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Tuesday, May 18, 2004

Farenheit 9/11 Ignites Cannes Film Festival Goers
Michael Moore's newest documentary Farenheit 9/11 is receiving rousing cheers and long standing ovations according to CNN and Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times. The controversial film was recently bought by the Weinstein brothers at Miramax after the parent company, Disney, refused to distribute the film. Disney would also not allow Miramax to distribute the film so the Weinstein brothers came to the rescue.

The title of the movie comes from the Ray Bradbury novel Farenheit 451 and is signficant because that is the temperature at which books will burn. Moore interprets Fahrenheit 9/11 as the "temperature at which freedom burns."

CNN described the film in this way:

The movie reiterates other critics’ accusations about the Bush family’s financial connections to Saudi oil interests and the family of Osama bin Laden. Moore charges that the White House was asleep at the wheel before the Sept. 11 attacks, then used fear-mongering of future terrorism to muster support for the Iraq war.

Yet Moore - the provocateur behind the Academy Award-winning "Bowling for Columbine," which dissected American gun culture - packages his anti-Bush message in a way that provokes both laughs and gasps....

Interviews, mocking footage of Bush’s often inelegant speeches, and comments by U.S. soldiers in Iraq - many expressing harsh disillusionment in their leaders - dominate the film.

It opens with a whimsical recap of the 2000 presidential campaign and the rancor after Florida’s photo-finish vote threw the election to Bush over Democratic rival Al Gore.

"Was it all just a dream?" Moore ponders. "Did the last four years even happen?"

The Sept. 11 attacks play out with no images of the planes that hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Instead, Moore fades to black and provides only the sounds of the planes crashing into the towers, before fading in again on tearful faces of people watching the devastation and a slow-motion montage of floating ash and debris after the buildings collapsed.

Moore examines Saudi financial ties to the Bush family and presents post-Saddam Iraq as an economic-development zone for American corporations.

Graver in tone than "Bowling for Columbine," the film includes grisly images of dead Iraqi babies and burned children, along with amputees and other U.S. soldiers injured in Iraq....

Even those skeptical of Moore, who has drawn criticism that he skews the truth to fit his arguments, were impressed.

"I have a problematic relationship with some of Michael Moore’s work," said James Rocchi, film critic for DVD rental company Netflix, saying he found Moore too smug and stunt-driven in the past. "There’s no such job as a standup journalist."

Yet in "Fahrenheit 9/11," Moore presents powerful segments about losses on both sides of the Iraq war and the grief of American and Iraqi families, Rocchi said.

"This film is at its best when it is most direct and speaks from the heart, when it shows lives torn apart," Rocchi said.

Just as the controversy surrounding Gibson's film The Passion of Christ created a remarkable interest for people to see the film, the same appears to be happening with Farenheit 451.  At least, that was the case at Cannes.

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No Exit Timeline for U.S. Troops In Iraq
Here's a major news item from the AP that disappeared as quickly as it appeared. Answering questions in front of the Senate Committee for Armed Forces, Wolfowitz explained that there was no timeline for the departure of US troops from Iraq. Regarding the reasons why there is no timeline, Wolfowitz offered the following to the committee, according to the AP:

“I would say of all the things that were underestimated, the one that almost no one that I know of predicted ... was to properly estimate the resilience of the regime that had abused this country for 35 years.”

[Wolfowitz] said that included the failure “to properly estimate that Saddam Hussein would still be out there funding attacks on Americans until he was captured; that one of his principal deputies, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, would still be out there funding operations against us; that they would have hundreds of millions of dollars in bank accounts in neighboring countries to support those operations”; and that the old intelligence service would keep fighting.

Wolfowitz also said U.S. officials were wrong to impose so severe a policy of de-Baathification, the decision to purge members of Saddam’s Baath party from the government. The move threw thousands of teachers, military men and others out of work, many of whom had been required to join the party for employment, and was blamed for not only boosting joblessness but helping fuel the insurgency.

The ban on former party members in public-sector jobs was eased last month.

Wolfowitz also said that the next year to 18 months would be critical in Iraq because it would take that long to stand up fully trained and equipped Iraqi security forces and to elect a representative government.

Wolfowitz didn't sound too upset that there was no plan or timeline of departure. Due to the recent revelations regarding Rumsfield and how he failed to accurately plan for the war and the reconstruction, not to leave out how he helped mastermind the Copper Green strategy, I doubt they even want to leave. This Administration thrives on the chaos of terror and war. And besides, who are we to convince them they are wrong. To steal a phrase from Chris Hedges, they define themselves and no other definitions count.

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