I don't like michael moore, but his films have some powerful moments. The biggest problem his films have had, however, are the moments where he inserts himself in front of the camera. He comes off (and probably for good reason) as an abusive, egotistical, self-serving boor.
In BFC, the KMart scenes were almost unbearable. He dragged the kids - who looked like they didn't want to be there and never offered a coherent thought of their own for the camera - into his own scenario where he was an ass to businesspeople who really had no relevance to the underlying concern.
That's not to say he wasn't an ass at Lockheed Martin or to Charleton Heston either, but I found using the Columbine victims as props to be particularly reprehensible.
Having said that, I thought BFC was powerful and enjoyable. I get very irritated when people spout that it is trash and lies. Was there some minor misdirection? Yes. Does it invalidate the director's point? No. Nobody cares whether LM makes satellites or ICBM's - Moore wasn't seriously trying to create a literal link between Dad making WMD's and kiddy at home doing same in basement - it was a metonymical link between the activities of the government and the governed. It is sufficient for Moore's point that somewhere in the U.S., some company is manufacturing WMD's for the government.
According to the Ebert/Roeper clip, Moore only pulls his asstacular on-camera abuse stunt once. This may be once too often for some people, but to me it says that he knew how serious this work was, and kept his fat ass in check as well as he could.
Whether we believe it has significance or not, probably all of the people in this forum have read all of the allegations/information that will make its way into F. 9/11. Nonetheless, I think the packaging of the information will be interesting enough to make it worth seeing.
P.S. Did anyone else notice that Roeper made some comment to the effect "Moore exaggerated and made it look like Bush just sat there for 6 minutes" ... as though that *wasn't* what happened? Scary stuff folks.
) but his viewpoints are sometimes so extremely left that I say jeez, WHAT are you hammering on NOW, and sometimes I think he puts some extreme links, such as putting responsibility for the school shooting at lockheed martin etc (but I tought he had some personal grudge against them wasnt it ?) but it's really hard to get the facts from the fiction. an interview is hard to fake, what that person said was said, but the context in which it was shown also matters.
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