Cinematic Punditry

Background
Its not altogether unseen, but definately rare, when a movie wins awards before it has a domestic distruibuter (by domestic I mean within its own country). One of the biggest cases I have seen of this type of award-giving is in 1984/85 with the release of Brazil, when Terry Gilliam had a contract to release his big art-house movie at under 120 minutes, and it actually was 132 minutes. This caused a now-legendary fight between Gilliam and Universal Studios (specifically Sidney Sheinberg) leading to Universal's re-editing and withholding of the film for over a year, and Gilliam's campaign to keep control. While fighting for control, Gilliam made the move of showing it underground, especially to film critics, and ended up winning the L.A. Film Critic's award.

The latest misadventure in cinematic manuverings is the piece of punditry (with exaggerated, unfair, or fictional elements) from Michael Moore, Fahrenheit 911 (slogan, "The Temperature Where Freedom Burns"). As most people know by now, Disney, when Moore had proposed said movie, had originally said that they were not going to distribute the movie. However, Disney and Miramax gave Moore 4._ million dollars to make the movie, and when it was finished, Disney decided not to release it. This, of course, provides great fodder for publicity.

NEW INFORMATION

Before I lose you all by exploiting my cinematic knowledge, here is the latest update: Fahrenheit 911 has won Cannes Film Festival's Palme D'Or. For those of you who don't know, Cannes is a major annual international film festival held in Cannes, France (Mediterannean Coast). At the end of the festival, the Jury gives out awards to whomever they consider to be the best movie. Past winners of the Palme D'Or include Elephant (last year's awesome reaction to Columbine), The Pianist (Roman Polanski's look at life as a Jew under Polish Nazi occupation), Pulp Fiction, M*A*S*H, Apocalypse Now, and Taxi Driver. Also, it does make mistakes, such as Wild At Heart, David Lynch's abhorable movie with Nicholas Cage.

This year, the jury was headed by Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, duh...), and the rest of the jury represented a few different countries. The jurors includes:

Benoit Poelvadore (C'est Arrive Pres de Chez Vous aka Man Bites Dog, director and killer, Belgian)

Edwidge Danticat (a black female writer from Haiti who became a US citizen at age 12)

Emmanuelle Beart (female French actress, star of 8 Women [murderous singing lesbians] and Mission: Impossible)

Jerry Schatzberg (Finnish director, most famous for early works with Al Pacino, Scarecrow, and The Panic in Needle Park)

Kathleen Turner (American Actress, The War of the Roses)

Peter Von Bagh (Finnish Film Critic)

Tilda Swinton (British actress, Adaptation., and Vanilla Sky)

Tsui Hark (Vietnamese martial arts director, obviously a Tarantino choice)

So, 1 French, 2 Fins, 1 Belgian, 1 Brit, 1 Vietnamese and 3 Americans decided that Fahrenheit 911 was the best movie of the festival. Fox News, with its fair and balanced reporting, blames it all on the French. Especially with Tarantino heading the troops, and 2 violent directors (Man Bites Dog is one of the most vicious movies I have ever seen), I highly doubt that it was just the French who were thumbing their noses at America through Michael Moore.

However, if this is anything like the Brazil situation, this should make it easier to either force Disney to distribute it or give Miramax enough oomph to buy it back and find another distributor. For some reason, everybody trusts film festival awards to at least pick out entertaining films (Pulp Fiction was so much better than that piece of shit Forrest Gump which won at the Oscars).

So, with any hope, this piece of cinematic punditry will make its way onto film screens sometime in the near future, and we can see all the glory that Michael Moore tends to use. Well, at least his movies are downright entertaining. Good work Cannes.