If the evil men do lives after them, the legacy of dishonesty, demagoguery and hypocrisy that Michael Moore has been enabled to legitimize in film and the body politic will endure for a long time after he quits making documentaries as he says he may. That hopefully means his disingenuous indictment of capitalism now making him millions in theaters will be the last time he’ll project his puerile class warfare demons onto a movie screen and insult our intelligence by calling it a documentary.

Don’t get me wrong. Moore came up with a clever shtick that can be amusing, but he doesn’t make real documentaries. He makes sophomoric  agitprop that violates the Oscar’s rule against fiction in that form which other documentary makers must apparently follow — a double standard point I’ve made to the Academy awarders twice. Only the first of those letters is listed below because of space limitations, but a key point made in that second note is that there should be a separate category for Moore’s type of fabricated political schlock if such stuff is going to be receiving awards .  Sans that, “anything goes with documentary film … there are no standards … it’s all a game,” as University of Texas film professor and indie producer John Pierson put it. (more…)

This week, as the buildup to the upcoming movie “G.I. Joe” continues, the L.A. Times claimed that…

Yet overseas, where big action films often earn 60% or more of their ticket sales, rah-rah American sentiment doesn’t play well. So those references have vanished from the advertising.

Big Hollywood’s John Nolte gave that theory a thorough fisking, providing numbers showing that while “rah-rah America” movies aren’t guaranteed big foreign box-office returns, they aren’t automatically guaranteed to fail. He also points out that many “anti-rah rah” movies have even less appeal.

Oh, is it still okay to say “foreign?” Just checking, seeing as many schools are replacing “foreign language” departments with World Language departments. We’re all just one, big, happy World Family, right?

Okay, back to the topic at hand. John’s post got me to thinking. If anti-war movies such as “Rendition” and “A Mighty Heart,” despite the hype and the A-list star roster didn’t bring in the beaucoup bucks, how about anti-American movies made by one of the biggest anti-Americans on the planet, Michael Moore? (more…)