NYT: "Fahrenheit" Ads Use the Fuss the Film Is Causing

'Fahrenheit' Ads Use the Fuss the Film Is Causing
By FELICIA R. LEE

Published: June 23, 2004


After picking its way through a minefield that included everything from finding a distributor to a battle over its rating, Michael Moore's documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" opens in Manhattan today and in about 850 theaters nationwide on Friday. Attacked by the right as anti-military and praised by the left for its critique of the Bush administration, it is being marketed as the summer's must-see cinematic controversy, both entertaining and contentious.

"The most controversial film of the year," intones the voice-over in some television advertisements. Other print advertisements show Mr. Moore and Mr. Bush holding hands and strolling on the front lawn of the White House, with the words "Controversy . . . What Controversy?"

The trailer for the film ends with Mr. Bush calling on all nations to do everything they can to stop terrorist killings. Then the camera pulls back, and the viewer sees the president with a golf club as he says, "Now watch this drive." The voice-over narration promises "the true story that will make your temperature rise."

The documentary, which examines Mr. Bush's actions after 9/11, is already widely viewed by critics as a cinematic roast of the president. If nothing else, the film's constant handmaiden has been a great deal of buzz. But the question that will be answered this week is how hot "Fahrenheit 9/11" finally turns out to be in the middle of the country, far from the political cacophony on both coasts and its top prize at the Cannes International Film Festival last month....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/23/movies/23MARK.html


ON EDIT: See response #3 for the Times's revew of the film.

West coasts. This movie has been promo'ed to the hilt here in the Midwast Illinois ....

ONe of those for sure!

people are planning to carpool to get to Fayetteville to see the film.

This does NOT bode well for the boy king.

:hi: ayeshahaqqiqa!
dbt

Must be at least 60 or 70 miles. Have a safe trip :hi:

Unruly Scorn Leaves Room for Restraint, but Not a Lot

By A. O. SCOTT
Published: June 23, 2004

Respect for the president is a longstanding American tradition and one that is still very much alive, as the weeklong national obsequies for Ronald Reagan recently proved. But there is also an opposing tradition of holding up our presidents, especially while they are in office, to ridicule and scorn.

Which is to say that while Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" will be properly debated on the basis of its factual claims and cinematic techniques, it should first of all be appreciated as a high-spirited and unruly exercise in democratic self-expression. Mixing sober outrage with mischievous humor and blithely trampling the boundary between documentary and demagoguery, Mr. Moore takes wholesale aim at the Bush administration, whose tenure has been distinguished, in his view, by unparalleled and unmitigated arrogance, mendacity and incompetence.

That Mr. Moore does not like Mr. Bush will hardly come as news. "Fahrenheit 9/11," which opens in Manhattan today and in the rest of the country on Friday, is many things: a partisan rallying cry, an angry polemic, a muckraking inquisition into the use and abuse of power. But one thing it is not is a fair and nuanced picture of the president and his policies. What did you expect? Mr. Moore is often impolite, rarely subtle and occasionally unwise. He can be obnoxious, tendentious and maddeningly self-contradictory. He can drive even his most ardent admirers crazy. HE IS A CREDIT TO THE REPUBLIC....

***

The most moving sections of "Fahrenheit 9/11" concern Lila Lipscomb, a cheerful state employee and former welfare recipient who wears a crucifix pendant and an American flag lapel pin. When we first meet her, she is proud of her family's military service — a daughter served in the Persian Gulf war and a son, Michael Pedersen, was a marine in Iraq — and grateful for the opportunities it has offered. Then Michael is killed in Karbala, and in sharing her grief with Mr. Moore, she also gives his film an eloquence that its most determined critics will find hard to dismiss. MR. BUSH IS UNDER NO OBLIGATION TO ANSWER MR. MOORE'S CHARGES, BUT HE WILL HAVE TO ANSWER TO MRS. LIPSCOMB.

http://movies2.nytimes.com/2004/06/23/movies/23FAHR.html

From the LAT's famed film critic --

MOVIE REVIEW
'Fahrenheit 9/11'
Michael Moore's partisan yet provocative film commands attention.

By Kenneth Turan, Times Staff Writer


He didn't call it "J'Accuse!" but he might as well have.

Like Emile Zola, whose celebrated 19th century open letter assailed the French government for being a party to intolerable injustice, Michael Moore in "Fahrenheit 9/11" has launched an unapologetic attack, both savage and savvy, on an administration he feels has betrayed the best of America and done extensive damage in the world.

Unabashedly partisan, wearing its determination to bring about political change on its sleeve, "Fahrenheit" can be nitpicked and second-guessed, but it can't be ignored. Set to open today in New York and Friday in Los Angeles and across the country, this landmark in American political filmmaking demands to be seen.

It's a tribute to how seriously Moore takes his secular crusade that he's largely abandoned his usual haphazard style in favor of a more focused, more concentrated mode of attack. With expertly deployed footage and a take-no-prisoners attitude that echoes that of his conservative betes noir, Moore has made an overwhelming film. It is propaganda, no doubt about it, but propaganda is most effective when it has elements of truth, and too much here is taken from the record not to have a devastating effect on viewers....

***

Now, seething with a controlled fury, Moore is angrier than ever; like Peter Finch's anchorman in "Network," he's fed up and not about to take it anymore. As outraged about Sept. 11 as any neo-con, he's livid about what's been done in its name. And he gives no one, least of all President Bush, the slightest benefit of the doubt....

(And there's this great line: "What anger Moore has left over after savaging the administration is directed at the mainstream media for being too in thrall with the official line -- 'Navy SEALs rock!' exults 'Today's' Katie Couric in one clip." And this: "Perhaps the most disturbing of all is footage showing the president on the morning of Sept. 11, continuing with a photo op involving a Florida elementary school class reading 'My Pet Goat' for nearly seven minutes after having been told that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center. It's an unflattering picture of irresolution and even paralysis, one that informs Moore's thesis — of a president in over his head — and pervades the entire film.")


http://www.calendarlive.com/cl-et-turan23jun23,0,4515683.story

"Like Emile Zola, whose celebrated 19th century open letter assailed the French government for being a party to intolerable injustice."

Moore carries on an honorable tradition of democracy - holding elected officials accountable.

I think Turan's entire review is excellent, and a statement of its own.

"...It is propaganda, no doubt about it, but propaganda is most effective when it has elements of truth, and too much here is taken from the record not to have a devastating effect on viewers..."

It's not making stuff up about someone when you take clips of what that person actually says and does and allow them to make your case for you. Notice that the conservatives who are bashing this have either not seen it, or maybe have, and are just bashing it, with no evidence to back up their claims that it's just lies-lies-lies. THEIR criticism is all lies-lies-lies.

Can't wait to see this. And when I go, I'm purchasing a couple of extra tickets, just to drive up the box office receipts. Several of my friends have already told me they're doing this. That's where I got the idea.

I was watching something with clips from the film on it the other night (I think it was the Lauer interview/not sure)

There is a snippet where bush is giving a black tie speech and he says something like "Some people call them the haves and the have mores, but I like to call them my base" (then he smirks of course.)

I have been studying and following bush's crimes since a 1999 but that particular clip still shocked me.

The arrogance of bush and his *base* is just beyond appalling!

If this film doesn't wake up the middle class in this country then we are doomed! (sorry for the mellodrama lol)

"Qaeda"

and your name will appear on a list of terrorists:)

i want to see it in the theater so i can hear crowd reaction, but being lumped with all the 'unpatriotic' people could be hazardous to my health:)

and if i buy it when it comes out on DVD, might my name be added to yet another list?

call me paranoid, but the present administration made me this way.


edited to say, i'm going to see it anyway. the end could be near.

why would you care? I'm proud that I'm anti-Bush and I would welcome them putting my name on their lists. I say "Bring it On" you fascists. I live in America and the last I heard we were still a free country, so I'm willing to put my name/face on the line as being anti-Bush for the whole world to see. If you don't have the courage of your convictions and just anonymously post on sites like DU, then what good would it do?

n/t

is going on Friday and taking her 18 year old daughter and a group of her daughter's friends. I, of course, am going too and wearing something anti-Bush and my Kerry for Prez pin.

Excellent! Good for your supervisor...

.

You know, I've never felt that if you are using Bush's own words, as in a documentary, there is no riducule BY Moore.. Bush invites the viewer's ridicule, by his own cruel and inane words and actions. Ridicule? When is documenting the words and actions of a government called ridicule? If the Bush adminstration does things that cause them shame, embarrassment, and even indictment, that is NOT the creation of the documentarian... it is the result of the administration's actions.

Moore was brilliant in making a documentary... because the players are right there on the screen, saying the words.. he didn't make a thing up, there is no conjecture, no opionion of the documentarian in the film.

Controversy is IN.