http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5915972/site/newsweek/<snip>
In addition to "Fahrenheit" (DVD Oct. 5), this explosion of urgent and angry political films includes Robert Greenwald's one-two punch of "Uncovered" and "Outfoxed" (both on DVD before they appeared in theaters, and which MoveOn.org has been promoting on the Internet), the Karl Rove expose "Bush's Brain" and "The Hunting of the President" (DVD Sept. 28), which documents the campaign to bring down the Clinton presidency. The subtext of all these films—and the explicit argument of the alarmist "Orwell Rolls in His Grave," about the corporate takeover of our media—is that the major news outlets have dropped the ball and don't bring us the real news. How many people, watching "Fahrenheit's" footage of protesters pelting Bush's car with eggs on Inauguration Day, wondered why they'd never seen that before?
Few of these documentaries have the rowdy entertainment value that Moore delivers. But his polarizing persona, and his use of fiction-movie techniques, make Moore's screed easy for pro-Bush viewers to dismiss. They may have a harder time refuting Greenwald's "Uncovered," with its impressive lineup of expert opinion—CIA operatives, weapons inspectors, State Department officers, intelligence analysts—marshaled to demolish the administration's rationales for war. One emerges from this unhysterical, cogently argued film convinced that the war has been a costly diversion from the fight against terrorism—and created terrorism where it didn't exist before. Greenwald's "Outfoxed" is an equally convincing demolition of Fox News—though no one's going to be shocked to hear that Fox slants to the right. Greenwald shows us a poll revealing that 67 percent of Fox viewers believed there were links between Al Qaeda and Saddam (contrasted with 16 percent of NPR listeners); 35 percent said weapons of mass destruction had been found.
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