Farenheit 911 Scores Perfect Zero-No Oscars for Michael

The BBQ Pit
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Really? Perhaps this is why some posters have a problem with the term. Viewing my own well-worn collegiate dictionary- doucmentary adj 1: contained or certified in writing 2: of, relating to, or employing documentation in literature or art; broadly FACTUAL, OBJECTIVE

No emphasis added-that’s how the book shows it. Mr. Moore’s work is not a documentary, it’s a politically driven piece. While some will argue as to it’s factuality, it is in no way objective. He hates Bush, which is why he is the darling of the left. By not allowing 9/11 to be considered as a documentary and betting on best picture, he played the long ball and lost. Michael Moore is full of himself, and that is why I pitted him. Had any of the wailing, whining supporters who are willing to attack posters actually read the link, they might have understood what the pitting was about. Perhaps I relied on too much.

102

Bearing aside that that definition has already been posted and discussed, the objectivity has nothing to do with whether it would have been considered as a documentary by the Academy (It would have. He’s up for other awards from the Director’s Guild and Documentary Association). I am more than willing to believe that Moore’s ego rank amok and didn’t want to ‘lower himself’ to competing in the straight doc category – so he’s guilty of grandstanding. I also doubt he actually he thought he’d get a nomination and if he did, he was delusional, since no other documentary has ever been nominated for best pic and only a handful (Hoop Dreams, notably) have gotten other nominations (for editing).

What, you thought no one would argue with you in the Pit?

103

I very much doubt that MM hates Bush, in the same way I don’t. That would be like hating Pinnochio rather than Gepetto. What we hate, what we truly hate…is what these men are doing to our country.

GeeDubya is a marketable product. So long as he sticks to the script his handlers lay out for him, he’s cool. But don’t you notice that when he wings it, he fucks up? Isn’t that what really rankles about* F451*? They show the outakes, the bloopers, the unguarded moment…GeeDubya as he really is, not the packaged goods you bought.

Do you believe in magic? Miracles? Do you believe that a pampered and feckless mediocrity can suddenly transmorgify into a Leader of Men? By what divine intervention? What metaphysical mechanism do you put your faith in, that such things can happen? Fate? Divine guidance? Do you seriously imagine, for one second, that GeeDubya would be name you would recognize if he was born in a broken home in Arkansas? For all Bill Clinton’s failings, and they are legion, he built the man he is, from scratch, from Arkansas to Oxford to the White House. GeeDubya was born on third base and believes he hit a triple.

The boy who points out that the Emperor has no flight suit is a pimply little snot. I don’t have any illusions about MM, he doesn’t matter. But as long as these men can wrap a vacuum in an American flag, swell up the patriotic music and bloviate a few stern platitudes and sell us a President…this shit will keep happening to us.

Isn’t that really it? When you talk with people like yourself, who hate MM and his movie, isn’t that really what its about? Not that he made GeeDubya look evil, that he made GeeDubya look foolish.

GeeDubya is foolish. And that’s worse, far worse, than evil.

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You can’t argue complex subjects such, as the history of an entire genre of art, by relying solely on dictionary definitions. Find a more comprehensive source that agrees with your definition, and I’ll listen. If all you have is dictionaries (and, note, only some dictionaries), then don’t bother posting. You haven’t got jack shit.

Yes, it was a biased, politcally driven documentary. Same as Triumph of the Will. Same as Why We Fight. Are you saying these films were not documentaries? Can you find one credible filmmaker who would agree with you?

Yeah, you got us pegged there. He’s our God-King. We worship and sing hossanahs unto him every morn. This has nothing at all to do with anything I’ve posted here. Wether or not I agree with a film has no bearing on wether or not that film is a documentary.

More likely, he decided that he’d rather rake in the long green by releasing his highly controversial documentary right before the election, than hold it back so that he might get yet another tacky gold statue and have the DVD sales tank after the issue had already been decided. Jesus Christ, if you’re going to malign the man, at least pick a motive that makes a single bit of fucking sense. Documentaries do not win Best Picture. Ever. They don’t even get nominated for best picture. Moore would have to be either a congenital idiot, or a full-blown schizophrenic to think he had a chance at Best Picture.

Sure, whatever you say.

I give as much of a fuck about Michael Moore as I do about your pit thread. I’m objecting to morons who cherry-pick one definition out of a goddamned dictionary and think that means they understand an entire genre of film.

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Is everything okay with you, Miller?

I’m not being facetious here, either. I’ve seen you participate in a great many threads where more substantive issues than this were under debate and I don’t recall nearly so much anger from you. The way you’re acting is more than a little out of character for you. You know I have a high regard for you and I hope everything is okay.

I really do. :slight_smile:

106

Just give up, man.

It’s a documentary.

“Documentary” is a noun in this sentence. Compare with “it’s a house”, for example. “House” can be an adjective too (house music, house party), but obviously it isn’t acting as one in that sentence.

The film is a documentary.

Same as above, with the pronoun “it” replaced with the noun phrase “the film”. Same rule applies: when you say “(noun) is a ___”, a noun goes in the blank. “A (adjective)” just doesn’t work - would you say “the clown is a happy” or “the car is a fast”?

It’s a documentary film.

There you go.

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Is not. :wink:

“Documentary” implies truth and credibility, and therefore it carries a certain amount of lightweight gravitas.

Neither truth nor credibility are hallmarks of Moore and his works.

108

Funny how so many people seem to think showing facts and news clips, and linking them with narration and sequencing to present a point of view, is somehow untruthful.

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Well Fuck it. You guys have it right… Documentaries are all objective and without bias.

By that definition Mr Moore’s movie is not a documentary.

By that definition there has never been a documentary film made… ever.

See? Simple. The academy should remove the category and we should stop using the term until someone makes that competely unsubjective film.
Easy peasy.

Happy?

110

Yeah, I understand how that can happen when you’re wrong about something.

How can you call F911 “factual” when he lied about the Pantagraph quote?

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Ah yes. That’s the scene that showed a newspaper with the wrong date, with some text reformatted and enlarged, right?

As long as you’re setting the bar that low, why don’t you cross reference all the end credits with IMDB? That big fat liar might have misspelled someone’s name!

112

Well, let’s have a fair comparison… How about the stirring documentary, Mission Accomplished, starring GeeDubya, as The Leader, and a cast of thousands from the USS Abraham Lincoln. You remember that one, don’t you?

How the ship was held up for hours so that The Leader could land on the deck? How they used a jet transport, even though well within helicopter range? How they made the ship turn round to have the coastline in the TV shot? How The Leader strode, oh, so manfully, with the words “Yes, I flew it!” Anybody believe that? Anybody?

Remember how they displayed that big ol’ banner, “Mission Accompished”, then, when criticized, tried to weasel out of it by claiming that it was all the crews doing? Of course, it was produced in Washington, DC, by the Presidents Orcs, but they wouldn’t cop to it, not if anyone was being critical of Himself. So they dumped it on the crew, they’re just extras, after all.

So how many lies is that in this brief little film clip?

And in comparison, that headline was not on that page, and not in that typescript! Gasp! The mendacity!

If Moore worked 24/7, didn’t sleep, didn’t eat, for six months, he couldn’t put out the body of lies that this admin. puts out between lunch and dinner.

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The Pantagraph is not a pantagraph. The owner and or editor are LIARS. We must not believe anything they say, or the terrorists will have won.

114

Very true. So, why bother? Just make shit up.

There never was a war without atrocities, either. So, why bother?

115

I don’t recall hearing anything about torture and atrocities in the American Revolutionary War.

Why do you hate America, New Iskander?

116

???!?!?!?!?! I’m sure you have a point there but you’ve got me stumped!

I never said anything about made up shit, I’m merely pointing out anyone deluded enough to believe that documentaries are objective works have set the bar to an impossible level. By their standard (and the dictionary definitions they keep pointing to) there have never been documentaries ever made.

Once you make a choice what to point the camera at and what is cut out or what is cut together to create a narrative you have made a subjective piece of film. It is impossible to make a documentary that is objective. Even if you have no narration playing connect the dots you still have a message by what you show. For example take Atomic cafe.

It shows many clips of 50s atomic bomb educational films as well as test films from the era. No narration just the clips which weren’t even filmed by the director.

You might think oh that is objective, but guess what, It ain’t. When you watch it it is quite obvious it is an anti nuke film. You know by watching what the director is telling you by what he shows you and how he pieces it together.

No one has ever nor will ever meet the standard of objectivity that is proposed by those who use a dictionary as the means to judge what is or what isn’t a documentary.

117

Technically, those quoting from Dictionary.com or the like are not using a dictionary to support their argument. If you look up ‘Dictionary’ in one of these online sources, you’ll see that it’s defined thusly:

There are no books online, thus there are no dictionaries online.

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book (from the Oxford English Dictionary):

  1. c. A literary composition such as would occupy one or more volumes, without regard to the material form or forms in which it actually exists; ‘an intellectual composition, in prose or verse, at least of sufficient extent to make one volume’ (Littré s.v. livre). In this sense Carlyle described himself as ‘a writer of books’.
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Looks to me like the OED is weaseling in an attempt to keep its definitions in tune with this fast paced world.

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And material in any format that WOULD fill a volume is a book – or so say the treacherous weasels who want yesterday’s words to meet the needs of today’s high-tech world.