No More Moore!

[Brother None]

There was a point? What was it? The movie I saw just rambeled on without any kind of coherent message, and pointed in twenty directions at the same time. He's like Victor Hugo without the writing ability.

The point was that the American society has an issue with fear, using it as a motor for too many things, which ultimately can't lead to any good.

 

[John Uskglass]

There was a point? What was it? The movie I saw just rambeled on without any kind of coherent message, and pointed in twenty directions at the same time. He's like Victor Hugo without the writing ability.

The point was that the American society has an issue with fear, using it as a motor for too many things, which ultimately can't lead to any good.

I thought it was about how a lack of a shitty fre healthcare system in America leads to Mr. Moore trying to smother crying teachers?

Really, yeah, that might have been the point too it, but what about the beggining in which he indites how easy it is to get guns, or his K-Mart Crusade?

 

[bob_the_rambler]

i think the "gun availability" issue is moot, the assholes that killed in columbine had more than just guns. they had bombs as well and a long time to plan.
more attacks the wrong issues (not to mention he is a smelly liberal), he should be attacking the fact that these boys were vertually uguided, and physocopaths, they built bombs in their own garages, and practiced in the woods many times. but their parents had their heads up their asses, they ingored their kids completely.

 

[welsh]

I saw Bowling for COmbine and read parts of Stupid White Men.

I have to admit I like what I saw and what I read. But I came away from the movie thinking that Moore wasn't so much against guns but fear. After all he points out that Canada and the US both have lots of guns but the gun violence in the US is very different. Funny, you'd think with all that damn snow, swingers, and then there is UJ, there would be more gun violence.

It seems to be that concern with fear is the most interesting part of the story. That fear is perpetrated by the media, especially in our news.

That said, a guy who is willing to take on the NRA and the gun industry is due to get some abuse. I actually have some doubts about the accuracy of the critics.

Anyway, Moore has responded to his critics.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/wackoattacko/index.php

and another response-
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/8/12/171427/607

Seems the critics are subject to the same faults they accuse Moore of.

Oh and it looks like his new film will be released afterall.
http://movieweb.com/news/news.php?id=3803

 

[Big T]

After all he points out that Canada and the US both have lots of guns but the gun violence in the US is very different. Funny, you'd think with all that damn snow, swingers, and then there is UJ, there would be more gun violence.

Population density is soooo much lower in Canada (compared to most of the US), so (at least it would seem to me) the probability of people "clashing" would be less.
You really need to compare, for instance, two cities with similar size, population density and a similar make up (ethnic (shouldn't be relevent, but it may well be), job types etcetera).



(Whoa, excessive use of brackets (parentheses) there)

 

[Gwydion]

The point was that the American society has an issue with fear, using it as a motor for too many things, which ultimately can't lead to any good.

But even that point was so poorly made that you'd be better off directly recommending the book Moore mentions rather than this film. One of the examples the author uses, that Moore doesn't mention for obvious reasons, is the huge exposure school shootings were getting at a time when they were decreasing in number. The author pointed out that even lightning kills three times as many people as school violence. To borrow from Hardy, Moore should have made his movie about the epidedemic of lightning strikes instead; it would have been a lot more consistant.

 

[welsh]

After all he points out that Canada and the US both have lots of guns but the gun violence in the US is very different. Funny, you'd think with all that damn snow, swingers, and then there is UJ, there would be more gun violence.

Population density is soooo much lower in Canada (compared to most of the US), so (at least it would seem to me) the probability of people "clashing" would be less.
You really need to compare, for instance, two cities with similar size, population density and a similar make up (ethnic (shouldn't be relevent, but it may well be), job types etcetera).

(Whoa, excessive use of brackets (parentheses) there)

I agree. It used to be that homicides were more common among acquaintances, but now it seems that they are more likely to occur among strangers, with a disproportionate number happening among poor minorities, and I think in urban environments. In that sense your argument about population densities might make a lot of sense. Likewise, where you find large population densities you are also talking about poor and middle class semi-mobile labor.

Thus you get into the problem of income distributions. It is interesting to note that one of the causes of the variation of democracy, dictatorship and communism in the beginning of the 20th century can be seen as stemming from social movements and the willingness of the state to react them, and these social movements come as a consequence of industrial revolutions. However, you also find an interesting correlation between income disparities and crime. Thus where you find high levels of income disparity, especially in Latin America, you find high levels of crime.

An interesting paper might examine the costs of crime on political social mobilization. If minorities were not so subject to crime in urban areas, might they be more politically active? An interesting idea and worth thinking about.

But you're right. Vancouver and Seattle perhaps? San Diego vs Tijuana? They do have to compare cities and try to utilize a tight comparison on issues like education, social class, ethnic homogeneity, levels of preventative policing and administration of justice. Some cities might be easier to do if you look globally. For instance, comparing Sao Paolo in Brazil to Mexico City to New York might show some interesting comparisons. I had made a recommendation to Gwydion about a comparison between New York and London, where I think you see a slight decrease in crime over the past few years vs an increase in crime in London. But one could also do other urban areas: Rome, Paris, Moscow, Johannesburg.

The trick would be to find cases that fit Mills Methods of Agreement and Difference.

 

[John Uskglass]

Thus you get into the problem of income distributions. It is interesting to note that one of the causes of the variation of democracy, dictatorship and communism in the beginning of the 20th century can be seen as stemming from social movements and the willingness of the state to react them, and these social movements come as a consequence of industrial revolutions. However, you also find an interesting correlation between income disparities and crime. Thus where you find high levels of income disparity, especially in Latin America, you find high levels of crime.

Not true always. Armenia has strikingly low levels of crime, high levels of literacy and the only major crime industries there are cannabis growing for personal use and some drug traffiking between Turkey, Iran to Russia.

On the other hand Indonesia, Brazil and Mexico have alot more money, but alot more crime.

I'd argue it has more to do with literacy rates, ethnic conflict and an overall system of morals. To all of the above, Armenia is superb (save ethnic conflict, in it's rightious war against the Azerbijani opressors of Nagorno Karabakh).

 

[Tannhauser]

*Ahem* Having lived in Mexico, and hating nearly every second of it, I just have something to point out.

Different cultures have different moral standards, regardless of wealth. In Mexico, bribery is a way of life, it is how normal cops make enough money to live (since they couldn't really live on their ridiculous pay). Bribery and corruption is accepted by everyone, as a way of life, which creates a society ripe for crime (where criminals can bribe the police and escape). I suspect Armenia has different standards.

 

[John Uskglass]

*Ahem* Having lived in Mexico, and hating nearly every second of it, I just have something to point out.

Different cultures have different moral standards, regardless of wealth. In Mexico, bribery is a way of life, it is how normal cops make enough money to live (since they couldn't really live on their ridiculous pay). Bribery and corruption is accepted by everyone, as a way of life, which creates a society ripe for crime (where criminals can bribe the police and escape). I suspect Armenia has different standards.

Yep. That's my point. Mexico has ALOT more money, yet Armenia has alot less crime and corruption.

Though, it should be noted, that Armenia was the Soviet Silicone Valley until recently. But that's a generation ago, before the earth quake.

 

[welsh]

I would dismiss the ethnic conflict bit right off. The more I look at ethnic conflict, the more I see economic causation as the underlying cause. The world is full of countries with different ethnicities living next to each other, and often those ethnicities don't like each other that much. But most of the time they aren't killing each other. The reason, probably because there are enough people out there who know that conflict is bad economics that they can put a restraint on the assholes who would stir up ethnic violence.

Morals- I suspect are more structurally defined than not. If there are morals against armed violence, what you are really saying is that there are informal rules that have grown in a society that restrain violent self-help. Again, economics at work.

A bit of this discussion is in the death penalty thread.

That's not to say that culture doesn't play a role. But exactly what that role is, is unclear.

Literacy, is a function of education and education is partly a function of national wealth.

So it's back to economics for the most part. And I think if you look at a wide data set you'll probably find that high income disparities are associated with high violence.

As for Armenia, don't know much about that one.

 

[John Uskglass]

As for Armenia, don't know much about that one.

It was baisically the Soviet Silicone Valley until recently, only in the late '80s an earthquake hit (so bad that even Cher, who is half Armenian, came over). Hundreds of thousands died, infrastructure became non-exsistant, and it helped prove as much as Chernobyl that the Soviet Union was dying that it could not even help one of it's most important provinces.

It's never really had a history of crime. Widespread literacy has as much a legacy in Armenia as Japan, as during the Ottoman years the Turks gave the "infidels" "less important" commercial duties.

Recent years have seen quite a bit of truoble, however. Azerbijann was recently given the province of Nagorno-Kharabakh before the Soviet break up, and the Azeri government baisically flew in the Mig-21s to start killing the Armenians, and making room for Azeris.

Armenia responded with overwhelming force, and now controls 21% of Azerbijjan. Sadly, Armenia has resorted to the kind of stuff the Azeri did, and both the Armenian and Azeri economies are suffering, though Armenia has an impressive 12% GDP growth rate.

 

[John Uskglass]

 

[Sander]

Argh! I'M BLIND!

 

[Murdoch]

 

[welsh]

What I am wondering about is the new film- HEre is a review from Time-

Monday, May. 17, 2004
A First Look at "Fahrenheit 9/11"
Controversy aside, the new Michael Moore film is a fine documentary
By MARY CORLISS/CANNES
A few years ago, Michael Moore spoke with then-Governor George W. Bush, who told the muckraker: “Behave yourself, will ya? Go find real work.” Moore has made trouble for so many powerful people he has become a media power of his own. He can even make celebrities of mere movie reviewers: When his latest cinematic incendiary device, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” had its first press screening Monday morning, American critics emerging from the theater were besieged by a convoy of TV and radio crews from networks around the world who wanted to know what they thought of Moore’s blast at the Bush Administration.

Disney, for one, was not impressed. Earlier this month, the company ordered its subsidiary, Miramax Films, not to release the film. Moore says that his lawyer was told by Disney CEO Michael Eisner that distributing it would harm the company’s negotiations for favorable treatment for its Florida theme parks from that state’s governor, one Jeb Bush. Harvey Weinstein, co-chair of Miramax, is now trying to buy the film back from Disney and to fashion his own coalition of the willing — other distributors happy to profit from Disney’s timidity. The result of this internal agita will be to raise the profile and, most likely, the profitability of Moore’s film, which he still hopes will open on the July 4th weekend.

So much for the controversy. How is it as a movie? “Fahrenheit 9/11” — the title is a play on the Ray Bradbury novel (and Francois Truffaut film) “Fahrenheit 451,” about a future totalitarian state where reading, and thus independent thinking, has been outlawed — has news value beyond its financing and distribution tangles. The movie, a brisk and entertaining indictment of the Bush Administration’s middle East policies before and after September 11, 2001, features new footage of abuse by U.S. soldiers: a Christmas Eve 2003 sortie in which Iraqi captives are publicly humiliated.

Though made over the past two years, the film has scenes that seem ripped from recent headlines. Last week, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld visited Iraq and, to the cheers of his military audience, defiantly called himself “a survivor” (a word traditionally reserved for those who have lived through the Holocaust or cancer, not for someone enduring political difficulties). In the film, a soldier tells Moore’s field team: “If Donald Rumsfeld was here, I’d ask for his resignation.”

Moore’s perennial grudge is against what President Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex: the collusion of big corporations and bad government to exploit the working class, here and abroad, for their own gain and in the process deprive citizens of their liberties. The Bush Administration’s Iraq policy is handmade for Moore’s grievances. Bush and his father have enjoyed a long and profitable relationship with the ruling families of Saudi Arabia, including the bin Ladens. The best-seller “House of Bush, House of Saud” by Craig Unger, whom Moore interviews, estimates that the Saudis have enriched the Bushes and their closest cronies by $1.4 billion.

Politicians reward their biggest contributors, and the Bushes are no exceptions. Fifteen of the 19 September 11th hijackers were Saudis; but when Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador who is close to the First Family, dined with the President in the White House two days after the attacks, the mood was collegial, not angry. In the Iraqi ramp-up and occupation, the Administration has rewarded its Saudi and Texas supporters with billions in rebuilding contracts. As Blaine Ober, president of an armored vehicle company, tells Moore: the Iraqi adventure is “good for business, bad for the people.”

Bad for the people of Iraq, Ober means. But, Moore argues, bad for Americans as well. As he sees it, 9/11 was a tragedy for America, a career move for Bush. The attacks allowed the President to push through Congress restrictive laws that would have been defeated in any climate but the “war on terror” chill. “Fahrenheit 9/11” shows some tragicomic effects of the Patriot Act: a man quizzed by the FBI for casually mentioning at his health club that he thought Bush was an “asshole”; a benign peace group in Fresno, Cal., infiltrated by an undercover police agent.

Two Bush quotes in the film indicate the Administration’s quandary in selling repression to the American people. One: “A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, no doubt about it.” The other: “They’re not happy they’re occupied. I wouldn’t be happy if I were occupied either.” Moore’s argument is that the U.S. is currently being occupied by a hostile, un-American force: the quintet of Bush, Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft and Paul Wolfowitz.

Moore is usually the front-and-center star of his own films. Here, his presence is mostly that of narrator and guiding force, though he does make a few piquant appearances. While chatting with Unger across the street from the Saudi embassy in Washington, he is approached and quizzed by Secret Service agents. Hearing from Rep. John Conyers that no member of Congress had read the complete Patriot Act before voting for it, he hires a Mister Softee truck and patrols downtown D.C. reading the act to members of Congress over a loudspeaker. Toward the end, he tries to get Congressmen to enlist their sons in the military. Surprise: no volunteers.

The film has its longueurs. The interviews with young blacks and a grieving mother in Moore’s home town of Flint, Michigan, are relevant and poignant, but they lack the propulsive force and homespun indignance of the rest of the film. “Fahrenheit 9/11” is at its best when it provides talking points for the emerging majority of those opposed to the Iraq incursion. In sum, it’s an appalling, enthralling primer of what Moore sees as the Bush Administration’s crimes and misdemeanors.

“Fahrenheit 9/11” may be seen as another example of the liberal media preaching to its own choir. But Moore is such a clever assembler of huge accusations and minor peccadillos (as with a shot of Wolfowitz sticking his pocket comb in his mouth and sucking on it to slick down his hair before a TV interview) that the film should engage audiences of all political persuasions.

In one sense, Michael Moore took George W. Bush’s advice. He found “real work” deconstructing the President’s Iraq mistakes. “Fahrenheit 9/11” is Moore’s own War on Error.

 

[John Uskglass]

It won the Palme d'Or. I've lost all respect for France.

 

[DJ Slamák]

I've lost all respect for France.

The jury:
* Quentin Tarantino (USA)
* Kathleen Turner (USA)
* Emmanuelle Béart (France)
* Tilda Swinton (UK)
* Benoît Poelvoorde (Belgium)
* Tsui Hark (Hong Kong)

SCNR.

 

[John Uskglass]

I've lost all respect for France.

The jury:
* Quentin Tarantino (USA)
* Kathleen Turner (USA)
* Emmanuelle Béart (France)
* Tilda Swinton (UK)
* Benoît Poelvoorde (Belgium)
* Tsui Hark (Hong Kong)

SCNR.

I hope Quentin did'nt vote that way.

 

[Brother None]

It won the Palme d'Or. I've lost all respect for France.

You ever took Cannes seriously?

Hahahaha!

Yeah, pre-selected jury elections, real great system

Can almost sucks more than the Oscars. And now that they're mainstreaming more and more, they'll suck more and more. But even though they were right at times, they have always majorly sucked.

I hope Quentin did'nt vote that way.

He probably did, being a moron and all that

I hope Tsui Hark didn't vote that way

PS: CC, Fahrenheit got the longest/loudest applause ever on Cannes, set a new record. How could it not win?

PS: complete jury;

Jury: Quentin Tarantino (USA) (president); Emmanuelle Béart (France); Edwidge Danticat (USA); Tilda Swinton (UK); Kathleen Turner (I) (USA); Benoît Poelvoorde (Belgium); Jerry Schatzberg (USA); Hark Tsui (Hong Kong); Peter von Bagh (Finland) (critic); Nikita Mikhalkov (president) (Russia) (short films); Nicole Garcia (I) (France) (short films); Marisa Paredes (Spain) (short films); Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkey) (short films); Pablo Trapero (Argentina) (short films)