Doos

I feel that the people who feel manipulated and cheated should steer away from other movies that are "documentaries", like the matrix.

__________________
Don't be alarmed, I'm an African.

Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels good.

Sparhawk

Great post, you said it better than I ever could. What ever happened to 'The only thing we have to fear is Fear itself'?

__________________
"In Iraq, no doubt about it, it's tough. It's hard work. It's incredibly hard. It's - and it's hard work. I understand how hard it is. I get the casualty reports every day. I see on the TV screens how hard it is. But it's necessary work. We're making progress. It is hard work."

Gorgo

We can lose ourselves in criticism of details or we can see the big picture, like seeing the forest not just the trees.
There are many political issues that are just wrong for America, wrong thinking, wrong ethics, wrong ways of doing business and running government.

"Bowling For Columbine" was to show how obsessed America is with war, making weapons, promoting weapons and cultivating a "fear culture" where everyone needs a gun to feel safe.

On a side note, I hope his new movie "Fahreheit 9/11" brings new awareness to causes of the 9/11 tragedy. America was not randomly selected for the largest terrorist attack in modern history. Maybe his style of "documentary" will get the point across to most Americans.

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Will Code for food . . .

almostaugust

Bowling For Columbine was a good documenatary. I am sick to death of people posting apparent damning information about it. Anyone who knows anything about filmmaking will tell you that the documentary genre is malliable and subjective in nature.
Nobody can dispute the facts about gun deaths around the world, as much as the truth is hard to swallow. He has brought to the surface a whole lot of information that people have tried to sweep under the carpet aswell, however dubious his intentions are.

__________________
'And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember all the times I tried to tell my myself
To hold on to these moments as they pass'

Achernar

Oh yeah, Michael Moore is a lying sack of shit.

jimk

reviving a thread 'cause i just saw the movie this week.........

i thought it was going to be just about gun control. found it very interesting - his theory of america's problem being that we're a society run by fear. i seem to remember someone, somewhere in the movie saying that with our national psyche, even if there was a way to take away the guns, we'd still slaughter each other at a globally absurd level.

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raw power is a guaranteed o.d.

raw power is a laughin' at you & me

-iggy

marcopolo

The real point is that Bowling is deliberately, seriously, and consistently deceptive .
A few minor problems have come up since the movie's release, unfortunately:

The Columbine shooters didn't go bowling the morning of the massacre. The local Lockheed plant doesn't manufacture weapons of mass destruction, or any kind of weapons. And you can't walk out of that bank with a brand new gun.

Other than that ... Michael Moore made a fine documentary .

__________________
Those who can't laugh at themselves leave the job to others.

Eviltree

There will be distortion wherever you look in politics, even documentaries about politics, you can't just look at one source. You always have to look at both or all 3 sides of the argument to piece together the entire picture. If the NRA made a film, you can be sure it also would be filled with deception. You can't look at just the details, the movie WAS about how America is run by fear, propagated by the American media, and U.S. Government, who use excuses (true and false) to excercise more, and more control.

mute76

Bah! I knew that fat fuck was an ass. Ashame too becuase I liked the movie.

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What the fuck is "wtf"?

djtestudo

I downloaded the movie (I refuse to support him) and watched it.

All I can say is that some points were funny, and interesting, and other points were so blatently biased and just plain spun that I wanted to beat my moniter with my chair.

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"Final thought: I just rented Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine. Frankly, it was the worst sports movie I've ever seen."
--Peter Schmuck, The (Baltimore) Sun

trench

Someone sent this link to me not too long ago

http://www.bowlingfortruth.com/

rodgerd

Moore hardly comes across as anti-gun in BFC. If anything, he effectively spends the first chunk of the film setting up the idea that guns are the problem precisely so he can knock it down.

rodgerd

Depends. Moore spends most of the film knocking the idea that guns per se are the problem in the US. Most of the film is about bigger social issues.

rodgerd

It's a point made in the movie IIRC - even if you subtract gun related deaths, the US has a higher homicide rates than other Western nations.

It's an interesting view into the psyche of so many of the people who are most pissed off about BFC that they are msotly treating it as an anti-gun movie and hysterical about the portrayl of the NRA.

Ironic, too, that in doing so they're guilty of the same sort of misrepresentation that they claim Moore is.

jimk

my wife & i were visited last night by a friend who sells insurance. as i politely listened to his spiel, i was constantly thinking, "this guy's job is selling fear." especially as he explained how i might want to consider life insurance for my THREE YEAR OLD (!!!!), "just in case."


moore's movie definitely made a mark on me. but not really anything to do with guns. i'll just be thinking about fear as a motivator & commodity.

__________________
raw power is a guaranteed o.d.

raw power is a laughin' at you & me

-iggy

HeAtHeN

I am amazed at some people's views here!! But you're all entitled to them.....

I happen to love BFC and agreed with Mr Moore on just about everything.

The US Media is a joke. Just go back to the movie and fast forward to the part where he is in Canada. There are 7 million guns here and only 30 million people..... with only a hundred or so gun related deaths each year.

As Americans you have been conditioned to fear the world by your media.

I'm British by brith, but now call Canada my home and I can see this for myself. We get the US networks up here (I get the Spokane channels) and thats all you see. Murders dominate the local news..... its just not like that here or in the UK.

Again.... I'm not calling Americans stupid, I just wish you'd seek other sources for information (BBC News, CBC etc) and stop watching the propaganda channels (CNN, Fox News)

Let the flaming begin.....

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marcopolo

I would love to flame you ... but , your British , so it would be pointless .

Wait . Errr ... Hugh Grant ? Now are you happy ?

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Those who can't laugh at themselves leave the job to others.

thespian86

I watched this movie and as someone who calls himself a "movie buff" i found that Micheal Moore does edit but it is only just to get the point across. It was infact what Killer Yoda said is how i feel. Mike may have used trickery to do his work but his base idea is what matters. I urge anyone to get this movie and watch it for yourself before you "pick sides". I found it to be amazing.

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Aaron0000

The link doesnt work anymore anyone else know of a good article on this subject.

marcopolo

Try this one

__________________
Those who can't laugh at themselves leave the job to others.

floonine

I liked the movie, thought it was entertaining, and I always welcome someone else's opinions or viewpoints, but a documentary that has false information in it should not win an award in a non-fiction category. That's my opinion though.

__________________
Political arguments do not exist, after all, for people to believe in them, rather they serve as a common, agreed-upon excuse. Foolish people who take them in earnest sooner or later discover inconsistencies in them, begin to protest and finish finally and infamously as heretics.

Stare At The Sun

I'm a pretty liberal guy, and i didnt like this movie, it was totally one sided, utter propoganda, and i found it to be bullshit. i lost a lot of respect for moore.

Mr. Spacemonkey

I actually liked this movie when i saw it. But i now have very little respect for Micheal Moore after reading a couple of the links posted here.

__________________
"I hope that when the world comes to an end, I can breathe a sigh of relief, because there will be so much to look forward to." -- Donnie Darko

taog

I thought i would stir up some more of this bowling for columbine thing

I have watched the movie a couple times again, since it is on PPV now... yep.. i'm using direct TV and i am in canada... muhahaha

Anyway, I just read a lot of one of the articles that is against Michael Moore and bowling for columbine

it's this article http://www.hardylaw.net/Truth_About_Bowling.html

This person also leaves out a lot of stuff.

I can honestly say that i don't really know much about the facts for a lot of it, and i am quite dissapointed that Moore did edit a lot of shit to make it fit, but the canadian link for homicides and such is incosistant as well.. http://www.hardylaw.net/canada.html

first of all, a lot of canada (the big cities) have huge differences between classes. In the city i live in, you either go to university, you are poor, or you are rich. There is basically no middle class, and it's a fairly large city with over 300,000 people. There are very few homicides. And for the people who believe that the 'mixed ethnicity' has soemthing to do with homicides, London has quite the mixed ethnicity. Basically if you take canada and take the ratio of race and wealth and everything, London (where i live) is a small version of canada, which is why it is the 'test' city, where everything gets tested first to see if it will make it in the marketplace. So, it's pretty safe to assume that you can take this city as a good example of how canada as a whole acts.

It also says that rural areas basically make up canada. This is also untrue. Sure, there may be more rural areas in canada than the states, but a hell of a lot of the population makes up for big cities. The most populated provinces are Ontario and Quebec. Look at the size of montreal, toronto, ottawa, london, hamilton, and many others. Most of them have more than 100,000 people, and the amount of homicides is still very very low.

Given that homicides in canada are going up and a great rate, i also blame this on a lot of the media that is being fed to canada. A lot of people here now watch direct tv, from the states, which means the news and everything else. I do have to say that the difference between Canadian news and the news from the states is huge. Every time i turn on CNN or FOX or any other major news station, it's always about what is happening with some war, or who killed who, or whatever. The commercials are much different as well. Canadian TV now gets CNN and Fox news, and american commercials.

The Canadian news channels are almost exactly as Moore shows, with speed bumps being the breaking news or whatever. That would have been a local news channel for a small rural area that he was looking at, but it does get the point across.

However, more and more of canadian media is starting to look like the media and news in the states, and our homicide rates are going up. I know that this doesn't mean that this is the reason for it, but it sure is something to look into and it is interesting.

Also, when i was a kid i remember watching a real Canadian news channel at my cottage one day. I always had american TV, since we have had one of those olde school satellite dishes since i was 2 years old. I remember falling in love with the canadian news, because it was stuff that was going on around me in my area and my country. It somehow made me feel important.

This could also be a reason why the media might not have that big of an effect on canadians, since most of them might realise that the media and news they watch about homicides in another country, aren't here.

Anyway, i don't like the things that this guy left out about canada, as i didn't like the things michael moore left out about canada.

Also, it is possible to purchase some ammunition in some walmarts in canada. Sure, most of them dont sell it, but a lot of them do, when they are near hunting areas. I know that you cannot purchase handgun ammunition or anything like that, but you might be able to purchase shotgun ammunition. I don't know exactly what you can purchase, but i know you can legally purchase some without a licence. This guy said that you can't purchase any and probably only wrote down part of what was said about the buying of ammunition.

Michael Moore did make it seem like you can go into any walmart in canada and purchase any bullets you want, and as many as you want, when in fact you can't, but you can purchase some type of ammunition.

Then this guy says you can't purchase any legally.

They both distort the truth. Neither can be trusted.



Also, when i have time, regarding this page.. http://www.hardylaw.net/rates.html

i am going to figured out the approx. values for the real ratios, instead of beating around the bush like both moore and this guy do.

Prince

I haven't seen the movie, but I've watched similar argum...er, debates take place all over the web. The thing is, though, that I personally don't give a damn whether he or his film is bullshit or not. The fact that his movie has probably made more people THINK FOR THEMSELVES ABOUT AT LEAST SOMETHING than all typical Oscar-winning films put together, that alone, to me, makes the film deserve the recognition.

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JohnnyRoyale

Let me see if I can help folks here understand why people dislike Mr. Moore (including myself)

From the Dictionary.com web site:

<quote>documentary

n. pl. doc·u·men·ta·ries
A work, such as a film or television program, presenting political, social, or historical subject matter in a factual and informative manner and often consisting of actual news films or interviews accompanied by narration.

allegory

n. pl. Allegories.
A figurative sentence or discourse, in which the principal subject is described by another subject resembling it in its properties and circumstances. The real subject is thus kept out of view, and we are left to collect the intentions of the writer or speaker by the resemblance of the secondary to the primary subject.</quote>

For Example: If I take a fact, then distort it via clever editing, voice over "explanations" or selectively excluding certian relevant facts (lying), then it's not a documentary, it's an allegory (or an infrence, but that's for a different post). So, for instance, if I show a porn website full of naked people having sex with animals, and say "The Titled Forum Project contains disgusting smut pictures like these", the infrence is:
a) The TFP has pictures <b>EXACTLY</b> like that and
b)That's all they have, cause the TFP is a porn site.

See, from an allegorical standpoint, I've used a porn site to describe the TFP, which would leave the unknowledgeable to believe that the TFP is a porn site too. Which it isn't. But there are pictures of naked people around, which might be contrued as porn. Which makes my action above FACTUALLY incorrect, but ALLEGORICALLY correct.

But when you take allegory, and pass it off as fact, and win awards for that, it irks people.

See?

__________________
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illesturban

First and foremost, I support BFC and Michael Moore.

I'd like to direct most of you here to this article:
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/wackoattacko/

Now I'm sure there will be some people who will simply not believe a thing said there and that's fine, but since every damn link here is against Moore. By the way, I could be saying the EXACT same things about the guy who wrote up the website you guys keep linking to. What kind of authority is he!? He's obviously some right-wing, gun-toting conservative who doesn't want negative things about his industry or affiliations exposed.

I'd like to point out a couple things in the above article:

In the article, he does admit that the Charlton Heston clip where he says "from my cold dead hands" was added from archived news footage...

The Truth: Heston took his NRA show to Denver and did and said exactly what we recounted. From the end of my narration setting up Heston's speech in Denver, with my words, "a big pro-gun rally," every word out of Charlton Heston's mouth was uttered right there in Denver, just 10 days after the Columbine tragedy. But don't take my word – read the transcript of his whole speech. Heston devotes the entire speech to challenging the Denver mayor and mocking the mayor's pleas that the NRA "don't come here." Far from deliberately editing the film to make Heston look worse, I chose to leave most of this out and not make Heston look as evil as he actually was.

Why are these gun nuts upset that their brave NRA leader's words are in my film? You'd think they would be proud of the things he said. Except, when intercut with the words of a grieving father (whose son died at Columbine and happened to be speaking in a protest that same weekend Heston was at the convention center), suddenly Charlton Heston doesn't look so good does he? Especially to the people of Denver (and, the following year, to the people of Flint) who were still in shock over the tragedies when Heston showed up.

As for the clip preceding the Denver speech, when Heston proclaims "from my cold dead hands," this appears as Heston is being introduced in narration. It is Heston's most well-recognized NRA image – hoisting the rifle overhead as he makes his proclamation, as he has done at virtually every political appearance on behalf of the NRA (before and since Columbine). I have merely re-broadcast an image supplied to us by a Denver TV station, an image which the NRA has itself crafted for the media, or, as one article put it, "the mantra of dedicated gun owners" which they "wear on T-shirts, stamp it on the outside of envelopes, e-mail it on the Internet and sometimes shout it over the phone.". Are they now embarrassed by this sick, repulsive image and the words that accompany it?

Finally, I've even been asked about whether the two killers were at bowling class on the morning of the shootings. Well, that's what their teacher told the investigators, and that's what was corroborated by several eyewitness reports of students to the police, the FBI, and the District Attorney's office. I'll tell you who wasn't there -- me! That's why in the film I pose it as a question:

"So did Dylan and Eric show up that morning and bowl two games before moving on to shoot up the school? And did they just chuck the balls down the lane? Did this mean something?"
Of course, it's a silly discussion, and it misses the whole, larger point: that blaming bowling for their killing spree would be as dumb as blaming Marilyn Manson.




----------------------------------------------------


You can actually see from a link to the transcript of Heston's full speech that they DID edit it...they edited it to look better; regardless of how Michael Moore may have edited BFC, the fact remains that Heston DID say those words.

And the fact of the matter is, if you are a gun-toting republican you are not going to like Michael Moore or his writings. But that doesn't mean everything that he publishes is a lie. I happen to believe that the president is crooked and cheated his way into the white house, but hey... that's another story.

I bet half of you writing in here haven't even seen Bowling For Columbine and if you had, you'd realize that whether you agree in part or in whole, that there are several valid and truthful points. Don't be deceived by media that is skewed or even the government that wants you to believe every decision it makes is for the betterment of the country... Yeah and where the hell are those weapons of mass destruction again? oh wait...

sherpahigh

It was never a question of if he actually said those words or not. It was the editing of the speech that is manipulative. It was nice of Moore to edit Hestons speech for him to make him seem "less evil". Obviously Moore knows better what Heston was trying to convay more than Heston himself.

The fact is that the NRA did not come running to Littleton upon hearing about the tragedy to tout guns are good. The meeting was planned years in advance. The timing of the event was indeed unfortunate, but little could be done about it given the time constraints aside from cancelling all events that they could. Which they did out of respect for the tragedy.

Saying that he said those words and that's the end of it holds little water when you take into consideration how they were edited to appear. Look at Heston's speech (Which I believe is not 'evil' as Moore puts it) beside that of how it was represented in the 'documentary' http://www.hardylaw.net/Bowlingtranscript.html

In my opinion they are like night and day. Moores version of the speech takes Hestons words way out of context. Not a fair representation at all.

omega2K4

Ditto. Stop your bitching about the movie and Michael Moore, if you don't like them, then don't talk about it.

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"Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form."- Karl Marx

jobu

It is a real shame that we can't be presented the facts as they really are and let us make our own decisions about them.

sherpahigh

haha. that's pretty funny. You know, if Moore followed that kind of advice we wouldn't be here talking about him would we? He dosn't like a lot of stuff but it's always the stuff that he dosn't like that he talks about the most.

I guess blindly accepting what he puts forth as the truth without question is a better way to go about it. Well if that works for you, more power to ya.

Mehoni

Here Michael Moore explains the "lies" and where he got his figures from:
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/wackoattacko/

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flamingdog

I'm not sure where you've got your facts from, but I take that as an affront to my professional integrity. I don't know anyone who distorts or lies about facts to prove their own point. If you do you get called on it, and if you keep doing it, soon enough your integrity is in the crapper and nobody trusts you anymore. Trust is vital to journalism, so it makes no sense to lie. Look at Jayson Blair. It blows up in your face eventually.

I'll admit most news outlets have an agenda, but that's hardly a secret. Individual reporters continually tread the line between reportage and comment and they cross it at their peril. Politicking is likely to have come from an editor.

Don't say 'most' reporters when you haven't got facts to back that up.