Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 911" Wins Palme d'Or at Cannes

One of my colleagues is at Cannes and will be reporting back soon. The MIRAMAX folks are signing the deal with Disney to buy the film back at cost. Maybe Newmarket will distribute the film (that would be a coup -- they distributed "The Passion of the Christ")

Moore has always had a team -- a film is a collaborative effort. He does edit his own films with some assistance.

Not including statistics that happen to not support his viewpoint is hardly a factual lapse. That's the responsibility of those rebutting his results. Neither is giving money to the Taliban which the adminstration admitted was a mistake -- they were the rulers in Afghanistan at the time. You don't suppose that money ended up in their pockets, do you?

Incidentally, political cartoons are also documentary. They see the facts from a different viewpoint.

"Not including statistics that happen to not support his viewpoint is hardly a factual lapse."

Then what on earth is? There were facts... that did not support his viewpoint... so he left them out! More specifically, he manipulated the facts, presenting two sets of statistics as analagous when they were not.

Argh, I can see this isn't going to go anywhere, so I'll bow out. Looks like a good movie, I'll look forward to seeing it.

I would go back and analyze just what his viewpoint was with and without the legal intervention factored in. Were his Canadian statistics with or without legal intervention? How many people do you think are killed in Canada due to legal intervention? But this is suppose to be about the new films and somehow everyone wants to change the subject to what they felt was wrong with his previous efforts. Directors make movies that are successful and some not so successful with different opinions about each effort.

BTW, what credential do these sites put forth for their research? Have they been researched for "manipulating" the facts? Moore has countered many of these manipulations by the opposition but I'm sure not many have read them.

Well, I will continue to keep posting the latest about the new film so if those who care want to keep in touch, fine.

Amazing how emotional we can all get over what is, after all, only a movie.

<ducks, runs for his life, weaving to avoid potshots>

<grabs Happy Andy's sleeve, and runs alongside>

Moore does appeal to the emotions as well as the intellect and often that is very cloudy territory. His presentation of a set of facts are infuriatingly biased for many. So what. I think he gets his point across and it's not always preaching the choir -- it's preaching to the choir who are on the fence. There is no black-and-white in politics or social issues -- it's always in living, blazing color. Michael could be accused of using a bit too much red sometimes.

How many points of Bush's job performance and popularity do you think this film will shave off?

(If essentially that's what the conservatives are afraid of, is it any wonder how the vitriol will spew out, also in living color?)

What you describe seems more like propaganda (or a political ad) than a documentary. Call me old fashioned but I like objectivity and factual accuracy in a documentary.

I haven't described anything because I haven't seen the film. That's a matter of opinion if anyone believes the film is not objective or is not factually accurate. I would imagine if it's not factually accurate that Bush could sue for slander.

(Which, of course, he wouldn't as the chance he would lose would be political suicide).

From a Channel4 Review:

Michael Moore's incendiary film about the Bush administration contains some shocking accusations. James Mottram reports:


In a Cannes Film Festival that has so far failed to produce many surprises, this is the one film everyone was waiting to see. Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 arrived in a blaze of publicity despite - at the time of writing - being without a major US distributor and with no money for advertising.

A chilling investigation into the four years of US President George W Bush's time at the White House, the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the Iraq war, the bottom line is it delivers a devastating blow to the Bush administration in the run-up to its re-election campaign.


Put together with Moore's trademark mixture of wry humour and forthright opinions - last seen in his gun-culture study Bowling For Columbine, which won him an Oscar for Best Documentary in 2003 - the two-hour film brought tears to the eyes of some audience members at the advanced press screening I attended.

As Moore himself said, during a Q&A on the Croisette on Sunday 16 May, "You will see things in this film that you have not seen before. You will learn things that you have not learned before. We have footage, because I was able to sneak crews into Iraq and get them embedded with the US military, without them knowing it was Michael Moore shooting. They are totally fucked.

BALANCE OF CHANNEL4 REVIEW

Moore is more...he feels big, his emotions are big.
By nitpicking every detail of his films, you are not getting it. Even with his deliberate primitive directing style, the overall thrust of each of his films is true. Don't let his emotion get in your way.

He's not a laid back PBS film documentarian. Moore is of the people. He's that person in the crowd that hollers out what you have been thinking and you wouldn't even consider correcting his grammar.

That's exactly right. He promotes instant response and from the Moore haters and it's going to be a vitriolic denial of what he is getting at.

I agree with both of you; reaction to Moore's films is always visceral, and comes from each pole of the political spectrum.

It's op-ed as cinema.

A documentary is simply a collection of documents. It doesn't prescribe how they are assembled. Moore often uses juxtiposed images to punctuate his point. That the dissenters attack the parts and him personally does not support their argument that he's off-base on the point of the film. Any arrangement of facts can be interpreted in many different ways (just read our own political forum).

EVENT NOTICE:

Sat. May 22, 2004--2pm (EDT)

Cannes Closing Ceremony with Roger Ebert on
IFC. (Live)

Thanks for the reminder! I've already bookmarked it on my cable.