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Cannes' Palme d'Or goes to Michael Moore
An anonymous reader writes "The Palme d'Or of the Festival de Cannes was presented this year by Charlize Theron to Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore. I don't know if it's the first time this prize is awarded to a documentary, but I guess it's rare enough to be mentioned, especially given the problems this film encounters."
Is it a "documentary" like Bowling for Columbine?
His movies would be more credible if he didn't try to present them as documentaries. They're not documentaries. They're commentaries.
Nothing wrong with that at all, but let's just be clear about it. Up front.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
I haven't seen the thing and I am sure it is politically biased, but certainly I would like to make that determination myself rather then seeing Buena Vista kiss presidential ass and decide that it is not gonna distribute it for fear of losing tax breaks in Florida...
--- "I didn't think anyone would understand it" -Prof. Bob Muller
I'm sorry, but that second link completely turned me off to reading further.
Any website which needs to mock the physical appearance of someone to make a point shouldn't really be trusted.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Well, he's kind of like SCO. He makes a claim, has no real evidence to back it up, and then twists facts to make it seem like he was right all along
Now that sounds like WMD and Iraq.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
As a non-US citizen I even have to wonder what people in the states gets so worked up over in the first place, he's just a reporter who wants to illuminate problems in the society and he happens to have a real knack for storytelling and presentation.
But maby it's just that truth hurts...
/greger
actually michael moore has requested that people question everything - including what he says. i saw him speak in dublin and while i didn't agree with many things he said, he was very upfront that people should research and learn.
in fact in one interview his main complaint was that a lot of the stuff in f.9/11 which people say is "new" is not new at all - he just asked around to find it. essentially he said, "i'm just a schmuck who only graduated from high school with no training in journalism - how is it that i found this stuff and "real" journalists didn't?"
as a person who has followed tech "journalism" for years, i can actually answer his question. but like him, i don't much like the answer.
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and, by God, America needs more of them.
A lot of people claimed that movie was very anti-gun, but it was hard for me to conclude that. I'm basically kind of neutral on guns, and I didn't feel like the movie really said anything one way or the other on that part of it. I think it did try to make the point that Americans were too violent, even fond of violence, and that guns allow for more serious consequences, but I think we all know that. He clearly didn't like the NRA's political activism, but he didn't really go after the Second Amendment. At least I didn't notice it, and I certainly should have. (I think the Second Amendment was exactly what the Civil War was about--and it lost. Thanks and a tip of the hat to that great Republican Abraham Lincoln.)
It's going to be interesting to see how BushCo tries to spin their way out of this one. It sounds like he's just collected the facts and shown them in an ugly light--but very artistically. Dubya was probably not amused. Maybe it contributed to his little accident over the weekend? If so, BushCo better watch out for the klutz label. It certainly didn't help Ford in his campaign. (Interestingly enough, I never bought it at the time, and still don't. I don't know how a couple of clumsy stumbles got taken so far out of proportion.)
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Disney made a decision as a private company and business that they will not produce and distribute a film.
The film is obviously already produced and they are ordering a company they bought to not distribute it. Their decision is motivated by political pressure, and they are willing to abandon profit in order to appease their Bush overlords (Jeb and Dubya).
a private company should not be able to pick and chose what it stands behind
Miramax picked it, Buena Vista, who bought Miramax some time ago, told 'em no.
I wonder what the shareholders will think of this. They invested in a company who decides to refuse profits, that isn't kosher. Of course, Eisner might be doing the only profitable thing: Protecting the theme park tax credits, in which case this is an instance of political censorship.
Either way, it is censorship, because no matter what your deficient education led you to believe, censorship is not something that only governments can do, nor is it only evil when governments do it.
You can't take the sky from me...
He selectively chooses material to illustrate his extreme leftist views
You mean just like you selectively choose comments to illustrate YOUR extreme anti-moore views? How about this line from the Washington Post?
What's remarkable here isn't Moore's political animosity or ticklish wit. It's the well-argued, heartfelt power of his persuasion. Even though there are many things here that we have already learned, Moore puts it all together.
Its real easy to point fingers, isn't it?
This is enormous. This is politics going inside the Cannes palmares. A political move to ensure americans will talk about the movie and release it. Not saying that this is not a great movie, I'm very much looking forward to seing it ; but they were fantastic movies featured in Cannes.
This is really an important move from Cannes, the cinema culture, or the society in general.
Even Moore said "Jesus, what have you done ?" to the Jury when he came to receive his prize.
Cannes, the most pedantic cinema club, gave the Palme to a movie that is mostly a work made to make sure Bush won't be president anymore.
This is one of the most important socio-political event this year !
theefer
Prison abuse sucks, yes. But here's why Abu Ghraib is on the front page, and those stories are not: They're Americans.
What was becoming known as the Iraqi Prisoner Torture Scandal is now known as the Iraqi Prisoner Abuse Scandal, or even the Iraqi Prisoner Mistreatment Scandal. The word Torture is quickly becoming the elephant in the middle of the room. We all know that those people in those photographs are being tortured. What else can one call it when a jailer pours acid on a prisoner's head?
We're all accustomed to seeing torture in movies, or on the news. But in these situations, the torturer is always an alien figure, usually over-the-top, characterized in broad strokes. The great cinematic torturers, such as Laurence Olivier in Marathon Man, or the captors in The Deer Hunter, have one thing in common: They're not Americans. The Vietnamese soldier photographed shooting his prisoner in the head: Not American. Lynndie England: American.
An American torturer is repellent, alien to our cultural mindset. We're so unaccustomed to the sight that it's doubly disgusting. The racist undercurrent of our popular media feeds back on us in this situation, and tells us that Americans, white Americans, don't do this. They're the good guys. But these soldiers are just average Joe and Jane America, and they did do this. We are they, and they are us, and that means that as a country, we are ashamed.
People in general don't deal with shame very well. We all of us, naturally, try to take shameful moments and acts and deal with them by softening the blow in our minds. One deals with the memory of keen embarrassment by finding the humor inherent in the situation. One deals with a past infidelity by rationalizing that since nobody will ever know, nobody will ever be hurt. The word adultery becomes fling, fling becomes indiscretion. These rationalized lies may even be necessary for us to move on with our lives, and not be locked into paralysis by our inability to deal with our darker natures. Certainly the press were quick to jump upon language which allowed them to lessen the shock. As anyone who's regularly read a newspaper in their lives knows, this is not something journalists are wont to do.
It is not yet time to move on. Let's at least agree in this instance to call it like it is: Torture. Americans, acting on behalf of America, tortured the hell out of these people.
Read it again. Say it out loud, hear it, listen to it, accept it. If you are a patriot, as I am, feel the way it hits your stomach and stays there, destroys your appetite, knocks down the straightness of your shoulders. Americans, acting on behalf of America, tortured the hell out of people. Don't let the words change for you, and slide the full truth of what has happened away. As one who loves this country, it's maybe too painful to look directly into the truth of this matter for too long. As one who loves this country, being seared by the shame our countrymen have brought down on us is a necessary step toward making things right. Gaze full-on into it, and let it make you humble again.
Stop your apologist comparison of the wrong thing we did in one situation to the wrong things other people do in similar situations, as if their abhorrent behavior somehow justifies or lessens the severity of our own.
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
I'm not a flaming liberal that thinks Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky necessarily have their finger on the dynamics of our society by any means. But if anything, the unbridaled vitriol he elicits from factions of the populace should warrant careful consideration of his work.
I have seen all his movies and some parts I think are incredibly illuminating and others are obviously embellished or distorted, but one thing is for sure: Debate on these issues is productive and there aren't enough outlets for the types of messages he's promoting in our media today, and even if you don't like what he stands for, it's probably incredibly important, even if you disagree with him, that you support his right to express himself. That you recognize that he is passionate about what he believes in and shouldn't be cut down by pedantic, ignorant, sweeping judgements. Otherwise, you will inevitably find at some point, you'll be in his situation as well.
The fact of the matter is that Moore documents his work exponentially better than his ideological rivals in most cases. His underdog status necessitates this, and that's good for everybody. It's also worth noting that the majority of Moore's critics prefer to criticize Moore, the fallible, sometimes-inconsistent MAN (as if any of us are standards by which others should be judged), and completely disregard his work and the issues he raises.
To dismiss him is to bury your head in the sand whether you agree with his agenda or not.
Having seen this film it was obvious that Moore was implying that public policy sending the single mother to work and public policy making firearms readily available were the cause of or significant contributing factors to the shooting. People who disagree with Moore point to other contributing environmental factors, like running an illegal-drugs business and poor parenting. It is likely that a more thorough analysis could show several troubling factors in this kid's life that all contributed to him shooting another child. I don't see any evidence that a single change in welfare laws, gun laws, drug laws, or parenting laws could have guaranteed that this shooting never would have occurred. Many of us seem to suffer from the fallacy that we can prevent every tragedy with a new law or government program. Whether these laws or programs are conservative or liberal in nature, it doesn't seem to matter. Not every social problem can be solved with law. Some have to be solved by society.
Stuart Eichert
Having lived both in the US and the EU I don't think the statement that "that criticism against Bush is generally regarded as not a wise move" can be that easily dismissed.
I found that there is a culture of intimidation in the US (where I currently live again). A colleague of mine actually told me that she is afraid to show her political leanings because she knows that her boss doesn't share them and she's afraid that she wouldn't get a promotion if he knew. I never heart a similar sentiment expressed to me in Germany. Back there it was perfectly normal to strike up a conversation about politics at the office e.g. at your lunch break.
In Corporate America more often then not policies discourage the employees to discuss such controversial topics.
Democracy can not work without public discourse. I think this is actually the underlying reason why the democractic processes are so broken in the US - people in this country do not talk about political topics any more because they are afraid they may offend somebody and fear the repercussions.