Just finished watching Bowling for Columbine and I have to say that Michael Moore is my hero. Basically an examination of why the US has something like 11 thousand deaths by gun every year, and Canada (with similar ethnic mixes, similar or higher number of guns per capita, same taste in music, movies, video games, and just as violent a history (though maybe not as violent as some place like Germany, England, Russia, or Japan)) has something like <400. Lies, damn lies and statistics, but still a great look at why the US has this fear of everything around them and the need to lock themselves in lock the bad guys out and protect themselves with gobs of firearms. There was no real conclusion, but the main difference between the two countries seemed to be the media, and what is being shown. These days of course it’s war war and more war of course. The attitude of the US cited in the film versus that of Canada seems to hold true with the US attitude of solving problems by going and blowing things up and the Canadian one of… well… not.
Two things strucke me as funny/scary/ironic in the film. The first was when Michael Moore went through Winsor Ontario (or maybe it was Toronto?) and just randomly opened doors on peoples houses to see if the “we don’t lock our doors at night” attitude was true. The people whose doors he opened basically said “hows it going eh?”. I can only imagine he didn’t do the same thing in the US because he was afraid of being shot in the face. The media has no doubt instilled the fear in the average person from our neighbor to the south that if your door is opened (if it was not locked god forbid) unexpectedly it is no doubt some [ethnic] gang member on his way in to kill you and beat/do nasty things to your family, and you should shoot them immediately.
The other was … shit, I don’t remember what I was going to say now.
I’m sure that others have good stuff to say about the movie as well, and if Mr. Moore should happen to read this, sir, my hat is off to you in thanks from a Canadian fan.