Negromancer News Bits and Bites: January 18th to 24th, 2015 - Updated #15

NEWS:

From Variety:  Quentin Tarantino begins shooting "The Hateful Eight."

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From YahooTV:  Seth Rogen responds exclusively to the outrage about his American Sniper comments.

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From TheGuardian:  J.K. Rowling slapped back at Rupert Murdoch's bigotry.

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From YahooNews:  Free Mark Wahlberg!

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From YahooNews:  Michael Moore speaks on American Sniper - He says that he was taught that snipers were cowards, because his uncle was killed in WWII by a sniper.

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From YahooNews:  Seth Rogen also has thoughts on American Sniper, referencing Inglourious Basterds.

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From TPM:  The Oakland Tribune's front page headline read, "And the Oscar for best Caucasian goes to...

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From Variety via YahooMovies:  In its first full week of release, American Sniper wins the January 16th to 18th, 2015 weekend box office with an estimated take of $90.2 million.  This is also the Martin Luther King holiday weekend, so totals will go up.

From YahooMovies:  Taya Kyle, the widow of American Sniper SEAL, Chris Kyle, struggled with the idea of someone playing her late husband on screen.

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From HuffingtonPost:  Star Trek's troubling 50th anniversary.


COMIC BOOKS:

From TheVox:  Bryan Singer announces the new actors who will play Storm, (Alexandra Shipp), Jean Grey (Sophie Turner), and Cyclops (Tye Sheridan).


STAR WARS:

From CinemaBlend:  Disney ditches George Lucas' ideas for Star Wars 7.

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From CinemaBlend:  Actress hunt for Star Wars spin-off films.

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From CinemaBlend:  George Lucas' at one time predicted the future for Star Wars.

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From YahooMovies:  George Lucas has finally seen the trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens.


MISC:

From ComcastSportsnet:  Now you know what it feels like to be Kobe.

2013 National Film Registry Selections - Complete List

by Amos Semien

Under the terms of the National Film Preservation Act, each year the Librarian of Congress names 25 films to the National Film Registry that are "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant.

Annual selections to the registry are finalized by the Librarian after reviewing hundreds of titles nominated by the public (this year 2,228 films were nominated) and conferring with Library film curators and the distinguished members of the National Film Preservation Board (NFPB). The public is urged to make nominations for the registry at NFPB’s website (www. loc.gov/film).

Films Selected for the 2013 National Film Registry:

Bless Their Little Hearts (1984)

Brandy in the Wilderness (1969)

Cicero March (1966)

Daughter of Dawn (1920)

Decasia (2002)

Ella Cinders (1926)

Forbidden Planet (1956)

Gilda (1946)

The Hole (1962)

Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)

King of Jazz (1930)

The Lunch Date (1989)

The Magnificent Seven (1960)

Martha Graham Early Dance film (1931-44)

Mary Poppins (1964)

Men & Dust (1940) 

Midnight (1939)

Notes on the Port of St. Francis (1951)

Pulp Fiction (1994)

The Quiet Man (1952)

The Right Stuff (1983)

Roger & Me (1989)

A Virtuous Vamp (1919)

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966)

Wild Boys of the Road (1933)

END

Review: "Team America: World Police" is Crazy, Smart and True (Happy B'day, Trey Parker)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 209 (of 2004) by Leroy Douresseaux

Team America: World Police (2004)
Running time:  100 minutes (1 hour, 40 minutes)
MPAA – R for graphic, crude & sexual humor, violent images and strong language; all involving puppets
DIRECTOR:  Trey Parker
WRITERS:  Pam Brady, Matt Stone and Trey Parker
PRODUCERS:  Scott Rudin, Matt Stone, and Trey Parker
CINEMATOGRAPHER:  Bill Pope, A.S.C. (D.o.P.)
EDITOR:  Thomas M. Vogt
COMPOSER:  Harry Gregson-Williams

COMEDY/ACTION/ADVENTURE

Starring:  (voices) Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Kristen Miller, Masasa, Daran Norris, Phil Hendrie, Maurice LaMarche, and Paul Louis

The subject of this movie review is Team America: World Police, a 2004 satirical comedy film from the team of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of the long-running animated series, “South Park.”  The film’s cast is composed of marionettes (puppets) instead of live actors.  Team America: World Police follows a popular Broadway actor who is recruited by an elite counter-terrorism organization to help stop a dictator who is plotting global terror attacks.

Team America: World Police may be 2004’s funniest film.  Some may consider it the most obnoxious and crass movie of the year, especially after viewing the graphic puppet “sex scene.”  It will certainly go down as one of the most outrageous movies not made by John Waters.  It’s a wonderful send up of action movies, especially as those made by super-producer Jerry Bruckheimer, and the hilarious characters that populate them.  Even the musical scores to Bruckheimer films get it up the butt and in the mouth from this movie.  It’s also a wicked satire of American military aggression and the celebrities who protest it.  However, as good as the film is (and it’s quite good), Team America: World Police frequently falls on its own spear.

Team America is an international police force dedicated to maintaining global security.  And they’re also marionettes; you may best remember marionettes as those puppets on the venerable British TV children’s series, “Thunderbirds.”  Team America’s latest mission takes them to Paris, France, where they fight a handful of terrorists with WMD’s, also known as weapons of mass destruction.  Team America also manages to destroy Paris’ most famous landmarks, and also loose a team member to a terrorist’s bullets.

Team America’s leader, Spottswoode, a gray-headed, older, distinguished gentleman, recruits a young Broadway actor named Gary to replace the fallen comrade.  Spottswoode thinks that Gary will make the perfect spy because in college he was a double major in theatre and world languages.  The other Team America members:  Lisa, Sarah, Chris, and Joe, are wary at first, but they back him up on their first mission to Cairo to infiltrate a band of Islamic fundamentalists with WMD’s.

There is however a larger crisis looming.  Power-mad dictator Kim Jong Il of North Korea has planned a series of simultaneous global terror attacks – imagine 9/11 times 2356.  He’s convinced the Hollywood Film Actors Guild, or F.A.G., and their leader, actor Alec Baldwin, to support a conference in North Korea in which all world leaders will attend.  The conference is merely a cover for the launch of the worldwide terror strikes, which will occur while Baldwin gives his peacenik keynote speech.  Can Team America stop Kim Jong Il…and the actors?

Team America: World Police is the second major studio film from Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of the uproarious and bawdy animated program, “South Park,” on Comedy Central.  Team America, on one hand, is a delightful and loving send up of “Thunderbirds” and the other puppet marionette shows produced by England’s Century 21.  On the other hand, the film is mostly a vicious and brutal satire of the contemporary American political landscape and American self-righteousness.  The use of marionettes instead of actors greatly takes the sense of people getting made fun of to a level that human actors couldn’t go.

Parker/Stone use clever dialogue, over-the-top violence, and hyper-patriotic songs to skewer heavy-handed U.S. military offenses, strikes, and pre-emptive attacks on international locales.  They also use marionettes that closely resemble well known Hollywood and celebrities that protest U.S. military action.  The marionettes, in some cases, barely look like the stars that they’re supposed to resemble; in some cases the resemblance is just close enough not to get the filmmakers sued.  Still, it works enough so that such stars as Alec Baldwin, Tim Robbins, Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, Matt Damon, Helen Hunt and others are mercilessly lampooned.

But is the movie good?  The answer is a resounding yes; it’s one of the funniest films I’ve seen in years.  However, it is mean-spirited, graphic, obnoxious, brutal, vicious, vulgar, filthy, foul, nasty, rank, etc.  Sometimes, I had a hard time believing that Parker and Stone were going so far in their satire and humor.  Still, they’re not frat boys out of control; every joke and satirical comment and farcical moment seems well conceived.

Team America: World Police, in the end, takes the side of the “good guys,” but Parker and Stone obviously only trust them a little more than the “bad guys.”  They insist that even the protagonists be viewed with a wary eye, so in the end, it’s as if they question that anyone can be trusted.  Fighting assholes who want to kill everyone is a dirty job, and the heroes and their charges may not be “all that” themselves.  Team America: World Police is not perfect, but it’s the work of frankly honest and only barely inhibited filmmakers.  That’s refreshing when “looking good” is so important these days.

8 of 10
A

Updated:  Saturday, October 19, 2013

The text is copyright © 2013 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this site for syndication rights and fees.

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Michael Moore, Anniversaries, and Old Movie Reviews

by Leroy Douresseaux

Today is the 10th anniversary of the 75th Academy Awards, which occurred on a Sunday night on March 23, 2002. Steve Martin hosted the Oscar ceremony for the second time. Chicago won “Best Picture,” one of its six wins (after receiving a leading 13 nominations). This was also the night that a hip hop song won the best song Oscar for the first time (“Lose Yourself” performed by Eminem and written by Eminem, Jeff Bass, and Luis Resto).

Probably the most memorable event was the acceptance speech by Michael Moore, who won the Oscar for “Best Documentary Feature” with Michael Donovan for the film, Bowling for Columbine. Moore invited his fellow nominees on stage and spoke about the then-recently started Iraq War:

"We live in fictitious times. We live in the time where we have fictitious election results, that elect a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. Whether it's the fiction of duct tape or fiction of orange alerts, we are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Mr. Bush! Shame on you! And any time you got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up! Thank you very much!"

I still love that acceptance speech, and it’s one of my favorites. Anyway, I’m still doing some house cleaning. As you noticed, I posted reviews for Lilo & Stitch and The Wild Thornberrys Movie. They were the last two reviews of films nominated for the 75th Academy Awards that were posted on the original site, but had not been moved to the new Negromancer. Welcome.

By the way, Moore is holding a nationwide series of house parties tonight, in which people will get together and watch Bowling for Columbine. For more information, go here.

"Capitalism: A Love Story" Shows No Love for Greed

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 88 (of 2010) by Leroy Douresseaux

Capitalism: A Love Story (2009)
Running time: 127 minutes (2 hours, 7 minutes)
MPAA – R for some language
WRITER/DIRECTOR: Michael Moore
PRODUCERS: Anne Moore and Michael Moore
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Daniel Marracino and Jayme Roy
EDITORS: Jessica Brunetto, Alex Meillier, Tanya Meillier, Conor O'Neill, Pablo Proenza, T. Woody Richman, and John Walter

DOCUMENTARY

Starring: Michael Moore, William Black, US Congressman Elijah Cummings, Sheriff Warren Evans, Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, Wallace Shawn, and Elizabeth Warren

Capitalism: A Love Story is a 2009 documentary film by author and director, Michael Moore. The film focuses on the financial crisis that began in 2007 (and continued into 2010) and indicts capitalism and the current economic order of the United States. Moore details how capitalism via corporations dominates the lives of Americans and the rest of the world (by default).

Moore’s film travels around the country, especially Middle America, detailing how the excesses of capitalism and corporate greed have damaged, even destroyed the lives of some Americans. Moore attempts to enter the halls of power in Washington D.C. and the global financial epicenter in Manhattan, specifically Wall Street, to discuss greed and government bailouts. Capitalism: A Love Story’s topics include corporate-owned life insurance (called “dead peasants insurance), for-profit prisons, home foreclosures and evictions, the influence of Goldman Sachs in Washington D.C., modern worker strikes, Wall Street’s “casino mentality,” and more. The film asks several questions, but the most prominent being, what is the price that America pays for its love of capitalism? The film also has a religious component in which Moore wonders if capitalism is a sin and if Jesus would have been a capitalist.

Obviously the title, Capitalism: A Love Story, is a misnomer, but this isn’t a hate story. Moore examines “unfettered and unregulated” capitalism and also how modern capitalism is defined by greed, an insatiable lust for money, and the tendency to view everything and everyone as a commodity – all subject to exploitation. Moore is more than just a documentary filmmaker; he is also a crusader. As such he presents evidence and information specifically designed to prove his point – in this case that capitalism is destructive and evil – and also to get his audience politically aware and socially active.

Sometimes, Moore’s own actions in his movies come across as stunts – like his antics on Wall Street and near Congress in this movie. In Capitalism: A Love Story, this only serves to hurt the movie’s credibility and also makes him look more like a prankster than a documentary filmmaker. Like Fahrenheit 9/11, Capitalism: A Love Story avoids perfection because of its creator’s tendency to clown.

Still, Moore dazzles with his ability to tell stories about the struggles and suffering of ordinary working Americans. He is also one of the best American filmmakers working today. Impressive storytelling and exceptional technical skills are the calling cards of this brilliant movie director. When such a director tackles our nation’s most pressing issues, we should pay attention because it matters.

8 of 10
A

NOTES:
2010 Image Awards: 1 nomination: “Award Outstanding Documentary (Theatrical or Television)”

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Michael Moore's SiCKO Chronicles Real Death Panels

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 12 (of 2008) by Leroy Douresseaux

Sicko (2007)
Running time: 123 minutes (2 hours, 3 minutes)
MPAA – PG-13 for brief strong language
WRITER/DIRECTOR: Michael Moore
PRODUCERS: Michael Moore and Meghan O’Hara
EDITOR: Geoffrey Richman, Christopher Seward, and Dan Swietlik
Academy Award nominee

DOCUMENTARY

Starring: Michael Moore, Tarsha Harris, and Larry and Donna Smith

In his most recent documentary, Sicko, Oscar-winning filmmaker Michael Moore (Bowling for Columbine) set his sights on the state of the American healthcare system, examining the plight of both the uninsured and the under-insured. Moore’s argument: in the world’s richest country, 45 million people have no health insurance, while HMO’s grow in size and wealth.

During his investigation, Moore uses his trademark humor and confrontational style and attempts to shed light on the complicated medical affairs and tragedies of a wide-range of Americans. Sticking to his tried-and-true one-man approach, Moore also visits Canada, Great Britain, France, and Cuba to compare how those countries provide basic health care coverage free for their citizens.

Michael Moore is clearly dismayed that so powerful and wealthy as nation as the United States should put so many of its citizens in the position of gambling their health will always be good. Sicko seems to reveal that Moore is equally surprised and perhaps angry that the system is such a mess that even people with health insurance are not always better off than the uninsured. Moore shows how the system got that way, and then relying on people rather than statistics, he introduces his audience to various Americans who’ve suffered as a result of a system that emphasizes profit over the well-being of its patients. Some sick people even get a death sentence – in the form of a refusal to pay for a lifesaving procedure – personally from their insurance provider.

The carnival atmosphere that hangs over Moore’s films (especially Fahrenheit 9/11) is still here, but Moore rarely loses focus in reminding us that American can do better for more of its citizens when it comes to healthcare. Though his surprise sometimes comes across as disingenuous, Moore uses droll humor and sly wit to ignite the fire in your belly and the rage in your heart. I must admit that there is some unintentional humor: some of the services that European governments provide for their citizens border on nanny state overkill, but who has the last laugh? Them or we Americans?

Sicko, Moore’s best film since Roger & Me, demands that American healthcare be reformed to help all citizens regardless of financial status. Moore also argues that only those with something to gain from the status quo will ignore the sobering realities.

10 of 10

NOTES:
2008 Academy Awards: 1 nomination for “Best Documentary, Features” (Michael Moore and Meghan O’Hara)

2008 Image Awards: 1 nomination for “Outstanding Documentary (Theatrical or Television)

Sunday, March 09, 2008

Fahrenheit 9/11 a Tour de Force

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 146 (of 2004) by Leroy Douresseaux

Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)
Running time: 122 minutes (2 hours, 2 minutes)
MPAA – R for some violent and disturbing images, and for language
WRITER/DIRECTOR: Michael Moore
PRODUCERS: Jim Czarnecki, Kathleen Glynn, and Michael Moore
EDITORS: Kurt Engfehr, T. Woody Richman, and Christopher Seward

DOCUMENTARY/WAR

Starring: George W. Bush, Lila Lipscomb, and Michael Moore

His detractors have called documentary filmmaker Michael Moore everything from a polemist to a propagandist. The Oscar® winning director (Bowling for Columbine) is the best known American documentary movie maker, even better known than such acclaimed talents as Ken Burns and Errol Morris. In the late spring of 2004, Moore debuted is most controversial work to date, Fahrenheit 9/11, in which Moore aims his camera squarely at the administration and policies of U.S. President George W. Bush.

Fahrenheit 9/11 details the connections between the Bush family and various Saudi Arabian oil interests, especially the bin Laden family – ironic considering that Bush and the bin Laden family member who is the alleged architect of the September 11, 2001 attacks on America, Osama bin Laden, are now mortal enemies. The film also takes a look at what happened after 9/11/2001, and how the Bush administration used the tragic event to push its agenda. Moore’s claims include accusations that Bush family and business associates have greatly benefited monetarily from the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq through government military and petrochemical contracts. Fahrenheit 9/11 later takes a look at the affects of combat in Iraq on the soldiers and Iraqi citizens, and Moore interviews Lila Lipscomb, a proud and patriotic mother whose son dies in Iraq.

Unlike Moore’s films, Roger & Me and the aforementioned Columbine, Moore, as a character, does not make many on-screen appearances in Fahrenheit. Fahrenheit 9/11 is more focused than the Academy Award-winning Columbine because Moore has to spend a great deal of the film detailing his arguments, especially in the film’s first half. The first hour or so of Fahrenheit 9/11 is where Moore makes his arguments that George Bush and his cronies and administration used the war to enact government and social policies that they wanted to force on Americans all along and that the terrorist attacks on the U.S. gave them the opening they needed. Moore claims that ultimately the war in Iraq was more about the Hand Puppet’s administration’s desire to make money than protecting the U.S. What makes Michael Moore’s argument convincing is that he culls so much archival news footage, photographs, and video from recent news conferences. Thus, the subjects of his film do the vast majority of the talking and inadvertently convict themselves and prove Moore’s points.

The first half of Fahrenheit 9/11, when it focuses on George Bush, is outrageous and hilarious. Michael Moore has the gift of being both subtle and blunt when it comes to humor. His satire has the precision of a scalpel, and he presents arguments with the blunt force of a fist; he is brutal and relentless. Considering how so many Hollywood directors of comedies now rely on childish gross out jokes to sell their “humor,” Moore is likely the smartest film director of humor in America. He uses President Bush and his associates like hapless sock puppets for his jokes, all the while he expertly delineates their follies.

The second half of Fahrenheit 9/11 is a bit of a downer, as Moore takes his camera to Iraq to interview soldiers. He also interviews a soldier’s mother from his hometown of Flint, Michigan. Although many critics have claimed that Michael Moore portrayed the American servicemen and servicewomen as villains, I found that to be otherwise. The little time the soldiers are on camera, Moore shows warts and all, but the soldiers come out looking like humans and not killing machines. They make mistakes and do ugly things, but Moore shows them as the heroes – guys and girls just doing their jobs. If the job is wrong, it’s not by their hands, but it’s on the people who sent them there.

The other segment of Fahrenheit 9/11 that’s really hard to watch is Moore’s time spent with Lila Lipscomb, the mother of a slain soldier. His camera takes such an intimate look at her life surrounding her son’s service in Iraq that when tragedy strikes, the viewer also feels the pain.

As good as Moore is at making documentaries, he also uses film to make commentary, and he uses film as if he were an essayist. He’s also part of that other group of journalists, reporters, storytellers, etc. who go beyond the safe borders where mainstream American media won’t go. Michael Moore just happens to be the loudest source of alternative information concerning politics and society, and Fahrenheit 9/11 may be his most accomplished work. Still, it’s by no means perfect; sometimes the film looses focus (as during his visit with two Oregon state troopers). However, Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sign of even greater things to come from Moore, and it’s one of the best films of the year.

9 of 10
A+

NOTES:
2004 Cannes Film Festival: 2 wins: “FIPRESCI Prize Competition” (Michael Moore) and Golden Palm or “Palme d’Or” (Michael Moore)

Happy Anniversary, Michael Moore

Seven years ago, Michael Moore walked on stage to receive his Oscar statuette for "Best Documentary."  He invited his fellow nominees on stage and Moore made the following speech:

"I've invited my fellow documentary nominees on the stage with us and we would like to ... they are here in solidarity with me because we like non-fiction. We like non-fiction, as we live in fictitious times. We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that elects a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. Whether it's the fiction of duct tape or fiction of orange alerts we are against this war, Mr Bush. Shame on you, Mr Bush, shame on you. And any time you got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up. Thank you very much."

And the boo birds came out!  The Guardian (UK)'s Megan Carpentier talks about that incident and compares it to Kathryn Bigelow's recent acceptance speech at the Oscars.

Review: Academy Award Winning Documentary "Bowling for Columbine"

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 171 (of 2003) by Leroy Douresseaux


Bowling for Columbine (2002)
Running time: 120 minutes (2 hours)
MPAA – R for some violent images and language
WRITER/DIRECTOR: Michael Moore
PRODUCERS: Charles Bishop, Jim Czarnecki, Michael Donovan, Kathleen Glynn, and Michael Moore
EDITOR: Kurt Engfehr
Academy Award winner

DOCUMENTARY/COMMENTARY

Starring: Michael Moore, Charlton Heston, Marilyn Manson, Matt Clark, and Dick Clark

After passing over his Roger and Me in 1989, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) handed out its Oscar for “Best Documentary, Features” to filmmaker Michael Moore for his 2002 feature Bowling for Columbine. The Writers Guild of America also awarded Moore “Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen,” one of many American and international awards the film won.

In the film, Moore explores the roots of American’s predilection for gun violence. He also takes a look at the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado where two students killed 13 people with guns and an incident in his hometown where a six year-old boy killed a six year-old girl with a handgun he found at his uncle’s home. Moore also examines American’s culture of fear and bigotry; he especially focuses on the bigotry against young, black men that marks them as violent predators. Moore also goes after powerful, elite political and corporate interests that directly make money by fanning a culture of bigotry, fear, and violence.

Bowling for Columbine is exacting in the detail to which it pursues its topics, although Moore seems as stumped as anyone to provide answers. It is as if he’s pointing at the symptoms or results of our culture, but can’t find out why things are as they are. It’s a fair and mostly balanced look because Moore gives people a chance to speak. Some, in particular, Charlton Heston (then president of the National Rifle Association or N.R.A.) seem simultaneously proud and embarrassed of their very vocal support of guns and tacit support of gun violence.

The film is often very funny. Its issues are perplexing – especially the examination of Canada, a country with a lot of guns, but very few gun deaths. BFC is also quite heartbreaking and dramatic; the segments on Columbine and the murder of the schoolgirl in Michigan are heartbreaking. Moore knows just how to push buttons when he reveals that the mother of the small boy who shot the girl works two very low paying jobs because of Michigan’s “welfare for work program.” Even with the two jobs, she couldn’t pay her rent and was evicted from her home. She moved in with her brother, and that’s where the child found the weapon.

The film is a little over the top at times. The Heston interview doesn’t go well, and in the segment, Moore seems to be picking on this elder statesman of acting, who was later revealed to be in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Oh, God must not like ugly.

Some may find BRC unbalanced, and though that makes it almost as much commentary as documentary, the film is important. Someone had to document the horrors of this violent, bigoted, and greedy leader of the free world in a form that would force its way into pop culture and into the popular conscience. This excellent film only makes people mad because it is both real and truth revealing.

8 of 10
A

NOTES:
2003 Academy Awards: 1 win: “Best Documentary, Features” (Michael Moore and Michael Donovan)

Michael Moore for President?

In an op-ed for Truthout, writer Robert Naiman discusses all the good things that would happen "If Michael Moore Were to Run for President."  Naiman believes that the progressive movement and the country would benefit because Moore's campaign would force the current administration of President Barack Obama to return to the progressive, populist agenda he promised when he ran for president:

If Obama's advisers knew for certain that they would face an effective progressive challenge in the 2012 primaries and caucuses, it's likely that they would start making different political choices immediately, because everything they fail to accomplish by spring 2012 would be on the table in the primaries and caucuses: health care for all, putting America back to work, ending the war in Afghanistan. Most analysts seem to think that there was a strong correlation between Obama's announcement of July 2011 as the beginning of US troop withdrawals from Afghanistan and the 2012 election cycle; but an effective primary challenge would bring that calculation forward by six months. It's likely that if Obama's advisers knew they faced a spring 2012 deadline for showing that the war was ending, they would stop undermining Afghan efforts to start peace talks. A Moore campaign could save thousands of American and Afghan lives. In contesting Democratic primaries and caucuses against Michael Moore, Obama's advisers wouldn't be able to prevail by deploying mere rhetoric, because now they're in power, and would have to answer for what they are actually doing.

I doubt that it would be that simple, but a Michael Moore run from the presidency would be great.