i don't believe Moore makes true documentaries, because they are always super weighted to the left, but he just chooses to manipulate facts in his favor. they are still facts. so he's like a lawyer. kinda.
and you're right, i don't know the statistics of your neighborhood, and frankly, i don't know the statistics of my own. personally, i don't care. when the bullets start flying, it's reasonable to say that they were human, and just as faulty as the rest of us. despite their alleged nationality.
and also, i don't think it will make a difference where you move. i say, stay where you are. it will take time and money to move somewhere where there are as good of chances to get shot up. pick yer place, because i think they're all the same.
I've been hearing a lot lately about how Michael Moore doesn't make "real" documentaries. I will admit that he is pretty far left but his films are still documentaries. They're persuasive documentaries and try to get a point across.
Quote:Today the word 'documentary' is used to describe any film or programme which includes some factual element, from investigative programmes on child abuse or illegal immigration to 'fly on the wall' documentaries such as 'Airport'. In fact, for viewers and broadcasters alike, documentary is now used to define any programme that is not a drama.
this looked like it could get long on the topic of MM movies so I split it out of PIX's thread. I wanted to include brokend's original because it was quoted....
PIX,Jun 24 2004, 09:12 AM Wrote:OH WOW....I used to game and talk to the RWTD guys like 3 years ago. They are in the
Tulsa area. Man...it's a small world.
Uggg....a Michael Moore thread. I plead the 5th.
Thats madness lol
Yeh now they are much bigger. They merged with GKR and BCThc..so its a north american clan now lol. That is crazy.
I wonder if he tries to concentrate the left-wing messages because of how right-wing the media he watches is.. like somebody talking loudly while wearing headphones.
You're talking about the media in another country right? The only people saying that the media is or has been right wing
are John Kerry, Al Franken and Jeanane Garafolo. FOX is the ONLY station to EVEN show right sidedness EVER!! Funny how
it is the most popular news source these days for the US.
Wait...let me say that again: The Left's voices are Al Franken and Jeanane Garafolo....on Liberal Radio Air America (XM-RADIO). These 2 are
the best representatives the Left could post??? The democratic party has changed so much for the worse over the last 50 years.
It once stood for proud things and the people. Now it has morphed into this socialist monster of political correctness and environmental
terrorists. BRING BACK THE 40's DEMOCRATS!!!!
While Moore may seem far left, he actually doesn't like how things are going with the left right now. I may not agree with a lot of his beliefs but I like that he thinks for himself. Seriously...he thinks Oprah would be great for president...no way.
I do like Micheal Moore. If you disagree with most of his political views you probably wont enjoy his stuff as much, but at least you can still enjoy canadian bacon.
ok, John Kerry pisses me off to no end, as do most politicians, but none lately more than bush. that said, Moore admits fully that his movies are a primarily propaganda, since to be called a documentary they need to show BOTH sides of an issue. Moore shows his own views, but in such a way that his points are hard to deny. I saw about 2 minutes of Fahrenheit 9/11 yesterday, and the movie was just so heavy in the two minutes i watched that i walked away, unwanting to see any more. i do want to see the whole movie, but it's depressing.
and if it's not, then it's blase. Moore has a reputation of doing the same things to piss off politicians over and over again. or actors. or anyone in the media (which is heavily controlled by conservative politics, by the way). so at this point, if i'm not on the verge of tears, i'm bored. kind of extreme, no?
i dunno, i think oprah would send our country down in raging flames, but that's just me.
on the other hand, if Jeanane Garafolo ran for president, i would be uncontrollably compelled to vote, campaign, and offer my first born child to her in some kind of primitive sacrificial ritual. i am ravenously attracted to that gal.
seriously, my first born child.
brokend,Jun 23 2004, 08:58 AM Wrote:i don't believe Moore makes true documentaries
By its truest definition, documentary does not mean "fact based" or "objective." It is completely impossible to make an objective film. You could plop a camera down somewhere and let it record whatever for 2 hours and it would still be somewhat slanted, because you only get one perspective of what is going on.
The great thing is, that, in actuality, "This is Spinal Tap" is a real documentary. It appears to have no narrative, and attempts to be objective. The fact that it is completely fabricated is irrelevant.
Quote:Main Entry: 1doc·u·men·ta·ry
Pronunciation: "dä-ky&-'men-t&-rE, -'men-trE
Function: adjective
1 : being or consisting of documents : contained or certified in writing <documentary evidence>
2 : of, relating to, or employing documentation in literature or art; broadly : FACTUAL, OBJECTIVE <a documentary film of the war>
- doc·u·men·tar·i·ly /-m&n-'ter-&-lE, -"men-/ adverb
I like Webster's Dictionary posting here. Notice the synonyms for a documentary in bold. Do we see ANY of these 2 items in this movie. You tell
me....I haven't seen it.
see, that's the problem.
Moore presents nothing but facts in his films, but he selects the facts that support his arguement to present. He isn't false in any way, he's just swayed. In Fahrenheit 9/11 Moore has compiled all the footage he could find of Bush acting like a lost handicapped kitten, and narrated it with his most embarrassing and shocking facts from his past. It is extremely one-sided, and it pierces you emotionally, which would seem unfair if it were false, but since what he shows is true, it's just sad. If you have any measures to settle with Bush, or you didn't like something he did (anything at all), then F-9/11 shows it to you in the most humiliating form for Bush.
Could he be a good guy? Could he be a bad guy? Hard to tell. It's simply in the light that he's portrayed.
By the way, that last statement goes well for Bush OR Moore.
07-04-2004, 05:22 PM (This post was last modified: 07-04-2004, 05:26 PM by sage_4.)
Taken from "Film Art: An Introduction (sixth edition)"
"As a type of film, documentaries present themselves as factually trsutworthy. Still, any one documentary may not prove reliable. Throughout film history, many documentaries have been challenged as inaccurate. One controversy involved Michael Moore's Roger and Me. The film presents, in sequences ranging from the heartrending to the absurd, the response of the people of Flint Michigan, to a series of layoffs at general motors plants during the 1980's. Much of the film shows the inept efforts of the local government to revive the town's economy. Ronald Reagan visits, a television evangelist holds a mass rally, and the city officials launch expensive new building campaigns, inclusing "AutoWorld", an indoor theme park that is supposed to lure the tourists to flint.
No one disputes that all of these events took place. The controversy arose when critics claimed that Roger and Me leads the audience to believe that these events occured in the order in which they are shown. Ronald Reagan came to Flint in 1980, the TV evangelist in 1982; AutoWorld opened in 1985. These events could not have been responses to the plant closings shown early in the film because the plant closings started in 1986. Moore falsified the actual chronology, critics charged, in order to make the city government look foolish.
The point for our purposes is that his critics accused his film of presenting unreliable information. Even is this charge were true, however, Roger and Me would not therefore turn into a fiction film. An unreliable documentary is still a documentary. Just as there are inaccurate and misleading news stories, there are innacurate and misleading documentaries.
A documentary may take a stand, state an opinion, advocate a solution to a problem. As we shall see shortly, documentaries often use *rhetorical form to persuade an audience. But, again, simply taking a stance does not turn the documentary into fiction. In order to persuade us, the filmmaker marshals evidence, and this evidence is put forth as being factual and reliable. A documentary may be strongly partisan, but as a documentary, in nonetheless presents itself as providing trustworthy information about it's subject. Roger and Me offers criticisms of social policies, but the criticisms are presented as based upon facts."
* Rhetorical form is one of 4 types of non-narrative film. When we hear the word documentary most of us think of the stuff that is on the discovery channel about, like, the south african dung beetle. But that is, in fact, in it's own classification of documentary. There are 2 types that refer to documentaries, and they are:
Categorical - This is like the nature one. It is named as such because it takes one single subject, or category, and breaks it into smaller categories. For instance "a film about the united states might be organized into fifty parts, each devoted to a single state."
Rhetorical - Basically, any kind of documentary that takes a side. Yes, this includes bias, we are all bias, and having a bias is not an objective viewpoint. Therefore, any rhetorical documentary is not completely objective.
Even categorical films can have rhetorical elements. If a film about various plants in the rainforest suddenly begins to speak of how we must save the dying rainforest, it becomes non-objective, and begins to argue a point. A video could be put out by a company who happens to farm these rainforest lands. It could speak of how benneficial it is that we use these fertal lands to grow specific crops. Neither of them are lying.
Just wanted to show you guys that I don't just say stuff because I feel like it. I'm not defending Michael Moore as a person, he is a bit a fanatic, and goes overboard occasionally. But I am defending him as a filmmaker, and his film itself. Of course his film is biased, by definition it must be biased; he is trying to prove a point, that's all. Besides, let's face it, we all have our biases.
