Radio Lady Discusses: I saw a preview of Michael Moore's "Sicko" this week. Ask me anything...

what did you think. . .?

Unofficially, I'm giving it a highly-positive rating on Ellen's Entertainment Report Card.

The ending was quite a bit contrived, but all-in-all, you'll learn many things you probably don't know about America's overpriced and underachieving health care system.

The price for us was a definite bout of depression, as the whole unjust, topsy-turvy, stupid and financially disgusting picture of health care in the United States is put under MM's microscope.

Are you planning to see it?

Only eleven of them showed up.

spectacular fasion? Does it have the same potential to polarize people like "F9/11"

Thank you in advance for your intuitive and insightful answers...

BIG INSURANCE, BIG BUSINESS, and BIG GOVERNMENT will try to poke holes in Moore's script, as they did in F-911. (Interestingly enough, looks as if FOX NEWS gave the movie a POSITIVE review! How's that???)

Moore has taken his case to New England and is planning to ask every candidate running for president to answer the question: What will you do about the health care mess we are in?

Let's hope that "Sicko" gets people all fired up when it opens on Friday, June 29th -- that will be the beginning of a LONG HOLIDAY PERIOD -- from Friday, 6/29 through Wednesday, July 4th.

What more American focus could a movie want? We are being ripped off royally and it's been going on since Nixon and Haldemann were in the Oval Office (Moore has the tape recordings to prove it!)

Have some firecracker health care debates while you're setting off those cherry bombs and sparklers!

for writing "prescriptions" without a medical license.

wouldn't surprise me in the least.

always a pleasure to see your threads:hi:

I tried to explain the DU to another film reviewer in the area.

I told her it was a message board with "immediacy" (people are really on-line in real time to discuss most anything)... She is currently using Live Journal and I guess that has its advantages, too.

I just emailed her the link to this thread. Maybe she'll take a peek.

Wonderful news!

Maybe we'll get the HEALTH CARE BALL ROLLING.................................

I'd appreciate your input after the opening.

It made me shake my head in disgust several times. I've been an American expat for several years now, and this movie reminded me of one of the reasons my family left the States... We were talking about moving back some time in the future, and then we watched Sicko, thought about the healthcare we receive now, and said, well, maybe way, way in the future we will go back. It's a shame, really, because there is so much I love about my home country, but we live so much better in the UAE than we could back home.

I really think I would be terribly homesick if I lived anywhere else.

We've thought about Mexico and Canada, but your part of the world is just too far away from the people I love.

However, I've got to hand it to you -- making that kind of a break certainly doesn't seem easy. How long have you been away? What kind of work takes you there? If any of these questions are too sensitive or person, I'll understand.

(On edit: It really looks like a fascinating place. We've been to Israel and Egypt on several visits in the 1980s.)

http://guide.theemiratesnetwork.com/photos/sharjah.php





Take care and keep in touch.

In peace,

Radio Lady in Oregon

And they are actually going to show Sicko! Can't believe it...I knew it was gonna be in the local Angelika theaters but for it to be in "mainstream" Cinemark theaters is huge, especially in the theater closest to my house since I live in the reddest, most repuke area of the state!

The distributor has already increased the number of venues (theaters) it will play in.

Let me know what you think after you see it.

Thanks... RL

http://www.slate.com/id/2169162/

Calling in SiCKO
Michael Moore takes to the phones to promote his new movie.



By Christopher Beam

Posted Tuesday, June 26, 2007, at 7:29 PM ET

The other day, a Slate staffer got a call from a person—a real, live person—asking if she planned to go see Michael Moore's new movie, SiCKO. She said that she was indeed planning to see it but didn't know exactly when. The caller insisted that she go this weekend, to "send a message" to the Bush administration that the country is fed up with the health-care system. What was this—an advertising campaign? Political mobilization? Some kind of Get-Out-the-Audience phone-a-thon?

All of the above. The Weinstein Company, SiCKO's distributor, has hired a Democratic "phone vendor" to contact a select group of potential moviegoers and encourage them to see the film. Phone vendors are usually employed by political campaigns and other interest groups to promote a candidate or a cause. But in this case, they just want you to watch a movie. They've already made "tens of thousands" of live calls, with another slew of "robo calls"—recorded messages read by Moore himself—on the way, according to the president of the firm Winning Connections. Callers target known Democratic contributors or activists in New York and Denver, where the film is being released this weekend. It's a strategy worthy of Karl Rove: Mobilize the base and ignore the 60-year-old Republican males in Plano, Texas.

It's no surprise that Moore is borrowing tricks from the political playbook. The consultant he hired back in May, Chris Lehane, worked for both the Clinton administration and Al Gore's 2000 presidential run. Lehane speaks in the language of campaign literature, not summer blockbusters. SiCKO, he told me, is a "call to action." It's "the cinematic equivalent of The Jungle." Other aspects of the film's promotion—or at least the buzz surrounding its release—have been equally political, even wonky. On June 20, Moore testified at Rep. John Conyers' hearing on universal health care. That same week, he publicly invited 900 Washington health-care lobbyists to a special screening. (Only a dozen or so showed up.) He even personally hosted a screening in Manchester, N.H.—you know, the Cannes of New England. Meanwhile, Moore has been partnering with sympathetic parties from labor unions to nurses' organizations.