I'm sorta surprised I didn't hear about it earlier but I found out Tuesday there was going to be a showing of Sicko in London Friday night. That wasn't too big a deal until I found out director Michael Moore was going to be there. There were rumours some stars like Kiefer Sutherland might come as well.
On Wednesday the USC radio station CHRW asked if I could get some passes so they could review the movie. I called the distributor Alliance Atlantis and asked if I could have some passes. They sent enough for the radio station staff and three friends and I to go.
It was a pretty big deal, media from all over were there to cover it. It turned out parts of the film were shot in London which is why Moore chose to show in London for the first time in North America. Also Moore's Grandfather was from this area.
It was a bit annoying at first, we arrived early to get good seats and because they always give away more passes than there are seats on the assumption some won't be used. We were kept waiting outside in the hallway for over an hour even though the theatre was empty. It was almost show time by the time we got in. The hallway got really hot and the older woman in front of us had way too much perfume on, it was literally making our eyes water. If the staff had tried to make us squish together to make the line shorter I would have refused.
Anyway, we finally got in and Moore came out and said a brief intro before the movie. I've never seen him in person before, he's quite funny.
The movie presentation was quite surprising to me, they showed it on video, not film. It wasn't a great video projector either but fine for a movie like this. One of my friends leaned over and asked me if the picture was supposed to be so dark. It started up about 10 seconds into the movie for some reason so they had to restart it.
Sicko itself was good, pretty typical Moore stuff however you could see some differences from previous films.
He wasn't in the film as much. I wonder if some of it was shot by other people.
There was less of the ambush style interview he is famous for, most likely because everyone knows who he is. When they found out his next movie was going to be on health care all the companies in the US told their employees not to talk to him.
The basic premise of the film is comparing the US health care system to other countries, mostly Canada and France. Needless to say the film didn't even pretend to be objective.
It was very compelling in it's arguments. Even reasonably educated me could see he was leaving things out but it didn't detract from the overall argument.
Every Canadian who has ever complained about our health care system should see this film and be thankful they aren't Americans, especially poor Americans.
The film wasn't as entertaining as his earlier efforts but was still pretty darn funny.
Moore did a Q&A after the film which was really interesting. It turned out a lot of the London people who were in the film were there including the guy who got his fingers chopped off and the doctor that reattached them. They gave him a white doctor's coat which was kind of cute.
One point he made that was quite striking for me was how Canada's health care system could go either way, toward the French system that covers things ours currently doesn't or towards an American style private system. I for one am going to try to make sure we don't go the US way.
BTW The only star other than Moore there was actress Shirley Douglas, Kiefer Sutherland's mother.
1 comment:
I heard about the premiere about a week after it happened and I was disappointed I didn't hear about it sooner. Thanks for telling us about it.
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