Moore rant wows Cannes - Toronto Star (Momentum builds for F-911)

[Screaming Lord Byron]

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1084831812019&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154

It took five separate screenings to accommodate the press demand to see Michael Moore's heavily anticipated anti-Bush documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 at the Cannes Film Festival yesterday, and when it came to turning up the political heat here, neither the movie nor its maker failed to disappoint.

The audience at a afternoon gala screening responded with a 20-minute standing ovation. Festival artistic director Thierry Fremaux told the New York Times it was the longest he had ever witnessed in Cannes.

A scorching indictment of the current U.S. administration's military engagement in Iraq that colours the entire enterprise as being rooted in the Bush family's business relations with Saudi oil money and members of Osama Bin Laden's family — and featuring some harrowing footage shot by freelance camera crews of prisoner abuse, bombed Iraqi civilians and dead-of-night military raids on Iraqi homes — Fahrenheit 9/11 is a considerably more sober, impassioned and focused film than Moore's previous record-breaking box office documentary success Bowling For Columbine. It also features, for better or worse, considerably less Michael Moore on screen.