Everything I've read about Manufacturing Dissent so far suggest the film is the result of the worst kind if spurned lover reaction. Moore's inaccuracies are readily available from any conservative website of your choice and to make their film work the makers appear to actually pretend they were dumb enough to take Moore's films at face value at some point.
Well, if they did they're probably still too dumb to have anything worthwhile to say, and if they did not the - presumed - premise of their movie is a lie.
Now, if they examined why and how Moore's particular form of public communication works and thrives (including e.g. talk radio) that might be interesting, but an "uncovering" of something that was common knowledge five years ago?
Death proof is nearly 2 hours now? I can't see that working at all. Since it's essentially a huge, tedious verbal build up followed by an overlong car chase in the 90 minute cut.
"I'm a Cyborg but that's okay" is brilliantly good. One of the best asian films I've seen in a long time, also worth checking out if they bring it your way is "Saving the Green Planet" about a man convinced a wealthy industrialist is actually an aliening trying to destory the earth.
Moore on the other hand drives me nuts since his early films are patently the very definition of propaganda, and even though he's toned in down in recent films, his manipulation of the facts are still blatantly obvious. However, I think the fact is that he's playing to the less educated American mid-west as opposed to general audiences. I recently saw an interview with him where he talked about how dumb most americans are, siting the fact that they didn't know Canada had universal health care, but I think those are the very people he's aiming at since they don't know enough to pick up on what he's doing.
Protagonist and I'm a Cyborg, But That's Okay both sound utterly fascinating. Hopefully they'll meet their promise.
I saw Manufacturing Dissent at SXSW, and... it's okay. There's not a lot of there there, in retrospect. The central theme of the film seems to be that Moore is disingenuous as a journalist and nowhere near as honest and entitled a populist as he makes himself out to be.
No doubt that will come as a shock to... well, somebody, but for most of us these realizations are nothing new, and the movie doesn't really build on them or make any further conclusions. Thus, it's not all that interesting. The film essentially functions as a Michael Moore criticism, and while it's nice to get one of those from a liberal perspective -- as opposed to the scads of anti-Moore conservative documentaries, a veritable cottage industry at this point -- there's simply not much the movie has to say.
Were you buying individual tickets, as opposed to a general film pass for the festival or whatever, I wouldn't recommend it. And if it's scheduled opposite something else interesting, by all means go see the other thing. But I suppose it's diverting enough if you've got nothing in particular to lose.
Honestly knowing what I know about Michael Moore, there's very little that I can learn about him that would rock my socks, so the entire point is in the delivery.
Any anti-Moore thing carries no real interest. If it is good, or funny, clever, or precise, I'll buy into that. I did for two films, and only two.
These guys I have not heard much good about them.
For absolutely no reason that I can think of, the first thing that popped into my mind when I read the title of this post was that Benny Hill sketch where he's a Middle Ages courier and has to deliver a scroll from Essex; he turns the scroll over and sees EDINBURGH on the back, at which point he stares at the camera with a look of absolute horror and mouths the word silently: "EDINBURGH?" :D
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