In Contention

Tag: Michael Moore

  • Herzog, Moore, Coens plan a stop at TIFF

    Capitalism: A Love StorySome exciting announcements out of Toronto today (still no “Road”).  The festival is shaping up to be very, very cool this year.

    The film I am most excited about, announced today, is Werner Herzog’s remake “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” with Nicolas Cage in the role that Harvey Keitel made legendary. No in between with this one; they either nailed it or blew it.

    Drew Barrymore will bring her directorial debut here, the roller derby flick “Whip It,” with Ellen Page.  That brings back memories of Saturday afternoons with my grandparents watching roller derby. Barrymore made a startling impact in “Grey Gardens” on HBO earlier this year and hopes are high for this one.

    The Coen brothers are back with “A Serious Man,” as is Michael Moore with “Capitalism: A Love Story,” his latest documentary that will take viewers into the financial brain centers of America.

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  • With love from Michael Moore

    Capitalism: A Love Story“Capitalism: A Love Story.”

    That, Variety informs us, is the title of Michael Moore’s latest, which you may remember remained nameless even through its own teaser trailer. So, simply by waiting this long, he even turns the choosing of a title into a publicity opportunity. You sort of have to admire the way he plays the game, right down to his cornball blurb:

    “It will be the perfect date movie … It’s got it all — lust, passion, romance and 14,000 jobs being eliminated every day. It’s a forbidden love, one that dare not speak its name. Heck, let’s just say it: It’s capitalism.”

    Spooky that I asked yesterday for a documentary to step forward and report for awards season duty, and a mere few hours later we get this. The film bows October 2nd, courtesy of smart indie outfit Overture Films.

  • Michael Moore’s untitled bailout film gets a trailer

    Really, a trailer before the film has a title?  Has that ever happened?  Anyway, it’s not much.  A simple tease:

  • Michael Moore says goodbye to General Motors

    Michael MooreIn case you’ve been under a rock, allow me to inform you that General Motors was finally backed into a corner this afternoon and filed for bankruptcy, most certainly marking the end of an era and the next embossed chapter in the ever-expanding volume on American capitalism.  To mark the occasion, filmmaker Michael Moore has written an on-cue goodbye letter to the company on his website, which he also blasted to email subscribers.

    Now, say what you will about the hyperbolic Moore, but speaking as a former owner of a Pontiac, a Dodge, a Honda and a Toyota,I find little to disagree with in this paragraph:

    It is with sad irony that the company which invented “planned obsolescence” — the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would then have to buy a new one — has now made itself obsolete. It refused to build automobiles that the public wanted, cars that got great gas mileage, were as safe as they could be, and were exceedingly comfortable to drive. Oh — and that wouldn’t start falling apart after two years. GM stubbornly fought environmental and safety regulations. Its executives arrogantly ignored the “inferior” Japanese and German cars, cars which would become the gold standard for automobile buyers. And it was hell-bent on punishing its unionized workforce, lopping off thousands of workers for no good reason other than to “improve” the short-term bottom line of the corporation. Beginning in the 1980s, when GM was posting record profits, it moved countless jobs to Mexico and elsewhere, thus destroying the lives of tens of thousands of hard-working Americans. The glaring stupidity of this policy was that, when they eliminated the income of so many middle class families, who did they think was going to be able to afford to buy their cars? History will record this blunder in the same way it now writes about the French building the Maginot Line or how the Romans cluelessly poisoned their own water system with lethal lead in its pipes.

    Just recently Moore announced a release date for his upcoming, as-of-yet untitled, documentary on the economic crisis.  You can bet there will be plenty of talk about General Motors in there.  Read the rest of the GM send-off at MichaelMoore.com.

  • Overture Films sets release date for Michael Moore’s latest

    Michael MooreTotally beside the point, but the first thing I thought when this press release popped up into my inbox was how happy I am to see studios like Overture and Summit succeeding in what has too long been an industry run by the big guns.  I miss the days when an October Films could get stuff done, or an Orion.  Anyway, here’s the press release, in part:

    Overture Films and Paramount Vantage have announced that Oscar-winner Michael Moore’s new documentary feature will be released domestically on October 2, 2009. The as-yet-untitled film will explore the root causes of the global economic meltdown and take a comical look at the corporate and political shenanigans that culminated in what Moore has described as “the biggest robbery in the history of this country” – the massive transfer of U.S. taxpayer money to private financial institutions.

    On this, the 20-year anniversary of his masterpiece Roger & Me, Moore returns to the issue that began his career: the disastrous impact that corporate dominance and out-of-control profit motives have on the lives of Americans and citizens of the world. But this time the culprit is much bigger than General Motors, and the crime scene far wider than Flint, Michigan.

    Says Moore: “The wealthy, at some point, decided they didn’t have enough wealth. They wanted more — a lot more. So they systematically set about to fleece the American people out of their hard-earned money. Now, why would they do this? That is what I seek to discover in this movie.”

    Full press release after the jump. Along similar lines, Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter has written a scathing indictment of the banking industry (via Hollywood Elsewhere):

    It can fairly be said that the chain of catastrophic bets made over the last decade by a few hundred bankers may well turn out to be the greatest nonviolent crime against humanity in history. They’ve brought the world’s economy to its knees, lost tens of millions of people their jobs and their homes, and they could drive an estimated 200 million people worldwide into dire poverty. In other words, never before has so few done so much to so many.

    The full press release on Moore’s film after the jump.  Oh, and a suggested title for the film: “Mint Condition.”  Other ideas?

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  • ‘Religulous’: Variety is a believer

    Concerns have been expressed on this site that Larry Charles’ and Bill Maher’s “Religulous” would emerge as an exercise in left-leaning smugness, taking potshots at easy, cherry-picked targets to equate faith with absurd naivete. Certainly, the jokey, swiftly-edited trailer didn’t do much to shift this feeling.

    But Variety’s review of the film paints a decidedly different picture. Going so far as to call it “brilliant (and) incendiary,” they describe the film as a study that, while not neglecting its obvious comic angles, tackles its subject with appropriate profundity and inquisitiveness:

    To the film’s credit, Maher never engages in Michael Moore-style gotcha tactics, but rather asks questions that raise more questions, in the form of a Socratic dialogue. To believers expecting a blind hatchet job, this will prove both thought-provoking and a bit disarming; skeptics may be surprised (as Maher is) by the occasionally smart replies to his queries.

    Though the review does make reference to Maher’s occasionally flip comic tactics (contradictory subtitles accompanying interviews, and the like), the critic seems a little taken aback by a solemn conclusion to the film:

    Ending minutes, though, will catch auds up short: Suddenly, the laughs die down, and as in his closing monologues on “Real Time,” Maher turns deadly serious with a final statement that will stir raging arguments in theater lobbies.

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