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Bowling for Columbine



In the wake of the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, the intrepid documentarian Michael Moore set out to investigate the long, often volatile love affair between Americans and their firearms, uncovering the pervasive culture of fear that keeps the nation locked and loaded. Equipped with a camera and a microphone, Moore follows the trail of bullets from Littleton, Colorado, and Flint, Michigan, all the way to Kmart's Michigan headquarters and NRA president Charlton Heston's Beverly Hills mansion, meeting shooting survivors, militia members, mild-mannered Canadians, and musician Marilyn Manson along the way. An unprecedented popular success that helped usher in a new era in documentary filmmaking, the Oscar-winning Bowling for Columbine is a raucous, impassioned, and still tragically relevant journey through the American psyche.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION:

• New high-definition digital restoration, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Michael Moore Makes a Movie, a new documentary featuring Moore, chief archivist Carl Deal, supervising producer Tia Lessin, and field producer Meghan O'Hara
• Programs covering Moore's return to Colorado in 2002, his 2003 Oscar win, and three film-festival Q&As with Moore
• Excerpt from a 2002 episode of The Charlie Rose Show featuring Moore
• Corporate Cops, a segment from Moore's 2000 television series The Awful Truth II
• Trailer
• PLUS: An essay by critic Eric Hynes

Charlton Heston joins the collection!

And Charlie Rose returns!

flyonthewall2983 wrote:And Charlie Rose returns!

Why the film is still "tragically relevant"

Excited to decline around a dozen posts over the next couple days where people unfavorably compare this release to Armageddon and talk about the NRA! 1 down so far!

mfunk9786 wrote:Excited to decline around a dozen posts over the next couple days where people unfavorably compare this release to Armageddon and talk about the NRA! 1 down so far!

Can you move them to Infighting and Navel Gazing for all of us to see?

Anyways, a quick Google search (I haven't seen this movie) mentions how Bowling for Columbine technically isn't a documentary and that it was heavily fictionalized... or is this some ludicrous, butthurt claim? Edit: looks like this guy made a website named "moorexposed.com," so ignore this.

Oh god, here it goes...

mfunk9786 wrote:Excited to decline around a dozen posts over the next couple days where people unfavorably compare this release to Armageddon and talk about the NRA! 1 down so far!

To be fair I'd much rather watch the Bay film again.

Me too, it's just the siren song for someone who isn't very well versed on CC... "Didn't they put out Armageddon? Lol!"

They notably left off the intern commentary from the DVD. Actual LOLs at calling the second season of the Awful Truth whatever is going on there, too

Well, Charlton Heston was already in the Criterion Collection as the narrator in the opening scene of Armageddon!

And just because it is fun to see, here's Mr Heston guiding us through the movie rating system (which appeared on one of those 42nd Street Forever trailer compilation discs) to ensure that nobody is harmed by adult content!

On the Heston sequence in Bowling For Columbine, it is a stunning moment of a film almost completely morally undermining itself, turning any anger at Heston's disturbing "from my cold dead hands!" speech at the NRA convention around somewhat as Moore ends up doing a stunt that just feels like bullying an old man in his own home. It is a rather annoying sequence, existing more seemingly because Moore needed a big closing act to his film than something which seemed to evolve more naturally out of his filmmaking, such as the returning bullets to K-Mart sequence does. And I often think it undermines those Columbine survivors getting their 'big empowering moment' somewhat, as we go from them triumphantly confronting K-Mart employees to Moore seeming to need to one-up their achievement by confronting a celebrity! (I think it ends up showing more that Moore has a fascination with celebrities than working as a condemnation of Heston's rather insensitive, but expected from someone in that position's, comments coming so soon after Columbine. I mean this film did more to publicise the NRA than that speech on its own ever did!)

I do not know if it is just me, but I also find that Heston confrontation sequence slightly suspicious in some ways, mostly because we get a shot-countershot cut from Moore holding that photo to Heston walking away that seems strangely as if at least one side of that encounter was re-staged, or at least that the material doesn't fit together as having naturally occurred in that manner originally.

I'd be interested if Criterion put out The Awful Truth. I vaguely remember seeing a few episodes during it's original run.

flyonthewall2983 wrote:I'd be interested if Criterion put out The Awful Truth. I vaguely remember seeing a few episodes during it's original run.

They did!

I'm fascinated to see how they master this film, since it was shot on several sources ranging from 16mm to digibeta. I wonder if they'll go back to the source material, or use an IP.

kcota17 wrote:

flyonthewall2983 wrote:I'd be interested if Criterion put out The Awful Truth. I vaguely remember seeing a few episodes during it's original run.

They did!

This one, not that one.

flyonthewall2983 wrote:I'd be interested if Criterion put out The Awful Truth. I vaguely remember seeing a few episodes during it's original run.

The complete series is still available on DVD from Docurama.

Werewolf by Night wrote: Fri Mar 16, 2018 9:17 pm

flyonthewall2983 wrote:I'd be interested if Criterion put out The Awful Truth. I vaguely remember seeing a few episodes during it's original run.

The complete series is still available on DVD from Docurama.

Indeed, for that reason, I'd prefer to see them do TV Nation instead -- which has yet to be released by anyone in the DVD/Blu/Digital era (granted, both series were essentially the same show)... or else give "The Big One" a proper release.

I’m very surprised that the full Oscars speech from the ceremony including the clips from the other nominated films is in the extras - I’m sure it’s just a licensing thing cleared from a previous release but would like more of that when possible!

The original DVD had Moore explaining the entire thing because they couldn't clear the rights. For this release Criterion inserted the footage over Moore's description, so Criterion was able to do it. I'm pretty sure they've licensed Award footage for other titles but can't recall where at the moment...