Bowling for Columbine...

[Guest Mole]

It took about 3 weeks for Bowling for Columbine to download, and it was worth the wait.

 

First off, the quality of the movie is awesome. It says at the bottom that MGM put it out so people could view it for the Oscars.

 

Second, this is one of the best documentry I've seen since Hoop Dreams. At some points, Moore is funny as fuck, while other times it's very serious. He made his point about guns very well, and everything was good.

 

Anyone else see it?

[Guest treble charged]

Is it on Kazaa now? Last 2 times I tried to download it I got Goldmember and Signs.

[Guest bob_barron]

I don't think Bowling for Columbine qualifies as a documentary. It's pure farce

[Guest Texas Small Arms 09]

I agree with Bob, that was full of crap

[Guest Mik at Cornell]

Just because it's someone's opinion and presented as so doesn't make it less of a documentary.

[Guest bob_barron]

Well when Moore stages scenes and stuff like that- it kinda loses its credibility

[Guest WrestlingDeacon]

I think it's a good and thought provoking film, but for Moore to present it as a sort of straight documentary is a little misleading. Moore is a brilliant filmmaker with a distinct sense of humor and he knows how to craft a movie. Although if you want to get into what is and isn't a documentary, Moore is more of into the pseudo or mockumentary style that was pioneered by Spinal Tap than what has constituted "real" documentaries of the past.

[Guest Crazy Dan]

I thought it was an excellant film. It raised some good points. One, a reason why there might be so many gun deaths, is due to the media obsession of putting every violent story they can find. It's this fear that we, as Americans, are constantly put in. From Y2K, to killer bees, to child kidnappings (even if on a national average they were way down). Didn't any one find it strange that a bank doubles as a gun shop?

 

Also, I have read on other posts that the kid who shot that girl, was a bully and bad kid. And maybe so, but that wasn't the point, the point was that since the kid's mother was on this state government program which had her on a bus on 60 mile journey to work two crappy paying jobs. Because of this, she was not able to raise her kid properly.

 

Second, why does the NRA have this thing about having gun rallies in the same town of a gun tragedy? They had a gun rally right after the Columbine shooting. Isn't that a little heartless?

 

He also made Charleton Heston look really bad. And Charleton Heston has no one to blame but himself, or maybe it was the Alzheiner's that he came out with

 

The point of the movie wasn't to say "guns are bad". No this movie was trying to find out why we have such a high number of gun related deaths. And he deducted that we are put into constant fear and mistrust of one another. It wasn't the video games, Japan puts out most of the violent video games. It's not the music, Germany is the king of death-goth music. And it really was not the guns, since Canada has over 10 million guns. It's the media's and higher ups who have us in constant fear (Color orange anyone).

 

Also, I loved the "History of America" done by the South Park creators, who happened to go to Columbine.

 

What was also tthought provoking was the showing the Columbine footage of the event unfolding. He also threw in clips of kids afterwards all emotionally torn up from the massacre.

 

And he got Kmart to take bullets of it's shelves, when it is was shown how easy it was to purchase them and how Kmart only cared when it was made to look, desevedly, bad.

 

The last thing to think about. Moore actually interviews Marilyn Manson, who many, including John "Bumpkin" Gibson, of fox news, blamed the Columbine incident on. Marilyn explain himself very well, and when asked what he would say to the vicitms of Columbine, he stated "I would say nothing. I would have just listened to them. Because, no one did."

 

This was my favorite film of last year.

[Guest Mik at Cornell]

I agree with Crazy Dan. I saw this film in Australia and it made me think, laugh and at points almost moved me to tears. It made me look at my country in a different light and even listening to some of the Australians talk about the film when I came out of the movie. It really gave me a whole new perspective on just how violent we are as a nation. Granted, Moore has his own way of presenting the facts, but the message of the film shouldn't be lost. It was the best documentary of the year and he deserved the Oscar, IMO. I'll be buying it on DVD.

[Guest TUS_02]

http://www.hardylaw.net/Truth_About_Bowling.html

 

This site kinda backs up what Bob said about the movie. But people should know what the true stories are.

[Guest MDH257]

The hardylaw.net guy appears to be a 2nd amendment lawyer. I'm not saying he's not being truthful, but his loyalty is to the pro-gun movement.

 

There's supposed to be a Wall Street Journal article that tries to "expose"

Bowling for Columbine and Micheal Moore and goes into many of the same things that web site writes about. I hope someone post a link to it.

 

I think Michael Moore is his own worst enemy. There are so many good points that he makes that no one will ever consider because he's just a "liberal fat fuck".

 

BTW, Bowling for Columbine won Best Original Screenplay at the Writer's Guild Awards a couple of weeks ago. The movie deserved it, if only for the History of the United States cartoon.

[Guest LooseCannon]

This NY Press article on the 50 most loathsome New Yorkers sums up my feelings on this movie and michael moore pretty well.

 

"3 Michael Moore, Filmmaker/Activist

 

Slagging on this pandering blowhard is nothing new—especially not in these pages—but he makes it so easy. In the despicable Bowling for Columbine, the lumbering behemoth makes fun of working-class whites in order to make over-educated whites feel better about themselves. His arguments against gun control are simplistic, weak and mired in the cloying stink of self-service, which smells suspiciously like a fat man’s crack. Every time Moore comes out in support of a liberal band or politician or fellow celebrity—as he proved last Sunday night—the hardworking, intelligent and reasoned left is degraded by association. It’s time for activists to jettison the ballast that is Michael Moore and start repairing the damage."

[Guest MDH257]

I saw a disscussion of his Oscar speech on another message board and someone said: "Why are liberals only allowed to be soft spoken NPR types when consevatives got there voices heard by yelling just as loud as Moore does."

[Guest Mole]

After reading what TUS said to read, I believe that man is defiently pro-gun. Everything that is said is indeed true, and Moore did spread the facts out a bit.

 

However, I think Moore is just trying to get his point across that there is a problem in the US and no one knows why. Isn't that the case here?

[Guest Dangerous A]

I saw Bowling for Columbine when it first came out.

 

Is it thought provoking? Yes

 

Is it a real documentary? Hardly

 

Moore has good points about the destructive nature of guns, but offers no real solution other than the subtle "ban all guns" thing. It should be seen, but watch it defensively.

[Guest SP-1]

I really hope he doesn't hint at "ban all guns" because that's just retarded. I'd have to throw something at the TV.

[Guest LooseCannon]

I saw a disscussion of his Oscar speech on another message board and someone said: "Why are liberals only allowed to be soft spoken NPR types when consevatives got there voices heard by yelling just as loud as Moore does."

Some stripes of liberals distance themselves from a guy like Michael Moore because they consider themselves too educated to be swayed by the loud, populist invocation of red herrings that people like Michael Moore and Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly employ.

[Guest LooseCannon]

I really hope he doesn't hint at "ban all guns" because that's just retarded. I'd have to throw something at the TV.

In an article I read on Salon.com, Moore says that guns aren't really the problem, American culture is, and he says that we should become more Canadian-like.

[Guest Incandenza]

Moore has good points about the destructive nature of guns, but offers no real solution other than the subtle "ban all guns" thing. It should be seen, but watch it defensively.

The film offers no solution because there is no solution. Moore says as much himself. The film never proposes banning guns; it's more about why American culture is so violent.

[Guest Dmann2000]

Well when Moore stages scenes and stuff like that- it kinda loses its credibility

Errol Morris does that all the time, does his work suffer as a result?

 

As my film professor said in our documentary class. "There's no such thing as a documentary. Every film has the influence of its makers all over it. To say it's more real because it's 'non-fiction' is ridiculous."

 

I view Moore's films as Oliver's Stone's. I doubt things are 100 % accurate, but I believe the man believes everything he puts up on the screen.

[Guest Mole]

Good point DMann

[Guest cartman]

Great movie, no matter what anyone tells you, it's ALL true.

[Guest bob_barron]

--- Forbes reports that an early scene in "Bowling" in which Mr. Moore tries to demonstrate how easy it is to obtain guns in America was staged. He goes to a small bank in Traverse City, Mich., that offers various inducements to open an account and claims "I put $1,000 in a long-term account, they did the background check, and, within an hour, I walked out with my new Weatherby," a rifle.

 

But Jan Jacobson, the bank employee who worked with Mr. Moore on his account, says that only happened because Mr. Moore's film company had worked for a month to stage the scene. "What happened at the bank was a prearranged thing," she says. The gun was brought from a gun dealer in another city, where it would normally have to be picked up. "Typically, you're looking at a week to 10 days waiting period," she says. Ms. Jacobson feels used: "He just portrayed us as backward hicks."

[Guest cartman]

Then why did they say they had 500 guns in their vaults at all times? Were they forced to "stage" that? If so then how can they say they got used?

[Guest treble charged]

I really wish he hadn't tried to blame some of the shooting deaths on Dick Clark, Charleton Heston, and K-Mart. It really hurt the film, in my mind.

[Guest cartman]

Actually it helped make them look like the assholes they really are.

[Guest Anorak]

As my film professor said in our documentary class.  "There's no such thing as a documentary.  Every film has the influence of its makers all over it.  To say it's more real because it's 'non-fiction' is ridiculous."

I'm glad somebody in this thread finally had the brains to raise that point. I had to laugh about the earlier line about Moore's film being phony compared to 'the real documentaries of the past'.

 

Apart from manipulating our emotions in a rather heavy handed manner in a couple of scenes Moore's film was a witty and intelligent look into an emotive and controversial issue. The majority of faceless hacks villifying Moore either sit on the opposite fence to him politically or have vested interests in the institutions he is pointing his finger at. Every politicised documentary maker in history is 'guilty' of the same things pinned on Moore in such a hysterical and pathetically predictable manner. The majority of Moore bashing falls into the same narrow minded category as those moronic peace protester bashing pieces you see around the CE folder. All petty minded, shallow and self-satisfied 'observations' from those whose pig headedness substitutes poorly for a genuinely open mind or modicum of real intelligence.

[Guest bob_barron]

Actually it helped make them look like the assholes they really are.

Last I checked none of them ever pulled the trigger

[Guest treble charged]

Yeah, blaming those people (ESPECIALLY Dick Clark, who did nothing wrong at all) just comes off as cowardly. And putting the picture of the dead little girl on Charlton Heston's driveway (or whatever) is also an assholish thing to do.

[Guest Crazy Dan]

I think the whole Dick Clark thing had something to do with the fact that Dick Clark's chain restuarants are employing workers from that state run work program. Those programs have many single parents on a bus, going a good distance to work in resturants, like the one Dick Clark owns, for very low money. And this is leading to many kids not being raised with adequate parental supervision. Moore even interviewed a county DA, who said that this program was not a good idea.

 

When Moore asked Clark what he thought about it, Dick Clark came off as very cold, like he didn't care.

 

And you are right, it wasn't his fault. But maybe when he allows his restuarants to be a part of these work programs, that this might, just might be a contributing part to the over all problem.

 

I trully think that people in this country has this huge love affair with guns. I trully don't get it. I mean, if people hunt, and own shotguns and rifles for the sport, then I have no problem. But when the NRA fights for your right to own armor piercing bullets, the guns that the killers of Columbine used which really has only one purpose, and automatic assualt rifles, then that borders own abusing the Second Amendment, IMO.

 

If people want to own guns in this country, then I will not stand in your way becuase it is your right, but will it trully make you any safer? I personally have never known anyone who has had their house broken into. My family has never had a break in before. None of my friend's families has either. For that matter, I don't recall any of neighbors ever having a break in before either. So when I hear the "protection" argument, please ask yourselves what are you protecting yourself from exactly? I mean I might understand if you live right in the middle of a war zone. But many people live in decent neighborhoods. There is always a possibility of a break in, I will not argue that. But, I can not live my life in fear. If my place is broken into, I will let whoever has broken in, take what they want and leave. That is what insurance is for. A gun will not bring me any gauranteed of safety, and in many cases it brings in more problems.