June 30, 2004

Crowds and shorts.

No way around it. There's still one movie louder than the rest of the noise out there, and with an expansion to 1710 screens by the end of the week and, you know, respectable box office numbers so far, it may be this way a tad longer than many expected. Rather than try to siphon off all mentions of Fahrenheit 9/11 into a separate entry, the mix that follows seems to more accurately reflect the beat we're dancing to at the moment.

Crowds

Drew's been doing a little detective work and has found a possible source for "Investigative Correspondent" Michael Isikoff's erroneous accusation #2 in that Newsweek article a while back. Seems a transcript floating around conservative quarters does a little tweaking. A little serious tweaking. Drew explains and provides video evidence proving Isikoff & Co wrong. And earlier: "Moorewatch, a website which likes Michael Moore just about as much as I adore the Fanta jingle , has come up with a plan that makes no sense whatsoever. Let me break it down for you."

Hands down, the rant of the week in a week rowdy with rants is Matt Taibbi's in the New York Press. Hitchens is the occasion but not the point: "Michael Moore may be an ass, and impossible to like as a public figure, and a little loose with the facts, and greedy, and a shameless panderer. But he wouldn't be necessary if even one percent of the rest of us [journalists] had any balls at all. If even one reporter had stood up during a pre-Iraq Bush press conference last year and shouted, 'Bullshit!' it might have made a difference."

Elsewhere in the NYP:

The Village Voice also runs a piece on Fahrenheit 9/11 and journalism. Richard Goldstein: "[W]ho would have thought Fox News would keep its attack dogs relatively muzzled while ABC and NBC launched remarkably unbalanced attacks... I hope Fahrenheit 9/11 affirms my conviction that the press distorts but we decide."

Also in the Voice:

Crowds

Aaron posts a long, thoughtful review: "But the most terrifying part of this film is virtually the same thing I found so scary in Errol Morris's stunning and brilliant Academy Award-winning documentary from last year, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S McNamara: the eerie similarities between the build-up to and ongoing war in Vietnam in the 60s and 70s and everything going on in Iraq."

The indieWIRE bloggers continue to chime in on F9/11:

  • Tom Hall: "I understand that his on-screen persona is up for discussion, and that his tactics personalized the politics of the war. I don't debate that. What I do want to know is when it became ok to call someone a fat prick in a film review."
  • Steve Rosenbaum: "We've legislated out point of view. And told audiences that's what they want."
  • Wendy Mitchell: "To get people debating about the current political climate - for better or worse, pro-Bush or anti-Bush, is great for our country."

Bill Werde reports in the New York Times on two events on opposite sides of the fence. MoveOn PAC threw parties in all 50 states featuring a conference call with Michael Moore while Move America Forward screened Louis Schwartzberg's America's Heart and Soul, a Disney documentary that's increasingly being cast by many as the anti-Fahrenheit 9/11. MAF's been playing up its association with Disney, sparking discomfort in Disney quarters - Werde quotes a spokesperson: "We've screened this movie close to 100 times. Where were the media calls when we showed it to the Sierra Club or the AARP?" - and a bit of grandstanding on the part of Michael Moore: "Disney joining forces with the right wing kooks who have come together to attempt to censor Fahrenheit 9/11 must mean that Dumbo is now in charge of the company's strategic decisions." But he does have one valid point: "This latest development only further disproves what Michael Eisner had claimed about 'politics' not being behind Disney's decision not to distribute Fahrenheit 9/11."

Meanwhile, the NYT also handpicks a sampling of its readers' views.

The USA Today's Gary Strauss meets Lila Lipscomb: "Michael was fantastic. I hope everyone will see the film. I hope it will open people's eyes and make them begin to ask questions and start speaking up for themselves." Also via Movie City News: Mark Glaser in the Online Journalism Review on how MichaelMoore.com and the films complement each other.

Doug Cummings tried to see F9/11, but found, "both to my dismay and pleasure, every single screening was sold out." So he caught Control Room instead. The bottom line: "It's required viewing."

City Pages puts two reviewers on the case, Matthew Wilder and Terri Sutton. And then Rob Nelson also can't help juxtaposing F9/11 and America's Heart, but he's got a good idea: Take Mark Wojahn, director of What America Needs: From Sea to Shining Sea to a premiere of the latter film. His thoughts? "I feel like we just walked out of a 90-minute commercial."

William Saletan and Jacob Weisberg, Slate's chief political correspondent and editor, respectively, discuss "Kerry's Coalition of the Wild-eyed," the new ad from the Bush campaign. Saletan: "The Bush campaign's claim that the amateur Hitler ads represent 'John Kerry's Democratic Party' is laughable. Kerry didn't control MoveOn.org, and MoveOn.org didn't make the ads." Weisberg: "But the vileness... must not be allowed to obscure its essential hilarity. What moron came up with this idea?"

Also in Slate: David Edelstein reviews the "gravely splendid" Spider-Man 2 and Dana Stevens launches "Surfergirl," "not so much a TV column as one watcher's online diary." In other words, it's a lot like what Heather Havrilesky has been up to in Salon.

With four - four! - movies in the works about Boadicea, Stuart Jeffries remarks, "What Hollywood will make of the life and times of the flame-haired, 1,950-year-old rebuffer of Romans is anyone's guess," but he stakes out the possibilities. By the way, right at the end there, he mentions that Antonia Fraser tells him Sophia Coppola has optioned her book on Maria Antoinette. Also in the Guardian: Robert Hughes writes about cramming a quarter of a century's worth of art history into a 55-minute television program and the paper runs a story on how Marlon Brando is doing these days: Not well.

In the Independent, Danielle Demetriou reports on Kate Winslet pulling out of Woody Allen's next film, his first to be shot in London. With just three weeks to go before shooting begins, costumes had been fitted, the works. The spokesperson quote: "Kate is very sad that she won't be able to fit Woody's film in. She needs to be around her family."

Crowds

Dennis Harvey: "If Fahrenheit 9/11 is the screaming headine of this media moment, an angry op-ed in a pop format, then Ken Jacobs's Star Spangled to Death might be labeled its perfect graduate-dissertation complement. Jacobs's massive project is a deconstructive read of America as concept, ideology, betrayal, and ongoing hypocrisy." Also in the San Francisco Bay Guardian:

Filmbrain's starting a weekly quiz! ID that screen capture! Also: Kubrick's 1951 short Day of the Fight.



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Posted by dwhudson at June 30, 2004 8:34 AM