Bowling For Columbine (DVD)

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TITLE : Bowling For Columbine

RATING: ****½

DIRECTOR: Michael Moore

SCREENWRITER: Michael Moore

NARRATOR: Michael Moore

STUDIO: United Artists / Alliance Atlantis / Dog Eat Dog Films

RUNNING TIME: 120 min.

RATED: R (US) & 15 (UK); for disturbing images, and some profanity.

DVD AVAILABILITY: 5.48 GBP, from Amazon; ASIN# ...
...the lifelong NRA member made BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE, a fascinating, groundbreaking documentary about America's love affair with guns. The film got great notice all over the world, and would later go on to win the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2002.

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LET 'S TAKE THE SKINHEADS BOWLING!!!
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TITLE : Bowling For Columbine

RATING: ****½

DIRECTOR: Michael Moore

SCREENWRITER: Michael Moore

NARRATOR: Michael Moore

STUDIO: United Artists / Alliance Atlantis / Dog Eat Dog Films

RUNNING TIME: 120 min.

RATED: R (US) & 15 (UK); for disturbing images, and some profanity.

DVD AVAILABILITY: 5.48 GBP, from Amazon; ASIN# B000089ATL

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INTRODUCTION
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It was the morning of April 16, 2007; it began like pretty much every other morning in America. The farmer did his chores. The mailman made his deliveries. The President continued to complain about sending more troops to his phony "war on terror" in Iraq. And out in the little town of Blacksburg, Virginia, terror unfolded for the student body at the largest University in the state.

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IS AMERICA REALLY A COUNTRY OF GUN NUTS?
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At 7:15 am Monday morning, a female college student and a residential advisor were shot to death at a freshman dormitory at Virginia Tech. Two hours later, a gunman packing 2 guns and dozens of clips of ammunition entered Norris Hall, an Engineering building on campus; he locked and chained several of the doors shut to not allow anyone to enter or exit the building. Chaos ensued to the nth degree as he open fired on the student body, for no ryhme or reason; by 10 a.m., this mysterious gunman had murdered 32 people, in addition to injuring countless other students. Before police apprehended him, he shot himself in the face. It has become an all too familiar story in the U.S., and it echoes previous incidents like the 1966 Charles Whitman killings in Texas, the Washington D.C. snipers, the recent Amish children murders, and most notably, the tragedy of Columbine high school in 1999.

What makes the Virginia Tech massacre so devestating, however, is because it is officially now the worst mass killing in American history. I live only 2 hours away from Blacksburg, and I know several people who attended Virginia Tech, including my own niece Amanda, who graduated from there in 2005. As with the rest of the country, I was completely shocked and what is even more chilling it is that Friday will be the 8th anniversary of the killings that occurred in Columbine high school in Littleton, Colorado. It's obvious that there will be much debate about the gun laws in the country this week, and more than ever before; is America really obsessed with guns and violence? Well, Michael Moore obviously thinks so; the lifelong NRA member made BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE, a fascinating, groundbreaking documentary about America's love affair with guns. The film got great notice all over the world, and would later go on to win the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2002.

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LET 'S TAKE THE SKINHEADS BOWLING!!!
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Personally, I've always been tied on the ongoing gun debate; on one hand, it can be a good thing to keep yourself armed in case you or your family is in danger. However, what disturbs me the most is that America has such a violent history and that it has more deaths caused by guns than any other country in the world. Why is that? What makes our society so violent? Why are the crime levels and murders in the U.S. so alarmingly high? That is what Michael Moore explores, and he had done an endless amount of research in order to make this documentary. The opening sequence is quite eye-popping, in which he walks into a bank in his homestate of Michigan and discovers that if you open up an account, the bank can give you a free gun. That makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever, and it immidiately intrigued me to keep watching.

We learn that Moore had won a marksman award while as a teenager in Michigan, which he describes as a "gun-lovers paradise." Since then, he has been a lifelong member of the National Rifle Association, of which the president is legendary actor Charlton Heston. What inspired Moore to make this film I think is really when Heston held a national gun rally in Colorado just 10 days after the slaughter at Columbine high school, where two angry, abused teenagers---each of whom legally purchased guns and bullets at local stores---murdered 13 people in cold blood. I, for one, think that Heston's actions are indeed insulting and totally unwarranted; the families felt that way too, with one father stating: "When a rifle is used to kill my son, it is not used to kill deer. It has no useful purpose!"

Moore interviews many individuals in and around Littleton, Colorado, including Matt Stone, who co-created South Park and had attended Columbine; while Stone was upset at the abuse he received while in school, he decided to put it in a cartoon. Moore then includes many news sources showing the aftermath of Columbine, including the increased security at other schools around the country, the experts questioning what drove the students to violence, as well as the controversial history of the right to bear arms in America. As a documentary, I think that BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE is lucid, intelligent, and jarring on so many levels, even if you are not a fan of Michael Moore.

The title, by the way, draws from the fact that the two teenagers that stormed Columbine had gone to the local bowling alley to do a gym elective offered by their school. Moore ingeniously questions why nobody attacked bowling for causing the teenager's rampage, when it posed as an equal influence to violent movies/video games, lack of parental guidance, shocking goth music, and the other dozens of targets for which America attacked after Columbine. This is all I'm saying: don't tell me that violent images negatively influence people's minds; because, seriously, if violent movies made you violent I would have committed 97 murders by now. I think the answer really lies in the violent culture which has always been present in America, such as the massacre of all the Native Americans and the many decades of slavery.

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A FLINT NATIVE BECOMES A DOCUMENTARIAN
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Incidentally, I didn't really see BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE until after Moore had won the Academy Award and made a controversial acceptance speech in which he slammed George W. Bush for starting the war in Iraq just days earlier; I was in Japan at the time that Moore's film was released to theaters. I had seen Moore's first film, a darkly ironic piece of filmmaking from 1989 called ROGER & ME, in which a muckraking Moore wanted to know why General Moters (GM) had laid off 40,000 workers in his hometwon of Flint, Michigan, resulting in the unemployment rate soaring to well over 50%, plunging the town into severe economic welfare. I loved the film, though I didn't follow Moore's antics during the 1990s; it was after I watched BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE and reading his book "Dude, Where's My Country?" in which I became a true fan of his work.

What I love most about his Moore is his off-the-wall, delightful sense of humor that he injects in all of his films and books. For example, my favorite moment in ROGER & ME is when he is attempting to enter the fortress of a building that GM has in order to interview chairman Roger Smith; he is asked for proper ID, but doesn't have any, so he gives them his Chuck E. Cheese membership card instead. Since releasing FAHRENHEIT 9/11 in 2004, in which he spotlights George W. Bush's business partnership with the Saudis and Bush's unjustified reasons for the attacking Iraq, Moore has been under fire from conservatives, citing that his documentaries are full of lies and one-sided views; despite these claims, nobody has ever been able to prove him wrong with anything he says. In fact, Moore even offered a million dollars to anyone that can legally disprove anything he said in FAHRENHEIT 9/11; nobody ever stepped up to plate to challenge that.

With BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE, Moore opened my eyes up in so many ways, even though I already knew that gun violence was a major element in the United States. There are many memorable moments in film, such as when he interviews Marilyn Manson, who was the #1 target for "influencing" Columbine; there is also the sequence in which Moore journeys up to Canada, where he discovers that gun violence and murders are virtually nil, especially when compard to the US. Then there is the climactic showdown with NRA president Charlton Heston, in which the former actor wasn't really able to answer Moore's inquiry as to the reasoning behind the school violence and the justification of his gun rallies all over the country---particlarly one that Heston setup in Michigan after in a 6-year-old boy took a gun to his elementary school and killed a little girl in 2001.

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A TIME FOR PRAYER AND CHANGE
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With the unbelievable events surrounding Virginia Tech at this very moment, it made me think even more about Moore's documentary; we never may find out why this gunman decided to murder over 30 innocent people, but one thing is for sure: I think that the gun laws in this country need to be seriously re-evaluated. Like Colorado, my home state of Virginia has ridiculous gun laws, such as it being legal for a minor 12 year old to purchase automatic weapons and ammunition, as well as immigrents who aren't citizens but who have green cards to get weapons. Of course, it all goes back to the 2nd amendment of the Constitution, which states everyone's right to bear arms; I'm fully aware of England, Canada and other countries having much stricter gun laws and thus the crime rate is so much lower. It's clear that something is seriously wrong with the U.S. when it comes to violence, and it is only going to tragically get worse.

Let me reiterate that I'm not really attempting to take sides over the gun debate, but I feel that a change is in order, though with a pro-gun Bush in the White House, it is probably not going to happen, even in the aftermath of the worst mass killing in American history….so far. If you haven't seen BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE yet, I highly recommend it, and it is available for only 5.48 pounds from www.amazon.co.uk. Plus, while I'm aware that many of you wonderful readers are living in the UK, and are not so much affected by the gun laws or school violence that are present in the US, may I all ask for you to pray for all the victims and families destroyed by the Virginia Tech tragedy, which by now has made international news. Take care, stay safe, and thank you for reading. Chris 

P.S. As with many others affected by this tragedy, I'm more than ready to fight to keep Charlton Heston and the NRA from coming to Blacksburg, Virginia for a stupid, unnecessary gun rally.

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QUO TES AND CRITIC'S CORNER
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1) "Well, here is my first question: don't you think it's a little dangerous handing out guns in a bank?" --- Michael Moore

2) "Forget gun control, we need some bullet control! All bullets should cost $5,000, you know why? There will be no more innocent bystanders!" --- Chris Rock

3) "Man, if someone gets shot you must have known he did something. Now he's got about $100,000 worth of bullets in his ass! Man, now I can say: I will blow your f***ing head off if I can afford it!" --- Chris Rock

4) "He came into the library and shot everyone around me, and then he put a gun to my head and asked if I wanted to live. Then he shot the black kid because he was black." --- Columbine survivor

5) "I just have five words to say: from my cold dead hands!!!" --- Charlton Heston holding up a rifle

6) "We may never figure out why the teenagers did it, but one thing adults should never forget: it still sucks being a teenager, and it really sucks going to school." --- Michael Moore

7) "I can see why they would attack me because in the end, I'm a poster boy for fear. I'm what everyone is afraid of." --- Marilyn Manson

8) "How many people are killed by guns each year? In Canada: 165. In the UK: 68. In Australia: 65. In Japan: 39. In the United States: 11,127 !" --- Michael Moore

CRITIC'S QUOTE #1: "Moore provides an invaluable service by sparking debate and encouraging thought. Better still, he does all of this, and more, while remaining one of the most savagely hilarious social critics this side of Jonathan Swift." --- Joe Laydon, San Francisco Examiner

CRITIC'S QUOTE #2: "Hardly an objective documentary, but it's great cinematic polemic; love Moore or loathe him, you've got to admire the intensity with which he's willing to express his convictions." --- Frank Sweitek, One Guy's Opinion

CRITIC'S QUOTE #3: "This film is extremely serious without being solemn, passionate in a deliberately laid-back fashion, and both hilarious and chilling." ---- Phillip French, UK Observer

 

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