Movies! Movies!

bugsybanana and I celebrated Independence Day in traditional NYC Jewish style, with movies and Chinese Tex-Mex.

First up was Fahrenheit 9/11. Man, this is some effective piece of propaganda. It kicks the legs right out from under Bush’s straight-talking cowboy image, making him look like either an indecisive bumbler or an actor reciting prepared lines. The opening credits run over footage of Bush and other administration bigwigs being picked over and made up in preparation for various televised appearances (reminiscent of the 1992 movie Feed), the sort of thing most Americans never see and which can be pretty surreal on first exposure. It has (I hope) the effect of reminding you that these televised speeches are carefully constructed artifacts, and that you’re not getting an honest look at the speaker.

The movie manages to be very funny and entertaining for a political documentary, which is why I think Moore’s a genius even when I don’t agree with him (try reading his essays about why he thinks OJ Simpson was innocent), but there are also some very harrowing moments (like his visit with a woman whose son had been killed in Iraq), and some gruesome footage (of Iraqi war dead).

There are also moments that hearken back to his first movie, Roger & Me. Not only the visit back to Flint, MI, but also the Christmas scene where American soldiers are going door-to-door in Iraq, looking for, well, we’re not quite sure, which reminded me of a very similar scene of families being evicted at Christmas in Flint.

On the way out I bought a “Re-Defeat Bush in 2004” button from a buy with a table outside the theater (Loewe’s 19th).

Then I wanted to see something where the good guys win, so we saw Spider-Man 2 (and I’m enough of a comics geek to find that hyphen galling). Yeah, this is at least as good as the first one, maybe better. The New Yorker in me was, on the one hand, pleased over all the NYC visual shout-outs (the Daily Bugle is published out of the Flatiron Building, the planetarium scenes were actually shot at the Rose Center for Earth and Space, the architecture on all the fake CGI buildings looks right, etc), and chuckling over the mistakes (an elevated train in Manhattan?). And the rooftop where Peter regains his confidence? I’m about 80% certain that I’ve drawn that rooftop — from a conference room in the Flatiron Building.