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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. --
It's probably not even the message on it's own that won it for him. Rather, Disney's unwillingness to distribute the film with that message.
four of the nine jurors were American: Mr. Tarantino, Kathleen Turner, the director Jerry Schatzberg, and the Haitian-born novelist Edwidge Danticat. one juror, the actress Emanuelle Béart, is a French citizen, British actress Tilda Swinton, Benoit Poelvoode, a Belgian actor; Peter von Bagh, a Finnish critic; and the Hong Kong director Tsui Hark made up the rest of the jury. taken from here
Tarentino told Moore exactly the opposite: "It's not only for the message: it's a good movie".
To be exact, it was in 1956, when "Le Monde du silence" by Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Louis Malle won the Palme d'Or.
List of winners 1946-2004
My next comment will be ready soon, but moderators can beat the rush and mod it up early.
Moore currently doesn't have a US distributor because of the Disney/Miramax situation, but Moore feels so strongly about the the content of Farenheit 911 and that American voters especially need to see the movie before the November election.
I'm personally not a fan of Michael Moore at all, but I will give Moore a lot of credit if he does what seems to be the best option right now: release the movie online, for free. If he does that, he shows that he isn't being a hypocritical war profiteer - he cares more about people hearing the message than the paycheck.
The petition to release the movie is here.
http://www.talknerdy.org
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
Yeah, I know what you mean...
Guns are good. The more, and the bigger, the better.
Corporate dominance of the working class is good, more is better. Besides, one day, I'll be rich too, so screw 'em!
Invasion of other nations (the biggest guns under corporate dominance) is the ultimate expression of what America is all about.
How dare anyone attempt to question any of this, let alone try to allow access to another's opinion?
Moore must be lying anyway, because he's kind of fat and sloppy.
Me? I'm embracing my inner reptile.
I believe everything the neocon media feeds me without question. It's so much easier that way.
Go team Bush! Go USA!
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.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
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.
A few years ago, Moore had an ex-employee arrested, when said employee tried to get an interview with him.
http://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/regio nal/061700ny-col-tierney.html
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?
InstaPundit.com has been posting links to other prison abuse stories. For some reason, these aren't getting as much attention in the mainstream media ("all Abu Ghraib, all the time").
Maybe the French, Germans, Arabs, public employees unions, California Attorney General, and their apologists should take note.
May 22, 2004
PRISON MANAGEMENT PROBLEMS AND A DYSFUNCTIONAL CULTURE OF ABUSE in the California prison guards' union.
posted at 03:53 PM by Glenn Reynolds
May 21, 2004
SOMEONE TELL 60 MINUTES about this secret underground prison:
'It starts off by being stripped naked in front of 10 police officers including two women, gratutious humiliation is used to break you down.' '... worst jail that you can possibly imagine.' 'Not even a hole to go to the bathroom. You have to piss against a wall and you sleep in piss on the concrete floor.' The torture victim demands 'the immediate shutdown of this secret underground prison'. It's not at Abu Ghraib, it's in Marseille, France.
No doubt Ted Kennedy will be condemning it soon.
posted at 07:41 PM by Glenn Reynolds
May 21, 2004
MORE STORIES OF ARAB PRISONERS BEING ABUSED:
ARAB prisoners beaten and tortured, innocent bystanders killed by gunfire - another damning human rights report.
But the difference this time is that the violence is being perpetrated not by coalition forces in Iraq, but by the Palestinian Authority, and the victims are its own people.
The report, partly funded by the Finnish government, claims Palestinian cities are in a state of near anarchy, with people on the payroll of Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority (PA) blamed for 90 per cent of gangland violence.
It highlights numerous incidents of torture of prisoners and refers to the killing of civilians in gunbattles between Palestinian factions.
It is another blow for Mr Arafat's organisation, which was recently accused of misusing 134 million of European Union funds. Mr Arafat was accused of signing cheques to people linked with terrorist activity.
I'm sure Ted Kennedy will have comments.
posted at 09:55 AM by Glenn Reynolds
May 18, 2004
IRAQI EMIGRES ON ABU GHRAIB: This is interesting:
Hadi Kazwini is an Iraqi engineer who moved to Australia in 1997 and lives in Sydney with his wife and three children. He is amazed at the gullibility of those Australians who have taken the Arab response to the photos at face value.
This sort of brutality goes on all the time, it is happening now in jails right through the Middle East, he says. But of course there are no photos. This is selective outrage.
Kazwini believes that the behaviour revealed by the photos is awful and the US soldiers involved should be punished. But he says some of the Iraqi prisoners shown were Saddam's killers and torturers. They have been responsible for far worse violations of human rights than the Americans.
Where is the outrage about this, he asks. I haven't seen
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
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.