Last night we saw FAHRENHEIT 9/11 at a downtown theater owned by the LOEWS movie chain, which, I just read (click me!), is being bought by THE CARLYLE GROUP, an investments firm that doubles as a "defense" contractor, and one of the biggest $$$ beneficiaries of BOOM, BLAST, BLOOD, and other US-related destruction; imagine how creepy it was to see F911 explaining who and what CARLYLE is and does, in a theater they're getting ready to own. I can't help but wonder if they mean to pull F911 from THEIR theaters once they've got control. Go see this movie, friends. This may be the last time a movie the government DOESN'T want you to see is widely available to see at all.

That said, it was an AMAZING movie. Politics aside, it's just well-made, and laugh-out-loud funny -- with some REALLY creative use of music: for example, a scene in which two Marines recruiters are strutting through a parking lot looking for poor black males to "add to their lists" is accented with disco music; bu$h's "mission accomplished" landing on the aircraft carrier is shown to the tune of "Believe it or Not" (the theme to the old TV show, "The Greatest American Hero") -- I nearly pissed myself.

It stands up as a powerful indictment of this whole administration, but they mostly hang themselves with their own ropes: Moore just digs up the film of them doing it. Moore's real feat in this film was just pulling together existent, often stunning, film that more than anything else makes you wonder where the F*** the MEDIA'S been for the past four years?! The film of member after member of the House of Representatives, almost every one of them black, standing up before congress and asking to contest the 2000 election because of the enormous number of black voters who were denied their votes, and each being told, one by one, that they could not contest the election unless they could get the signature of a single Senator, and their apparent frustration at the complete stonewall from the Senators -- this was the first scene that made me cry. It was far from the last.

The video of bu$h's innauguration day: the swells of protestors, his limo pelted with eggs, his being the first president in history who didn't walk publicly up the street, and into the front door of the White House -- this just made me wonder: how many hours per day of cable news would you have had to have watched to have caught THAT historic parade?

Another element of this movie that really struck me: TRANSLATIONS. Moore has actually bothered to TRANSLATE what the Iraqis, who we often see yelling and screaming on television (and often we can make out only one word, "Allah," and this word we've been taught to fear), are saying. We discover that most of those invocations of Allah's name are actually just people screaming "Oh God, Oh God!" in grief. They're trying to tell us that the pile of rubble behind them was their uncle's house. They're trying to tell us they've buried 5 family since the Americans came and started shooting and bombing. Again, getting this insight into their humanity made me wonder: why has the media shown these people only as raving, babbling, loons? Why hasn't anyone bothered merely to TRANSLATE?

The most important thing is this movie, though, is Lila Lipscombe. Her story requires every frame of film devoted to it, and I can't hope to do it justice here. She is a hardworking, caring, Christian, patriotic member of a military family she calls "the backbone of America." Her son is killed in Iraq, her son who, not long before his death, writes a letter home thanking her for the Bible she sent him, and expressing his rage with bu$h, for putting them all out there in danger "for nothing." I can't do her justice: I can only say that the vision of a weeping Lila Lipscombe standing before the White House being called a liar and verbally abused by a pro-bu$h woman who tells everyone nearby Lila's grief is "just a show" -- when I saw that, I thought: that is what's wrong with America.

Moore's closing sentiment is this: our soldiers are the true patriots. They're willing to make the ultimate sacrifice so that the rest of us don't have to. And the only thing they ask is that we never send them into harm's way unless we absolutely have to.

There's tons more in this film, and I highly recommend you see it, before more "defense" contractors buy up more movie chains, and POOF...

...like that, it's gone.  ¶ 12:18 PM (0) comments

  Moore's Magic: 9/11 Electrifies
by Rex Reed



Michael Moore leaves no turn unstoned. There are multitudes of shattering, seminal moments in his brilliant Bush-whacking documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11, that reveal more about the cynicism, greed and ineptitude in the U.S. government than you will ever learn from any sound bite on the right-wing late-night cable-channel blabfests, but one will stay with me forever. Forget about the "official" reports from the White House about the activities of George W. Bush on the fateful morning of Sept. 11, insisting he learned about the Al Qaeda attacks while meeting with Florida pre-schoolers and quickly dashed from the room to save the country. The truth, it is now revealed, is that he was informed of the first attack on the World Trade Center before he even entered the schoolroom, and he decided to continue with his photo-op anyway. There he is on camera when Andrew Card informs him of the second plane and utters the fatal words, "We're under attack!" -- but he continues to read My Pet Goat for another seven minutes, his eyes sliding sideways in his puzzled face, like a moron looking for a bathroom, until his staff insists that he leave. (He stayed for another half hour.) If nothing else, that defining moment says volumes about what we can expect from the President of the U.S. in the center of a supreme, history-altering crisis: He's just clueless.

There are other moments that will impact some viewers and polarize others. So many, in fact, that you watch Fahrenheit 9/11 with disbelief, and leave shaking with rage. Sometimes sarcastic, always funny, Mr. Moore is armed with facts, and he presents them accurately and succinctly. The controversial filmmaker stated on the Today show that White House mouthpieces have denounced the film as "outrageously false" without seeing it, and right-wing Republicans have charged Mr. Moore with staging a "left-wing conspiracy" to influence the forthcoming election. Well, duh. For years, reactionary conservatives have been famous for staging right-wing conspiracies of their own to disgrace and discredit elected Democratic public officials. Maybe this is payback time. Whatever it is, everyone should see Fahrenheit 9/11 first -- before debating the issues. The purpose of any documentary is to influence opinion. But instead of the customarily droning voice that comments on the action and tells you what to think, this one asks tough, logical questions, gets rational answers, and never loses its entertainment value.

Mr. Moore, who has tackled corporate greed (Roger & Me) and gun control (Bowling for Columbine), now feels driven and obligated to strip the facade from a swaggering, bow-legged, grammatically challenged bully and a cabinet that is beginning to look more like the Third Reich every day. He accuses them of lying about their motivations for declaring war against Iraq, a country that never threatened America in the first place, killing thousands of innocent civilians in retaliation for the acts of 9/11 aggression, although not one of the terrorists was from Iraq, and killing more than 800 of our own American kids (all from ethnic or working-class families). Nobody denies that Saddam Hussein was a monster, but not the Iraqi women and children who have been "saved" from one villain only to be burned and shot and maimed for life without arms and legs by villains in a different uniform. At the same time, Mr. Moore shows Mr. Bush justifying American atrocities against Saddam Hussein by actually saying to the camera, "He tried to kill my daddy." Like his daddy, he knows he might also get kicked out of the White House after serving only one term. Still, he pursues a war that is losing the "hearts and minds" of even the boys who fight it (the interviews with our soldiers on the front lines will make you weep) while earning the U.S. unprecedented heights of global hatred and distrust, even from long-standing allies. And he does it on the golf course, ignoring the pressing domestic issues of health care, education, Social Security, unemployment and the economy while instructing frustrated reporters to watch his next drive. (In his first eight months in office, he was on vacation 42 percent of the time.) Meanwhile the current occupants of the White House, bolstered by an irresponsible press that has never bothered to ask the right questions, have courted public support by hammering home the kind of fear and born-again religious ideology that keep people subservient and paralyzed. Mr. Moore is saying that in the lineup of fear factors, terrorists and sinners may have replaced Communists and beatniks, but if you keep the people frightened enough, the bully always wins.

The movie begins with the awesome night in 2000 when the U. S. Supreme Court decided the election, not the American voters, then unveils footage that was never reported on TV of the Bush inauguration limousine being pelted with raw eggs. Instead of the traditional walk to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, he was so afraid to leave the car that he became the first President in history who was forced to sneak into the White House through a back door.

It was downhill from there, and Mr. Moore has obtained amazing film to illustrate the graphic two-hour slam-dunk that follows. In the wimpy reportage that has dominated the media for four years, very few journalists have bothered to investigate the shroud of secrecy surrounding the Bush Presidency that keeps the people ignorant, to write about it, to explain it. Mr. Moore does it with wit and cleverness. There's no doubt that he would do anything to prevent a Bush re-election, but there is no conjecture here. No embellishment. He doesn't need any. Dubya & Co. are easy targets: Mr. Moore simply turns on his cameras and lets them hang themselves. He proves the $1.5 billion in profits the Bush clan has made from oil interests of the family of Osama bin Laden, the real perpetrator of the 9/11 disaster, then asks why, when all aircraft were grounded after 9/11, the White House allowed several planes to fly around the country picking up the bin Laden family and protectively escorting 142 Saudis out of the country without interrogation, overruling the protests of the F.B.I. You can say, "Yes, but his family has denounced Osama, so what's the problem?" The problem is that the Bushes, pere et fils, were in business with his family at the same time that Osama was under surveillance as a suspected Al Qaeda terrorist and neglected to make a full disclosure.

Mr. Moore also reveals Dubya's military records, blotting out the name of a fellow pilot whose flight status was suspended for refusing to take a physical exam. The friend Bush was trying to protect turns out to be James R. Bath, who both managed the U.S. financial investments of the bin Laden regime and bankrolled the various oil interests of the Bush brigade. Cut to Dubya, arrogantly stating: "Access is power." Then, when he was investigated by the S.E.C., the man who got Bush out of hot water, Robert W. Jordan, was later appointed ambassador to -- you guessed it -- Saudi Arabia. The ironies pile up like body bags.

Now that the merde has hit the oscillator, so to speak, Mr. Moore charges that the Bush administration is still trying to hide evidence of its own stupidity by censoring 28 pages of the independent report by the 9/11 commission. If you don't gasp at the sight of Mr. Bush dining with the Saudi ambassador with part of the Pentagon in flames in the background, this movie is not for you. No need to talk about the President welcoming the Taliban to the State Department, knowing they were harboring the man who bombed the U.S.S. Cole. No need to go into the plans to build an underground pipeline through Afghanistan pumping money into a company owned by Vice President Dick Cheney. Alarmingly, it's all gone unreported by an irresponsible press corps. With $860 billion currently invested by the Saudis in American business, no wonder our tax money pays for a six-man detail to protect the Saudi ambassador in Washington. But why does it take Michael Moore to tell us? This is all very dispiriting. But unless you've lost your sense of humor completely, you've just gotta laugh when Mr. Moore intercuts Mr. Bush's tough talk from cowboy movies with actual footage of the corny cowboys in those movies saying exactly the same things.

I've hardly scratched the surface of this electrifying documentary. Mr. Moore even cruises through Washington reading from a loudspeaker the idiotic USA PATRIOT Act -- hastily passed by Congress without ever reading it -- and chronicling the lunacy it has inspired: groups and individuals harassed by cops for holding private club meetings, a woman who was refused admittance to an airplane because she was carrying breast milk. All diversionary tactics, says Mr. Moore, to distract the American people from viewing the corpses sent home from Iraq for funerals that have never once been attended by President George W. Bush, or debunking the myth of "weapons of mass destruction." People of all ages are shown voicing doubts about the kids who have died in a questionable war with no end in sight, and for what? Bush says, "Defending freedom." This movie says, "Making money." And talk about imbalance. Fact: Out of 535 members of Congress, only one has a child serving in Iraq. One of the most telling scenes in Fahrenheit 9/11 is Michael Moore, standing outside the U.S. Senate with a microphone, trying to convince members of Congress to enlist their own children for the war. Not a single Senator or Representative is willing to send his own children into harm's way. This is one of the few scenes in which the director appears at length. One of the things that makes this movie better and more convincing than his previous films is the way Mr. Moore stays mostly in the background, compiling facts and letting the evidence speak for itself.

The Cannes cognoscenti and the limousine liberals have already declared Fahrenheit 9/11 the blockbuster documentary of the year. Who knows how it will play in Punkin Crick? I think it should be required viewing for every American, but as usual, I fear the people who could learn the most from the issues it raises will avoid it like a fund-raiser for free abortions. Mr. Moore's opponents will label it ideologically fueled partisan agitprop, which it is, but any visionary who tries to cultivate change is destined to harvest adversaries. With his usual fury channeled and under control, Mr. Moore sets out to prick, probe and sound a wake-up call in an emotionally charged election year where the truth has been buried six feet under, and succeeds with humor and bite. The result is undeniably galvanizing, immensely watchable and damned good filmmaking. If it convinces one nonvoter to think, it will serve a purpose. The saddest and most infuriating thing I learned from Fahrenheit 9/11 is not the political hackwork, but the reality of what a lightweight the President is in the context of American history. George W. Bush may be the first President of the U.S. who has brainwashed himself.

  ¶ 2:54 AM (0) comments

 
Vince Vaughn is an Average Joe, trying to keep his gym above water in DODGEBALL: A TRUE UNDERDOG STORY.

This movie was inexplicably funny. It was absurd, silly, and often overplayed (especially Ben Stiller, who plays an over-the-top bad guy with a weight-loss obsession and an eating disorder that involves shoving pizza in his pants), and in many ways this ideas been done before (in a different style) when they made BASEketball (which is also a laugh-out-loud movie), but this is a really funny ride that must be ridden to be believed.

While we were at the theater we picked up our tickets for F911, which we pre-bought online this last weekend -- the guy told us the whole weekend through of F911 is sold out, and suggested we come an hour or 90 minutes early if we want a good seat!

...I'm just glad we pre-bought!!!  ¶ 2:44 AM (0) comments

 
SAVED! was a really good movie...

But more than just being good (no, it's not as radical as people would have you think: it's a very well-done high-school dramedy, and it's very positive about Christianity), it got me thinking about what makes a good story work....

Stories require barriers, boundaries, taboos, no-can-do's; stories require some danger, some threat, some challenge, some SOMEthing, and modern stories suffer because there are too few rules in our society. Pretty much anything does go these days. So what's a story to do? Suck? I mean, if it weren't for the flaming hoops, all the poodle would be doing is jumping up and down -- and that's just annoying.

So this story does something really great: it's set in a world where there ARE rules, where the rules really matter. It puts the characters in crisis: it makes them torn. It lays out consequences that wouldn't be there for anyone outside their world, and it makes them hurt. And (great news!), it doesn't let them escape their Christian world to get away with it: instead, it asks Christians to be forgiving -- something, it turns out, that while it can be pretty hard for even Christians to do, they try real hard to do. And all of this is done in a lighthearted teen-dramedy way that's truly funny. It's probably the best movie in its genre ever made.

I'll be owning this when it comes out on dvd. Highly recommend!!!

ps: LOVE!  ¶ 12:31 AM (0) comments