So I’m watching it as I type. Lots of hindsight to ruminate on while I reacting to it. Quite surreal to confront all of the things it throws at the viewer with so much time passed.
Any other late bloomers out there?
I haven’t seen it yet, actually. But I’m screamingly liberal. Really.
Haven’t seen it yet, but in my case it would be preaching to the choir.
I couldn’t handle sitting through it all at once, so I split it into manageable chunks, and I’m still watching some of the DVD features.
I’m certainly in the choir as well (sometimes soprano, sometimes alto, tenor every once in a while).
My strongest reaction, at this point, is that I miss the dialogue that this movie brought with it. It seems like we’ve gotten desensitized again, and our short attention spans have flitted off to other shiney things, when many (if not all) of the issues illuminated by the film are very far from resolved.
This article published today by the Washington Post was part of the reason I finally went out and rented it today:
I’m a liberal who hasn’t seen it yet, and I intend to keep it that way. So as long as I’m living, no liberal who watches it will be the last.
Me too. I am Spartacus!
Um, I meant to say No, I have not seen it either. Simply becuase I never go out to the cinema and I don’t have an video-thingy-whatsit-machine. Or even this fun new-fangled DVD stuff.
(I’m not really a Luddite, just rather penniless) 
I saw it in theaters. On reflection it was a rather bad way to spend that money. Not saying that it wasn’t worth seeing, just not worth seeing in theaters.
I ain’t done seen it, but I do see that I’m moving this thread to Cafe Society. If it gets too deep (what with the inevitable debates), it might later mosey its way over to Great Debates or, depending on the tone, the Pit.
Technically, I’m considered a liberal, but I’ve not seen the film and have no desire to do so.
I’m a liberal, and I just got the DVD from the local library yesterday! It’s sitting here on my “in” shelf.
[It had been on reserve for months; when I signed up I was something like #150 on the list, with 4 copies available, so it’s taken this long to get it.]
When it first came out, pretty much everyone I knew went to see it, and would call me afterwards and say “You have to see it, there’s a scene where they point out fact X”, and I had to tell them that I already knew that (often via research prompted from an SDMB discussion).
I’ll probably get round to watching it tomorrow evening. I’m expecting to find it interesting as a document, but will be very surprised to learn anything new.
My brother rented it a few weeks ago for his first time watching it, and I saw it again with him. Was interesting, though the various critisicms about Moore’s love of weaving bad conspiracy theorys and such are well justified, and that really brought the first half of the movie down.
The best part was how Moore split the movie in to two distinct halves. The first was about the people who make the decision to go to war, both here and in the Middle East, how they’re all part of the same club of rich folks, while the second half delt with the people who were affected by the war, and how far they are from those who make the decisions.
Also, my brother has been getting the inevidible calls from army recruiters (just graduated from HS) and was seriously considering joining. This movie, particularaly the bits with the military recruiters has really convinced him to take the claims of the various sergents calling our house with a little more skepticism, which certainly redeems F 9/11’s faults in my eyes anyways.
It was interesting. Moore is good at the documentary thing, but bad at the oratory thing: the movie was much more effective when Moore just shut up and let the footage do the talking.
Moore inserting himself in his movies as a sort of bumbling everyman was a lot more effective in his earlier stuff, especially Roger and Me and his TV shows. It doesn’t work as well here. I think it’s partly because the topic, I’m far more inclined to listen to a scruffy guy in a baseball cap discuss the plight of the working poor then I am to listen to him discuss global politics and finance. He has also been in the media a lot lately, often not in flatering contexts, so seeing him again in the movie suffered somewhat from his overexposure
I haven’t seen it yet either, but my thoughts are, “What, is it going to tell me that Bush is a corrupt rich dude who killed a bunch of people needlessly and sat around doing nothing when the terrorist attacks were being planned and in progress? I already know that.”
Actually, with all the developments that have come out since the election (especially the two Downing Street Memos), I wonder if Moore is planning a sequel…
I’ve seen it. I don’t agree that Moore is good at the documantary thing. I suppose he is if you just measure financial success. It started for me with “Bowling for Columbine” I really thought it was great until some people started questioning his facts and editing techniques and I did a little research. IMO becuase of the way he selectively edits and misrepresents the facts to make “his” point he has no legitamate claim to his flims as documantaries. Same with F.9/11
In dealing with the Iraq war issue I thought “Uncovered” was a much more factual presentation.
I agree that Fahrenheit 9/11 didn’t exactly tell liberals new things, nor did I meet many conservatives who changed their minds. I’m neither, but it didn’t tell me that much either, when you get right down to it. I did meet more than a few liberals who attacked it, though.
There was one scene that really got to me, and made Moore’s point better than anything else. It was the scene where a soldier explained to Moore that the troops could put music over their intercoms, followed by shots with the song playing; so there is a series of clips of American soldiers taking out Iraqis to the tune of “Burn, Motherf*ers”. This is not an inspiring portrayal of Americana, and I suspect that disturbed/angered liberals just as much as conservatives.
I watched Fahrenheit 9/11 in theatres, btw. It was the first time I went to our local theatre.
I saw it live in the theatre before the election.
My lasting impression is that Moore should have
a) kept every second of the sequence of Bush looking poleaxed after being told about the WTC attack; and
b) not said a word, just let the film roll with a stopwatch counter in the corner.
His narration, with its surmising about conspiracy and what kinds of crap might be running through Bush’s mind at the time, just didn’t contribute. But Mr. Bush looked far from Presidential sitting there with this “oh fuck” expression on his face and My Pet Goat in his hands for minute after minute after minute.
I bought the DVD in late October.
I haven’t even taken it out of the shrink wrap.
I’m afraid I’ll get so angry while watching it that I’ll break my bigscreen TV.