich and its multi-billion-dollar fake war in Iraq, but Iraq is now a fucking terrorist factory. Meanwhile, who's laughing all the way to the bank? Bush and his cronies, who couldn't just outright steal from us Americans at gunpoint, so they decided to steal billions of our tax dollars through their phony war. (And note who does and who does not pay taxes.)

Finally, the left wing also believes in combatting terrorism, but believes in doing it in an intelligent way, in a way so as to not make the problem even worse. Fucking duh.

Newsmax urges us to "STOP MICHAEL MOORE FROM PROFITTING [sic] IN HIS ATTACKS ON AMERICA & OUR MILITARY." (As Ted Rall noted, the future belongs to those who can spell.) "The goal of the film is abundantly clear: to undermine the war on terrorism," proclaims Newsmax.

No, the goal of "Fahrenheit 9/11" is to stop dictator, sociopath and war criminal George W. Bush from getting us into World War III by making more unprovoked attacks on sovereign nations, especially sovereign Muslim nations. Motherfucker Bush has no God-damned right to involve the entire world in his sick fundamentalist "Christian" fantasies of Armageddon. Motherfucker Bush wasn't even elected.

Despite all of this, the right-wing nutjobs hold that it's Michael Moore and his new movie that pose the greatest danger to America and to our troops!

These are incredibly stupid, insane people. They embrace Bush, the man who would get them all killed without a second thought if it meant more billions for him and his cronies, and they persecute Moore, who'd like to see a stop put to our young soldiers being put in harm's way without a very good reason.

And as "Fahrenheit 9/11's" opening weekend take of almost $24 million demonstrates, these right-wing nutjobs are pathetically weak. I've yet to see any media coverage of any significant protest or demonstration of theirs, and indeed, as Moore himself has noted, their attempted boycott of "F9/11" seems to have been better advertising than the film's distributors could have bought.

Reading the neo-Nazis' online rhetoric is a bit chilling, but it's important that we keep an eye on these psychopaths. We outnumber them, but they are ignorant, fearful and they loves their guns, as Moore amply demonstrated in his last film, "Bowling for Columbine," an Oscar-winning documentary about gun nuts and violence.

Mon, 28 Jun 2004 06:04:23 GMT

(AFP photo, left)

Hope for the republic: 'Fahrenheit' beats 'White Chicks'

"Fahrenheit 9/11" was the weekend's top-grossing movie, reports The Associated Press.

"Fahrenheit" grossed $21.8 million in the United States and Canada since it opened on Friday, earning more in its opening weekend than Michael Moore's last film, "Bowling for Columbine," earned during its entire run ($21.6 million), reports Reuters.

The AP notes that "Fahrenheit" is "the first documentary ever to debut as Hollywood's top weekend film."

The AP quoted Moore as saying: "I want to thank all the right-wing organizations out there who tried to stop the film, either from their harassment campaign that didn't work on the theater owners, or going to the FEC to get our ads removed from television, to all the things that have been said on television. It's only encouraged more people to go and see it."

The Wayans brothers' comedy "White Chicks" came in second place for the weekend, earning $19.6 million; while "White Chicks" played at more than 2,700 theaters, "Fahrenheit" opened in only 868 theaters, "a wide release for a documentary but narrow compared to big Hollywood flicks," the AP notes.

"Fahrenheit" cost about $6 million to make and less than $10 million to market, reports Reuters.

Update (Monday, June 28, 2004): The Associated Press reports that the final weekend box-office take for "F9/11" was $23.9 million, $2.1 million more than had been estimated.

Sun, 27 Jun 2004 18:20:06 GMT

Michael Moore's new documentary, "Fahrenheit 9/11," which opened nationwide on Friday, has been selling out throughout the nation. "Fahrenheit's" success, I surmise, is due in large part to the fact that the corporately controlled mass media haven't bothered to tell the whole story for the past four years and the people are hungry for the truth. (AFP photos)

'Fahrenheit': Is it a 'documentary'? Is it accurate?

"Fahrenheit 9/11" is poised to be this weekend's top-grossing movie, which greatly bothers not only the Bush Nazis but the surprisingly many members of the "left" who can't stand it that Michael Moore and his movie are getting so much attention and they're not.

Two talking points about "Fahrenheit" in the coming weeks and months are going to be:

Can we really classify "Fahrenheit 9/11" as a documentary, since Moore takes a stance on his subject?
How accurate is "Fahrenheit 9/11"?

The World's Most Famous Film Critic, Roger Ebert, writes in the Chicago Sun-Times that yes, "Fahrenheit 9/11" qualifies as a documentary. (I remember that some Bush Nazis claimed that Moore should give back his Best Documentary Oscar for "Bowling for Columbine" -- or that it should be revoked -- because "Columbine" is not a documentary, and since they're all experts of the cinema without an ideological interest in the matter whatsoever, who are we to argue with them?)

Anyway, Ebert writes of "Fahrenheit":

...Most documentaries, especially the best ones, have an opinion and argue for it. Even those that pretend to be objective reflect the filmmaker's point of view. Moviegoers should observe the bias, take it into account and decide if the film supports it or not.

Michael Moore is a liberal activist. He is the first to say so. He is alarmed by the prospect of a second term for George W. Bush, and made "Fahrenheit 9/11" for the purpose of persuading people to vote against him.
That is all perfectly clear, and yet in the days before the film opens June 25, there'll be bountiful reports by commentators who are shocked! shocked! that Moore's film is partisan. "He doesn't tell both sides," we'll hear, especially on FOX News, which is so famous for telling both sides.

The wise French director Godard once said, "The way to criticize a film is to make another film." That there is not a pro-Bush documentary available right now I am powerless to explain. Surely, however, the Republican National Convention will open with such a documentary, which will position Bush comfortably between Ronald Reagan and God. The Democratic convention will have a wondrous film about John Kerry. Anyone who thinks one of these documentaries is "presenting facts objectively without editorializing" should look at the other one.

...Moore's real test will come on the issue of accuracy. He can say whatever he likes about Bush, as long as his facts are straight. Having seen the film twice, I saw nothing that raised a flag for me, and I haven't heard of any major inaccuracies. When Moore was questioned about his claim that Bush unwisely lingered for six or seven minutes in that Florida classroom after learning of the World Trade Center attacks, Moore was able to reply with a video of Bush doing exactly that.

I agree with Moore that the presidency of George W. Bush has been a disaster for America. In writing that, I expect to get the usual complaints that movie critics should keep their political opinions to themselves. But opinions are my stock in trade, and is it not more honest to declare my politics than to conceal them? I agree with Moore, and because I do, I hope "Fahrenheit 9/11" proves to be as accurate as it seems.

While Ebert writes that there are some inaccuracies in "Columbine," he does not list any glaring factual errors, any inaccuracies that even touch the foundation of Moore's main points in the film. He writes that he believes that Moore's "ambush" interview with Heston was unfair, but I don't know about that. Heston probably assumed that he was going to get a doting interview or he wouldn't have agreed to to do it, and so it's difficult for me to feel sorry for Heston, who appeared to have agreed to the interview out of self-interest. And no one forced Heston to reveal himself on camera that he's a fucking racist gun nut. However, if Heston has at least mild age-related dementia, as he appeared to in his interview with Moore, one could argue that Moore was unfair in using the interview. But one could also argue that the interview shed important light onto the mind of a high-ranking member of the NRA, which is more important than sensitivity for the insensitive Heston.

From my review of "Fahrenheit 9/11" some might believe I don't find accuracy important. I do. Like Ebert, because I agree with Moore I want his stuff to be accurate. However, I have two main problems with the Moore Accuracy Police:

The double fucking standard. The Moore Accuracy Police, as their title suggests, seem to give a shit only whether every fucking word and image and nuance in Michael Moore's material is 200 percent accurate. Everyone else, such as "President" Bush and his warmongers and the corporately controlled mass media, get a free fucking pass where the truth is concerned. Huge lies are swallowed whole while irrelevant inaccuracies are hunted down with butterfly nets and pinned to a dissecting tray. (As Jesus said, "You strain out a gnat yet swallow a camel!") Because hey, Michael Moore's prevarications or factual errors are far more potentially devastating to the republic and to the world than, oh, say, "President" Bush's.
The throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater mentality. Again, I believe that Michael Moore should take pains to ensure accuracy. It sucks ass, but much more is expected from the left than from the right where truth and accuracy are concerned. People are used to the right lying through their fucking Nazi teeth. (I need only give one example to prove my assertion: Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about having received a blow job and while George W. Bush still walks around as a free man even though he's a fucking war criminal for having lied about the reasons for taking his nation to war, which has resulted in the deaths of thousands of people.) There are people out there who have the psychological need to believe that if any inaccuracy or unfairness can be found in one of Moore's films, then the entire film is an invalid piece of shit. Of course, millions of Moore-haters poring over every nanosecond of his two-hour films are going to come up with something. I, however, take the whole-picture approach. I think that Moore is doing great work and that his strengths by far outweigh his flaws. I agree wholeheartedly with The New York Times' film reviewer, who wrote that Moore "is a credit to the republic."

But have any glaring inaccuracies been found in "Fahrenheit"? None of which I'm aware. Roger Ebert wrote that he isn't aware of any, either, but don't take our word for it. Here's what The New York Times says on the accuracy of "Fahrenheit 9/11":

So how will Mr. Moore's movie stand up under close examination? Is the film's depiction of Mr. Bush as a lazy and duplicitous leader, blinded by his family's financial ties to Arab moneymen and the Saudi Arabian royal family, true to fact?

...After a year spent covering the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, I was recently allowed to attend a Hollywood screening. Based on that single viewing, and after separating out what is clearly presented as Mr. Moore's opinion from what is stated as fact, it seems safe to say that central assertions of fact in "Fahrenheit 9/11" are supported by the public record (indeed, many of them will be familiar to those who have closely followed Mr. Bush's political career).

Mr. Moore is on firm ground in arguing that the Bushes, like many prominent Texas families with oil interests, have profited handsomely from their relationships with prominent Saudis, including members of the royal family and of the large and fabulously wealthy bin Laden clan, which has insisted it long ago disowned Osama....

Mr. Moore charges that President Bush and his aides paid too little attention to warnings in the summer of 2001 that Al Qaeda was about to attack, including a detailed Aug. 6, 2001, C.I.A. briefing that warned of terrorism within the country's borders. In its final report next month, the Sept. 11 commission can be expected to offer support to this assertion. Mr. Moore says that instead of focusing on Al Qaeda, the president spent 42 percent of his first eight months in office on vacation; the figure came not from a conspiracy-hungry Web site but from a calculation by The Washington Post.

This is a very long article, so see it here (free registration required).

"Fahrenheit" jibes with everything that I've read in reputable media sources (The Associated Press, Reuters, The Washington Post, The New York Times, etc.) about the Bush regime for the past four years, but I'll keep my eyes open for any confirmed inaccuracies (that is, inaccuracies that are documented by reputable parties; as for anything that a right-wing Web site or Fox News says, well, I consider the source).

Finally, I'll note that Moore's detractors, I have observed, form three main camps:

The elites (or, as "President" Bush calls them in "Fahrenheit," "the haves and the have-mores" -- "my base"), whose reasons for hating Moore and every populist who won't just shut the fuck up are obvious;
Those poor and middle-class Americans who are dumbfucks, as evidenced by the fact that the elites have succeeded in persuading said dumbfucks, through such satanic vehicles as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, the National Rifle Association, White House spokesweasel Scott McClellan, Bush asslicker Karen Hughes and the FOX television "news" network, to vote against their own interests (how fucking stupid is that, to vote against your own fucking interests?); and
The "liberal" Moore-haters who wish that they had a tiny fraction of his success and who want us to believe that somehow The Cause is strengthened when we eat our own. (Great thinking outside of the box, guys! Very counterintuitive! You're so fucking cool!) These misguided motherfuckers should do what I'll call a Reverse David Brock: go and join the right wing, where they fucking belong.

But, love Moore or hate him -- and there seem to be few who are in between -- there seems to be no stopping the "Fahrenheit" juggernaut. And the republic will be better off for it.

Sat, 26 Jun 2004 05:36:13 GMT

Film review (well, kind of)

In this video clip shown in "Fahrenheit 9/11," "War President" Bush sits in an elementary school, stunned, after learning that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Rather than immediately leave, like a good war president would do, he remains at the school in a daze. (He had, remember, received a presidential daily briefing on Aug. 6, 2001 titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in U.S.") To watch this video clip, click here.

Fahrenheit 9/11

The Democratic Party owes Michael Moore big.

"Fahrenheit 9/11," which I saw today in a packed Sacramento movie theater that had sold-out showings -- the same movie theater where in October 2002 I saw "Bowling for Columbine" and saw Moore speak about his film, which would go on to win the Best Documentary Oscar -- easily could sway the November presidential election in John Kerry's favor.

First, let me dismiss Moore's detractors, such as Christopher Hitchens, who wrote an interminable piece-of-shit Moore-bashing rant for Slate (I've never liked Slate, which is owned by megacorporation Microsoft, so it doesn't come as a shock that Slate ran Hitchens' right-wing, Bush apologist piece), and Salon's reviewer, Stephanie Zacharek, who strikes me as one of the many "liberals" whose primary problem with Moore is that he is highly successful and they, compared to best-selling author and Oscar-winning filmmaker Moore, are nobodies. (In the end, these asswipes sell us out in order to get whatever rewards, real or imaginary, that they expect to get from their Masters for Defending The System. Even if it's just prestige that they're after, they're still selling us out. For a study of this sick phenomenon, see David Brock's Blinded by the Right.)

Self-serving Moore-haters have accused "Fahrenheit 9/11" of being grossly unfair. It isn't.

Moore doesn't claim to know every little connection between the Bush clan and the bin Laden clan, but he does the best he can, given the fact that the Bush regime is widely regarded as the most secretive White House administration at least since Richard Nixon's. What's Moore supposed to do? Not utter a fucking word until we know everything about everything that is shady about the Bush regime, which is just about everything? There's a lot of shit that we'll never know. It's best to say what we know right now rather than to sit on it until we can be absolutely certain that it's "fair."

The Republicans certainly don't lie awake at night worrying about whether or not they're fair. Shit, they'll make a "case" for war with things like obviously faked documents!

And they get away with it, too. They blatantly stole the 2000 presidential election by knowingly and intentionally disenfranchising thousands of Democratic-voting black voters in Florida and having the five U.S. Supreme Court justices who were appointed by Republican presidents decide the presidential election instead of the American people. They blatantly lied about an oil-rich nation's threat to the United States so that they could invade and occupy it for oil and war and reconstruction profits -- branding anyone who might question them in the least as al-Qaeda-loving, America-hating traitors. They tell the rest of the world to treat our prisoners of war according to international standards -- as "President" Bush does in a precious clip shown in the great documentary "Control Room" -- and then we find out that Americans treated the Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison, most of whom were innocent of any crime, like the Nazis treated their detainees. So much for "liberation."

The Republicans get a free pass on these serious crimes, but when Bill Clinton got blown by an intern and lied about it, he was impeached. The Republicans get a free pass on these serious crimes, but when Michael Moore puts out a film, even those who claim to be on the left go over it with a fine-toothed comb for anything that even looks like it might be an inaccuracy or an unfairness so that they can triumphantly pronounce that the entire film, Michael Moore and everything he stands for are bullshit.

This shit is exactly what Jesus, who was a foaming-at-the-mouth liberal, was talking about when he said of the Pharisees of his time, "Blind guides! You strain out a gnat yet swallow a camel!" (Matthew 23:24). Hitchens, Zacharek and other Moore-bashers who wield fine-toothed combs for self-aggrandizement: You are modern-day gnat-straining Pharisees, and I have three words for you: Fuck you all.

(Think that Jesus wasn't a liberal? Would even a moderate have said this?: "Truly I tell you: A rich man will find it hard to enter the kingdom of heaven. I repeat: It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." No, but Jesus did -- see Matthew 19:23-24. And "President" Bush and God knows how many of his rich supporters claim to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ.)

The Moore-bashers have also accused Moore of only exploiting people to make a political point. While there might have been a whiff of that in "Bowling for Columbine," in "Fahrenheit" Moore shows only respect for his subjects and I see none of the self-aggrandizement of which his self-aggrandizing critics falsely and hypocritcally accuse him.

If "Fahrenheit" seems unfair, that's only because for the past four years the corporately controlled mass media -- the mass media owned by the corporate elites, who make big money on wars and whose children don't have to join the military because they're rich -- have given the Bush regime a free pass, and consequently, the millions of Americans who rely on the corporately controlled mass media for their news have given the Bush regime a free pass. "President" Dumbfuck might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but he means well, an astounding number of Americans zombified by corporately controlled mass media incorrectly believe.

The mass media turned the other way when the Bush regime blatantly perpetrated election fraud in 2000 because Bush had been their pick. That's not an opinion -- that's what happened. As Al Franken writes on page 39 of Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them (which makes a great gift), "Any normal American who watched the news or read the papers that year would have noticed that the media just hated Al Gore. Somewhere along the line, the pack decided that Al Gore was a sanctimonious, graspy exaggerator running against a likeable if dim-witted goof-off. Instead of covering the issues and how they might affect average Americans, the media looked for little scraps of evidence to support its story line of Gore the Exaggerator. They found them in the unlikeliest places. For example, where he didn't exaggerate." (You really need to read the whole chapter, Chapter 7, "The 2000 Presidential Election: How It Disproved the Hypothetical Liberal Media Paradigm Matrix." Well, actually, you really need to read the whole book, or listen to the audio version of it, as I am, because to hear Franken read it is probably a lot funnier than it is to hear yourself read it.)

The corporately controlled mass media loved candidate Bush and they loved "President" Bush's war, too. From Day One of the March 2003 unprovoked invasion of Iraq, the corporately controlled mass media, especially the television "news" networks, played cheerleader to the invasion. It was great television! Great ratings!

I remember being filled with disgust -- I have a bachelor's degree in journalism, so I know what journalism is supposed to be -- when I watched the "embedded" "reporters" from the corporately controlled television "news" networks gleefully report from the battlefield in Iraq. Never did the "reporters" ask such unpatriotic questions as why the hell we'd attacked Iraq in the first place, and apparently they were very OK with the restrictions as to what they could report to and show their viewers that were put upon them by the U.S. military, because hey, being "embedded" sooooooo rocks! The "reportage" that we got from our media "watchdogs" were variations of "These tanks are so bitchen!" and "War is like so totally cool!"

The "embedded" "reporters" were bitches for the pimping Bush regime war machine. I was and remain appalled.

While "Fahrenheit" shows some of these Iraq war cheerleading clips (former real-life cheerleader Katie Couric gushed on NBC's "Today" show that "Navy SEALS rock," for instance), this subject alone could fill an entire documentary. (The closest thing to that documentary right now is "Control Room," which I saw but haven't reviewed -- but I give "Control Room" an "A+" and encourage you to see it if it's playing where you live, and if not, to see it when it comes out on DVD.)

The mass media have been out to lunch for at least the past four years. They don't answer to the people, but to their corporate masters. When the same corporate and government elites who send the young members of our lower socioeconomic classes off to fight their wars for profit and greed also control the mass media, we are in deep, deep shit. (The documentary "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" graphically illustrates the dangers of corporately controlled mass media, who do the bidding not of the people, but of their corporate masters.)

So given the fact that the American people have been outright lied to and kept in the dark as much as possible for the past four years, when Moore dare reminds us of the truth, he's seen as a radical.

Moore doesn't tell us much in "Fahrenheit" that I didn't already know. (But then, I try to keep myself informed; I don't watch the corporately controlled television network "news" -- NBC is owned by General Electric, another Iraq war profiteer, to give just one example of why I don't trust corporately controlled television network news -- but get most of my news via the Internet, such as from The Associated Press, Reuters, The New York Times and The Washington Post.) Moore does, however, show us images that the corporately controlled mass media don't show us, such as casualties in Iraq, both American and Iraqi; veterans of Gulf War II who are learning how to live as amputees or how to live with other permanent life-changing injuries; and how military recruiters aggressively target young people, mostly young men, from lower socioeconomic classes (see the still from the movie below).

Moore does a fantastic job of putting all of it together, of recapping the second Bush presidency, which is exactly why the Bush Nazis don't want you to see "Fahrenheit 9/11."

I don't know what went on in other cities today, but as I walked out of "Fahrenheit 9/11" this afternoon in Sacramento, they were registering people to vote, and I can't imagine any of the people who saw "Fahrenheit" in that movie theater with me today not voting on Nov. 2 and not voting for John Kerry.

Which brings me back to the Democratic Party.

I like John Kerry. I do. I shook his hand once, back in September at a small rally in San Francisco, before his campaign came back from the dead and he won the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary in January. I've been to two of his rallies, the one in San Francisco I just mentioned and one in Oakland in February. He has a lot more charisma in person than translates through television (maybe the corporately controlled television networks use a charisma filter to filter out his charisma -- just kidding).

I've given Kerry's campaign hundreds of dollars, have coordinated Meetups for him here in Sacramento, and have incurred considerable out-of-pocket costs, including buying Kerry stuff (bumper stickers, signs and buttons, mostly) that the national campaign hasn't had available to us -- all in helping get him win the Democratic presidential nomination (one down) and the presidency (one to go).

But I could never argue with the Deaniacs' criticism that Kerry, while I found him likeable and charismatic enough in person, isn't the most exciting candidate who ever lived.

Exciting isn't his thing. And that's OK with me. We need a stable, sane, competent president, one who uses the office of the presidency to benefit all Americans, not to enrich his fellow warmongering, oil-and-taxpayer-money-grubbing frat buds by lying to the American people and to the world about his reasons for launching a fake war on an oil-rich, comparatively defenseless nation.

But gone are the days when intelligence and competence were enough in a presidential candidate. (Hell, gone are the days that intelligence and competence are even required in a president -- "President" Monkeyboy is proof of that.) We want to be infotained, dammit.

On this the Democrats are pretty fucking clueless and have been for the past four years. (Howard Dean was considered to be exciting, but I don't consider volatility to be exciting. Not in a good way, anyway.) Moore hit the nail on the head when he told Playboy in an interview that appears in the July 2004 issue, "Instead of fighting as the Republicans fight, they [liberals/Democrats] say, 'Let's all be nice.' 'Nice' has lost us the House [of Representatives], the Senate, the White House, the Supreme Court and the majority of the governorships. As a result of 'Can't we all just get along?' we control nothing. It's a wonderful sentiment, but if the storm troopers are coming down the street, you don't meet them with daisies." (Sorry, but the interview isn't available online; you'll have to read it in the magazine.)

Al Gore's testicles just recently descended. Better late than never, but damn, it would have been nice if instead of sighing during his debates with Gee Dubya like the preppy captain of an Ivy League school debate team, he had let Shrub have it like he's letting the Bush regime have it in his speeches now.

As Moore shows in "Fahrenheit," the Democrats basically handed the White House to George W. Bush on a silver platter. With the exception of some black members of the House of Representatives, who were appropriately outraged at the voter fraud the Republicans perpetrated in Florida, apparently no other U.S. representatives would go on record to oppose the coronation of Bush II and not a single U.S. senator would do so.

And the Democrats -- including John Kerry -- sat impotently by while the Bush regime's war machine inevitably marched toward Iraq, which had done nothing to the United States whatsoever, and had not threatened to do anything whatsoever to the United States, but just happens to have the world's second-largest oil reserves.

As Ted Rall points out in his great new book Wake Up...You're Liberal! and as Moore states in the Playboy interview, "Inside the average American beats a good liberal heart," yet the Democratic Party has failed miserably to rally Americans during the past four years. (Don't even get me started on the 2002 midterm elections or the California gubernatorial recall election.)

I don't know how it is throughout the rest of the nation, but the Democratic Party in Sacramento -- and Sacramento is home to the state's Democratic Party -- is, from my experience with and observation of it, all about raising money and winning elections. It isn't inclusive, but is filled with party insiders, many of whom have a thinly veiled contempt for those who aren't as involved in and knowledgeable of the party's inner workings as they are. It's a Republican Lite club, not a party for and of the people. (Don't even get me started on the Kerry campaign's piss-poor minority outreach and how if you want to attend a Kerry fundraiser, you'd better have at least $500 or $1,000 -- but preferably $2,000 -- lying around.)

I started to coordinate the Sacramento-area Kerry Meetups in August and did so until after it was clear, in January, that Kerry was going to get the Democratic presidential nomination. Then the Meetups were commandeered in February by two local Democratic Party hacks who talk mostly about money, money and money. They sometimes allow but do not encourage the stupid people (that is, people who aren't Democratic Party insiders) to talk about the issues that they care about, which is what used to happen at the Meetups before the hacks' hostile takeover. The Meetups have become, in essence, a fund-raising arm of the Kerry campaign, something they were never supposed to be. If you were to attend one of them you'd think that you'd accidentally walked into a Republican Party Meetup, because about all that's discussed is money.

While I know that fund-raising is important -- as I said, I have given the Kerry campaign hundreds of dollars and I have encouraged others to give also -- you can raise money and address the issues that people care about. You can't meet everyone's personal needs, but you can do more than incessantly hit them up for money, which is about all that the Democratic Party seems to be about.

My personal experiences with Democratic Party hacks leads me to believe that the party has seriously lost its way, has devolved into a political machine that knows only how to raise money to try to win elections (emphasis on "try"). The political machine's two hacks I just mentioned have sucked the heart and soul right out of the Sacramento Kerry Meetups, which now are only worth going to if there is a good speaker, which more often than not is not the case.

I have seen, at the local and national levels, that the Democratic Party doesn't know how to inspire the people anymore. Unfortunately, I intuit that the majority of Kerry's supporters hate Bush a lot more than they love Kerry. (I've coordinated and attended Kerry Meetups where Kerry himself was discussed relatively little.) The Democratic Party and, to a lesser degree, the Kerry campaign, don't know how to inspire the people but only know how to ask them for money. The Democratic Party is old. It's tired. It forgot its purpose long ago and instead focuses on the process of raising money and winning elections.

The people with me in the crowded movie theater today watching "Fahrenheit 9/11," however, were inspired. They were quite jazzed up. You'd have thought that you were at a Howard Dean rally. (Truly, the movie was more like an event than just a movie.)

I saw today that the people want to be inspired. They want to get jazzed up.

The Democratic Party doesn't know how to do that, so thank God for Michael Moore, MoveOn.org, Air America Radio, Democracy for America (what's left of Dean's once-impressive organization), progressive webloggers and others in the coalition of the willing, because if we had to rely on the Democratic Party alone on Nov. 2, we'd be fucked. (Although when Kerry wins, I'm sure the Democratic Party hacks will take all of the credit.)

I am not exaggerating when I say that, with the polls so close -- Kerry and Bush have been neck-and-neck in the polls for months now; sometimes one is up a little, but then the other is up a little, and overall it's been a dead heat) -- yes, a movie could make the difference. (Think I'm full of shit? Well, at least one writer for The Washington Post agrees with me.)

If "Fahrenheit 9/11" couldn't affect the November election, the Bush Nazis wouldn't be trying to censor it, would they? (As Moore tells The Washington Post: "That's the difference between our side and their side: Even when we disagree, we're respectful of freedom of speech. But when they disagree, they try to shut you down. Well, it's un-American. And it's wrong, and people are not going to stand for it. People in this country don't like to be told they can't watch something or see something.")

After having watched "Fahrenheit 9/11" today, I can tell the Bushies: Be afraid. Be very afraid.

I haven't seen people riled up like I saw them riled up today in the movie theater in a long time. As I said, as they left the movie theater, people were registering to vote.

Think the Democratic Party doesn't want some of that Moore Magic? You're wrong. I got this e-mail today:

Plan your own hot Fahrenheit 9/11 rally!

"Fahrenheit 9/11," Michael Moore's acclaimed documentary about the actions of the Bush administration after 9/11 and in Iraq, opens today across the country. The film won the grand prize in the world-famous Cannes Film Festival. The New York Times said, "[These are] pictures that have been largely shielded from our view."

Join thousands of California activists in seeing the movie. We have a list of theaters throughout the state that are showing the movie on our site.

Additionally, you can do more than just watch the movie. Here are a few ideas for what you can do:

Plan your own rally. Call up your local TV stations and newspapers and tell them you'll be outside the theater.
Organize a Voter Registration Drive at the theater or hand out Kerry's position paper, Strategy for Success in Iraq.
Sign up to pledge your attendance this weekend with MoveOn.
Host a house party this Monday that will culminate in an online chat with Michael Moore. You can sign up or find out more at MoveOn's Web site.

So burn up your activism energy this weekend -- take in the movie that tells the story about how the Bush Administration handled 9/11 and Iraq. If that doesn't get your blood boiling, nothing will.

California Democratic Party
1401 21st Street, Suite 100
Sacramento, California 95814
(916) 442-5707 phone
(916) 442-5715 fax
www.cadem.org

The Democratic Party, which for the past four years hasn't had the guts to take on the Bush regime for fear that it would offend people (gasp!) and potentially cost them some votes (gasp! gasp!), is all too happy to coattail on Moore's success, so if I ever hear a Democratic Party hack bash Moore, I just might have to bash that hack.

In "Fahrenheit 9/11," Moore unleases upon the Bush regime all of the valid criticisms that the effete, shell-shocked Democrats should have been unleashing during these past four years. Moore is, to steal a line from Howard Dean (who, I understand, stole the line from the late Sen. Paul Wellstone), a one-man Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.

If "Fahrenheit 9/11" is a smash -- and I can't see it not being a smash -- yes, it could tilt the election to John Kerry.

As I wrote on June 12:

Will Michael Moore singlehandedly prevent "President" Dumbfuck from getting a second term?

No, but "Fahrenheit 9/11" will be an important piece of the overall Bush removal effort in the coming months. (Other important pieces of the overall Bush removal effort -- besides, of course, the John Kerry campaign and the Democratic Party -- include MoveOn.org, Air America Radio, numerous left-leaning Web sites, and, if I may say so, weblogs.)

What about the movie itself, you're wondering? Well, as I indicated, just as "The Passion of the Christ" was more than just a film, but was a sick and twisted "Christian" event, "Fahrenheit 9/11" also is not just a film but is an event (although a film and an event of which Jesus Christ would actually approve.) Therefore, I don't want to regurgitate the contents of "Fahrenheit" here, and countless other reviewers are doing that anyway.

I will say of the film that the opening credits and the very last clip of "President" Dumbfuck that Moore shows alone are worth seeing "Fahrenheit 9/11," and that while it's rare to hear an audience clap after a movie these days, the showing of "Fahrenheit 9/11" that I attended here in Sacramento today got a vigorous applause.

Go see it. Then tell your friends, family members and co-workers about it. Encourage the people you know to vote on Nov. 2 and come Nov. 2, vote.

My grade: A

Click here to go to the film's Web site.

Mon, 14 Jun 2004 05:44:26 GMT

Film review

Venezuelans show their support for democratically elected President Hugo Chavez (right) in Caracas, Venezuela, earlier this month. Chavez, who aims to improve the lives of the majority of Venezuelans who live in poverty by redistributing the nation's unfairly distributed oil wealth, faced a right-wing coup attempt in April 2002 in which a rich oil executive was installed as the new president. The people revolted and Chavez was returned to power within a couple of days. The short-lived coup is dramatically depicted in the documentary film "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised."

Chavez now faces a recall election orchestrated by the same right-wing forces that tried to unlawfully, undemocratically, forcibly overthrow him in 2002. Just as Republicans in the United States never got over the fact that Democrat Bill Clinton was democratically elected in 1992 and tried unsuccessfully to remove him, right-wingers in Venezuela have never gotten over the fact that Chavez was democratically elected in 1998 and are doing everything in their power to remove him and to return the rule of Venezuela to the aristocrats, who would get even richer off the nation's oil wealth while the masses continue to suffer in poverty. (Associated Press photos)

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

The documentary "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" chronicles the short-lived April 2002 coup of democratically elected Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (he was elected in 1998 by a landslide) by Venezuela's equivalent of Republicans -- right-wingers pissed off over the fact that Chavez was democratically elected and that his policies favor the common Venezuelan, not the overprivileged elite, and that Chavez doesn't kiss U.S. ass.

Chavez's cardinal sin, in the eyes of his right-wing opponents, is the redistribution of the nation's oil wealth to help improve the lives of the 80 percent of Venezuelans who live in poverty.

In sickening scenes, we see rich right-wing Venezuelans, most of whom appear to be of aristocratic Spanish (i.e., white) blood, actually claim before the camera that Venezuela's poor (who are mostly non-white) haven't struggled enough, like they have, and therefore they, the whiter, richer Venezuelans, should control the nation's government and wealth, and we see them in secret meetings in which they advise each other to watch their servants, who might be spies for Chavez, and to keep guns in their homes in case they have to shoot poorer Venezuelans if the poorer Venezuelans should revolt and come after them.

The right-wing coup leaders -- who probably were, as Chavez's supporters claim in the film's footage, supported by the Central Intelligence Agency -- immediately install an unelected right-wing president of their own, rich oil executive Pedro Carmona; abolish Venezuela's constitution; and dissolve the nation's elected legislative body. You know, what the Republicans would do in the United States if they could get away with it. (Wait a minute -- they did get away with installing a president whom the people did not elect, and they've at least shit and pissed all over the U.S. Constitution. And Republican-orchestrated redistricting in order to favor the Republican Party is a serious subversion of the democratic legislative process.)

The people of Venezuela -- the majority of whom voted for Chavez and who support him -- rise up against the newly forcibly installed, unelected right-wing government. They prevail and Chavez is restored to his rightful power within a couple of days. The anti-democratic right-wing coup leaders -- who are fucking traitors and criminals -- don't get what they deserve, which is at least life in prison for the loss of life that they caused in their unlawful subversion of democracy -- their treason -- but the fact that Chavez does not take revenge upon them demonstrates that he is not the tyrant that the right-wingers accuse him of being.

The Bush regime denied any involvement in the failed right-wing coup of Venezuela's democratically elected government, but the United States' oily fingerprints are all over it, and the Bush regime clearly gave at least its moral support, if not also practical support, to the coup. (There are clips of former CIA Director George Tenet and former Bush spokesweasel Ari Fleischer -- whose lying tongue I'd still like to rip from his throat and shove up his ass -- at least tacitly praising the coup.)

It's no coinky-dink that Venezuela is the world's fourth- or fifth-largest oil producer (depending upon your source), producing 14 percent of the oil consumed by the United States.

And, I might add, what happened to traitor and criminal Pedro Carmona? He is now living in Miami, Florida, where all Latinos who try, unsuccessfully, to sell out their own people to the United States seem to end up. No, the Bush regime had nothing to do with the attempt to overthrow a democratically elected government that refused to kiss U.S. ass, especially where oil is concerned, I'm sure.

The film's title is a reference to the fact that the coup probably could not have taken place without the aid and abetment of Venezuela's private television networks -- owned by oil companies -- that broadcast anti-Chavez content and propaganda. (Chavez, allegedly an evil dictator, allowed the networks an unprecedented amount of free speech, and had at his disposal only the state-owned television network, which the coup members disabled during the coup.)

The plutocratically owned TV networks' blatant lies to the Venezuelan people about the events before, during and after the failed coup, which the filmmakers expose -- such as the blatant lie that Chavez resigned, when he never resigned but was forcibly carted off to and detained at an island -- are chilling. And they remind us Americans of the dangers of the plutocratically owned media in the United States, which increasingly serve the interests of their wealthy owners and others of the ruling class at the expense of the American people. (For a study of this -- specifically, the American corporately controlled media's failure to responsibly cover the 2003 U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, see the excellent documentary "Control Room," which I have seen and will review here shortly.)

The makers of "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," who are Irish, had set out to make a documentary film about Chavez and had no idea that the coup would take place. The documentarians gained surprisingly free access to film the coup as it unfolded, and the dramatic story unfolds better than could any Hollywood script.

My grade: A rare A+

Click here to go to the film's Web site.

Sat, 12 Jun 2004 23:24:26 GMT

The reason so many Americans don't like Michael Moore, I intuit, is that we Americans are one big alcoholic family in denial and Moore is the black sheep who verbalizes our open national secrets. Shhhhhhhhhhhh!

'9/11' on 6/25!

The Los Angeles Times has an interesting article about Michael Moore's new anti-Bush-regime film "Fahrenheit 9/11," which opens in theaters nationwide on Friday, June 25. (I am so there on opening day that I'll probably take the day off from work.)

The Times notes, as I have mused, that it will be the first time in U.S. history that a scathing film about an incumbent president will be released nationwide during a presidential election campaign season. (You can be a part of history by buying your advance tickets here.)

Of course, the Bush regime is responding to "Fahrenheit 9/11" the way it responds to everyone who doesn't suck up to it or at least keep his or her fucking mouth shut: It is using variations of "Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me!" and is attacking the messenger rather than responding to the messenger's message. (Can you say "Richard Clarke"? "Paul O'Neill"? "Joseph Wilson"?) Reports the L.A. Times:

So far, the Bush reelection campaign has played down concerns about the film's effect.

"Voters know fact from fiction coming from Hollywood," said Bush campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel. "It's designed to entertain. American voters want fact, not fiction, when determining their vote. And everyone knows where Michael Moore is coming from."

Others have been more aggressive in trying to discredit Moore, who attacked Bush from the Oscar podium when he won the feature documentary prize for his "Bowling for Columbine."

Former President George H.W. Bush called Moore a "slimeball" last month, dismissing the upcoming film as "a vicious attack on our son," according to the New York Daily News.

I guess that calling someone a "slimeball" isn't "a vicious attack," or that Republicans are incapable of making vicious attacks because God is on their side, and therefore their attacks are Godly. (They have it all wrong; God is on my side, and so my attacks are Godly.)

And memo to Bush spokesweasel Scott Stanzel: Moore's main intent, it is pretty apparent, is to inform and to persuade, not "to entertain." (But, of course, you know that, you fucking liar.) If Moore can entertain us while he shows us the awful truth, that's a good thing -- it allows us to laugh instead of to cry.

(But it was nice of Stanzel to put forth yet another pathetic attempt at a Jedi mindfuck, as is typical for members of the Bush regime. "Watch the swinging pendulum. Watch it go back and forth! You are feeling very sleeeeeeeepy. Sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeepy! Repeat after me: Michael Moore's new movie is fiction. Fic-tion!")

I've watched the trailer for "Fahrenheit 9/11," and the film appears to be comprised mostly of film and video footage of real events -- not "Hollywood" "fiction" -- and the camera doesn't fucking lie.

For example, in the trailer there is a clip of Gee Dubya telling what CBS News calls a "diamond-studded $800-a-plate crowd" in October 2000: "This is an impressive crowd: The haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elites; I call you my base." (This is supposed to be funny.) I especially like the last scene in the trailer, in which "President" Dumbfuck is playing golf while "seriously" discussing his regime's "war on terror." (You gotta see it. Click here.)

These are windows that open directly into George W. Bush's dark soul and you cannot explain them away, such as by claiming that somehow they were taken out of context.

That said, does "Fahrenheit 9/11" have a Moorian slant? I'm sure that it does. But again, the camera doesn't fucking lie, and the film and video clips in Moore's film speak for themselves. Moore-bashers can't argue against what has been captured on camera, so they are making personal attacks on Moore instead. Expect innumerable personal attacks on Moore from members of the Bush regime and the regime's sleepwalking supporters in the coming months, but don't expect the attack dogs to actually address any facts or issues that Moore raises in his film. Expect them to attack his character and his motives and expect them to make juvenile cracks about his appearance.

But the Bush regime's novel idea of preemption apparently has caught on. Reports the L.A. Times:

To anticipate and fend off the criticism that already is brewing, Moore has set up a "war room" populated by former Clinton White House operatives plotting swift counterattacks on Bush supporters who question the film's credibility.

To lead the effort, Moore has hired Chris Lehane and Mark Fabiani, former political advisors to Bill Clinton and Al Gore. "Employing the Clinton strategy of '92, we will allow no attack on this film to go without a response immediately," Moore said Thursday. "And we will go after anyone who slanders me or my work, and we will do it without mercy. And when you think 'without mercy,' you think Chris Lehane."

Moore also said he planned to use the film to register thousands of voters, and will stage screenings to benefit antiwar groups set up by families of U.S. troops in Iraq and victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Will Michael Moore singlehandedly prevent "President" Dumbfuck from getting a second term?

No, but "Fahrenheit 9/11" will be an important piece of the overall Bush removal effort in the coming months. (Other important pieces of the overall Bush removal effort -- besides, of course, the John Kerry campaign and the Democratic Party -- include MoveOn.org, Air America Radio, numerous left-leaning Web sites, and, if I may say so, weblogs.)

There hasn't been a coalition to defeat the dark forces of evil like this since the fellowship of the ring.

We're showing George W. Bush and his henchpeople and their zombified supporters what a real "coalition of the willing" looks like.

P.S. to "liberal" Moore-haters: You suck. No, really, you do.

When you make superficial, juvenile comments about his appearance and make false allegations about his motives, when you bash him without actually taking on the facts and the ideas that he presents -- using logical arguments and facts -- you sink right to the bottom with the Bush-lovin' AmeriNazis.

And when your Moore-bashing sounds just like the right-wing nutjobs' Moore-bashing, it's painfully apparent that your main problem with Moore actually is that he is ridiculously successful (a bestselling author and an Oscar-winning filmmaker) and that you are...not.

Mon, 29 Mar 2004 00:05:33 GMT

Film review

Satan is a fag, in the gospel according to Mel Gibson. In his overrated film "The Passion of the Christ," Gibson portrays Satan (played by Rosalinda Celentano, above) as an androgynous figure that easily can be interpreted as a gay man. (I liked it better when "South Park" portrayed Satan as gay, because I don't think that "South Park's" portrayal of Satan as gay could result in any hate crimes...)

The gospel according to Mel

Today I finally dragged my ass to "The Passion of the Christ," which also could be titled, "Jesus Meets Freddy and Jason."

Seriously: I could have seen "Dawn of the Dead," which was playing in the next theater (it really was; I'm not making that up), and walked away as enriched as I was when I walked away today from Mel Gibson's latest bloody egofest. (Surely Mel would have played Jesus himself if he weren't so long in the tooth.)

For all of the hype that surrounds it, "The Passion of the Christ" is little more than the first snuff-style Jesus flick. Unless you consider enduring two hours of what Roger Ebert called "the most violent film I have ever seen" to be a spiritual experience -- and in the age of "reality television" that may be the closest to a "spiritual experience" that we're going to get -- you will be disappointed, as I was, if you expect any spiritual sustenance from Gibson's film. (Note to self-identified "Christians": The point of Jesus' life is his teachings, not his birth and death, whether they were miraculous or not. Of course, Jesus' teachings call on us to radically change ourselves, which is why we much prefer to focus on his supposedly miraculous birth and death instead of on his teachings.)

I heard at least a few women in the theater audience openly sobbing as Jesus (played by the younger James Caviezel instead of Gibson) takes more and more beatings and sustains more and more open wounds and subsequently looks more and more like a big walking pizza with extra sauce.

As I sat there in the audience watching Gibson's way-over-the-top portrayal of the last hours of Jesus' life -- just when you think that Gibson couldn't make it any grislier, he does -- I couldn't help but wonder if, while they cry at the sight of a catsup-covered James Caviezel playing Jesus, the women who were crying in the audience cry over real-life brutality, such as the thousands of people who have been maimed and who have died in Iraq during this past year because, as former White House counterterrorism expert Richard Clarke recently divulged, Iraq had more military targets than did Afghanistan, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld pointed out to him shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Which is, I think, the point of Gibson's film: To allow a bunch of "Christians" to feel that they're pious and holy and saved because they can cry at and/or just endure a fucking movie with the grisliest crucifixion scene in cinematic history.

(While I'm glad that in modern crucifixion scenes they don't shave the actors' armpit hair -- they allow Jesus to have body hair now! -- never before in a crucifixion scene have I seen Jesus' ribs, which Gibson, who is one sick and twisted fuck, delivers to us. [I don't mean that we see the indentations where Jesus' ribs are; we see his ribs.])

Gibson offers up the most-mutilated Jesus we've ever seen on the big screen, and that's about all that he accomplishes in "The Passion of the Christ." While women in the audience were crying over Jesus' bloody and bloodier abuse, Gibson's gory special effects were so overdone that I found them distracting. Rather than feel empathetic for Jesus and cry with the women in the audience -- which I might have done had Gibson shown any restraint -- I found my mind wandering: What was it like for poor Caviezel, all covered in red goo, every day while they were shooting the film? Did he feel like he was playing Jesus Christ, or, because his role consisted mostly of being flogged and crucified and so he had relatively few lines, did he feel like he was the star of an S&M/fake snuff film? Did they use tomato sauce and/or other tomato products for blood, like it looked like they did?

And while Jews might be up in arms over the unflattering portrayal of Jews in Gibson's splatterfest (there is actual splatter and spurting in "Passion"), probably the gay community should want Gibson's head on a silver platter more than any other historically oppressed minority group.

For while the Jews and the Romans are portrayed as Jesus' torturers and murderers in Gibson's version of Jesus' last hours, the really, really, really bad guy -- Satan -- is portrayed as a bald, eyebrowless, androgynous man-woman in a black cloak who lurks in the crowd and whom we glimpse from time to time as he/she looks on approvingly at Jesus' sufferings on his way to his crucifixion. (At first I thought that the character of Satan was played by a biological male, but as the film wore on, the actor looked more like a biological female; I stayed for the end credits to see that "Satan," as the end credits indeed name the creature I had assumed was Satan, indeed was played by a biological female, an actress named Rosalinda Celentano.)

So Mel's message is, I guess: Satan is a fag (or maybe a dyke).

Gee, thanks, Mel.

Nowhere in the Old or New Testament have I read that Satan is an androgyne, possibly a gay man, who lurks about in a black cloak. But Gibson, for some reason, felt the need to add that fabrication to his film.

But it's not surprising, I guess, after the scene in another Gibson film, "Braveheart," in which a cocky but innocent young gay man is tossed from a castle window to his death -- mostly just because he is gay. I remember that the theater audience actually laughed at that scene and that I was appalled that the murder of a gay man -- mostly just because he was gay -- was considered by my "peers" to be comedic.

If that one blatantly homophobic scene in "Braveheart" -- which shouldn't even have been scripted -- had been edited out, it would have been a much better film, in my book.

But there's no saving "The Passion of the Christ," even if the superfluous, homophobic portrayal of Satan were entirely cut out. While Gibson plays lip service to some of Christ's teachings (shown in occasional flashbacks), in his film Gibson primarily focuses on the last violent, bloody hours of Jesus' life. (Ebert notes: "The movie is 126 minutes long, and I would guess that at least 100 of those minutes, maybe more, are concerned specifically and graphically with the details of the torture and death of Jesus.") I suspect that the real crucifixion, assuming that the crucifixion of a man named Jesus actually happened, wasn't as bloody as Gibson's film version of it.

I have this crazy notion that if we walk into a movie theater to see a film about Jesus Christ, we should walk out of the movie theater as better people than we were when we walked into it. "The Passion of the Christ" fails that test..

Although, I'm sure, the weeping women in the audience thought that they'd done their "Christian" duty.

My grade: C-

Update (Friday, April 2, 2004): I'm not the only one who puts "The Passion of the Christ" into the same category as "Dawn of the Dead." The current "Boondocks" series is now making the comparison:

Update (Saturday, April 17, 2004): The San Francisco Chronicle's Mark Morford finally weighs in on "The Passion of the Christ" in a column titled "How to Gag on 'The Passion': Nine Fun-filled Ways Mel Gibson's Brutal Snuff Film Makes a Mockery of True Belief. Clip n' Save!"

Mon, 16 Feb 2004 17:28:03 GMT

Film review

Rub-a-dub dud: Louis Garrel (right) plays the stereotypically bitter young French man Theo; Eva Green (middle) plays his spunky sister Isabelle; and Michael Pitt (left) plays the beleaguered, puppy-faced American student Matthew in Bernardo Bertolucci's disappointing film "The Dreamers." Despite its NC-17 rating, the film shows nothing that we haven't seen in R-rated films.

The Dreamers

Bernardo Bertolucci's disappointing film "The Dreamers" opens several possibilities but fulfills none of them.

The angst-ridden young characters' discussion of politics and philosophy doesn't rise much (if any) above that overheard at a typical Starbucks.

The creepily dysfunctional, quasi-sexual bond between a brother and sister with matching tattoos was done much better in HBO's series "Six Feet Under."

"The Dreamers" doesn't even fulfill the promise of being softcore porn, as its NC-17 rating suggests that it is. It shows no more nudity or sexual activity than I've seen in an R-rated film, so its NC-17 rating baffles me.

Nor does the film actually deliver on what its ads suggest will be depictions of gay or bisexual sex, incestual sex or even a three-way. It only teases us and portrays only heterosexual sex between two people (yaaaaaawn) -- and even then they use the missionary position.

(For those who really want to know, we see a lot of the French sister Isabelle [played by Eva Green] nude; my gay friend Estevan, who sat next to me during the movie, groaned frequently. There is one prolonged shot of the American student Matthew's [Michael Pitt's] flaccid but substantial family jewels, and we get only glimpses of the French brother Theo's [Louis Garrel's] goods, over which Estevan and I both were bitterly disappointed. In the scenes in which Theo masturbates to orgasm in front of Matthew and Isabelle and Isabelle and Matthew have intercourse, we see no erection and no penetration. If you want to see porn, you'll have to go get yourself some porn.)

Oh, yeah, the plot: "The Dreamers" is about a spoiled French brother and sister who mess with the heart and mind and penis of an American student (well, as I indicated, only the sister messes with his penis) who is living in Paris in 1968, avoiding, like "President" Bush, having to fight in the Vietnam War. The American student spends most of his time watching old movies at a movie theater, where he meets the brother and sister, who suck him into their sick relationship. While the brother and sister's parents are away, the three play mind and sex games while civil unrest unfolds in the streets below them. There isn't much more to tell than that.

"The Dreamers" has a few good scenes, such as the scene in which Matthew finally confronts Theo and Isabelle about their dysfunctional relationship and how they abuse him to make themselves feel better about it.

The three young actors turn in good performances, but with an unfocused script, which includes a disappointing ending, their efforts don't add up to much -- not even to good softcore porn.

About all I left the theater with was the question in my mind: Is every young French man sullen and irritable?

My grade: C+

Tue, 19 Aug 2003 04:45:36 GMT

'Bowling for Columbine' on video

Michael Moore's Academy Award-winning documentary "Bowling for Columbine" is available on DVD and VHS tomorrow. You can rent it or you can order it through Michael Moore's Website or through amazon.com (click here for DVD or here for VHS).

According to an e-mail I received from Moore (I am on his e-mailing list), "Bowling for Columbine" grossed almost $22 million in North America and $35 million overseas. (The previous box-office record for a documentary, he states, was $7 million.) He writes in his e-mail that it took so long for "Bowling for Columbine" to come out on video because it was in the theaters for so long because it did so well.

I have yet to see the DVD (I saw the film twice during its theatrical release), but according to Moore's e-mail, the DVD extras include: material on Moore's controversial appearance at the Academy Awards in March ("Bowling for Columbine" won Best Documentary); footage of an appearance Moore made in Denver, near Columbine, six months after the film's release; Marilyn Manson's video "Fight Song"; a half-hour interview with Moore on "The Charlie Rose Show"; "Mike's Action Guide" (material on how to get involved); the original three-minute trailer; and "The 'Bowling for Columbine' Teacher's Guide," which includes materials that teachers can download and print with computers that have DVD-ROM.

Here is the review of "Bowling for Columbine" that I posted on Oct. 15, 2002 (as tempting as it is to make improvements, except for a few small technical details, this is how the review originally appeared):

Film review

"From my cold dead hands": National Rifle Association President Charlton Heston in a still from Michael Moore's new film

Bowling for Columbine

Michael Moore couldn’t have asked for a better promotion of his new documentary on gun violence in America than the recent sniper shootings in the Northeast. No one else will say it, but it’s true; it’s difficult not to think of the sniper shootings after having seen Moore’s new film, and no doubt the sniper shootings will compel people to see it.

Saturday night I had the rare opportunity to see a film and hear its writer-director talk about it when Moore came to Sacramento for a benefit screening of “Bowling for Columbine,” which opened in New York City and Los Angeles on Friday and will open nationwide later this month. (Why Moore came here to Sacramento on Saturday when his film had just opened in New York City and Los Angeles the day before I am not sure. He did say that when his television program “TV Nation” was on the air, for reasons that baffle him, Sacramento consistently showed up at No. 2 on the ratings.)

“Bowling for Columbine” is difficult to describe. In his new film Moore has woven together a series of elements, most of them dealing with gun violence, others of them dealing with the more general concept of fear, and still others of them dealing with seemingly disparate subjects (such as Africanized killer bees).

Moore's film includes a short interview with shock rocker Marilyn Manson, who was accused of having influenced the two students who committed the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado; actual surveillance-camera footage of the Columbine High School shootings; a segment in which Moore helps two survivors of the Columbine shootings, one of them in a wheelchair, seek justice from Kmart, from where the Columbine shooters obtained their ammunition; a segment in which Moore opens a bank account and the bank gives him a rifle as part of its promotion; an interview with “South Park” co-creator Matt Stone; an interview with a former producer of the TV program "COPS" in which Moore asks why the program shows predominantly black and Latino men being arrested although corporate criminals steal far more from Americans; clips of National Rifle Association President Charlton Heston’s speeches at NRA events and a climactic ambush interview with Heston at his Beverly Hills estate; and my favorite part of the film, a cartoon short titled “A Brief History of the United States of America,” which is narrated by an animated bullet. Moore frequently compares the level of violence in the U.S. to that in other countries, especially Canada, and, you guessed it, the U.S. is No. 1.

Moore's film is all over the place, but even with the Africanized killer bees, Moore somehow manages to make his hodgepodge of a film work.

Perhaps the most poignant part of “Bowling” is the segment on the 2000 shooting death of a 6-year-old white girl by a black male classmate who had brought a handgun to school in Michigan. While at the time of the shooting the mainstream media focused on how irresponsible the mother of the boy who brought the gun to school must have been, Moore digs deeper. He reveals that she had to work more than one job in order to pay off the welfare that she had received but that she still couldn’t pay rent, that she did not see her son much because of her heavy work schedule, and that because she was evicted she was staying at a relative’s house, where her son found the gun. (There is even a link to Dick Clark, but I won't go into it, other than saying that I'll never think of "American Bandstand" the same way again.) This peeling back of the layers of why is exactly what Americans refuse to do, perhaps most notably in regards to the terrorist attacks of September 2001 (which Moore also features in his film).

“Bowling for Columbine” is typically Moorian. Moore is a liberal social commentator, so don’t expect objectivity. Moore is a man with a mission, which too many reviewers don’t seem to get. (See salon.com’s rather disappointing review, for instance. Salon has pilloried Moore also for real and/or imagined inaccuracies in his bestselling book Stupid White Men. Salon's problem with Moore -- aside from the fact that Moore and Salon's head honcho, David Talbot, had a falling out several years ago -- seems to be that while the Starbucks-sipping liberals at Salon talk about helping the disadvantaged, Moore actually rolls up his sleeves and does it.)

Anyway, at least when Moore goes overboard or gets sloppy with his facts, whether in his films, books or television programs, he is championing the little guy, erring on the side of the underdog.

All of that said, I do have some minor problems with “Bowling for Columbine”:

I have to wonder if the emotion that Moore displays while comforting the survivors of gunshot victims in his film is as genuine as we are supposed to believe. While I believe that Moore is genuinely concerned about the issue of gun violence, or he wouldn’t have spent three years making his film, I can’t help but wonder whether during those moments he was filmed comforting people he was also very aware that he was getting great material for his film.

And even though it's clear that he has an agenda, while watching “Bowling” at times it feels as though Moore is pushing too hard, such as when he leaves behind a picture of the little girl who was killed by her classmate as he leaves Heston’s residence. Going too far risks losing those whom you might otherwise have convinced.

As the end credits rolled Saturday night, Moore re-entered the movie theater and received a second standing ovation from the packed movie-theater audience (his first standing ovation was when he made a brief appearance inside the theater before the film began). He then generously spent about an hour answering questions.

The most intelligent question came from an audience member who stated that most gun-related deaths in the United States take place in the homes of the guns’ owners and then asked Moore why he did not include this angle in his film.

The audience expected a good answer, but Moore answered coyly, "I forgot." The audience laughed; Moore had disarmed them. He went on to explain that at 1 hour and 58 minutes, his film was long enough and he could not include in his film every aspect of gun violence in the United States.

That is true (although it might seem to some that he did indeed include in his film every aspect of gun violence in the United States). But more likely than that he forgot to include that angle, I think, is that a depressed widower blowing his brains out in his own home, say, is not as sensationalistic as, say, the shootings at Columbine or the recent sniper shootings in the Northeast.

Anyway, despite its flaws, "Bowling for Columbine" is a solid film. "A Brief History of the United States of America" alone makes it worth seeing.

My grade: A

Note: Clips from "Bowling for Columbine," including the hilarious animated short "A Brief History of the United States of America," are available at http://www.bowlingforcolumbine.com/media/clips/index.php.

Sun, 03 Aug 2003 15:10:35 GMT

Film review

Nick Nolte plays a grizzly priest in Mark and Michael Polish's nonsensical "Northfork."

Northfork

"Northfork" is one of those movies people walk out of pretending to have loved because they don't want their comrades to know that they didn't get it, either.

Thing is, there's nothing to get. "Northfork" is like a student art film that somehow snagged a big budget and big stars (Nick Nolte, James Woods, Daryl Hannah, Anthony Edwards) who must have read the script but for some reason agreed to do the film anyway.

"Northfork" is a surreal film about a 1950s Montana town called Northfork that is being cleared out for a hydroelectric power plant; soon the town will be underwater, so agents of the power plant (one of whom is played by Woods) drive around the flat, dusty terrain of Northfork trying to convince the few residents who are holding out to leave before they drown.

This idea is strong enough for a compelling realistic film, but filmmaking identical twin brothers Mark and Michael Polish didn't seem to think so. (Michael directed the film, both of them wrote and produced it, and Mark has a role as Woods' son. Mark is frequently wooden in the film, in contrast to his performance in the Polish brothers' first and much better film, "Twin Falls Idaho.")

Woven into the realistic plot of "Northfork" is the surrealistic subplot about a little boy (Duel Farnes) who used to be angel -- his halo and wings have been surgically removed and he bears the scars -- and who is looking for a way out of "Northfork." Nolte plays a priest who is trying to find adoptive parents for the orphaned little boy. Hannah and Edwards play spirits, angels, entities, whatever they are supposed to be, who are looking for a special entity that the little boy might be.

"Northfork" is short on substance and big on cinematography. But we've seen these kinds of images before in David Lynch's, in Gus Van Sant's and in Joel and Ethan Coen's films ("Northfork" is especially reminiscent of "O Brother, Where Out Thou?", with its sepia tones, and of "The Man Who Wasn't There," with its images of a flood). Of course "Northfork's" angel motif brings Wim Wenders' "Wings of Desire" to mind, and "Northfork" even has a bit of "Bladerunner" in it, with its motley crew of bizarre characters (Hannah, Edwards, et. al.) living together in the same house.

Salon's reviewer wrote that "Northfork" "just barely squeaks over the dividing line between slavish imitation and homage." I'd say that with "Northfork" the Polish brothers are well into "slavish imitation" territory.

I'm not impressed by films that don't make sense. Anyone can make a nonsensical film; it is much more difficult to make a film that is realistic and captivating at the same time. (And one David Lynch is enough.) Perhaps the Polish brothers knew exactly what they were trying to convey in "Northfork," but the inaccessible fantasies of identical twins do not make for good filmmaking, and if a piece of art fails to communicate something, then it has failed.

The Polish brothers, who grew up in the Sacramento area, made a brief appearance in the Sacramento theater last night before the film began and they made some informal (and not very informative) comments about "Northfork," which they warned us is filled with strange images. (They didn't stick around for the end of the film, which made me wonder whether they really had to be somewhere else or they didn't want to be there at the end of the film.)

The Polish brothers seem rather shy and unassuming, and I know that they are talented because I saw "Twin Falls Idaho," in which they played conjoined twins and pulled it off well.

I hope that they have satisfied their urge to copy their favorite art-film directors and get back to the filmmaking of which they are capable.

Their pretentious "Northfork" gives credence to "South Park" character Cartman's comment that "[art] films are those black-and-white hippie movies. They're always about gay cowboys eating pudding." ("This is like a black-and-white film made in color," Roger Ebert says of "Northfork." There is what appears to be a gay cowboy in "Northfork," but to the Polish brothers' credit, he doesn't eat any pudding.)

My grade: C-

Tue, 08 Jul 2003 08:02:07 GMT

One of many artists' conceptions of Harry Potter and nemesis Draco Malfoy getting it on (type "Harry Draco" into images.google.com and you'll see many more where this came from). Harry-on-Draco stories ("fics") also abound on the Internet. (One of the many such "fics," titled "Unspeakable Thoughts," starts with "Chapter One: Unexpected Use for a Wand.")

Is Harry a homo?

Alternet.org is running an interesting article from the Boston Phoenix titled "What Is It About Harry?" (I like my title better) that examines, in some detail, the subversiveness of the Harry Potter books and right-wing "Christians'" crusade against the book series. The article's author, Michael Bronski, writes:

The Harry Potter books are, in a word, queer. As used today, "queer" means "homosexual," but it has larger connotations too. The word also suggests a more generally deviant, nonconformist, renegade identity. In its oldest, original sense, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (which recently added the word "Muggle" to its august pages), queer means "deviating from the expected or normal; strange" or "odd or unconventional in behavior." The Harry Potter books can be read as queer in the "gay" sense, but also in the broader sense.

The article is a compelling read, perhaps especially for me because I'm gay and I myself use the term "Muggle" to describe people who just don't get it (which is most people).

Bronski argues how Harry Potter could be seen as gay -- for instance, he is rejected and mistreated by his own family, who demand that he keep the truth about himself hidden, and he finds happiness with his own kind. But, of course, even the second "X-Men" movie goes there when Iceman "comes out" to his parents as a Mutant; and Professor Xavier's school for Mutants, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and gay and lesbian bars all have something in common: they're a refuge for people who are different from those who might harm them.

Still, Bronski compellingly writes of the homosexual angle on the Harry Potter books:

Sure, all this may seem like "reading into" the novels – which is, after all, what literary criticism does. But what are we to make of the fact that Harry, before he learns of his true identity, is forced to live in a closet? Or that before he learns of his acceptance to Hogwarts, he is preparing to go to Stonewall High School?

I must confess that I haven't read any of the Harry Potter books, but I did see both of the films. Harry Potter as portrayed in the films struck me as pretty asexual, but Draco Malfoy seemed to me quite possibly to be hot for Harry, although in a twisted way. While Harry seemed to be able to do just fine without Draco, Draco sure seemed to want to interact with Harry, and the scene in the second Harry Potter film in which Harry and Draco duel with their magic wands (see below) until they are spent -- well, you get the idea.

From Bronski's article one might conclude that by virtue of their sexual preference, all gay men and lesbians are witches and wizards and all straight people are Muggles. Not true. There are heterosexual wizards and witches, and lots of gay men and lesbians are Muggles. (I coined the term "Mugglefag" for a gay man who lacks a magic wand; a fairy without a wand is a sad thing indeed.)

As much fun as it is to think that the Harry Potter books are one of the many wily ways in which we fags and dykes ensnare our new, youthful recruits, in his article Bronski makes a point about the Harry Potter books that is much larger than Harry's possible homosexuality:

Children, before they are completely socialized, have vibrant imaginations and often a very finely tuned sense of alternative possibilities. They are, in a very real sense, queer.

They have to be taught how to become "civilized." Socialization involves mastering table manners and politeness, but it also concerns learning how to conform to the world's most terrible ways. Children have to learn racism – to hate or fear certain people because of how they look; they have to be taught that work is far more important than play and that pleasure is always suspect; they have to be taught that there is only one correct way to worship God and everyone else is going to hell; they have to learn that heterosexuality is the only acceptable form of sexual behavior, and that some forms of sexual pleasure are wrong.

They are taught to be normal – whatever that may mean – within the terms of the prevailing culture. They are taught to be Muggles. Is it any wonder evangelical Christians find the Harry Potter books threatening?

Blast from the past! Read my review of "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" (now on DVD), from Nov. 19, 2002, here.

Tue, 24 Jun 2003 00:42:18 GMT

Film reviews

Fish & game

Albert Brooks voices Marlin (below) and Ellen DeGeneres voices Dory (above) in "Finding Nemo."

Finding Nemo

"Finding Nemo," Pixar Studio's latest offering, is the summer's -- and perhaps the year's -- best film so far.

In "Finding Nemo," juvenile clown fish Nemo (voiced by Alexander Gould) is captured by a scuba-diving dentist, who adds him to the aquarium in his office. Nemo's father Marlin (Albert Brooks) embarks on a journey to save his son, meeting a variety of creatures -- and dangers -- along the way. Marlin is accompanied by the blue fish Dory (the show-stealing Ellen DeGeneres), who suffers from short-term memory loss and who thus provides most of the film's humor. (Those with short-term memory loss might be offended, but, luckily, they'll soon forget about it.)

I won't ruin the fun of "Finding Nemo" by rehashing its entire plot; not knowing what comes next is what makes the film enjoyable.

"Nemo's" visuals are stunning and its screenplay is remarkably airtight, causing Salon's reviewer to remark that the film "works terribly hard for every scrap of charm or humor it imparts." Not true; we're just not used to seeing such a tightly put-together film.

Well, actually, we are; "Nemo's" biggest fault is that it steals too much from Pixar's past films, which are also tightly wrapped. In "Toy Story," Pixar's first wide-release feature-length film, toys Woody and Buzz Lightyear find themselves cast from the safety of their 6-year-old owner Andy's bedroom and they must face the dangers of the outside world. Eventually they find themselves trapped in the bedroom of the rotten brat Sid, who lives next door to Andy and who dismembers toys and rearranges them, a la Dr. Frankenstein, into grotesque reconfigurations. It is up to the rest of the toys from Andy's bedroom to save Woody and Buzz from a sure and horrible mutilation at the hands of Sid.

Similarly -- too similarly -- in "Finding Nemo," while Marlin and Dory face various dangers in the vast ocean while trying to get to Nemo, the other captives in the dentist's aquarium work together to try to reunite Nemo and Marlin before the dentists gives Nemo as a gift to his spoiled brat of a niece Darla, who wears menacing braces and kills fish through neglect. Darla is a female Sid, and the journey that Marlin and Dory take to save Nemo is essentially the same journey that Woody and Buzz take to get back to the safety of Andy's bedroom.

Still, with its abundant humor, much of it geared toward adults, and its incredible visuals, "Finding Nemo" is highly entertaining. I dragged my animated-film-hating friend and former roommate Margie to it, promising her that if she didn't like it I'd reimburse her the price of her ticket.

I didn't have to reimburse her, and that's saying a lot.

My grade: A+

P.S. Stay throughout the end credits.

Canadian geese are a long way from home in a still from "Winged Migration."

Winged Migration

The documentary "Winged Migration" is a visual film, so words won't do it much justice. It must be experienced.

"Winged Migration" chronicles the migration and the habits of several species of birds, including ducks, geese, swans, penguins, puffins, pelicans, cranes, storks, macaws and birds of prey. According to the film's Website, five film crews filmed the birds over three years over seven continents.

Many of the aerial visuals are mind-blowing and we are left to wonder how the filmmakers got shots that look as though the birds were fully cooperating with them, like actors. (At the beginning of the film we are assured that it employs no special effects.) In one of the many poignant scenes, a gaggle of geese fly past the still-standing World Trade Center. In another scene, the geese look quite out of place in the desert Southwest.

Although it's rated G, "Migration" more appropriately should have been rated PG, as it is not for small children. The beauty of the birds' behavior is punctuated by some rather harsh doses of reality, such as a sea bird with a broken wing that becomes lunch for a crowd of crabs, baby birds in a nest in a field about to be hacked to pieces by approaching farm machinery, and geese that are minding their own business migrating until some NRA-card-carrying idiots blow them out of the sky after they've already come God-knows-how-many miles toward their destination.

Probably "Migration's" biggest flaw is that it alternates between narration and subtitles to tell us, every once in a while, what's going on. It should have picked one method or the other, and when narration or subtitles do break in, most often what they tell us isn't very interesting or critical to our appreciation of the film. The film probably could do without them altogether, as it's more of a meditative piece than it is the usual informative nature documentary.

"Winged Migration" would bore to tears those who crave car crashes, explosions and action sequences -- I found myself momentarily bored once or twice -- but it's also an an antidote to the usual summer movie fare. Those who appreciate animals and natural photography and have had enough car crashes, explosions and action sequences should find it worthwhile.

My grade: A-