Bowling For Columbine

Director: Michael Moore Original UK Premiere: 2002 Dvd Release: 12th May, 2003 Number Of Discs: 1 Format: PAL, Region 2 Encoding

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Bowling for Columbine is a film directed by & starring Michael Moore. It won an Academy Award in the category of documentary film & has received both praise & criticism, both for the genre which it occupies, as well as what it claims. The film opened on October 11, 2002 & internationalized Moores previously cultish American status. The film won the 55th Anniversary Prize at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival & received a 13-minute standing ovation at the end of its screening at the festival. The films thesis is to explore what Moore suggests are the reasons & causes for the Columbine High School massacre. Moore focuses on the background & environment in which the massacre took place & some common public opinions & assumptions about different particular points. The film takes an informal, artistic & up-close-and-personal look into the nature of violence in the United States, focusing on guns as the controversial symbol of both American Freedom & its paradoxical self-destruction.

An Oscar-winning documentary based around a 1999 massacre at an American High School in Colorado, Bowling for Columbine is filmmaker Michael Moores take on the culture of firearms violence that is, apparently, peculiar to the USA. Significantly, this is no detective investigation into the psychology & motives of the two students who randomly opened fire on their classmates, killing 12 of them, Moore regards such particulars as practically irrelevant, rather, its an attempt to counter the moral panic & right-wing diagnoses that followed the massacre, with the likes of rock star Marilyn Manson blamed by some.

Using a mixture of roving interviews, statistics, historical documentary footage, cartoon animation & the set-ups familiar to fans of his TV Nation series, Moore teases out appalling truths about gun proliferation in America. Hes able to obtain a rifle by opening a bank account & shows that the bullets used in the Columbine massacre were still available at KMart, until he confronts their management with victims of the shootings. But its not just gun proliferation thats the problem. Canada, Moore discovers, is similarly rife with firearms yet has a far lower murder rate. The problem with the US, Moore believes, is an irrational climate of fear that has driven the country to reactionary extremes since the days of the pioneers, persuading citizens that they need to be armed to the teeth.

In a film short on lowlights, the highlight is Moores confrontation with NRA President Charlton Heston. Moores deceptively genial, shambling, regular American dude appearance wins Hestons confidence & Moore teases from the actor an inadvertently racist slip of the tongue, before turning up the heat, at which point Heston terminates the interview. In this moment, the sort of anger Moore demonstrated at the 2003 Academy Awards ceremony surfaces briefly as he brandishes a picture of a gunshot victim to the retreating Heston. Funny, shrewd, righteous, hard to deny, Bowling for Columbine is uncomfortable & irresistible filmmaking.

Michael Moore is the name of several notable individuals: Michael Moore, American author & film director. Michael Moore, UK Liberal Democrat politician. Mike Moore, former Prime Minister of New Zealand & former Director-General of the World Trade Organisation. Michael Moore, former Mississippi attorney-general, known for his involvement with early tobacco litigation. Michael Moore, former independent member of the Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly. Posters Of Michael Moore

Editors Choice: Fahrenheit 911, Bowling For Columbine, Ankle Biters, The Big One, Canadian Bacon, Roger And Me, View DVDology

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