Taking on 'Uncle Saddam' with sarcasm, smugness (airs Cinemax Tuesday) - negative review

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | Monday, November 25, 2002 | Jonathan Curiel

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With war looming in Iraq, it's more crucial than ever to get cogent analysis of the country and its despotic leader, so what does Cinemax offer? Irony. Smarmy, smarmy irony. "Uncle Saddam," which airs Tuesday night on the cable station, gives viewers an exclusive look inside the palaces, museums and other edifices that Hussein maintains on Iraqi soil, and it also provides a time line of Hussein's life, from his troubled childhood to his post-Kuwait grip on power. Filmmaker Joel Soler does it with so much snideness and smugness, however, that his movie is almost unwatchable.

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Judging from the praise for Michael Moore and other lefty "documentary" filmmakers, I thought that they liked smarmy presentations.

Sounds like they are shooting the messenger because they didn't like his message.

The documentary filmmaker has stated that the sanctions are not to blame for the conditions in Iraq but this goes against the leftist mantra.

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Official film site at Uncle Saddam.

Additional (more objective) articles can be found on FR by clicking on Uncle Saddam in the Keywords section of this post.

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"In the name of Allah, the merciful and compassionate, burn this satanic film or you will be dead."

The complete lack of cognitive dissonance among these doublethinkers is amazing to behold.

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Here's why there wasn't money for the Iraqi people (it wasn't sanctions and it wasn't a liposuction machine for Saddam): Model of Saddam's Grand Mosque

Monumental ego: a model of Saddam's planned mosque. It will be the world's largest. Currently under construction. Total estimated cost exceeds One Billion dollars. The model itself fills a large meeting room at an estimated cost of $500,000.00. French architect, Jacques Barriere, has been commissioned to design the structure, which will cover an area near Baghdad the size of 12 football pitches. It will be surrounded by a moat in which the crowning touch will be an island formed in the shape of Saddam's thumb, with the ground contoured exactly to match the leader's fingerprint. "It is so that when God looks down on this mosque he will see Saddam too," said Soler.

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You mean this filmmaker made fun of a person of Arabic origin?

That is so intolerant! No wonder this reviewer is outraged.

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The interior designer Soler interviewed was killed by poison a month after appearing on camera, and "minders" who followed Soler during his stay in Iraq were punished for not figuring out the filmmaker's true plan. Didn't Soler, a former television producer, know that the people he talked to would face retribution when or before his film came out? Was it worth it to make this movie? (Soler mocks Hussein's minders in the closing credits...

Why should I care about Saddam Hussein's interior designer? The bastard was willing to work for Saddam Hussein, he knew the risks, and he deserved what he got. That goes double for Saddam's minders, who are probably responsible for arrests and torture most of the time anyway. Why should I care about them?

Soler is incredibly brave for doing what he did. He's a hero, and I would use that word, because he knowingly risked his own life (he even risked being tortured for years on end) in order to expose this madman, and undermine his evil regime.

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It will be surrounded by a moat in which the crowning touch will be an island formed in the shape of Saddam's thumb, with the ground contoured exactly to match the leader's fingerprint. "It is so that when God looks down on this mosque he will see Saddam too," said Soler.

Kinda like the Grand Canyon and Monica Lewinsky.

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JONATHAN CURIEL'S REVIEW OF "BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE"

Jonathan Curiel, Chronicle Staff Writer

BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE: Documentary. Directed by Michael Moore. (R. 119 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)

"Bowling for Columbine" takes a critical look at gun ownership in the United States, but it expands the debate so much -- and so well, thanks to Michael Moore's daring interviews, indelible humor and unflinching eye for detail -- that the documentary reaches an exalted level of filmmaking. It explains the very fabric of American society.

"Bowling for Columbine" reminds us that this is a society where more than 11,000 people die every year from guns, where TV news and entertainment programs gorge on a diet of violent images, where banks give away rifles to customers, where the public lives in fear of being robbed and killed, and where government leaders tell people -- by their words and their actions -- that it's OK to solve problems with might and militarism.

Moore centers his thesis on the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., where two students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, killed 12 classmates. People blamed their depravity on everything from violent video games to the music of shock-rocker Marilyn Manson (who's interviewed in "Bowling"). But Moore says the problem of violence in America is much, much deeper than that and points his finger at a cross section of factors, including the racism that has always permeated the United States. It's no coincidence, Moore believes, that the NRA and the Ku Klux Klan were founded around the same time 130 years ago.

Only Moore could support his contention by showing a hilarious history-of- the-U.S. cartoon that outlines the origins of slavery and by interviewing -- and confronting -- actor and NRA President Charlton Heston. Moore talked his way into Heston's Beverly Hills home just by walking to the gate and ringing the buzzer. Heston wasn't prepared for Moore's line of questioning. Moore practically scolds him for insensitively appearing at an NRA rally in Colorado days after the Columbine killings and for appearing, a year later, at an NRA rally in Michigan shortly after a 6-year-old girl was killed there by a classmate. "Do you think it was OK to come and show up?" he asks Heston. Earlier, when Heston explains the high number of U.S. handgun killings by saying, "We have more mixed ethnicity here (than do other countries)," Moore tries to force him to elaborate. Heston doesn't.

Moore is an activist filmmaker who has an agenda that permeates his new documentary, but it's an agenda that works because it exposes the double standards and doublespeak that Heston and others have promulgated for years. Moore is serious, silly and funny in this film -- one reason "Bowling for Columbine" is effective as both a piece of entertainment and as a Chomsky-like critique of American society.

At one point, Moore lists U.S. military and covert operations that have installed corrupt leaders around the world, including Augusto Pinochet and the Shah of Iran. In another scene, he escorts two Columbine students who were injured in the shootings into the headquarters of Kmart, whose officials agree to stop selling handgun ammunition in their stores. (The 9mm ammunition used by Klebold and Harris at Columbine was purchased from a Kmart.)

Moore, the author of such best-sellers as "Downsize This!" and "Stupid White Men," previously made the documentary "Roger and Me," which examined the General Motors plant closing in Flint, Mich., that resulted in the loss of 30, 000 jobs. "Bowling for Columbine" makes the case that Americans live excessively in fear (the movie features an extensive interview with University of Southern California Professor Barry Glassner, author of "The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things") and that corporations selling security devices and bullets are among the biggest beneficiaries of this climate of fear.

Decades from now, historians will look back at "Bowling for Columbine" and say it captured the zeitgeist. Why does America lead the world in gun-related deaths, and why are there serial killers here every year? The questions that Moore asks are designed to spark debate. The answers are packaged in a way that will produce laughter, tears and anger. A film like this doesn't come along very often.

Jonathan Curiel: a blathering hypocrite.

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Oddly, in his review of “Bowling for Columbine,” Curiel applauds Michael Moore’s blindsiding of Charlton Heston with ulterior motives:

Moore is an activist filmmaker who has an agenda that permeates his new documentary, but it's an agenda that works because it exposes the double standards and doublespeak that Heston and others have promulgated for years. Moore is serious, silly and funny in this film -- one reason "Bowling for Columbine" is effective as both a piece of entertainment and as a Chomsky-like critique of American society.

I guess in his mind, Heston is a much bigger threat to peace than Hussein, and thus deserves to be mocked.

He also shares Moore’s disgust that we live in a nation where “government leaders tell people -- by their words and their actions -- that it's OK to solve problems with might and militarism,” so you can see why he wouldn’t want anybody mocking Saddam. Jonathan would rather send him flowers and tell him we love him.

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Great find. I had a hunch that would be his (like all lefties') view of Moore's filmmaking.

Propaganda is fine as long as it echoes the DNC talking points. < /sarcasm >

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In this article, the same filmmaker was assaulted for footage he was shooting in a documentary called "Uncle Osama".

The daring documentarian ("Uncle Saddam" filmmaker shows the French aren't all bad)

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The Chronicle is such an easy target.