Michael Moore has a rub bud. Better believe that he’s on a path to destruction; Bush destruction. He’s said it plain and simple. I take no offense at the idea that someone can be out to oust a regime, and I have no problem seeing that there can be differences that drive people to campaign one way or the other. That’s us; America. That’s good. What I take offense to is someone actually believing, or pretending to believe that they can take pictures, add sound, edit, overlap the pictures in the order that they want to, cut out what they don’t want, publish it and call it a documentary. In truth we all do it to some degree; there is really no such thing as a documentary. When I put the pen to this page or fingers to the keyboard as it were (pen to page? wow, I really am dating myself aren’t I?) I am essentially telling my version of the truth, just like every blogger we know.

There is a certain amount of rhetorical juggling we all do to create an atmosphere that is both believable and sellable at the same time, and the balance of those elements eventually makes us a commodity that others buy into. Therefore integrity has a lot to do with the end results of our efforts as writers, photographers, painters, musicians, columnists, and documentary film makers. However, no matter how close to reality we can get in a media form, there is always an edge of ourselves involved, and therefore if we have a following it only follows that our followers will have a like-minded position and will gravitate towards our work and nod their heads with us. That is life.

My mother, among many pseudo-culturally literate positions that she took, had a saying about churches. As a child I asked her once why there were black churches and white churches. She answered simply that, “most people gather up with those who are like themselves because they are comfortable with that.” Years later when struggling with racial issues in my own life I came to resent that and it seemed to me an excuse for segregation or bigotry. However, I have come to see now that this was not an excuse for anything, but rather simply a truthful observation. People gravitate toward what they are comfortable with.

There seem to be many who are comfortable with Michael Moore’s version of the truth and applaud it. It won the Cannes film festival and received a standing ovation there of 45 minutes in length. Please note that this is France. It seems rather odd that the country that stood for liberty and democratic values so much so that they gave us one of our greatest memorials to liberty in the statue that stands in NY harbor now stands for 45 minutes applauding a work that in “my church’s” definition is downright manipulation and distortion.

Just having seen the 7/1/04 rerun of Michael on Charlie Rose for a full hour of confrontation on the Fahrenheit film (which by the way brings up so many other images for us who lived in the time when Fahrenheit 451 was a big deal and meant so much about governmental subterfuge and loss of freedom by the individual, etc, I’ll talk about the old film in a moment as that is an important comparison – but the link is certainly not lost on us) and Charlie was certainly not soft on him about the issues, Charlie raised the specters of the details of the film and most certainly brought out the fact that the film is not based on anything more than Michael Moore’s opinions. Mike’s “church” is large, yes, and he has a large following, but it was confirmed by Charlie that he was indeed “preaching to the choir”. In response to that, Michael said that yes he was but, “my purpose in the film is for the film not to be finished by me, but by having a reaction take place whereby people who are not normally involved at all in the process of government would leave the theatre deciding to become involved.” CR: “So you mean go out and vote?” MM: “Yes”. CR: You mean go out and vote for John Kerry. MM: No, I mean go out and vote, period. CR: Against George Bush is what you mean. MM: No no, I mean just go out and get involved and vote period.

My best intuition tells me, after seeing that interview, that MM has got his foot in two different worlds and is only deceiving his self into thinking that he is truly telling all there is to tell. He actually believes that he has made a documentary and has been as close to actual truth as possible. But when cornered with his own strongly opinionated bias he tries to make out as some egalitarian with the saintly purpose of giving people enough doubt as to make their own decisions concerning the matter of Iraq and George W. I seemed to think after awhile of watching him that I could see another mouth appear, and he was speaking from two distinct different mouths, both saying very different-sounding things.

Other people can see this as well. It’s political posturing. A reviewer of a Minneapolis paper (and this is a heavily democratic town where they like things anti-Bush in general) said that the film was heavily biased. Anyone can see it. He is unabashedly anti-Bush, yet he says he’s not skewing his material to reflect that, “only relating the facts”. Please. Can’t Michael Moore simply say with great tact and flair, “Bush is horrible for the country and I don’t like him so I made this film in hopes of helping the democrats, or anyone else for that matter, win the next election so he will not be in office”? Why can’t he just say that? Why is it that what is so painfully obvious to the rest of us is so lost on one who is supposedly so well-informed?

The Notebook was a good film. No, it really was. It was a “chick flick” with good cinematography and plot structure and special effects and, well, as a man I know I can say this word…romance. There I said it. It was romantic.

But it was also fickle, much like the leading lady of the film.

Now for the hard stuff: It was formulaic because the same story of poor guy from a small town with nothing except great genuine relationships and one parent that extremely loves him for real meets rich girl who desires same but never says so out of fear of at least one dominating parental piranha who will kick her out of the family and mentally and physically and emotionally disown and destroy her if she does creates immense psychological and social tension because theirs is a true love that must be decided over between great physical odds that involves time or distance or racial difference and a pile of money has been done to death. But you know, you can do a formula film over and over again if it’s done well. This one was done fairly well. It was funny, and beautiful, and the sidekick supporting roles were great, and the people were interesting, and it was told in a novel way via retrospect from the end of their lives and contained a slight bit of mystery for awhile which we eventually figure out. It was very good acting. James Garner was his usual cool self, and his own age and physique was perfect for the failing old man, I kind of hate to say.

As for other acting moments I cannot agree it was all there. There were too many “set up” moments like when she returns in a car to see him again and the car doesn’t start and they spend the day getting reacquainted. It was just too surreal and I didn’t believe it. I WANTED to because somehow the unfinished sexual moment from earlier in their youth there in the old mansion never did quite get worked out and I would think it safe to say that we were all still emotionally and somewhat glandularly on edge waiting for a release. See, those subterranean threads of sexuality and emotional pressure really do pay off for a filmmaker who needs to string us along through the story and get us to “wait” expectantly through a whole war and a house-building-from-scratch and a false romance by a big-wig and a not-quite-as-attractive-war-widow and, well, EVERYTHING, just to get there and see them EXPLPODE in a sex scene that lasts for many many time-compressed cinema hours, and then we feel spent just like they do. Woo, that was fun I suppose. Ok, this is a review, and I hope I’m not spoiling it for you. Of course I’m not. Seeing is believing. However, I did notice that this was PG13, and I did see a young miss of about that age in the audience, and after seeing its complexity and strong content I would not take my daughter to see it. Come on people, this is an adult movie.

Ok, I’ll go off on the ratings here for just a moment. Ratings are really a poor and narrow way to judge films. Our rating system needs to be overhauled somehow. But R would have been more appropriate for this film. This is one of those cases where the only thing a PG13 means is that certain body parts are not displayed graphically, so it’s “ok”. But what are not taken account of in a story of this type are the certain parts of the “soul” that are overexposed. A thirteen year old is not going to relate to or understand the complexity and difficulty of choosing between two lives and loves, or of the need for a temporary relationship with a woman, for instance, as a means of tempering a deeper inner need, and then it becomes a “disposable” relationship because all along the war widow is proven to be a “placeholder”. I think all of us who’ve had loves and lost them have had that feeling at one time or another, wondering if the current love we have is really only there because of something we “lost” way back when, and then we wonder “what if”. I truly felt sorry for the rich guy in the end. It really wasn’t fair after all. He was not a bad guy. But a thirteen year old may misconstrue many of the deep and heavy relationships in a story like this and walk away slightly, if not drastically, disillusioned, disaffected, disappointed, or simply demoralized and jaded by the idea that maybe nothing is very certain and there is no one that can be depended on in this world. Ok, in the end true love triumphs, yes, but too much reality too early in life in a strong visual context like this in my opinion is too much for a young teen. Something simpler like “just getting to know people and be honest with them” is a great theme for the teen mind, or dependence on someone in a giving relationship, or heroism. The theme of substance verses flash can be covered in a million different ways other than this for teens. And does sleeping together prior to the true commitment of marriage ALWAYS need to stand out as an act of testing the waters? I thought maybe the true love they had was deeper than that. In fact I’m sure it was, because of the way they died.

I have to admit, the last scene was awesome and a great way to end their story together, and made up for some other more bland and not too serious movie mistakes. Altogether, it was a good film that married couples and those contemplating marriage should see. A nice “date” film, it was a good story. And I am not a chick!

DNA evidence, crime, and on being falsely accused.

From the latest today in CNN.com:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/08/10/dna.testing.crime.ap/index.html

Concerning the article on DNA evidence increasing the statute of limitations on rape crimes:

We are headed for Minority Report faster than we think (people used to say Big Brother or 1984. Now we have more updated futures in film to look at for comparisons). The "advancement" of DNA profiling has caused a huge swing in what is allowed in courts and how people are "brought to the scene of a crime" even years after the crime, all through DNA testing.

The immediate thought that scares me is, "What if someone got hold of some of my DNA, easy enough to do, and placed it at the scene of a crime (present tense that is, not a past crime of course unless they found a way to sneak my cells into the evidence box)? I could be anywhere, virtually. All you need to do is have a willing victim follow me around, unknown to me, give enough time for a crime to happen apart from someone seeing me, put a little sample of me on a victim's clothes, and Voila!, instant rapist. Or for that matter, if you got a sample of some of me (and I'd like to address the issue of WHICH tissues we are talking about here)and actually committed some sort of crime yourself and purposefully put some of my cells at the scene, then it would be a matter of a tipoff and the coppers would be on to me! This all involves DNA and crime, and does not mention which bodily cells necessarily are used for the DNA evidence. I'm assuming in a rape case they would need to be semen, but that was not mentioned in the article.

Looking to the future, though, it would not be a big leap to assume that we will be innundated with DNA profiling. We've got Craig Venter, the man who cracked the genome before the government did trying to create life now, along with a few hundred others. We've got insurance costs out the wazoo, along with medical costs. We've got terrorism and global tracking problems. Why not a universal gene bank that will take care of all that? Why not a way to "tag" everyone? If we could just keep the information from hurting someone who wanted a particular job, say, or into a part of the military, or from being used in experiments...you see the escalation that manipulation of genetics will do to us if you follow it to it's logical conclusions. Can we keep that from happening? I have no idea. I do know that eye scanning can still be fooled to some degree, and you don't have to replace your eyes to do that. So DNA match is still the most solid evidence on the planet of the individuality of a human being. It's inevitable that it will not be left alone.

I'm not frightened really. I'm not being an alarmist and saying, "call out the inquisition and get rid of all this science!" In fact, I don't think there is a thing we can do about it, to be honest with you. Nothing.

For the longest time now I've not allowed COMMENTS. I'm not sure why I've left it this way. I've had 7042 visitors so far, so I'm supposing someone would have like to have left a comment for me. Please feel free now to comment to this entry about anything you've read here. Thanks for visiting.