Tag Archives: Roger Moore

No, Michael Moore did not make a documentary called “Planet of the Humans”

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That was some other guy. The recently released documentary “Planet of the Humas” was written by Jeff Gibbs and Directed by Jeff Gibbs. See?

No mention of Michael Moore there. This is a Jeff Gibbs documentary.

Michael Moore does have a lot to do with this production, though. He is the executive producer, and he seems to be promoting it. But it is not his baby. It is Jeff Gibbs’ baby. We don’t know how much Moore was involved, or if he’s even seen it. (Well, he’s probably seen it, but did he only see it after it was done?)

Why is this important? For a rather sad pair of reasons. Here they are:

1) Trusted, sincere, carefully done analysis from several different individuals shows us that Planet of the Humans is not a good documentary at all. It borders on dishonest (if not charging across that border several times) and while here and there in the film there is surely an important message or two, the messages are supported with information that is mostly bogus, biased, some kind of balderdash.

2) Many people love and respect Michael Moore and his work, and a large number of individuals have, in my experience, decided that since this is a Michael Moore joint, it must be fabulous, and it must be true.

So, I say this to you, Michael Moore fan: This documentary sucks, but it is OK that it sucks. This is a documentary by Jeff Gibbs, not by Michael Moore. So, it is OK to pay attention to the many voices of critique. Indeed, as my friend Adam Siegel asked me earlier today: “Who is the real victim here? Is Michael Moore a victim of his friend Gibbs’ poor work? Does he know how bad this is? Poor man,” or words to that effect.

Speaking of Siegel, he is the one on-line expert who has gone all meta over Moore. He has assembled a series of posts, the most recent (on top of the list below) being the most comprehensive but all are worth a look, that put together the panoply of critiques of Planet of the Humans. Go read:

Moore’s Boorish Planet of The Humans: An Annotated Collection

Planet Of The Humans: Moore Trouble Than It’s Worth

Distributor pulls Michael Moore’s (@MMFlint’s) #PlanetOfTheHumans due to truthiness & errors

For #EarthDay, Michael Moore (@MMFlint) releases fundamentally misleading film

Sometimes less is more. In this case, Moore is less.

James Bond Incarnations In Order

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Roger Moore just died, and you will hear that he was the third, or second, or fourth, “James Bond.” He wasn’t. Here is the list of James Bond actors:

Barry Nelson, who played in “Casino Royale” in 1954. This was an episode in the “Climax!” TV anthology series, like they used to do a lot.
Sean Connery is often regarded as the “original” or “first” James Bond, and in a way he was, since he was the first to repeat the role in several movies. But he was actually the second actor to play the role in front of a camera. He did seven Jame Bonds.
David Niven, who played also in “Casino Royale,” a movie directed by Ken Hughes. Peter Sellers and Ursala Andress were also in the movie.
George Lazenby played James Bond in tghe 1969 “James Bond: ON Her Majesty’s Service.”
Roger Moore, taking up the role as the fifth actor to do so, started in 1973 and played the role seven times.
Timothy Dalton played two Bonds in 1987 and 1989. Many claim, I’m told, that Dalton played the most true-to-the-novel Bond.
Pierce Bronsan started to be Bond in 1995 and played four times.
Daniel Craig played Bond starting in 2006 and has made four films.

An interesting trend in Bond films: The time between films has steadily (but not very uniformly) increased. Once the thing got going, there was about one a year, but this slowed to about one every two years and eventually about one every three years. The last one was two years ago.

Why do I even know this? Because I regard about half the James Bond films ever made to be among the worst things ever put on film, and to have fueled and developed the rape culture our patriarchy embraces. At the same time, I like spy films a lot. Therefore, I thing a handful of the Bond films are great, many should be erased from our cultural memory, and a few others are bla at best.