Well... here 'Fahrenheit 9/11' is.
POSTED BY: Quicksand
UPDATED: Thursday, March 30, 2006 17:02
VIEWED: 28615
PAGE 1 of 13
That subject line was supposed to be a play on a Firefly quote. Oh, well, I'll try harder next time.
Since the subject line on this movie is so popular/hated here (79 responses so far), I thought I'd throw another log on the fire, cuz I'm not sure who I'm supposed to see about this.
At Yahoo!Movies.com, the following is the summary for "Fahrenheit 9/11"
Quote:
Documentary
1 hr. 56 min. Michael Moore's latest documentary traces why the U.S. has become a target for hatred and terrorism. It will also depict alleged dealings between two generations of the Bush and bin Laden clans that led to George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden becoming mortal enemies.
Now, here's the thing: the above is NOT EVEN REMOTELY what the movie is about. The film, if you haven't seen it and can allow me to talk about it without accusing me of hating America... is about Bush's ties with the Bin Laden family, and how he used the 9/11 terrorist attacks to push his own agenda. Mortal enemies? HARDLY.
Liberal media, my rosey red a**.
XOXO
___\_o_/___
--------------- (Qs)
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O'course the media's not liberal. That's what the conservatives bitch constantly, but the media, is rather, corporate.
Good movie, depressing as hell. Will definitely polarize people; no one on the fence about this flick. What I expected, I guess. Just makes me depressed about the state of corporate greed.
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Sorry, but the words "Documentary" and "Michael Moore" should never been used together. He's an embarrassment to REAL documentary filmmakers! His films resemble documentaries as much as reality shows resemble reality!
To quote Dennis Miller, "That's just my opinion. I could be wrong!" I'm sure many here are fans of his propaganda machine, but I'm not!
I'd given some thought to movin' off the edge -- not an ideal location -- thinkin' a place in the middle.
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Here's yet another user commentary...
User Comments:
Michael Daly (fanstp43@aol.com)
Date: 23 June 2004
Summary: Moore Collapses On His Own Hatreds
Michael Moore has concocted a film whose intent is, in Moore's words, "to bring down a President." Moore's film - whose title has earned criticism from writer Ray Bradbury for its tacky parody of his famous story - is a typically labored and scattershot series of attacks on its subject - here President George W. Bush and the US war on Islamo-Arab terrorism.
Moore tries to prove that Prewsident Bush was somehow culpable in Islamo-Arab attacks on the US in September 2001 because of the Bid Laden family's relation ship with the Bushes through the Carlyle Group. But this relationship is completely convoluted and once you sort through Moore's attack you find that the relationship was at most tangenital and utterly irrelevant to anything; it's somewhat like blaming Harvard for Pearl Harbor because Isoroku Yamamoto graduated from Harvard.
Moore pushes this alleged Bush-Bin Laden connection by citing flights that took members of that family out of the US after September 2001, and only by his convoluted paranoia can Moore believe they are evidence that the US somehow staged attacks on its own soil. Moore (as is his want) leaves out facts that destroy his paranoia, namely that no respectable investigation has found any kind of sinister motive behind these flights.
But as writer Christopher Hitchens has put it, a film that is based on a lie can only sustain itself by piling up smaller lies with ever-more contradictory claims. Moore balmes Bush for spending too much time on vacation before the 2001 attacks, but Moore's own footage shows these "vacations" were anything but - in one shot Bush is seen "vacationing" with Tony Blair, prime minister of Great Britain; such summitting is inherently serious work, not goofing off. More again uses his own paranoia as evidence of malicious motive by the Bush Administration.
More goes beyond paranoia into outright propagandizing for the enemy with his grotesquely fawning view of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Moore wants us to believe Iraq never backed any terrorist force, let alone the 2001 attackers, never mind Hussein's own boasts about his backing of international terrorists including Al Qaida, never mind the written documentation unearthed in Iraq after his overthrow (consistently ignored in major media) showing Iraqi involvement with Al Qaida and other international terrorist groups.
It continues with shots of Iraqi palaces and military bases under attack - Moore wants us to believe that these structures were civilian enclaves when they in fact were military and secret police bases. Iraq's 30-plus year record of slaughter, internal and international, is glosses over completely.
Moore tries to have it every way that attacks the US and ultimately collapses on his own contradictions. Either Saudi Arabia runs US policy or it doesn't - here Moore never bothers to wonder why Saudi Areabia would want to overthrow a Taliban regime in Afghanistan to which the Saudi government had close ties; Moore also never wonders about how a democratic Iraq means an economic rival to Saudi Arabia's near-monopoly on Middle Eastern oil exports and yet Saudi Arabia backs, however imperfectly, US efforts toward that goal.
It all means that Michael Moore has done it again - vented his spleen for no rational reason beyond anti-American bigotry. One has to wonder when people will grow tired of such, for Moore has taken the documentary and made it nothing but a vehicle woprthy of Leni Riefenstahl.
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And from the Boston Globe:
Movie Details
Fahrenheit 9/11
Moore's anti-Bush outrage fuels his riveting 'Fahrenheit 9/11'
By Ty Burr, Globe Staff
Boston Globe
Published: 06/23/2004
...
it should come with a label: "Chew before Swallowing." There are no new smoking guns here. Instead, Moore gives us the case against George W. Bush, a fat compendium of previously reported crimes, errors, sins, and grievances delivered in the director's patented tone of vaudevillian social outrage. And it works for much of the film; indeed, the first two-thirds of "Fahrenheit" are chunky with damning information and imagery.
....
One last thought: "Fahrenheit 9/11" is many things, but for pity's sake let's not call it a documentary. To do so abuses the word and shames the good and balanced work done by filmmakers as storied as D.A. Pennebaker and Barbara Kopple, as current as Jehane Noujaim of "Control Room," and as hard-working and unheralded as Carma Hinton of Brookline's Long Bow Group.
Moore, by contrast, is a maker of agit-entertainment, of cinematic essays whose express purpose is to convince. That's fine as long as he's respecting his audience. But when he pushes the camera into Lipscomb's weeping face and keeps it there, he's saying that he doesn't trust you to think for yourself. And that is when he becomes his enemy.
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Quote:
Originally posted by MacBaker:
I'm sure many here are fans of his propaganda machine, but I'm not!
Actually, he's quite forward with such things. I just saw him on the Daily Show (Jon interviewed him) and he said that his movies have two things in them.
1) fact (it's all public record after all so check it out for yourself if you like)
2) his opinion
Now, I don't know about you, but, I find it quite easy to tell when he is stating his opinion and when he is stating a fact. Those who can't (not saying you're one of them) have more problems then they know ie can't tell the difference between fact and fiction.
Propaganda machine my eye.
----
"Canada being mad at you is like Mr. Rogers throwing a brick through your window." -Jon Stewart, The Daily Show
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Ooookay! If his films aren't Documentarys, and they aren't Propaganda films, then what exactly are they?
Facts and "public record" are not exclusive to each other. The headlines "Dewey Wins!" are a part of public record, but last time I checked, Truman actually won that election.
Read the reviews above, they expose the "propaganda" style fact twisting that Michael Moore is infamous for. He's like P.T. Barnam. He's a showman, but he's no docmentary filmmaker. IMHO
I'd given some thought to movin' off the edge -- not an ideal location -- thinkin' a place in the middle.
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There are all kinds of documentaries, and in most cases, they are going to be subjective -- that's their nature. I could do a documentary about shopping at big, trendy malls, and if I loved doing that, my documentary would be full of happy shoppers all having fun, the rich diversity of the food court, and all the wonderful things you could buy at a mall that would make you and your family full of joy. If I didn't like these malls, my documentary would be full of parking lot fender benders, strollers running over your toes, and the horrors of rampant consumerism that drives us to buy useless trash. Now, which documentary would be a true documentary? Both of them. It's all about perspective.
Instead of trying to subvert the point with such a wide brush stroke that you do yourself disservice, why not argue the facts? If you don't like what Michael Moore is saying, that's your right. But don't say that his work is propaganda just because you don't agree with it.
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Sorry Tink, but I'm not the only one calling his tripe propaganda.
Here's another review on "public record".
FAKEN-heit 9-11: Michael Moore’s Latest Fiction
By Debbie Schlussel
June 25, 2004
Mark Twain, once said, "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics."
But Twain lived in the 19th Century. In the 21st Century, there are lies, damn lies, and Michael Moore "documentaries."
Like Twain, Moore wants to be the great social commentator of our era. But, "Fahrenheit 9-11" (F911), his latest propaganda film, shows why he will forever remain in "wanna-be" status.
It’s typical Moore: lies, half-truths, far-left wackos and kooks as experts, snarky cheap shots, and just plain nonsense.
F911 starts out by recounting the tired liberal-left canard about George W. Bush "stealing" the 2000 Presidential Election. Gee, we haven’t heard that one before. And for those who actually read the paper and peruse bookstores, there’s little else new in this waste of celluloid.
Moore shows endless shots of Bush and administration officials being made up for TV appearances, montages of Bush golfing and on vacation, a shot of Bush with his dog – all accompanied by the sarcastic vocal commentary of Michael Moore. (You didn’t expect the self-important, schlubby Moore to spare us and stay off-screen, did you?)
In Moore’s world, liberal politicians never get made up or hair coiffed for TV appearances. In Moore’s world, Bill Clinton never golfed, never vacationed for months on Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard, never had a dog named "Buddy" – all while Slick Willie had the opportunity (several times) to have Osama Bin Laden handed over to him, but declined.
But that’s Moore’s world. He has learned the Costas Gavras (the famous Socialist-Communist director who produced Anti-American films) technique well. Bush and other administration "villains"--so cast by Moore--are shot from down below, to make them look even more evil.
Moore spends much time on Bin Laden family members flying out of the US when the rest of America was grounded, right after 9-11. Showing a clip of Khalil Bin Laden at the airport, a chyron on the screen cleverly reads "days after 9-11." But, how many days? In fact, while some Bin Ladens did get to fly out early, most of the Bin Laden family flew out of America, after the rest of America could already fly. Moore says the FBI was not allowed to interview them, but in fact, the FBI was allowed to interview them and chose not to. That is disturbing, but it’s not what Moore "reported".
The close relationship between the Bush family, including the current President, and the Saudi Royal Family is troubling. But it’s nothing new, and Moore offers no alternative. The Saudi Royals are, no doubt, despicable. They foster and fund madrasas, mosques, and clerics who preach the death of the West, Christians, and Jews. They hold telethons to fund the "martyrs" and allowed Al-Qaeda to grow. Women can’t drive, and non-Muslims are the equivalent of slaves. Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar is slimy and dishonest.
But the precarious Saudi Royal Family is better than the alternative--the Saudi masses who hate us even more and who love Osama Bin Laden.
If Crown Prince Abdullah is deposed by its extremist population, Bin Laden is the most popular replacement. Given the large Saudi investment in our economy (upon which Moore touches) and large holdings in our banking system, a change in Saudi leadership could result in the collapse of our economy. $2 a gallon oil? That would be a pleasant memory from the past, and only rich phonies like Michael Moore would be able to afford to drive. The Saudis are the largest producers of oil, and the radical Saudi population would see to it that we go back to the
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"He shows Britney Spears saying she supports the President on Iraq. As if there weren’t a host of brain-dead bimbo celebs, (Madonna, Sean Penn, Russell Simmons, Lenny Kravitz, Susan Sarandon, The Dixie Chicks, etc.), spouting off on the other side."
10 Britney spears wouldn't equal the IQ of any one of those stars ( I mean, Susan Saradon, a Brain dead bimbo?)
"That is why it’s important for Bush to remain on good terms with the sleazy country that is the home to public beheadings and 15 of the 19 hijackers. Leftists from Moore’s "Amen" crowd won’t let us drill for oil in Alaska, so we can get away from dependence upon the Saudis. Not a peep about that in F911."
Excuse me while I gauge my eyeballs out
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