The Republic of T.

Braff Blogs

I get the strangest celebrity crushes at times, and for a while now I've had one on Zach Braff—currently starring in the new movie Garden State and on NBC's comedy Scrubs, but who first caught my eye in The Broken Hearts Club. Whenver Scrubs is on I usually find myself in front of the television. I'm not sure what it is about him, or his type (whatever that is) that appeals to me. I guess it's a sort of quirky vulnerability that's conveyed.

Anyway, Braff is blogging. Now, a movie star blogging is not exactly new. But Braff's blog seemed to exist mainly for the purpose of promoting his new movie. I don't get the impression that it will be updated much beyond the initial rollout of the film. (Though were I working for the studio, I'd want it at least revived when the DVD release rolls around.)

Film makers are now using blogs (actor blogs, more specifically) to promote movies. It's just something I found worth nothing at a time when bloggers are now getting press credentials at political conventions and people are wondering about the effect and significance of blogging and bloggers in general.

Turning Up the Heat in Texas?

It appears Bush can't any peace, even in Crawford Texas. Michael Moore is taking his film, Fahrenheit 9/11 to Crawfor for a special showing.

President Bush's weeklong trip to his ranch will be rudely interrupted Wednesday when filmmaker Michael Moore drops in to show his antiwar satire "Fahrenheit 9/11" in enemy territory, eight dusty miles from -- in Moore's view -- the scene of the crime.

Bush held several councils of war at his Prairie Chapel Ranch before invading Iraq, and the Go-Go's song "Vacation" accompanies Moore's barbed cinematic commentary on the amount of time the president spends chopping cedar, golfing and talking to cows.

…Moore's staff agreed to lend a print of the film to the Crawford Peace House, a hovel near the railroad tracks that an activist bought after raising the $6,000 down payment by selling "No War in Iraq" buttons for $1 apiece. The Peace House, which promises "a culturally diverse environment for spiritual growth" and is decorated with slogans like "Question Consumption," put out a red-and-white sign Saturday announcing a screening Wednesday at dusk. The suggested donation is $8.

What few if any people in town know is that Moore is coming along with the film and will introduce it and take questions afterward. He plans to send Bush an invitation to the Crawford premiere.

"He'd get a front-row seat," Moore said in a telephone interview from his native Flint, Mich. "I'd personally pop the popcorn."

Granted, the article goes on to state that most of the tickets were purchased by folks who are not citizen's of Crawford, but I still get a chuckle out of Moore going down there to tweak Bush's nose in his own back yard. One thing caught my attention, however.

A poll released last week by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that Moore is "preaching to the choir," with those who had seen the movie breaking down as 57 percent Democrat, 33 percent independent and 9 percent Republican. A Los Angeles Times poll last week concluded that the movie -- which the White House and Bush-Cheney campaign decided to ignore or brush off when officials were asked about it -- was wielding less influence among potential voters than Moore had hoped.

Bush has not seen the movie and does not plan to, an aide said. Some of Bush's preppy young workers don't want to support Michael Moore but are curious enough that they have been paying to see another film at a multiplex, then sneaking into "Fahrenheit."

The business about people buying a ticket for another movie and then sneaking in to see Fahrenheit is interesting. We were at a barbecue this weekend, hosted by some friends of ours, when the subject of the movie came up, and one person said he knew several people who did the same thing—bought tickets to another movie and then snuck in to see Fahrenheit—because they wanted to see the movie but didn't want to support it (or Moore) financially. Now, after reading this article, I have to wonder if the film isn't reaching an even wider audience than it's getting credit for. My guess is that the folks who are seeing the film without specifically buying tickets for it fall into either the Independent or Republican categories. So, without overestimating the film's ability to change anyone's mind about their vote come November, it may well be planting doubts in the minds of a few voters in those two categories, and perhaps enough for some of them to reconsider casting a vote for Bush.

Anyway, it's just a theory of mine. I doubt very seriously that Fahrenheit is going to change many minds, or cause huge number of people to change their votes. Yet, at the same time, in an election as close as it seems this one is going to be, one doesn't need to influence huge numbers. It may be enough to change a few minds here and there. Every little bit helps, and any little bit may be just enough.

$100 Million

It's official. Just one month after release, Fahrenheit 9/11 has hit the $100 million mark. And the DVD is supposedly coming out sometime in September.

Document This

When it comes to movies, I love documentaries. Half the time, I find them more interesting than a purely fictionalized movie. Real life so often is full of unanswered questions, and rarely do all the lose ends get neatly tied up. Instead, all the characters live on and have to live with their choices after the credits roll. Sometimes the rest of us have to live with their choices too,

The hubby and I had already planned to see Fahrenheit 9/11 this weekend. On my Netflix rental queue, The Fog of War and The Weather Underground were next up, and they arrived on Thursday. So this weekend was all about documentaries, and this post is all about reviewing those documentaries. (I warn you now that some spoilers may follow.)

Fahrenheit 9/11

Finally going to see it today. Review to follow sometime this weekend.

21 Grams/Mystic River

I'm not sure exactly when I developed a "thing" for Sean Penn, but I think it was back when I was growing up and happened to catch Bad Boys on television. Yeah, leave it to a teenage me to get memsmerized by a movie about teenage boys in reform school. Aside from the fact that Penn bore a passing resemblance to the (hopelessly straight) guy I had my first (utterly hopeless) crush on, his acting is what hooked me, and since then I've rarely passed up a chance to catch his performances in films that seemed worthy of his talent. So, after his (much-deserved and late in coming) Oscar win, it was a no brainer that my next DVD double feature would be two of his most recent movies, 21 Grams and Mystic River (featuring Penn's Oscar-winning performance.

Fahrenheit Profits Going Mostly to Charity

I haven't seen the movie yet. We'll most likely see it next weekend, but it's interesting news to hear that a large part of the profits from the movie will be going to charity.

Despite their personal investment, the Weinstein brothers will not be the biggest financial beneficiaries of "Fahrenheit." The real winner: a charity, or charities, as yet unnamed, that will receive about 60 percent of the net profit ultimately generated by the film -- a tally that could be tens of millions of dollars. The Weinsteins, meanwhile, will pocket about 40 percent of the net, according to people familiar with the deal.

More on Fahrenhiet 9/11

Just one line from a review on Altercation.

In fact, the most heartbreaking thing about F 9/11 is that we are now engaged in the national argument over a film that we should have had about going to war.

Heartbreaking, indeed; especially now, when reflecting on the latest attacks, deaths, and beheadings, and realizing that none of this had to hapen. The problem is not just with the Bushies, but also with a lot of Americans who empowered the administration by supporting war with Iraq when they should have had better sense.

A Conservative Review

Well, OK, a Libertarian (I tend to lump them in the conservative category) review of Fahrenheit 9/11 from LewRockwell.Com.

The film itself very much reflects its creator: It's shaggy, flabby, occasionally witty, and frequently infuriating. It will have a HUGE impact because Moore – his facile leftist economics notwithstanding – has nailed his case against the Bush regime flush to the plank. It will be all but impossible for anybody who sits still and watches this film to view Bush the Lesser as anything other than a petty, spiteful, dim-witted, bloody-handed little fool – and the figurehead of a murderous power elite. This explains why the Bu'ushists are threatening to go Abu Ghraib on Moore: They're busted.

—I chatted with several other people as they left the theater, all of them roughly my age (early 40s) and of similar economic and cultural background. Each of them indicated that he or she would urge friends to see the film – which means that it will have "legs" even if the GOP and FEC were to choke off advertising somehow.

There were no screaming Bolsheviks (one viewer had an anti-animal rights T-shirt) or marijuana-scented bohemians in the crowd. This wasn't the sort of crowd you'd see at a Phish concert, or storming McDonald's at an anti-WTO rally. There were Wal-Mart customers, people who probably listen to country music (even Toby Keith), and even vote Republican. And they were PISSED – quietly, but palpably. A would-be political prisoner Martha Stewart would say, that's a good thing. And well overdue.

I haven't seen the movie yet, but we plan to as soon as possible. Being parents, going to a movie takes only slightly less planning than the Normandy invasion. But we're going to see this movie.

On another intersting note, Michael Moore says his next film will target the U.S. healthcare system.

Michael Moore, whose controversial awarding-winning attack on the Bush regime, Fahrenheit 9/11, opens in Britain on 9 July, has revealed that he is to turn his camera on healthcare in the United States.

The director and author will attempt to save as many lives as he can by simply intervening with his camera crew during the course of 90 minutes of filming. He hopes to embarrass health insurance companies and hospitals into continuing to care for patients with no cover - highlighting holes in the American system.

…Moore said he had the idea when making his TV show, The Awful Truth, shown in Britain on Channel 4. 'We had this guy who was going to die because his HMO [insurers] wouldn't pay for his transplant so we went with him and conducted a funeral rehearsal,' said Moore. 'The HMO was ashamed and paid for the transplant and he lives to this day.'

The Corporation

While you're online buying tickets to see Fahrenheit 9/11 (Unfortunately, I'm not going to see it this weekend, but most likely next weekend), check out the—trailer for another movie—The Corporation—that's coming to theatre near you.

In this complex and highly entertaining documentary, Mark Achbar, co-director of the influential and inventive MANUFACTURING CONSENT: NOAM CHOMSKY AND THE MEDIA, teams up with co-director Jennifer Abbott and writer Joel Bakan to examine the far-reaching repercussions of the corporation’s increasing preeminence. Based on Bakan’s book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, the film is a timely, critical inquiry that invites CEOs, whistle-blowers, brokers, gurus, spies, players, pawns and pundits on a graphic and engaging quest to reveal the 4corporation’s inner workings, curious history, controversial impacts and possible futures. Featuring illuminating interviews with Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Howard Zinn and many others, THE CORPORATION charts the spectacular rise of an institution aimed at achieving specific economic goals as it also recounts victories against this apparently invincible force.

It's on my list of movies to see, when it comes to D.C. In the meantime. maybe I'll read the book.