Screening Gotham: All Sicko Tuesday

Some of today's Sicko-related news from around New York:

--The Reeler was not among the red-carpet invitees at last night's Sicko premiere in New York, but with today's press conference drawing nigh and my own wavering taste for the film itself, I'm not sure I would have been the best choice to bring you the scoop from the Ziegfeld. Rather, if I could have assigned and read a premiere dispatch from any one writer, it would have been Post critic (or is that post-critic?) Kyle Smith, who is a tad unhappy about the factual liberties taken by Michael Moore: "Sicko is an urgent bipartisan plea. Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, Yankees and Red Sox can surely all agree, says Moore, that our health care system ought to be run by Fidel Castro." It gets better from there as Smith, in a point-by-point rebuke, proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that America is and always will be the best place to treat his red ass.

--And if I had to choose one critic to square off against Smith in a winner-take-all Michael Moore-standards-and-practices debate (i.e. the winner gets to keep his career and the loser gets a job pumping gas in Flint, Mich.), it would have to be Glenn Kenny, who keeps it real for the right wing over at Premiere without all the vein-bulging and spittle.

--And what of the premiere, anyway? The Guardian was there drawing conspiracy theories from the filmmaker, who attributed the wide availability of Sicko on the Web to "people who ... had a vested interest in hoping that this movie would not do well at the box-office." No, that was Hostel: Part II. Moore's movie was uploaded by someone who thought the publicity of having a free Sicko download online over a sluggish summer weekend would pay for itself in the long run. So far, so good.

Posted at June 19, 2007 10:18 AM