5 years ago you would be right. Now, you're happily wrong. Of course, it is easier to be centrist and a populist when you're not fighting against an entire Republican controlled government.
What makes you think that? Each of his movies does progressively worse at the box office. It seems like fewer & fewer people are interested, which suggests that more and more, he's only appealing to people who already agree with him. http://www.deadline.com/hollywood/h...s-comedy-for-1-recipe-9m-friday-25m-weekend/# Michael Moore's purposefully controversial and politically polarizing documentary Capitalism: A Love Story was distributed by Overture Films and wound up in 7th place. It went wide into 962 theaters this weekend after opening on September 23rd in a limited release of 4 theaters. The pic about the financial crisis made $1.6M Friday and $2M Saturday (+33%) for a $5M weekend and $5.4M cume. Just for comparison purposes: Moore's most recent Sicko did $4.4 mil its opening weekend from only 441 theaters (and that was with him guesting on The Tonight Show and announcing he'd been subpoenaed by the Bush administration for the health care documentary). And his Fahrenheit 9/11 did $23.9M its opening weekend from 868 venues.) So, as much as the left loves Moore, and the right detests him, and he always uses the ensuing controversy to self-promote, the money angle is only what interests me. The fact is that Capitalism: A Love Story looks like its domestic total will fail to crack $20M and end up his worst performing film since his Oscar-winner Bowling For Columbine in 2002.
I think the financial success of Moore's movies/books has more to do with the political climate than anything else. The more divided people are, the more he'll get at the box office and the bookstore. I think people were more polarized from 2001-2005 than now. I'm not surprised that his being more objective or appealing more universally has much correlation to financial success.... look at all political shows/books/movies... when people go center, they typically don't get as much attention.
How about the premise behind Bowling? White people in the NRA are responsible for America's high gun-homicide rates. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/race.htm Here are some California-specific stats: http://www.vpc.org/studies/hisptwo.htm These are statistics that can be found with Google in a under a minute. They are not from some rightwing blogger site. In Bowling, Moore says there are "plenty of minorities" in Canada. Then he cuts to some black people who are obstensibly in Canada, then he says that 13 percent of the population is minority. He fails to mention that Canada is 10 percent Asian. Combined with the US Department of Justice statistics (which I find absolutely amazing that are not mentioned in a move about gun violence), do you think there is any doubt the he is being disingenuous? If we are to believe the message from Bowling, are we not doing a huge disservice to the inner-city victims of gun violence and potentially misallocating resources? That's the problem I have with him. If he at least, put on a modicum of objectivity, and THEN gave his own opinions, that would be respectable. Instead he has totally marginalized himself and shouldn't be taken seriously as an objective documentary maker. If he has changed for the better, then that's good and I would have to credit his growth.
You forget though. Those on the far left are rarely biased and far too pious to ever indulge in untruths. Anyone who found Bowling for Columbine less than objective, though, is a right wing nut. The very idea that Moore's journalistic integrity may not be impeccable must never be entertained. Sometimes those that point their fingers and claim intolerance or close-mindedness are the most close-minded themselves. I suppose it's more important to be "right" than anything else.
no, it's not appropriate. Glenn Beck thinks Obama, Fema, and ACORN are working together to build internment camps and intern all the white free-thinking people in it to brainwash them. Moore on the other hand, exposed the Bush administrations disgusting lie to the American people, he shed light on the healthcare problems of this country, and now he is going to show everyone who is really responsible for this "recession", non other than those huge corporations that Bush kept cutting taxes for. YEAH, EXCELLENT COMPARISON! and quit dwelling on Columbine, it was an awful scattered movie with no clear point. I'm sure Moore meant well, but he ended up making a $h!t movie because you really can't logically explain that shooting and you can't try to deduce ways to "prevent" it. It was a failure, but you can't discredit his most important works, Fahrenheit and Sicko (and hopefully capitalism) because Bowling for Columbine wasn't on par with them
When did Glen Beck say that? Or is that just you opinion of what he thinks? That would be like someone saying that Michael Moore thinks George Bush, Haliburton, and the CIA knocked down the twin towers to start wars. The truth is Glen Beck and Michael Moore are one in the same. If you think otherwise, you are blinded by being partasian.
Glenn Beck bases almost all of his commentary on half truths and innuendo in an attempt to garner a viewer base. Moore does the same thing. The reason "Bowling for Columbine" was a $h!t movie is because it was based on half truth and innuendo. It was made in an attempt to garner a viewer base. If you think that corporations getting tax cuts caused the recession, then there is little point in arguing with you. Recessions happen. It is normal in all economies. This is a GLOBAL recession. The foreclosure mess was caused by the laws signed by Clinton and Bush that required looser credit standards for mortgages. The result? "Innovative" loan products with an ARM based on LIBOR. These laws required lenders to write mortgages for people that would not qualify for a fixed rate mortgage. Then there are the stated income, or "liar's loans." There is plenty of blame to go around. Michael Moore will stand on the street corner with a bullhorn effectuating a citizen's arrest on AIG. Yellow journalism at its finest. Yeah...the comparison to Beck is fair.
He more-or-less said it. "free thinking white people" should be replaced by "right-leaning people ". http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-feldman/glenn-beck-recycles-x-fil_b_175068.html FOX News personality, Glenn Beck, has been using his airtime to broadcast a right-wing conspiracy theory about the Obama administration setting up 'concentration camps,' as part of a secret plot to establish totalitarian rule. Curiously, Beck's criticism of President Obama's economic policies seems to have been ripped directly from the plot of FOX TV's past hit series The X-Files (1993-2002) and the films based on the series (1998, 2008). While Beck claims he is not 100% certain that the camps exist, he has proclaimed repeatedly that the Obama administration's economic policies are pushing the country into "totalitarianism' and that he "cannot debunk" the existence of the camps, which are supposedly being set up under the auspice of the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), but which Beck claims will be used soon for mass imprisonment of American citizens with right-leaning political views. In a recent spot on FOX and friends, Beck claimed that he had conducted "research on" the so called concentration camps being built by the Obama WH as part of a conspiracy to establish totalitarian rule in America and the he could not "debunk them." According to Beck, "If you ave any fear that we might be heading toward a totalitarian state, look out. There is something happening in our country and it ain't good." Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-feldman/glenn-beck-recycles-x-fil_b_175068.html
I thought we already established the fact that Bowling was awful, no need to reiterate that. Now can you please tell me how Bowling can be used to discredit Fahrenheit and Sicko? Can we forget about the movie that dealt with 2 mentally-ill individuals shooting up a school, and focus on the 2 movies that exposed an illegal unconstitutional war and a corrupt health insurance industry that drops people when they need their coverage the most? I mean, how are they even remotely related? Why do you guys keep bringing up Bowling? yes, I absolutely agree, recessions happen. THIS, however, isn't your typical once-in-every-couple-of-years recession, this depression (that we're still in, by the way) was far from a regular recession that "just happened". Clinton's name doesn't belong in there. But that's what people on the right (and on the left) do when their guy ****s up; they throw a guy's name from the other side in and they pretend like they all played a role in this mess. Clinton's 8 years took us from the $h!tter to a surplus, but what do you know he got blown in the oval office oh noes. Bush spent like a drunken sailor, started unconstitutional wars left and right, kept cutting taxes for the rich, and signed some ridiculous legislation that got us where we are right now. It doesn't require an economist to see that if you spend all your money on wars you can't afford, all while cutting the taxes of the rich, your economy will suffer. combine that with the crap mortgages and we have ourselves a super-sized depression that we'd be lucky to survive. if Michael Moore didn't do that, Joe 6-packs and soccer moms won't be interested in the movie (and in the point he's trying to make), and thus he will fail at educating the public because unfortunately, your every-day American isn't ready to sit through a 2 hour documentary about health insurance companies. They are willing to do it, however, if a fat guy in a baseball hat shouts ridiculous stuff on a megaphone outside of AIG head quarters. It's ridiculous, but this you how low our society has gotten in this day and age. NO, it's not. <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/OqxOr5D1atc&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/OqxOr5D1atc&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object> Beck is an idiot and a phony Moore is intelligent and works for the nobel cause of educating the public on the issues that matter the most (see: unconstitutional war in Iraq, insurance companies putting people with cancer to death by "dropping" their coverage, and the top 1 percent of the population owning more wealth that the bottom 95% combined => NOT a "fudged" fact or a "half-truth") the comparison is absurd and ridiculous
I think dwelling on Columbine is appropriate. Simple facts and statistics cast doubt on his very integrity as a journalist and refute his very hypothesis. These facts are easily obtained with minimal research. If some right wing guy made a popular movie that was chock-full of lies, you would not hold that against him?
There is an entire "News" network that is "chock-full of lies," that MM could never begin to compare to.
There are biased people on the right who lie and biased people on the left who lie. It's part of politics. All I'm saying is that Moore is one of these people. He has a heavy political slant and his documentaries reflect this. This is not about Rush or Fox or whatever. I listen to Rush and I don't automatically assume him to be unbiased and honest. I listen to Air America and also do not make the same assumptions. You have to watch his films with a heavy grain of salt and cannot assume that all his presentations are truthful. It seems that even to suggest he has a bias is sacrilegious. It turns into a "our guys are honest so you must be a bad person" type of thing.
What are you talking about? Nobody in this thread has defended Moore as a bastion of honesty. You are arguing against a strawman.
His theory that the high gun-homicide rates in the United States are due to our "gun-culture" which is fostered by Second Amendment, NRA , white guys. Did you see the cartoon in that movie? A simple search of Department of Justice statistics shows that white, NRA guys are not wholly responsible for our higher gun-homicide rates. There is a HUGE ratio of gun deaths which are committed in the inner-city. The failure to mention these basic facts calls into question Moore's integrity and does a huge disservice to inner-city homicide victims. We can eliminate ALL white-guy NRA gum homicides from the statistics and our rates are still high. The ratio of gun-homicides in that (inner-city) relatively small population is extremely high and should, of course, also be the focus of any policies. There is only one point in the film where he throws lip service to this - but then he immediately refutes the point (without even mentioning the shocking statistics) by alluding to Canada where 13 percent of the population is minorities. He fails to mention (purposely so imo) that 10 percent of Canada is Asian and that these people do NOT typically make up a sizeable propertion of Canadian "inner cities". I am not against gun-control and stricter gun laws. I am just questioning Moore's integrity as a presenter of facts.
You should read some of the posts here that are defending him then. Heck, people here are defending him from some of my remarks.
