{"id":1207,"date":"2007-08-03T14:08:30","date_gmt":"2007-08-03T14:08:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/2007\/08\/michael-moore-and-me-at-the-mo.html"},"modified":"2007-08-03T14:08:30","modified_gmt":"2007-08-03T14:08:30","slug":"michael-moore-and-me-at-the-mo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/08\/michael-moore-and-me-at-the-mo.html","title":{"rendered":"Dispatch from Michael Moore&#8217;s Film Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"sicko_idol.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/87\/import\/sicko_idol.jpg\" width=\"182\" height=\"258\" style=\"float:right;margin: 5px\">Nine movies. Two panel discussions. Four days. It all adds up to one tired film reviewer&#8211;and the week\u2019s not over yet!<br \/>\nI have spent most of this week attending the third annual <a href=\"http:\/\/www.traversecityfilmfest.org\/\" target=\"_new\">Traverse City Film Festival <\/a>&#8211;a.k.a. \u201cThe Film Festival Michael Moore Built&#8221;&#8211;here in Michigan. This year the festival has grown and improved enormously from last year and has had the best array of movies I could imagine. I am beginning to think Robert Redford should start worrying about his new competition.<br \/>\nBut it&#8217;s not just the movies that make the festival fun for me. It&#8217;s the conversations I have had with the fellow movie buffs and one conversation in particular landed both Beliefnet and me in the press!<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nI was sitting in the back of the theater during the opening festivities when I met Jodee Taylor, a writer for the regional newspaper, the Traverse City Record Eagle. I liked her immediately, maybe because she was impressed that I was writing for a national media outlet when I live &#8230; well &#8230; in semi-rural Michigan. ( I am sure I told her the reason I am allowed to do this is not because of my exceptional writing ability, but rather because of my exceptional editors).<br \/>\nShe was also very empathetic when I explained to her that one or two, or maybe more, Idol Chatter readers were less than thrilled (ahem) with <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/2007\/07\/moores-sicko-manufacturing-mor.html#more\" target=\"_new\">my scathing review <\/a>of Moore&#8217;s doc &#8220;Sicko,&#8221; and agreed with me that there is a huge difference between Michael Moore the filmmaker and Michael Moore,  the festival guy who is really helping our local economy by putting on this event.<br \/>\nBut to <em>my<\/em> surprise, <em>she<\/em> was extremely surprised that I wrote for a religion and entertainment blog. In this day an age, in the post-&#8220;Passion&#8221; film era, I guess I assume most fellow journailsts have noticed the trend toward discussing the intersection of faith and pop culture in the media. So in between gossiping about &#8220;Borat&#8221; producer Larry Charles&#8217;s ugly orange shoes and actress Christine Lahti&#8217;s smokin&#8217; hot outfit, we had a nice chat in which I further explained why Beliefnet considered some of the movies at the festival worthy of some spiritual reflection.<br \/>\nAnd guess what? She liked my answers to her questions so much she wrote up a really cute entry <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.record-eagle.com\/?cat=28\" target=\"_new\">on her blog <\/a>at the newspaper all about Beliefnet! Go check it out, and look for lots of my coverage on the movies from the festival next week here at Idol Chatter!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nine movies. Two panel discussions. Four days. It all adds up to one tired film reviewer&#8211;and the week\u2019s not over yet! I have spent most of this week attending the third annual Traverse City Film Festival &#8211;a.k.a. \u201cThe Film Festival Michael Moore Built&#8221;&#8211;here in Michigan. This year the festival has grown and improved enormously from&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":108,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Dispatch from Michael Moore&#039;s Film Festival<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/08\/michael-moore-and-me-at-the-mo.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dispatch from Michael Moore&#039;s Film Festival\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Nine movies. Two panel discussions. Four days. It all adds up to one tired film reviewer&#8211;and the week\u2019s not over yet! I have spent most of this week attending the third annual Traverse City Film Festival &#8211;a.k.a. \u201cThe Film Festival Michael Moore Built&#8221;&#8211;here in Michigan. This year the festival has grown and improved enormously from&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/08\/michael-moore-and-me-at-the-mo.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Idol Chatter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-08-03T14:08:30+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/files\/import\/sicko_idol.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Kris Rasmussen\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Dispatch from Michael Moore's Film Festival","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/08\/michael-moore-and-me-at-the-mo.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Dispatch from Michael Moore's Film Festival","og_description":"Nine movies. Two panel discussions. Four days. It all adds up to one tired film reviewer&#8211;and the week\u2019s not over yet! I have spent most of this week attending the third annual Traverse City Film Festival &#8211;a.k.a. \u201cThe Film Festival Michael Moore Built&#8221;&#8211;here in Michigan. This year the festival has grown and improved enormously from&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/08\/michael-moore-and-me-at-the-mo.html","og_site_name":"Idol Chatter","article_published_time":"2007-08-03T14:08:30+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/files\/import\/sicko_idol.jpg"}],"author":"Kris Rasmussen","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/08\/michael-moore-and-me-at-the-mo.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/08\/michael-moore-and-me-at-the-mo.html","name":"Dispatch from Michael Moore's Film Festival","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/08\/michael-moore-and-me-at-the-mo.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/08\/michael-moore-and-me-at-the-mo.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/files\/import\/sicko_idol.jpg","datePublished":"2007-08-03T14:08:30+00:00","dateModified":"2007-08-03T14:08:30+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/667195b00ac2263e0f6700056170bbf8"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/08\/michael-moore-and-me-at-the-mo.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/08\/michael-moore-and-me-at-the-mo.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/08\/michael-moore-and-me-at-the-mo.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/files\/import\/sicko_idol.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/files\/import\/sicko_idol.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/08\/michael-moore-and-me-at-the-mo.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Dispatch from Michael Moore&#8217;s Film Festival"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/","name":"Idol Chatter","description":"Beliefnet Entertainment blog, TV blog, Movie blog, Religion in entertainment blog","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/667195b00ac2263e0f6700056170bbf8","name":"Kris Rasmussen","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/2e7\/2e7278d93dd11c6aad2c82da37f0d657x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/2e7\/2e7278d93dd11c6aad2c82da37f0d657x96.jpg","caption":"Kris Rasmussen"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/author\/krasmussen"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/108"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1207\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}