Just for our mutual clarification:

According to iwon

"LOS ANGELES (AP) - Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" took in a whopping $21.8 million in its first three days, becoming the first documentary ever to debut as Hollywood's top weekend film.

If Sunday's estimates hold when final numbers are released Monday, "Fahrenheit 9/11" would set a record in a single weekend as the top-grossing documentary ever outside of concert films and movies made for huge-screen IMAX theaters."

I'd agree with a new word. I think the use of "documentary" is misleading and reflects unfairly on thousands of real documentaries that are out there and based on fact.

I don't mean this to be a swipe at Moore, but the vast majority of his work is based on his very far far left-wing opinion.

Isn't it ironic that he's a millionaire off of this stuff? He should voluntarily pay higher taxes.

No that's not what medical research groups are and documentaries are not all "propaganda". And impeachments, lynchmobs? What known conservative director? What movies have been made? What are you basing this on? Anything? Anything at all??

Anyway from The National Review, a very liberal publication:
https://ssl.tnr.com/p/docsub.mhtml?i...s&s=just062804
DAILY EXPRESS
Conflation Rate
by Richard Just

Only at TNR Online | Post date 06.28.04
A mainstream liberal consensus on Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 has emerged quickly. It goes something like this: Moore's a nutty conspiracy theorist, and parts of the movie--in which he suggests, among other things, that we invaded Afghanistan not because of 9/11 but because we wanted to build a natural gas pipeline--showcase Moore at his least responsible. But he's also a talented polemicist and filmmaker; and as a result, the second half of the movie--in which he uses the story of Lila Lipscomb, a grieving military mother, to examine why it is only the poor and working class who sacrifice in times of war--is both profound and smart. In The New York Times, A.O. Scott called the interviews with Lipscomb the "most moving sections" of the film. If the folks with whom I saw the movie provide any indication, audiences across the country will leave the theater so moved by Lipscomb's story that they will forgive Fahrenheit 9/11 its often-incoherent points and poorly supported accusations. That, I suspect, is exactly what Moore wanted: to wrap assertions that can only be described as odd--such as his insistence that the military is failing to adequately patrol miles of deserted Oregonian coast--in the heart-breaking story of a mother's loss and the legitimate observation that America's system of military service asks too much of the poor and too little of elites....

-Rudey

If that is all this columnist got out of that portion of the film (poor vs. "elite"), then he has completely missed the point of Mrs. Lipscomb's story.

Perhaps you should read the whole thing...or you can tell us what makes you more qualified than "this columnist"?

Anyway here is another snippet of a review:
Unfairenheit 9/11
The lies of Michael Moore.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, June 21, 2004, at 12:26 PM PT
http://slate.msn.com/id/2102723
To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery.

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. And Iraq itself would still be the personal property of a psychopathic crime family, bargaining covertly with the slave state of North Korea for WMD. You might hope that a retrospective awareness of this kind would induce a little modesty. To the contrary, it is employed to pump air into one of the great sagging blimps of our sorry, mediocre, celeb-rotten culture. Rock the vote, indeed.

Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His latest book, Blood, Class and Empire: The Enduring Anglo-American Relationship, is out in paperback. Also, he served with the Nation (a much more liberal piece).

-Rudey
--Do you even know how to sail?

I don't know.
Everything I've seen about Michael Moores points to two things

a) He's a drama-king
b) He WANTS to piss you off

I've read 3 of his books, and will be seeing Fah. 9/11 soon. It doesn't surprise me that it's unfactual. I think Moore is out to piss people off and get y'all talking.

But I agree - if it's a documentary of anything - it is of his journey in the film. Is there such a thing as an "Editorial Documentary"?

It's not "unfactual," although some things are omitted to suit MM's purpose.
But MM has obviously done his job, because we ARE talking about it.

Thanks for answering my questions, Leslie. Maybe I will go see the movie.

I agree that it would be really hard for MM to top Roger & Me.

I'm planning on going to see it.

No Problem!
I haven't seen Roger & Me, but I hear it's great. I think I will rent it.

Just got back from the movie... over all not bad, although I felt he was lifting a footage from the CBC; all the Bush-Bin Laden thing has been done to death up hear in various news exposes... overall it was very entertaining and pretty much what I expected.

I don't think you could call the movie a documentary though, because the film-maker was pushing his view point through-out and he didn't adequately explore the subject matter from other perspectives... I'd call it a expose or something else along those lines... a good example of a documentary was "Fog of War" were the information was more or less presented and the viewer could make an unpressured opion of the piece.

Does it have a cartoon in it like the last one did? That's the only reason I'd go- otherwise I already know what Moore will show/say- I think we all do.

True. He does present things in an entertaining way. I may disagree with him on nearly everything he says, but I'll watch his stuff because it entertains me. Kind of like Spielberg.

I'm going to buy a ticket to see The Notebook and sneak in. I'd hate for these guys to get any of my money. I'm really curious about it though............should be very very interesting.

He's not "unfactual" . . . he's just ridiculous. He plays logical fallacies to the extreme - which i love when i'm taking the LSAT or trying to make out w/ my WI girls, but hate when it's time to play "real politics"