NationStates Jolt Archive

I suppose i shoudknt really, having never taken the time to watch his films the whole way through - but he appears to be the sort of individual who says things like "THE GOVERNMENT IS TAKING MILLIONS OF YOUR HARD EARNED DOLLARS" and leaves out "to fund welfare and the police" (regardless of the quality of these 2 institutions).

Should i watch his films? Are they really worth my time, when it comes down to it? No name calling please - first impressions are important and i didnt get a good one from him - im trying to find out if im essentially wrong about the fact that he seems happy to point out a lot that is wrong without making any positive changes, and usually he is only showing people wat they already knew ( ? ).

Really, im curious.

Methinks Moore is the sort who'd say "The Government Isn't Taking Enough of Your Hard Earned Money" :p He relies too heavily on hyperboles and outright lies for my taste but hey to each his own.

Moore is just another of the amoral opportunist ilk and laughs all the way to the bank. :rolleyes:

Liberals Warn Sinclair Not to Broadcast Anti-Kerry Film
By Susan Jones
CNSNews.com Morning Editor
October 11, 2004

(CNSNews.com) - A liberal group dedicated to "correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media" is furious that Sinclair Broadcasting plans to have its stations air an "anti-Kerry attack film" between now and Nov. 2.

Full article at:

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture....L20041011a.html

So i was right to think he is indeed a manipulative toad relying on shock value and simply telling people somehting they like to hear - because it makes them feel intellectual to watch a docu-film which is anti-establishment?

So i was right to think he is indeed a manipulative toad relying on shock value and simply telling people somehting they like to hear - because it makes them feel intellectual to watch a docu-film which is anti-establishment?

Close. :)

Michael Moore is like porn for liberals. You kinda feel bad that you like it so much, but it really gets you off. :D

I think Michael Moore is a self-serving egomaniac, personally, but it's up to you to form your own opinion on what you think of him.

I'm probably about as right wing as they come but

I thought Bowling for Columbine was a pretty funny take on society in general.

Farenheit 911 just wasn't as amusing, and seemed to rely on too many outright lies rather than the satirical fact bending of BforC. There's just no amusement in such a rabid personal attack, I guess I probably shouldn't have expected satire in the scope of the previous movie though. BforC was primarily satirical, F911 was primarily political.

His movies are probably best described as docu-dramas.

Lol, okey.

Thank you all.

To the OP:

I happened to find both Farenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine to be hilarious documentaries. Both are very entertaining. Both are also only about 20%-40% truth, with the rest being conjecture and/or conspiracy theory. Michael Moore is just one more person using his 'art' as a vehicle to spit his own rhetoric, he is no better, nor any worse, than any of the couple hundred million other Americans that do the same thing.

Worship him or demonize him at your own leisure. I for one don't think it's worth caring that much about.

Er, well, I think he's okay, except for his rabidness on abortion.

To the OP:

I happened to find both Farenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine to be hilarious documentaries. Both are very entertaining. Both are also only about 20%-40% truth, with the rest being conjecture and/or conspiracy theory. Michael Moore is just one more person using his 'art' as a vehicle to spit his own rhetoric, he is no better, nor any worse, than any of the couple hundred million other Americans that do the same thing.

Worship him or demonize him at your own leisure. I for one don't think it's worth caring that much about.

This may come as a shock to you, but not everyone is as capable of sorting fact from fiction as you apparently are, especially when the fiction is called a "documentary."

which is what i meant about it making people feel intelletual - thats a dangerous thing to do! read plato - democratic character stuff - very interesting, holds up well..typing fast..in rush...erm..moore silly - misleads the people who are mostly drawn to watch his films, perhaps? discuss!


Michael

which is what i meant about it making people feel intelletual - thats a dangerous thing to do! read plato - democratic character stuff - very interesting, holds up well..typing fast..in rush...erm..moore silly - misleads the people who are mostly drawn to watch his films, perhaps? discuss!

Michael

I've read it, and yes, I agree. But at least in the showing I suffered part-way through, most of those in the audience were apparently incapable of making such fine distinctions.

lol, im enjoying morality etc but im going away to a concert now - cant wait to see what i find when i get abck and have to do more work for an hour or 2..

Michael Moore is more than just an angry fat man.

He first came to prominence with the "documentary" Roger and Me, where he blamed Roger Smith, the then CEO of GM, for making people buy Japanese cars and causing GM plants in Michigan to close. Michael used this movie to show us how the greed of american auto manufacturers in refusing to make cars that no-one wanted to buy caused plants to close. If only they had just built those cars anyway, then people could have had jobs. And who cares if those cars get bought or not, that's not the main reason why people should build cars anyway. As michael showed us, cars should be built to make sure that someone unconected with the whole car making process never never gets evicted, and not, in fact, to sell them for a profit. Good old Michaelnomics, auto plants should just stay open whether they are doing something productive or not. (Mind you to be fair, no-ones ever built a sandwich that michael didn't want buy, but he did admit that he would never drive a pontiac, at least not after owning a BMW for a while.) Still the logic is irrefutable, we should just have factories making things that no-one wants, so people can have jobs like the old days. Michael prooved this by showing us the "human cost" of closing a factory. Unfortunatley just as he was riding the success of Roger and Me, those closed factories all reopened to make SUVs and the whole thing became a bit of an embarrasment for Michael, so he had to look for something else to do.

He was rescued by Bravo, the left wing arts channel. They thought his whole take on economics was cool, especially as just like Michael's fantasy factories, they were making stuff that no-one ever used (well in this case watched), so they got him to make the TV show, "the awful truth". And It was awful, so no-one watched it exactly like Bravo had planned. So for those of you who - and this group is just about everyone - don't know what it was about, it was thirty minutes of Michael exposing the "lies" of the TV nation (whatever that is). Despite this claim about exposing the TV nation's lies, which sounds kind of cool, it was actually pretty much him doing basically the same thing as he did in Roger and me - you know being fat and accosting people in the street with a microphone to ask them a bunch of irrelevant and rude questions. Then when they just looked agahst at him, all shocked at how fat and unwashed he was, this "proved" they were criminal liars that used babies for medical experiments and other things. Why Michael felt the need to do this he never really made clear. I suppose he felt that most of the TV nation were secretly killing babies and it was up to him alone to expose the "Awful Truth." Then - and I am NOT making this up - he obviously felt that this whole act was insufficiently bizzare so endorsed Alan Keyes for president on his show. (Yes that Alan Keyes). He never explained that one either.

Unfortunately for Michael his show didn't last long because evil republican capitalists decided that at some point Bravo should at least try to make some money by having people watch it, and the network was sold off to people who think that the only three legitimate things to put on TV are: Queer Eye for The Straight Guy, the Melanie Griffiths movie Working Girl; and Inside the Actor's studio with that Lipton fellow. (Once in a while The Princess Bride slips through the cracks, but I'm sure that's an oversight.) With this wall to wall 24 hour a day format of pure Christian right programming there was no place for Michael on the "new" Bravo and his show was cancelled after ideological disputes with the new conservative Christian management - despite his endorsement of Alan Keyes. (It had nothing to with the fact that the only other person apart from Michael’s mother to watch his show was me when I was high.)

Out of work again Michael decided to try what had worked for him the last time he was a fat unemployed loser; make a politically inspired movie about human tragedy and groundlessly blame it on white people and republicans. And the sad events at Columbine High gave him just such an opening, but not until sometime until after the fact when he was fired by Bravo.

Bowling For Columbine is, for many, the zenith of Michael’s artistic achievement in the trio of cinematic masterpieces he has produced. It is a richly textured and many layered analysis of modern day American culture, its history and traditions, and the gun violence that it gives rise to. Naturally, it is impossible to reduce the complexity of Michael’s central thesis about the genesis of modern day gun violence in the US to a few hundred words, but in essence he offers us an smorgasbord of new and exciting ideas to explain the decline of civil society. Amongst these revolutionary and novel concepts are: White people are racist; White People Came to be the US to be Racist; White People buy guns because they are racists; Racism makes all white people afraid; Canadians are not racist; and, some banks give away guns with checking accounts.

Michael also uses "bowling" as an opportunity to show us how Charlton Heston was directly responsible for the tragic events at columbine highschool, and does so with his inimitable elegant style. Few can forget the memorable scene where he gains an interview with Mr. Heston on the false pretext of discussing the validity and scope of second amendment and then just starts yelling at heston to apologize to some dead girl's parents for her death - because clearly heston shot her or something. From this we learn three things: Heston Kills children; Heston's behavior led to columbine; and its amazing that no-one has shot that fat fuck Michael by now. We also learn, that Michael is too fat to remember that Heston was a leading civil rights campaigner and may possibly - just possibly - be taking a principled stand about what he believes to be right regardless of partisan politics. This is because he is not as fat as Michael, and therefore is to dumb to be allowed to disagree with Michael’s immensely large girth.

Bowling ends on a poignant note, where Michael declares that it is "fear" more than anything else that causes our violence. This of, course allows us to enjoy the movie all the more, for now we can enjoy its blatantly partisan anti gun rhetoric without ever once feeling that it is playing to our own deeply held prejudices. No, indeed, the whole point of this "journey" was not one that rehashed our own deeply held partisan beliefs and prejudices - after all who knew that "rednecks" in small town America liked guns before Michael told us - but one that leads to the irrelevant and wholly unsupported conclusion that it is all about "fear". We are therefore comfortably allowed to laugh at stereotypes of those we consider inferior for two hours safe in the belief that we are actually learning something new. And yes, it is not fat people running up to you in the street with photos of children screaming that you support policies that foster baby-killing and that you should "apologize" that may cause violence, but rather "fear." (Maybe of non-whites, Michael’s not to sure on that point). On the other hand, behaving like Michael -running up to strangers and yelling at them for being racist baby killers - is perfectly rational, and in no-way is the type of thing that could lead to violence.


The only one small flaw in "bowling" - an otherwise perfect film - is it was made while a democrat sat in the Whitehouse, so Michael was not able to spend as much time as he would have liked in DC blaming a republican president for gun violence. (despite "fear" really being the cause).

Because of the success of "bowling" Michael became more than the cottage non-industry he had been during the lean "Bravo" years. And Michael now embarked upon a journey of self-discovery. He wrote a book about stupid fat white men but, ironically despite the title, it was not about himself. He also found that he is personally no more in favor of unions than Roger Smith, the once CEO of GM, and fired a bunch of people who worked for him when they tried to enter a collective bargaining agreement. (Commies!). This important period also served to prepare Michael physically and mentally for the work necessary to produce his magnum opus Fahrenheit 911 (Litigation Pending).

It would not be far wrong to say that if terrorists had not attacked on September the 11th 2001, Michael would have had to make another equally bogus movie, inspired by a deep and irrational hatred of Bush, about something else. Yet the attacks did happen, so Michael used that as a canvas upon which to blame white republicans for genocide. Yay Michael. (Prior to this he was working on a project about how the republicans used Polaroids of Justice Stevens and Kennedy in "flagrante delicto" to steal the electoral college from America or something, but it wasn't working out to well so really its a good thing for Michael that this other terrorism thing came along.)

But Fahrenheit 911 (Litigation pending), is not just about the theft of intellectual property from Ray Bradbury (Bradbury claims that Moore never gained permission to use the title, but apparently when it involves him personally Michael cares no more for the property of other artists than he does his own employees rights to organize), it is also about GW bush's biggest failure as president, his lack of psychic powers. Michael shows us how for seven whole minutes while no-one in the world was sure of what actually was happening, or what should be done, Bush failed to use his spider sense and immediately divine, absent any information, that Al- Qeada was flying planes into buildings. This more than any other charge, is what makes 911 (litigation pending) the powerful statement that it is. Yes, it is also packed full of other goodies, like were the republicans behind the WTC attack themselves, or did the republican backed CIA secretly smuggle several thousand pounds of c-4 into the WTC to help it "topple"; but these other uninformed and nonsensical charges are overwhelmed by Michael’s central indictment, that Bush is not psychic, or fat.

And no one can deny that the "lack of psychic" powers charge has become a rallying cry for those who are unimpressed with current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania avenue. For many of us, the charge that Bush just sat there in shock while no-one anywhere in the world knew what was really going on has resonance. We have all learned the error of electing (or not if you are as fat as Michael, because an Institution as anorexic as the Electoral College must be at base illegitimate) a right leaning president with no apparent psychic abilities. If only he could have been more like FDR, who because of psychic powers, knew the intelligence intercepts he received about Pearl Harbor were bogus – oh, wait, well I’m sure there is a psychic president out there somewhere. So, as Michael proves to us, it’s about time that he was tossed out and someone with a "spider sense" is given a chance. Like John Kerry, for example. Unfortunately 911 (litigation pending) was made before the democrat challenger was decided upon by the CBS network, so Michael couldn't highlight Kerry's ability to predict the future by using his Yoda like trance.

Michael, is now taking a well earned rest after the success of Fahrenheit 911 (Litigation Pending), by charging state universities $20,000 in speaking fees to appear for an afternoon. I can’t think of a better or more useful way to stretch the shrinking education dollar. Nor can Michael.

His next project is entitled. "Ha-ha, I’m moving to the Cayman Isalnds before those new taxes I said were a good idea for everyone kick in: fools!". He hopes one day to be less fat. Rumors abound on the internet that he eats the children of poor families. Still, there is no denying his artistic genius or Journalisitic integrity.

I suppose i shoudknt really, having never taken the time to watch his films the whole way through - but he appears to be the sort of individual who says things like "THE GOVERNMENT IS TAKING MILLIONS OF YOUR HARD EARNED DOLLARS" and leaves out "to fund welfare and the police" (regardless of the quality of these 2 institutions).

Should i watch his films? Are they really worth my time, when it comes down to it? No name calling please - first impressions are important and i didnt get a good one from him - im trying to find out if im essentially wrong about the fact that he seems happy to point out a lot that is wrong without making any positive changes, and usually he is only showing people wat they already knew ( ? ).

Really, im curious.

Just watch the films and form your own opinion...
Then you don't have to keep guessing what your opinion "should" be.
:rolleyes:

Lacadaemon- Encore!

Tumaniia:

Just watch the films and form your own opinion...
Then you don't have to keep guessing what your opinion "should" be.
:rolleyes:

I was interested to see what other people thought about me dismissing michael moore - i have no time for people who think they have scored a point by being arrogant. Clearly i have come across to you as lacking the courage of my convictions, yes? Or maybe as somebody who panders to popular opinion, or worse again a million times has never had to have an origonal thought of their own because low and behold i already got some from my brothers nirvanna CD's!or maybey some 'truly original and inspiring' music from favorites of individuality such as Korn and started writing "people=shit" on all my copybooks at school all day long. Yes? If not please mind your tone. It probably wouldnt be a good idea to forward the 'Yes' point of view because i have just realised that another thing i feel strongly about is people who dont take the time to think before shooting their mouth.

"I would be nicer if you would be smarter".

As far as i can tell you were indulging in auto-fellatio rather than attempting to say anything particularly valid...I hope to god i never see another of those sarcastic smileys used like that again beacuse by god i can rationally and calmly discuss racism, homophobia and any moral issue you care to think of but i will not stand for snide and cheap personal insults.

Lacadaemon- Encore!

Tumaniia:



I was interested to see what other people thought about me dismissing michael moore - i have no time for people who think they have scored a point by being arrogant. Clearly i have come across to you as lacking the courage of my convictions, yes? Or maybe as somebody who panders to popular opinion, or worse again a million times has never had to have an origonal thought of their own because low and behold i already got some from my brothers nirvanna CD's!or maybey some 'truly original and inspiring' music from favorites of individuality such as Korn and started writing "people=shit" on all my copybooks at school all day long. Yes? If not please mind your tone. It probably wouldnt be a good idea to forward the 'Yes' point of view because i have just realised that another thing i feel strongly about is people who dont take the time to think before shooting their mouth.

"I would be nicer if you would be smarter".

As far as i can tell you were indulging in auto-fellatio rather than attempting to say anything particularly valid...I hope to god i never see another of those sarcastic smileys used like that again beacuse by god i can rationally and calmly discuss racism, homophobia and any moral issue you care to think of but i will not stand for snide and cheap personal insults.

Sorry if you got insulted... But the question seems strange to me... "discuss wether I should view the films or not". Obviously you're interested...So why not go see those films?

But to answer your original question:
I haven't seen that 9/11 one, but I caught "bowling for columbine" on TV and found it very interesting.
I don't know how strange or interesting it is to Americans, but to non-Americans the movie depicts Americans as quite insane.
Of course I realize that Michael Moore has bias and a political agenda... But even so, just seeing those "militia" people running around playing soldiers in some forest made my jaw drop. Alot of the footage had the same effect, such as the ad from the school where the kid demonstrates how dangerous it is not to tuck in your shirt and the footage of Charlton Heston waving his gun and shouting at those gun-rallies. So, as I am not American and have never been there, this stuff is all very strange and alien to me.

So basically: If you are American, I really have no idea what you'd think of it... To non-Americans, I'd recommend it for the same reasons I'd recommend www.engrish.com (you know, those crazy foreigners doing crazy things), but I'd also suggest keeping in mind that Moore has an agenda and probably doesn't give us an entirely accurate picture of affairs in the USA. If he does (which I really hope isn't the case), then the film is indeed very very scary.

Thank you. Apolagies for shouting. :-)

Thank you. Apolagies for shouting. :-)

No problem.
Apologies for the harsh words at the start.
:)