Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2009 3:32 pm Post subject: TRAILER: Michael Moore's 'Capitalism: A Love Story'
TRAILER: Michael Moore's 'Capitalism: A Love Story'
'CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY' - In Theaters October 2nd
It's a crime story. But it's also a war story about class warfare. And a vampire movie, with the upper 1 percent feeding off the rest of us. And, of course, it's also a love story. Only it's about an abusive relationship.
It's not about an individual, like Roger Smith, or a corporation, or even an issue, like health care. This is the big enchilada. This is about the thing that dominates all our lives — the economy. I made this movie as if it was going to be the last movie I was allowed to make.
Capitalism: A Love Story If Michael Moore's latest documentary lacks the clean punch of his best-known work, it can only be because the crime scene is so vast, writes Xan Brooks at the Venice film festival
Michael Moore at Goldman Sachs in Capitalism: A Love Story
The bankrobbers caught on CCTV at the start of Capitalism: A Love Story are a forlorn and feeble bunch. We see a bedraggled old man in a Hawaiian shirt, and what looks to be a 12-year-old boy wearing a balaclava. For all their flailing efforts, they've got nothing on the real crooks: the banking CEOs who recently absconded with $700bn of public money, no strings attached. That's what's known as a clean getaway.
Michael Moore's latest documentary drew tumultuous applause at the Venice film festival today, suggesting that the veteran tub-thumper has lost none of his power to whip up a response. If the film finally lacks the clean, hard punch provided by the record-breaking Fahrenheit 9/11, that can only be because the crime scene is so vast and the culprits so numerous.
Undeterred, Moore jabs his finger at everyone from Reagan to Bush Jr, Hank Paulson to Alan Greenspan. He drags the viewer through a thicket of insurance scams, sub-prime bubbles and derivative trading so wilfully obfuscatory that even the experts can't explain how it works.
The big villain, of course, is capitalism itself, which the film paints as a wily old philanderer intent on lining the pockets of the few at the expense of the many. America, enthuses a leaked Citibank report, is now a modern-day "plutonomy" where the top 1% of the population control 95% of the wealth. Does Barack Obama's election spell an end to all this? The director has his doubts, pointing out that Goldman Sachs – depicted here as the principal agent of wickedness – was the largest private contributor to the Obama campaign.
Capitalism: A Love Story is by turns crude and sentimental, impassioned and invigorating. It posits a simple moral universe inhabited by good little guys and evil big ones, yet the basic thrust of its argument proves hard to resist.
Crucially, Moore (or at least his researchers) has done a fine job in ferreting out the human stories behind the headlines. None of these is so horrifyingly absurd as the tale of the privatised youth detention centre in Pennsylvania, run with the help of a crooked local judge who railroaded kids through his court for a cut of the profits. Some 6,500 children were later found to have been wrongly convicted for such minor infractions as smoking pot and "throwing a piece of steak at my mom's boyfriend". The subsequent bill for their incarceration went directly to the taxpayer.
Moore's conclusion? That capitalism is both un-Christian and un-American, an evil that deserves not regulation but elimination. No doubt he had concluded all this anyway, well in advance of making the film, but no matter. There is something energising – even moving – about the sight of him setting out to prove it all over again. Like some shambling Columbo, he amasses the evidence, takes witness statements from the victims and then starts doorstepping the guilty parties.
"I need some advice!" Moore shouts to some hastening Wall Street trader who has just left his office. "Don't make any more movies!" the man shoots back. Moore chuckles at that, but the last laugh is his. This, more than any other, is the movie they will wish he had never embarked on.
After 20 Years of Filmmaking on US Injustices, Michael Moore Goes to the Source in “Capitalism: A Love Story”
Beginning with the 1989 classic Roger & Me, the Academy Award-winning director Michael Moore says his films “come back to this central core concern, which is the economic system we have is unfair, it’s unjust, it’s not democratic.” With his new film, Capitalism: A Love Story, Moore tackles the financial system and the interchanging circles of Washington politicians and corporate managers that run it. Moore says, “I thought I’d just cut to the chase and propose that we deal with this economic system and try to restructure it in a way that benefits people and not the richest one percent.”
I see that Michael Moore's going to be a guest on the Hannity show on Fox tomorrow night. If anyone can capture it I'd appreciate it - it's bound to turn up on youtube, but the quality's bound to be low.
I see that Michael Moore's going to be a guest on the Hannity show on Fox tomorrow night. If anyone can capture it I'd appreciate it - it's bound to turn up on youtube, but the quality's bound to be low.
I would if I could, but I'll be watching it using the FOMNY streaming site. If you know how I can capture it from the streaming site and what program to use, I could do that.
Michael Moore didn't claim to be Catholic, just that he's a Christian. Not that I'm arsed one way or another. lol! Actually, I was hoping it was going to be a a short segment, I wasn't planning on sitting through the whole show. lol!
yeah, I think that's the bit that was on Bill O'Reilly before it started - he seemed to show a bit where Michael Moore stormed off, though I could have caught it wrong.
All in all, I think he did very well as far as it went. Dealing with someone who has such a blinkered view as Hannity (though I did recognise he had some scope) on a matter like this would be infuriating.
Michael Moore's anti-capitalist crusade The American film-maker has shocked many of his rightwing critics by revealing he is a practising Catholic Paul Harris
The Observer,
Sunday 11 October 2009
Rightwing critics of controversial film-maker Michael Moore call him many things: a socialist, a hypocrite, unpatriotic – and they even make unkind remarks about his weight. But, with his new anti-capitalist film showing on US movie screens last week, Moore has unveiled an unexpected trump card against conservatives who so vociferously attack him: Christianity. Moore is a practising Catholic and has put religion at the core of Capitalism: A Love Story. Alongside the political arguments about inequality, Wall Street corruption and the failures of George W Bush, Moore argues that capitalism is also fundamentally unchristian.
In the film he interviews several Catholic priests, who explain their belief that capitalism and the free market, by emphasising greed and the self over community, go against the Bible's basic tenets. One priest, Dick Preston, tells Moore: "Capitalism is evil, immoral and contrary to the teachings of Jesus." Moore also describes his own Catholic upbringing and includes a skit where free-market slogans are dubbed inappropriately – and hilariously – over scenes from a movie of Jesus's life.
The tactic appears to have unnerved many on America's right wing, who are used to attacking Moore as a symbol of leftwing secularism. On a recent TV appearance on cable channel Fox News, Moore was interviewed by rightwing host Sean Hannity. Moore surprised Hannity by identifying himself primarily as a Christian, not a socialist. He then turned the tables and asked Hannity when he himself had last been to church and what the subject of the sermon had been. The exchange left Hannity unable to answer and was an instant hit across the liberal blogosphere.
But many argue that the astonishment at Moore's gospel radicalism is misplaced. Though recent US political history seems to have been dominated by the rise of evangelical conservatism and its powerful grip on the Republican party, there is a parallel tradition of leftwing priests in America, especially with Catholics. "Catholics have always had a strong tradition in labour and union issues in America. There is not much in laissez-faire capitalism that is actually backed up by Catholic teaching," said Professor David O'Brien, a faith and culture expert at the University of Dayton, Ohio.
Cardinal James Gibbons was a famous advocate of union rights in the early 20th century. Daniel and Philip Berrigan were brothers and radical priests who opposed the Vietnam war. The black civil rights movement was led by clergy, most famously by Dr Martin Luther King.
Certainly the Rev Peter Dougherty appears to be in that tradition. Dougherty, who conducted the marriage service for Moore's sister, has known the Moore family for a long time and was happy to appear in the documentary. He lives in Michigan and has seen the devastation of local industry and unemployment that often seems to provide the motivation for Moore.
Dougherty told the Observer he had no qualms about launching a religious attack on capitalism. "There have always been people who questioned basing a society on greed. That is what capitalism is. It is based on the greed motive, a radical evil. Moore's use of religious arguments in Capitalism: A Love Story also taps into wider issues happening at the fiery place where US politics and Christianity meet. Though the past few decades appear to have been dominated by religious arguments over abortion and other social issues, those culture wars seem to have died down a little.
Among some evangelicals a strong environmental movement has grown up, seeing ecology and green issues in the light of religious arguments about conserving God's creation. Some churches and religious figures have taken a liberal stance on gay marriage. During Barack Obama's inauguration, openly gay bishop Gene Robinson gave a speech. The man who gave the invocation at the inauguration was Pastor Rick Warren, a leading evangelical. Though politically conservative, he has taken a leading role on issues of poverty, the environment and inequality.
But close watchers of Moore should perhaps not have been surprised by his inclusion of Christianity in his latest movie. In fact, he has long been open about his religious beliefs and his admiration for the liberal tradition of political activism in Catholicism. He has said that as a child he considered going to a seminary to study to become a priest because he had been so impressed by the nuns who taught him at school. Dougherty, who loves Moore's films, even thinks the Oscar-winning film-maker may have missed his true vocation. "Michael is a great preacher," he said.
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There you are Pirty, he is definitely Catholic. I'm a bit disappointed that he's made it a religious argument though. What's the betting that certain people will start saying that Catholics are now un-American because 'they are against capitalism'?
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