Month: June 2004

Matthew Rothschild of The Progressive magazine is a lefty with a brain. He wasn’t impressed with Michael Moore’s movie, especially with the scene John admires in the next post. Here’s why:

Even the lingering of the film on Bush’s face at the school in Florida after the planes have hit the towers was borderline low to a lay audience, I imagine. Here he has just been given the worst possible news a President can ever get, and some people watching may sympathize with the worry written all over his face (just as many people sympathized with Charlton Heston in Bowling for Columbine).

And as though Bush’s frozen reaction wasn’t enough, Moore piles on by telling us what Bush might have been thinking at that moment. Moore says maybe Bush was thinking that he’s been hanging around with the wrong group of guys, the Saudis. Somehow, I doubt that was the thought racing through Bush’s head.

Moore delivers the same sucker punch when he says of both George W. and his dad that they may wake up in the morning thinking: Should I do what’s best for America or for the Saudis, who give us more money? “Who’s your daddy?” Moore says.

Again, this got laughs in Madison, but I doubt it would in Rockford.

Masturbation, preaching to the converted, cheap shots, and nastiness – all in one blockbuster of a top-grossing documentary. But enough about Jackass – the Movie.

See this side-by-side comparison of liberal critiques of Passion and Fahrenheit for a fine lesson in the Double Standard.

Andrew Sullivan fleshes out a theme we wrote on yesterday, comparing Passion of the Christ to Fahrenheit 9/11, and since he’s seen both he has the gory details:

One was designed for the unthinking hordes of the far right; the other for the unthinking hordes of the far left. Both were deeply depressing indicators of how far our culture has curdled into unthought and emotional extremism. Neither sought to convert or explain or persuade. Both were designed to bludgeon the viewer into ideological conformity. And if you resist? You are a heretic or a dupe.

Seeing the intense emotional reactions to these movies – and especially Moore’s – I begin to understand what it must have been like to live in Germany or Japan in the 1930s. Angry mobs whipped up into an emotional frenzy by a manipulator who presses all the hot buttons, blaming their economic conditions on insidious cabals, and offering salvation and free stuff to all who will check their intellects at the door. Scary stuff, and where will it end?

I saw a movie last night that should be a double-bill with Fahrenheit, Shattered Glass. It’s the story of infamous journalistic con-man Stephen Glass who fooled some of the most prestigious organs of the elite liberal press a few years ago into publishing an increasingly bizarre series of fabricated articles.

Michael Moore is Stephen Glass with a camera.

(Sullivan link via Jeff Jarvis)

‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ has sold a lot of tickets for a “documentary:”

Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” made Hollywood history by selling $21.8 million worth of tickets in its first three days, becoming the only documentary ever to outgun all other blockbuster films at the nation’s box offices in one weekend.

But how popular does that really make it? Not all that much, if we’re talking about “blockbusters”:

By comparison, “The Passion of the Christ” earned $117.5 million in its first five days.

This seems an apt comparison, for Fahrenheit is a documentary like Passion is a historical drama. I suspect the audiences are fairly similar, though: people who place little stock by reason and evidence, have no use for science, and spend most of their lives fearing the dark forces.