Hopefully, a new step towards the exit door for dabya, it seems... I liked the way Michael Moore presented this as a new sign of friendship of France towards the American people Any comment? Oh, one more thing: on the purely technical side, this is the first time a non-fiction movie wins the Palme d'Or.

QuoteOriginally posted by: Tomfr Oh, one more thing: on the purely technical side, this is the first time a non-fiction movie wins the Palme d'Or.Not quite true.In 1956 Jacques Cousteau's The Silent World won the Palme d'Or. However, the "Palme d'Or" as a title was retired between 1964 and 1974 when it was reintroduced. This might cause some confusion. During the period 1964 to 1974 the main prize was called the "Grand Prize of the Festival".It is the first non-fiction film to win since 1956.Regards, Niclas

In fact, I was considering "non-fiction" as being a pure documentary, whereas The silent world looks more like a plain movie in the way it is put into scene. True, actors where not trained

"Any comment?"Yes.It has always baffled me why France, and particularly her inteligentsia, has always embraced and lauded the worst frauds America can produce. But I hold that the condition is the fundamental sign of the meta-jelousy of a dying culture.Charles Bukowski, a ahhhhh 'poet.' Wrote unreadable filth not worthy of anyone's attention. Result? Bestselling poet in France, despite his celebrated life as a 'bum' when he actually lived quite well and was many times over a millionaire from his royalties from sales in France alone. His books never sold in the USA. He died with an estate of over $5 million.My former next-door neighbor and professor, Noam Chomsky, a 'leftist' whose inability to ever admit he is wrong, even when he is confronted with overwhelming evidence, confirms my suspicion (based on personal observation) that he is actually mad as a hatter and with multiple clinical personality disorders. His fame shields him from treatment. Sane people admit when they are wrong: Chomsky never does, even over minor, minor items.Result? His works are best-sellers in France. When I speak to my French friends who read Chomsky uncritically, and ask them if they have read, ohhhh, article 'X' that refutes Chomsky line-for-line, they express ignorant bewilderment. Those articles mysteriously never make it to France, but Chomsky's books always do. Hmmmmmm.I will provide a single example of Chomsky's insanity, of which there are hundreds. I remind my French friends now: Chomsky was and still is an apologist for the Khmer Rouge, and he *supported* the Reagan administration's recognition of the Khmer Rouge as the legitimate government of Cambodia for seating in the UN in the 1980s. On a percentage basis, the KR committed the worst genocide in history, and Chomsky was their champion in the West. He still won't admit he was wrong. The phrase 'fucking nuts' does not begin to describe the depth of such insanity. Chomsky continues to remain on French best seller lists, the French conveniently forgetting their embracing his views on the KR during the 70s and 80s, and ignoring that they were entirely fooled by this montebank and his murderous clients.Never one to shy away from an easy buck, Michael Moore is the latest fraud selling his doctrine to France, where he will laugh all the way to the bank. Moore's misrepresentations in his films from title to credits are well-documented and critized in the USA and common knowledge (the Columbine killer boys did not go bowling, for example), but in France, ignored. Err, 'cause it is 'art.' Err, 'documentary?'Heck, this is so easy, I feel like going to the USA and starting a 'fraud' school for psuedo-intellectuals who want to get rich. Formula: 1) write/film/paint something that says 'USA horrible' 2) go to France and sell it, 3) take money to bank.Perhaps the love of movies is the hamartia of the French (only Indians go to more films, per capita, per year). I love movies too, but I do not for a minute confuse this art with truth. Even 'documentaries.' This line is sadly blurred in the French consciousness. The film critic Pauline Kael said it best when she expressed caution about the use and abuse of film:"movies, by affecting us on sensual and primitive levels, are a supremely pleasurable -- and dangerous -- art form. That mixture needs separating out, which I take to be my task as a critic. It's not a heavy task. It's pure joy: a way of satisfying my curiosity about how movies work, and about how the world affects them and how they affect the world.""But systematic criticism seems to me a violation of the very qualities that make movies such a powerful art form. It's an attempt to impose order on a medium which incorporates the appeal of the circus, the wild-west show, the penny dreadful, of theater, opera, and the novel, a medium which bites off chunks of anthropology, journalism, and politics, and a medium that is always, of course, the domain of eros. Movies can take in so much from the other arts, and so much from the world, that the job for the critic is not to close himself off."We do well to note Kael's link of film to eros, the French public's love of film and France's troubled relationship with the USA. But when it comes to criticising Moore's films, the French fall over themselves with praise and ignore his lies. Why? Is this living up to the standards of criticism?Returning to my orginal expression of France embracing American frauds as a fundamental sign of the meta-jelousy of a dying culture, we must also turn to France being unreconcilled to the observations of surrealist outcast George Bataille, and his ouvre. Particularly, his observations about his countrymen in "L'Érotisme ou la muse en question de l'être." Bataille's linking of sex, death, degradation, and the power and potentialities of the obscene is most exemplified in France always embracing the most over the top America bashing. In short, it is a limped-dick culture, dying away in irrelevance, and America bashing is France's Viagra. It is a disgusting way to feel good about yourself, and France has other choices, yet America bashing always is first on their list of preferred international expression of artisitc identity. And all the better if France can find a 'rebel' American whom she can show off to the world to say it for her.Please do not argue that the nine-person Cannes jury that awarded prizes had only one French member and four Americans, including jury president Quentin Tarantino and actress Kathleen Turner. The extended standing ovation from the Cannes crowd more than supports my observation of French zeitgeist. And besides, if the Cannes jury is argued to be insulated from the political views of the bien pensants of the host country, then that defeats Michael Moore's thesis in his film that the American public was fooled and easily mislead by the Bush administration concerning Iraq. You cannot simultaneously argue that one set of conscious adults are isolated from zeitgeist, rational, and objective, and another are just so much barely awake brainless mush.Please keep in mind that I am *not* an America First or always right apologist. I will vote for Bush in the upcoming election, but that simply is because I cannot vote for a Steve Forbes/Alan Keyes ticket (actually, I am so far right I'd prefer the King of Hawaii on an American throne and a Prime Minister, but another story).Though I am not an isolationist al la Pat Buchannan, I also thought Iraq an unwise extension after Afghanistan, but am glad the world is rid of Saddam Hussain, at a sad cost. And as much fun the 'torture' pictures of Iraqis in prison are right now for the 'gotcha' crowd, I'm rational enough to realize that degrading pictures of nude Iraqi men taunted by butch US women are simply many orders of magnitude less horrible than Uday putting live people into wood chippers and meat grinders in front of their families, of which there are mountains of testimony that this actually happened. A glow stick up your butt is not the same as dying watching the lower half of your body turned into hamburger before the eyes of your now life-traumatized wife and children. Yes, both should be condemned. But which has been condemend more loudly and with more ink? Hmmmm.The world press's and fellow traveler France's efforts to hold out these events as somehow morally equivalent, of which Moore's prize is the latest residual expression, simply underlines the hollowness of knee-jerk anti-American criticism. No valiant journalists covered Uday and his woodchipper, now everyone covers the USA and the glowsticks. It should make a thinking person sick, but instead journalists and the French feel good because they think they've given America a sock in the eye, and done valiant work for the 'truth' uncovering a dreadful wrong committed by the USA. It is laughably shameful in comparison to the neglect of criticism and journalism and documentaries of the horror that was Saddam's Iraq. These are not people to be admired who hold noble, brave ideas and are fighting for the truth.But I am glad the USA has the freedom to have critics, even montebank critics like Moore, in our healthy democracy. I wish France would embrace our freedom and liberty and have a few home-grown French critics who would be brave enough to point out to French audiances that Moore is a lying fool, along with Bukowski and Chomsky. I haven't seen it, which underscores my sad view that France is becoming weaker as a culture, nation, and people. As France becomes more une voca, it sacrifices 'liberte' at the altar. Truth apparently already was sacrified long ago.I would prefer if my French neighbors enjoyed a little bit more skepticism before embracing every poltroon who comes along with the simple message 'America sucks' or 'see, we were right all the time.' The sheer ass-kissing transparency of it alone should make otherwise intelligent French people suspicious. But they get sucked in time after time.Americans, despite what French think, have a rather balanced view of France, noting its irrelevance on a world scale ("Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordian") but admiring its ability to command EU policy, subsidies for itself, and French exceptionalism through unwitting political proxies ("EU and France strike accord on Alstom"), and also inhabiting one of the best pieces of soil on the planet for production of sublime products (heck, France even makes the world's best vodka for goodness sakes). My American friends are well-informed on French lifestyles of both town (Paris) and countryside (my farm life) when they visit, mainly from reading books on France, which occupy shelves and shelves of space in any American bookstore. But French consciousness of American geography and lifestyle begins and ends with Orlando or Manhattan, and is so bad that "Indiana Cafe" is a French restaurant chain that serves Tex-Mex food. I explain to my French friends that it is the equivalent of a restaurant in New York called "Cafe Lille" serving tuna, olives, peppers, and olive oil with epice provencal, on a pizza bread, with a Cahors, but I don't think they completely understand the discontinuity even then.I think most Americans, like myself, are a little baffled why France *always* embraces the dissenting opinion of the USA's actions. The explanitory variable does not appear to be a consistant ideology; the explainatory variable then must be France always embraces 'America is bad' because of jelousy.France would be better served to form a world artisitic and political identity that was not simply neo-leftist anti-Americanism. Sadly, in leading the effort to be 'EU-European' France has subsumed the more noble elements of its identity, and all that is left culturally visible on a world scale is shallow America bashing at every opportunity. In my view, it was a poor trade. And if French cultural institutions like the Cannes Film Festival want to crown and anoint fools like Moore as their King, then they will deserve the increased marginalization of their own cultural production. Americans like Moore, you see, are taking their place."For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers; having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned into fables." II Timothy 4: 1-4.- james "happily living in France"

QuoteHopefully, a new step towards the exit door for dabya, it seems... Geez, French liked Mike Moore, i mean, what a surprise. Where is this fellow who sold millions of books in France, saying that no plane ever hit Pentagon on Sep 11. I mean, French didn't want to use Internet because it is an "anglo-american" thing. I have another winner for the French. There is an individual here who runs around saying Bush and Israel organised Sep 11. That guy is a poet too, and a black on top of it, so after he gets his Croix de Chevalier des Arts et Lettres and Goncourt prize, Bush will have to go. And the Internet too.

Cannes just lost a bit more credibility. "Elephant" won a few years ago. That was a crap film based on the Columbine massacre.

Funny reactions...James, I hope you do not call "culture" the blockbuster production of Hollywood majors: there would definitely be nothing to be jealous about, and the rest of the Cannes prizes show that French cinema is still well alive. As for the political side, maybe it is just simply because, seen from France, what we hear in dabya's mouth would fit quite well in an extreme right Frenc leader's (except that this latter may have "some sort" of strictly political intelligence, which bush obviously lacks).Zerdna, this book on the absence of 9/11 planes on the Pentagone is just as News of the world or, on a lower scale, the Sun in the UK or the New Yorker in the US : crap... Hopefully, some serious analyses have been written on both sides of the atlantic regarding this...Crassus, Elephant won last year, and if I remember well there was quite a unanimity. Still, it is true that Cannes tends to grant prizes to "unexpected" winners (cf Kusturica this year). If you want blockbusters, you have the cesars in France and the Awards in the US.

"James, I hope you do not call "culture" the blockbuster production of Hollywood majors:"I never said US culture, and in particular her film culture, was superior to France's, or also not in danger. It currently sucks too. But France certainly is not leading the world out of US darkness on this front either, although she could. Which is another example of France's cultural weakness when instead of producing something intelligent and critical they instead embrace the dreck of a clownish poltroon to express themselves."As for the political side, maybe it is just simply because, seen from France, what we hear in dabya's mouth would fit quite well in an extreme right Frenc leader's (except that this latter may have "some sort" of strictly political intelligence, which bush obviously lacks)."Which shows where the median is in leftishly skewed France. Bush is actually quite moderate, and has alientated many conservatives, fiscal, economic, and moral. If Bush is France's example of 'extreme right' then political debate is not healthy in France. Libertarian ideas on public policy actually get heard in the USA, also Religious conservatives are able to express their views and are answered by the seccular left (and the religious left). These sets of ideas have no voice and no outlet in France, save somewhat in La Croix, and perhaps in "Le Canard Ancienne." Mr. LePen's ideas on deporting current guests of the nation also have US advocates and examples, and they are heard but not feared.This is a culture on its deathbed, because it has choosen as its last words and highest message "America is always wrong."

I'm not sure that any work of Mr. Moore counts as "non-fiction".Mr. Moore divorced the truth many years ago, it was an amicable split up, they sleep together occasionally, but they're both seeing other people.He is however a fine political raconteur, and I admire his work. He makes points that the appallingly tame US media just choose to ignore.He draws attention to things that should concernt anyone on our side of the war on terror, and does so with great skill, and I have bought and enjoyed all of his books.How many Oscars do you think he'll get ?My latest conspiracy theory is that this is a mediocre film, and that Disney/Miramax and Mr. Moore are "banning" it in the hope that this will makeit seem forbidden fruit, and thus more attractive.

As James mentioned, this prize was not voted by the french.President: Quentin Tarantino (USA)Other members: Emmanuelle Beart (France), Edwidge Danticat (USA), Tilda Swinton (England), Kathleen Turner (USA), Benoît Poelvoorde (Belgium), Jerry Schatzberg (USA), Tsui Hark (Hong-Kong), Peter Von Bagh (Finland).Now James seems to be very pissed off with France.. Why? I don t know. Michael Moore's books sell well in lots of countries (including UK, i don t know about the US). And Bukowski books do sell very well in Britain too. And i thought he sold ok in the US too: he made some money reading poetry in various US universities...Anyway, i m sure you d have more fun watching the passion of Christ by Mel Gibson

"he made some money reading poetry in various US universities..."As tresurer, and then president of the student council that handed out honorariums for poets reading at my college, I can assure you that this is no way to build a fortune. It barely covers transportation, food, drink. We are talking about $100 bucks here, maybe. Bukowski got his millions from sales in France, and he even said so in interviews late in life."My latest conspiracy theory is that this is a mediocre film, and that Disney/Miramax and Mr. Moore are "banning" it in the hope that this will make it seem forbidden fruit, and thus more attractive."I like that one. The old Razzle Dazzle. Bob Fosse lives."Now James seems to be very pissed off with France. Why? I don t know."Because France is "leading" by opposition to all things USA rather than advancing better ideas, both culturally and politically. "You suck" helps no one. "This is a better idea, let my try to persuade you of that view," helps everyone. France's cultural institutions abanndoned the latter in favor of the former. "Libre Bove" is France's most common graffito (after 'fuck' and its variant 'fuk'). What happened to "Metro, boulot, dodo" and the other clever things the '68ers came up with? (http://www.bopsecrets.org/French/graffiti.htm). All gone, because everyone French is too busy with "USA sucks" thinking.France has a noble past, where great ideas have germinated and florished. But now instead, the entire intelligencia of France is in a complete hamonious chorus hitting but a single note: 'USA wrong, always wrong.' If it were not so laugahbly predictable it would be tiresome. I expect better of France. France should too. Ever since Algeria, France has choosen to ignore the world's problems and cast itself as US obstructionist as its sole raisone d'etre on the world stage. It is a Fifth Business role, unmasked at last by the USA and Britain and Spain going ahead in Iraqi with France being able to do nothing about it. France's bully pulpit in the UN was burned down as her last legitimate world stage when that happened, and now they have only 'art' and 'Cannes' left to speak to the world. And so the mob pick as their King a clown.I love France more than this sad indictment of their cultural leadership.As I alluded, and now will explicitly state, the prize was not voted by the French, but French zeitgeist in the audiences made its will known, and the Cannes jury caved in. There is absolutely no way that Moore's shaky-cam direction (approaching cinema veritee McDonald's style) is the finest piece of the filmaker's art that the jury saw. It was politically motivated, pure and simple, and the Jury should have the guts to say so. Instead, they hide behind laughable defenses that this was awarded in the name or 'art.'If anyone really believes that, they are simple too stupid to bother with.

Indeed, there is a clear difference between the German opposition to the Iraq war, and the French.The Germans basically said "the American 'evidence' for WMD is bollocks. We've seen the secret stuff, and have our own spies, yet still don't believe it .War is a horrible thing, and modern Germans don't do war without a bloody good reason."Whatever your view on the existience of WMD, this is an honourable position, even if you disagree with it. As it happens they were right.The French position on the other hand was sadly much as James says, small minded anti-americanism, with perhaps a bit of fear and greed over their sales of nuclear technology to Saddam.

I see more anti frenchism on this thread than anti americanism.DCDC doesn t miss an opportunity to criticise the "racist" France. Now he tries to rewrite history.The idea of Tarantino going for Moore's movie because of some mysterious french pressure is laughable.

QuoteOriginally posted by: TomfrHopefully, a new step towards the exit door for dabya, it seems... I liked the way Michael Moore presented this as a new sign of friendship of France towards the American people Any comment? Oh, one more thing: on the purely technical side, this is the first time a non-fiction movie wins the Palme d'Or.Read two reviews....WSJ, which predictably panned it, and Herald Tribune, which predictably hailed it. Reality is somewhere inbetween, but, despite my left of center political views, I tend to agree that Moore is probably just a fat, uneducated, hypocritical shithead....I want me some of what he be getting.....hehehehehehe.