Holland are through, setting up a semifinal match against Portugal. This means two things:

1. I’ll be wearing my new shirt (which just happens to be bright orange) a lot
2. Duarte and I will be at war on Wednesday

After an unsuccessful attempt to see Michael Moore’s new movie Fahrenheit 9/11 Friday night (the Cumberland was sold out for the 7:00, 7:40 and 9:30 shows), we tried again at a different theatre last night. Fortunately, friends picked up the tickets way in advance and heeded the theatre employee’s advice to “get there early”. There was already a line for the theatre – I’ve never seen a line for any movie at Canada Square before – but it started moving as soon as we arrived.

The movie is playing at a lot of theatres here in Toronto. 5 or 6 theatres downtown, several more in the ‘burbs…and not just small theatres either. The giant multiplexes too. Early reports say it took is >$8MM on Friday alone, and by Sunday night should surpass the total box office of Bowling For Columbine, to date the top-grossing documentary ever. Even more amazing, Fahrenheit 9/11 could win the weekend while playing on fewer than 900 screens. Most films that win opening weekend play on 2,500+ screens.

The review is here.

Saw Michael Moore’s new documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 (official site | rotten tomatoes | imdb) last night. It was as I expected: heavily slanted against Bush (of course), a bit sketchy on the linkages & conclusions at times, and a lot to take in all at once, but it’s as advertised: a simmering 2-hour indictment of Bush as puppet, idiot and all-around shitty president.

Don’t worry, he lambastes others as well: the usual suspects (Rumsfeld, Cheney, Ashcroft, etc.), democrats (for not fighting back against the Supreme Court decision to uphold the fake election results, for not trying to stop the war against Iraq, etc.), evil companies (Halliburton, Enron, United Defense, the Carlson Group, etc.) and more.

But most of his vitriol is saved for Bush, and he makes no secret of this. Anyone who asks Michael Moore if his movie is unbiased will get laughed at. He has an agenda here, and well he should. While pushing a man out of the white house may not be the typical role for a documentarian, Moore is saying things that need to be said and showing images that need to be showed. How many people ever saw footage of Bush’s limo being pelted by eggs on inauguration day? How many of us saw the kind of images from Iraq, of dead toddlers and torn limbs and the like, shown on the news? How many of us got to hear angry screeds from soldiers about what a waste the Iraq war is? None of us have even seen pictures of the coffins of American soldiers returning home, as the White House doesn’t want our delicate sensibilities upset by the idea of soldiers being killed (though it should be noted that this policy was established by Bush Sr. during Gulf War I). Moore’s movie shows us things Bush and his handlers don’t want their own public to see. It shows us in such a way that we leave the theatre in mild disbelief, with anger to spare. Hopefully it lasts until November.

The quote that Bush so clumsily tries to get out at the end of the film is, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” If the American voters elect this warmongering idiot again, they’ll truly go down in history as the greatest fools of all.

Irony: the Dyke March is about to start, practically outside my window, and I just heard “It’s Raining Men” blasting through somebody’s loudspeakers.

Tomorrow (the big Gay Pride parade) should be fun. I’m essentially surrounded by the two parade routes (today’s and tomorrow’s), so some friends are meeting us tomorrow; we’re gonna slap on some sunscreen, drink some water and go watch on Yonge Street. It’s a spectacle!!

The English are out, so I’m backing the Dutch. Or should I say I’m “ruuding” for them.

from The Big Ticket: bush compares democrats to nazis

Anybody remember a few months back, when MoveOn.org got in a bit of trouble with their “Bush in 30 Seconds” contest? Hundreds & hundreds of ads were submitted & put on the website for people to vote on, and one (not a finalist, mind you) compared the Bush administration to the nazis. When this was pointed out to MoveOn.org, it was removed from the competition, but of course that didn’t stop right-wing pundits from using it to rail against democrats & the “liberal” media.

BTW: CBS refused to air the winning ad during the Super Bowl, choosing instead to show their support for men who can’t get it up.

Hypocrisy knows no bounds. As pointed out on the Randi Rhodes show (streaming 3-7pm ET on Air America Radio), a new video ad on the front page of Dubya’s official campaign website shows clips of Al Gore, Michael Moore, Dick Gephardt & John Kerry intercut w/clips of Hitler in an attempt to compare the angry statements of “John Kerry’s Democratic Party” to fascist nazi chants, while championing George W. Bush’s “optimism”.

In-f**king-credible.

Go check it out before they get pressured into taking it down. If it is taken down & you don’t get a chance to see it, let me know – I downloaded the thing because I am in such disbelief. Wow.

More and more these days I find myself enjoying football (real football that is, better known to North Americans as soccer), especially now that Euro2004 is on. I think if it were more readily available here – apart from major tournaments like Euro or the World Cup it currently only gets sporadic play on Sportsnet and Fox Sports World – and if I better understood the organization of the premier leagues, I’d be obsessed with it. I find it much more watchable than baseball or “American” football, but still not as much as hockey or basketball.

The best part? A 90 minute game, no commercial breaks, no TV timeouts, just a quick halftime and then 45-50 minutes of nonstop play. I LOVE that.

Fahrenheit 9/11 filmmaker burns Harper (from CBC)
Last Updated Thu, 24 Jun 2004 10:16:30

WASHINGTON – U.S. filmmaker Michael Moore sounded off Wednesday on Canada’s election, warning voters not to elect a Conservative government.

Moore, in Washington for the official American premiere of his movie Fahrenheit 9/11, said he hopes his film will convince Canadians to bypass Stephen Harper.

“You’ve got four days after it opens, to get people out to the polls to make sure that Mr. Harper doesn’t become your next prime minister,” he said.

“We’re trying to get rid of our conservative, you know. We’re going one way, you guys shouldn’t be going the opposite direction,” said Moore, whose new documentary takes a critical look at U.S. President George W. Bush’s response to the Sept. 11 attacks and the Iraq war.

“You should be saying, ‘You know what? We don’t want this country, Canada, to become like Bush’s America,'” he said.

When asked why he’s concerned with Canadian politics, Moore responded: “Well first of all, I live on the Canadian border. I don’t want to have to look across the border and see you guys going our way.”

Moore said he’s trying to convince Americans to be more like Canadians, and praised the country’s “ethic.”

“And that ethic says: ‘We’re all Canadians, we’re all in the same boat. If one of us gets sick, that person should get health care ’cause we’re all affected.’

“The American way is pull yourself up by your bootstraps: ‘Me, me, me, me, me. It’s mine. It’s mine.’ You know? Don’t go that way. Your Conservatives are trying to take you that way.”

We have written confirmation: Christopher Hitchens is a wanker given over to snottiness and hyperbole. Give the article a read; a few of my hastily written comments on it can be found below.

Hitchens: “This I divine from the fact that this supposedly ‘antiwar’ film is dedicated ruefully to all those killed there, as well as in Iraq.”
It’s not an antiwar film. Moore does not, nor do I think he would ever, refer to it as such. It’s an anti-Iraq-war film, and certainly an anti-Bush film. Moore isn’t so pragmatic to think that war is never necessary. He just seems to think that this Iraq war was not.

Hitchens: “Either the Saudis run U.S. policy (through family ties or overwhelming economic interest), or they do not.”
I wasn’t aware that US policy could be driven by only one factor at any given time (e.g., in May it’s the Saudis; in June it’s Bill Clinton’s book…). It’s possible that they influence it in some way, just as it’s possible that Enron or North Korea or NAFTA or the economy of Turkmenistan might.

Hitchens: “In the interval between Moore’s triumph at Cannes and the release of the film in the United States, the 9/11 commission has found nothing to complain of in the timing or arrangement of the flights.”
By this point in the article Hitchens has called out Moore several times for ignoring news and facts that don’t support his cause (which Moore may well do, however: stones & glass houses), so it’s worth nothing that Hitchens ignores rather suspicious reasoning behind it. The FBI determined – by September 14th, 3 days after the attacks – that all 142 Saudis flown out of Miami (where the mostly Saudi hijackers were based) had “nothing to do with the attacks” (from the Miami Herald). Quick work. Of course, this is no proof of a conspiracy, but it certainly doesn’t hurt Moore’s suspicions, and it does little to discourage anyone’s curiosity about the matter.

Hitchens: “The president is also captured in a well-worn TV news clip, on a golf course, making a boilerplate response to a question on terrorism and then asking the reporters to watch his drive. Well, that’s what you get if you catch the president on a golf course.If Eisenhower had done this, as he often did, it would have been presented as calm statesmanship. If Clinton had done it, as he often did, it would have shown his charm.”
More double-standards. Hitchens knows full well that if Clinton had done it, he would have been crucified by the right-wing media. And while we’re on the topic, Eisenhower earned the right to act however the hell he wanted to when war was at hand. He’d stared it in the face; Bush was a draft dodger. What did Roger Waters call it, “The Bravery Of Being Out Of Range?”

Hitchens: “In fact, I don’t think Al Jazeera would, on a bad day, have transmitted anything so utterly propagandistic.”
You’re right, Chris. No news organization, certainly no American news network, would ever have cast an inversely skewed look at Iraq. Certainly, the news never centered on the the misdeeds (and there were many) of the Baathist leadership of Iraq, on the infamous torture chambers, on the exquisite pain that Saddam and his henchmen would inflict on the populace. There seemed no point in mentioning the other millions upon millions of regular, ordinary people who went about their lives every day, having nothing to do with this. Obviously the evil few are what the country’s all about. Equally, you have the US, who is prone to ignoring the Geneva convention in Cuban and Iraqi prisons, who revoke personal freedoms of their own citizens in the name of security, and who occupy countries militarily based on wholesale lack of proof. America, the country, is obviously evil and must be invaded. C’mon. Of course Moore’s shots were propogandistic. So is 99.9% of the footage that Americans have been shown for the past 18 months. If you want to call bullshit on someone, call it on everyone.

Hitchens: “Moore asserts that Iraq under Saddam had never attacked or killed or even threatened (his words) any American.”
If he in facts says this in the film, then of course it’s silly. In fact, it’s silly to think that any country in the world, scrutinized to the degree that Hitchens does here, wouldn’t be as threatening to America as was Iraq. The UK, France, even Canada could be made to look aggressive according to Hitchens’ arguments, never mind countries like Syria, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran or North Korea. Why were we all not targetted?

Hitchens: “Finally, Moore complains that there isn’t enough intrusion and confiscation at airports and says that it is appalling that every air traveler is not forcibly relieved of all matches and lighters.”
I once sat in a London theatre, listening to Michael Moore talking about this very point. He wasn’t arguing for more intrusion and confiscation; he was arguing for more intelligence when doing it. He pointed out that on his flight to London he wouldn’t have been allowed to bring on, say, a nail file, but he *could* bring on a lighter – when only months after 9/11 some wingnut tried to blow up a shoe bomb using a lighter. The only device used in an attempted attack on an airliner, an attack which was highly public and forced airport security everywhere to relieve people of their shoes for months, was carried out with a lighter. But lighters were still ok to bring on board to light anything other than a shoe bomb, so long as you didn’t try to file your nails or remove a staple at the same time.

Hitchens: “Moore has announced that he won’t even appear on TV shows where he might face hostile questioning.”
Moore has said that he’d like to go on the O’Reilly Factor (where he’d surely face some tough questioning), but Bill O’Reilly wouldn’t even sit through a screening of the film, so I can’t imagine why Moore would do him any favours. Other than that, he’s appearing on at least talk show every day this week for what I can tell by the TV schedule.

Hitchens: “But then, this is the guy who thought it so clever and amusing to catch Charlton Heston, in Bowling for Columbine, at the onset of his senile dementia. Such courage.”
Heston fucking well deserves every bit of humilation, animosity and aggression that he gets, from Moore or anyone else. Anyone who, for years, continually showed up for NRA rallies in towns that had just suffered gun fatalities, in the name of preserving the right to bear arms, should be expect any bad karma that comes his way.

Hitchens: “If Michael Moore had had his way, Slobodan Milosevic would still be the big man in a starved and tyrannical Serbia. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been cleansed and annexed. If Michael Moore had been listened to, Afghanistan would still be under Taliban rule, and Kuwait would have remained part of Iraq.”
First of all, Afghanistan is all but under Taliban rule again anyway. Second, when did we start talking about the Balkans or the first Gulf War? And what the hell does Hitchens know about how Michael Moore would have preferred to handle Milosevic? Is everything so black and white to Hitchens that violent reprisal is the sole, solitary way by which to control international crises? Let me give you a hypothetical situation: I look out into my yard and see a small child kicking my dog. I tell him to stop; he refuses. I take out a gun and shoot the child, wounding my dog in the process. Was this the only solution available to me? Of course not; but anyone opposing the method by which I stopped the child is immediately cast as hating dogs.

Christopher’s just so screamingly tedious.

from The Globe and Mail: two feature films change their release dates to avoid being “trampled” by Fahrenheit 9/11. Not that I have any doubt of how it’ll end up. White Chicks will still win the weekend. But at least it’s a tiny shred of sensibility in the movie world.

The new blockbuster docs
Once relegated to public television, documentaries are muscling in on feature films at the box office
By SIMON HOUPT
From Tuesday’s Globe and Mail

New York — It is the epitome of high-stakes Hollywood gamesmanship. Every year, movie studios plant flags on days they consider to be prime real estate to launch their planned summer blockbusters, warning potential competitors to steer clear or face destruction. Backing away from an intended release date is a sign of weakness. But early this month, two movie studios quietly made an inauspicious sort of history by doing something no studio had ever done in the history of Hollywood: They each moved the release date of a feature film to avoid getting trampled at the box office by a documentary.

Not just any documentary, mind you. Sony Pictures moved up the Wayans brothers comedy White Chicks by two days and MGM delayed its launch of the Cole Porter biopic De-Lovely by a week to avoid competing for audiences and movie screens with Michael Moore’s anti-George W. Bush screed Fahrenheit 9/11, which opens in Canada on Friday. The studios’ defensive move illustrated more than just the power of Moore to draw a crowd. It acknowledged the growing might of documentaries at the North American box office.

This season may just be remembered as the summer of blockbuster documentaries. True, no non-fiction feature is going to compete for the box-office crown with Shrek 2, but audiences are demonstrating an unprecedented desire to pay for the type of film people used to think belonged in the sleepy backwater of public television.

For three weeks this spring, Super Size Me, a film tracking one man’s quest to ruin his health by gorging on McDonald’s fast food, landed in the top-10 listings of the weekend box office, marking the first time in history a non-concert documentary had achieved that feat. Not even Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine managed to crack the weekend top 10 during its long run in the fall and winter of 2002, despite winning an Oscar for best feature documentary.

In July, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, will open on more than 500 screens across North America. The heavy-metal band’s rabid fan base is expected to push the film into the upper reaches of the box office for its weekend launch, and possibly, long after.

Meanwhile the Canadian film The Corporation, having already taken in a record $1.1-million at the domestic box office, is now sucking up cash and audiences as it rolls across the United States. Out of all films playing in the U.S., it ranked second only to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in per-screen average during its opening week, a key indicator of desire among audiences, taking in more than $25,000 (U.S.) per screen.

It has all been a bit of a shock to the industry. Geoffrey Gilmore, the director of the Sundance Film Festival, said that shortly before the release of Super Size Me last month, the CEO of one of the top four cinema chains in the United States, a man who oversees more than 2,200 screens, told him the film wouldn’t make any money. “These guys haven’t changed their stripes,” says Gilmore. “They’re still very cynical about what will make money.”

Film-industry analysts say success breeds success. After a film like Bowling for Columbine hits the jackpot, distributors are more willing to put up money for advertising and marketing, which then helps propel the success of other films.

Unlike many documentaries of the past, the new films are fiercely unobjective and usually have a political or social agenda articulated by the filmmaker who plays a central role in the film. “The big docs tend to have a persona in front of them with which the audience identifies,” says Gilmore.

They also borrow one element that helps make Hollywood films so successful. “Large-audience films are often about bad guys and good guys,” observes the noted Canadian cinéma-vérité documentarian Allan King. “To be in a large crowd is to become anxious, to become anxious is to regress, and you can argue that listening to stories of Good and Evil is characteristic of childhood.

“Often, more complicated ways of looking at things are less popular and more demanding to pursue.”

Some of the traditional documentary-makers who value objectivity over agendas are dismayed by the evolution. Fred Wiseman, the dean of American documentary filmmakers, pointedly refused comment last year when asked about Moore’s approach and his self-promotional style.

The new docs have other similarities with popular Hollywood films. Most of the documentaries in the past decade to win an Oscar were concerned with historical issues, either heartbreaking tales from the Holocaust or vexing accounts of the U.S. civil-rights movement. Indeed, this year’s winning film, Errol Morris’s The Fog of War, revisited old ghosts from the Vietnam War. But the new popular docs all address issues that are burning up the evening newscasts and they have all been turned around speedily in the editing suite to capitalize on the current interest in their subjects.

Because of their timeliness, the films benefit from the cross-pollination of controversy. Super Size Me prompted sputtering outrage from nutritionists in the pocket of the food industry, inspiring op-ed articles and even copycat films in progress that aim to show eating at McDonald’s can be, as the fast-food company claims, part of a healthy diet. The Wall Street Journal took on The Corporation in its news pages, offering the last word to the noted free-marketeer Milton Friedman, a critic of the film’s message.

“When documentaries get feature-film attention — either from newspapers or electronic media — that drives people to the theatres,” said Sundance’s Gilmore, who notes that none of the films refers to itself in advertising as a “documentary,” perhaps because that term still carries a whiff of preciousness.

The most pressing contemporary issues today in the U.S. concern the actions of the Bush administration toward terrorism and Iraq, issues forcefully tackled by Fahrenheit 9/11. The trade newspaper Variety reported last week that research by the firm Nielsen NRG, which tracks developing interest among audiences for upcoming movies, found Fahrenheit 9/11 was the first choice this weekend of 4 per cent of moviegoers, more people than listed either the Hollywood romance The Notebook or Jean-Jacques Annaud’s adventure Two Brothers.

In fact, the distributor Lions Gate Films said demand for Fahrenheit 9/11 is so high it chose to open the film in two cinemas in New York before its national release. The movie will take up three screens in one theatre alone on the liberally inclined Upper West Side of Manhattan, Michael Moore’s own neighbourhood. A campaign by the liberal grassroots organization MoveOn to raise awareness of the film is seeking to have 100,000 pledge to attend a showing on Friday. As of midday yesterday, only five days after the campaign kicked off, more than 108,000 MoveOn members had made the pledge.

The new wave of popular docs even threatens to swamp some of the smaller fish in the non-fiction sea. Sarah Goodman, an independent filmmaker whose Army of One won the Best Canadian Feature prize at this year’s Hot Docs festival, sent out an e-mail yesterday to her friends asking them to support this weekend’s brief theatrical release of her film in Toronto. “Our challenge now is to get people out to see it in the face of the bigger blockbuster films,” it read. “We can’t compete with the star power and dough of Michael Moore.”