MICHAEL MOORE - OSCAR GOES TO WAR

Oscar voters on Sunday will have a chance to attend screenings of all five nominated films in the documentary category. Three are anti-war films. Michael Moore, who is among the nominees for his film Sicko about the U.S. health-care system, told the French news agency Agence France Press Wednesday, "The Academy has nominated three anti-war films: the thing that I was booed off the stage for is now being honored." He was referring to the negative reception he received in 2003 when, in accepting the documentary Oscar for his film Bowling for Columbine, he declared, "We live in a time when we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. ... We are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you!" On Wednesday, Moore remarked, "Times have changed." Among this year's nominated documentaries is Charles Ferguson's No End in Sight. Ferguson, a former member of the Brookings Institution thinktank, spent $2 million of his own money to pay for a film in which more than 70 people who were involved in managing the war after the invasion were interviewed. He told AFP that he made the film because he had become "quite disturbed at the quality of media coverage of the Iraq war."

21/02/2008