|
Edited on Sat Jun-26-04 03:01 PM by noahmijo
I caught the late showing (10:30 with two friends and my girl) and it was a packed house, and no freepers ruined the movie or were even there. This was in Oro Valley, Arizona, a town that is mostly Republican (but I suspect they are all RINOs) just outside of Tucson, Az.
No different than any other showing, the movie got a massive standing ovation at the end.
It starts with 2000 election and portrays how Bush stole the election, stripped blacks from the right to vote, and even showed great footage of the protestors in DC during Bush's inauguration to sort of build up the angry emotion you're bound to contain throughout the whole movie.
Then not to give too much away, let's just say for about the first quarter of the movie up untill the segment about Bush and The Saudis, is like 20 minutes or so of "Bush's greatest acts of Buffoonary" lots of laughing opportunities as you see just how inept and buffonish our "president" is.
Of course this is nothing new to most of us on here, but still to see some footage that we otherwise would NEVER see anywhere else.
Then we got to Bush and his Saudi friends. Moore pulled no punches in making the Saudi Royal Family and Bandar look like the villans they are, and told it all showing facts, documents and hard evidence as to the ties between the Bush family and the Saudis and EVEN THE TALIBAN!
We're talking photos of the bushies with the saudis, I mean I'm sorry, but if these are nothing but "lies" I really want to see how anyone can prove Moore's charges and evidence wrong.
Okay here's a big talking point to disprove everything Moore says. In his movie he's interviewing Richard Clarke, and Clarke says basically that Bush was all about Iraq, he was always about Iraq, he didn't want to hear about Al-Queda, The Saudis, it was Iraq, Iraq, Iraq.
Also as we all know, Moore shows the facts behind the Bin Ladens being flown out of the country (even going so far as to say that even a civil libertarian wouldn't have protested simply sitting them down and asking them questions), but the Repubs like to claims that it was CLARKE who thought of the idea of rushing the Bin Ladens out based on the fact that he authorized it.
Okay first off I will admit I haven't read a transcript of Clarke admitting this, but let's pretend he did AUTHORIZE it.
That's not the same as ORDERING it. We don't know what went on behind the scenes. Is it possible that maybe Bush put a little pressure on Clarke to authorize IF in fact Clarke did authorize it?
Not to mention being the "President" if Clarke did authorize it, then why didn't Bush say "hey bad idea, I won't allow that and I'm the president, the big boss here, we need to question these people."
But of course we know he didn't, so therefore no matter how you slice it, the Bush family got a free flight out whether Bush ordered it or stood by and did nothing about it.
Then the movie goes into the ordeal in Afghanistan and talks about how we sent far too little troops to really get the job done, and a whole list of other screw-ups in a way that sort of portrays that hmm maybe Bush wasn't so gung-ho to really nab Al-Queda...and Osama......
Then in one of the most moving segments in the film we become introduce to a woman who calls herself a "Conservative Democrat" This woman essentially tells Moore how she pushed her children to go into the military in order to help pay for college, and she herself assists those who live in poverty.
In an interesting little minute, she tells Moore how she loathed the protestors because she felt they were spitting on her children in the military, but then she says basically that she understood that the protestors were against the war, not her children.
You get the idea that she wasn't so gung-ho about the Iraq war, from the interview with her, she's just more intent on having her kids come home safely.
Unfortunately we discover that her son dies in a Black Hawk crash. In a tear jerking segment she reads the last letter he ever wrote.
Within the letter her son wrote that Bush completely has hoodwinked the country (these are not direct quotes but this is the jist of what he said) and that he hopes that there is a regime change in America.
**Minor Spoiler Alert-A segment that really you have to see it to really experience it though**
Later Moore follows her as she goes to DC and stops in front of the White House, which appears to be blocked off and heavily guarded by Secret Service. She finds a protestor who is camped out and when she spots her the protestor starts to say how Bush is a liar and is a murderer ect, and she (the woman whose son died) says tearfully "my son died in this war, my son, my boy"
The protestor was obviously from some foreign country, I couldn't tell though because she had a very quiet voice and I couldn't make out the accent, but it sounded like she was saying something like "Bush is a murderer and a liar, he's sending our sons and daughters to die for lies ect"
Then some other woman comes along and snaps "This is all staged it's just a stage, you should be blaming Al-Queda!"
The woman whose son died turns to her and says "my son is not a stage, my son died in this war, MY SON, for Bush's lies"
The woman then simply says "Your son's not the only one!" and walks away.
*********************************
You know fellow DU'ers I don't believe in hitting women.
But I wouldn't have minded one bit taking a 2X4 to this bitch's head for that remark....it's just unbelievable how some people can be how ignorant.....right to her face "your son isn't the only one" as if her son was nothing but a number....
Anyways, alot of footage in Iraq is shown. We see soldiers acting like degenerates, (this is what the rw talk shows are basing their "Moore spits on the soldiers" theory) but we also see soldiers talking about how they feel duped, how they don't know why they are there, then Moore proceeds to talk about how Bush has cut hazard pay and benefits for both soldiers and veterans.
Lots of distrubing images from Iraq as well, I don't want to describe them here, just watch it. Most of it though is nothing you haven't seen in photos, but here you see them in motion, it becomes far more real than a photograph.
We see soldiers in the hospital with serious injuries, amputees it's just a sad sick sight.
So ultimately in fairness we see a small group of "bad" soldiers, but we see the good soldiers, the soldiers who have been used as tools by our government, and if anything I thought this segment to be pro-military in that Moore's message was basically that our soldiers should be treasured and hailed as the brave people that they are, and that we can't blame them for just doing their job, and overall we should NEVER have be sending our soldiers off to fight and die unless the US is in a situation where a nation or large group or whatever is clearly threatening or has already attacked our nation.
I'll stop here, just go and see it, it truly is an amazing film, and it was better than I thought it would be.
The thing that Moore does I will admit is he engages in clever editing to sort of enhance the emotion. For example after seeing the woman who lost a son in Iraq crying and in agony over her loss, Shrub's smirking face fills the screen and says "I can't imagine what it would be like to lose a child" or something like that. (can't remember exact quote)
So you see this is what the right and its shills, call "lying" and "false editing" ect.
WHERE'S THE LIE????? Look he does edit the movie in a way to enhance the emotion, to really give you perspective, but in the example that I gave, is this woman's story a lie? if so can you prove it? and did Bush not say what he's caught saying on camera? was it his double or something?
Anyways, I highly recommend this movie, see it for yourself, but beware if you're already an emotional Bush hater, you may want to wait for it to come out on DVD otherwise you may find yourself involuntarily shouting certain words and phrases out that even a sailor would blush at at the screen in front of hundreds of strangers.
:)
|