Compiled by Shane Perlowin

June 29 (AGR)— Fahrenheit 9/11 exceeded all expectations last weekend, setting a new record opening for a documentary as it claimed top spot at the US box office.
Michael Moore’s controversial take on George W. Bush and his role in the Iraq war took $23.9 million, more than the Oscar-winning Bowling for Columbine managed in its nine months of release. Including its gross from two New York City theaters where the movie opened June 23, two days earlier than in the rest of the country, Fahrenheit 9/11 had taken in $24.1 million.
Theater owners in cities large and small reported sellout crowds. In Asheville, all through the weekend, people stood in line for hours in front of the Fine Arts Theater on Biltmore Avenue to see the film.
“It became part of the national conversation this weekend,” Moore told Variety. “These are mind-blowing numbers.”
Remarkably, the film achieved these figures despite playing in just 868 cinemas across the US, a tiny number compared to most blockbusters.
The film now not only boasts the best opening ever for a documentary, but also the best for a Palme d’Or winner, beating Pulp Fiction, which opened with $9.3 million in 1994.
The political action committee MoveOn.org organized thousands of parties on June 28 night linked to the release of the film. MoveOn recruited more than 4,000 supporters to give parties, with at least one in all 50 states and Washington DC. The highlight was an 8 pm conference call and question-and-answer session with Moore.
“These parties are to celebrate the film’s success,” said Eli Pariser, 23, the executive director of MoveOn, a liberal organization that advocates grass-roots involvement in politics. “But they are also to take the momentum gathered around the movie and direct it towards activities that will have a concrete effect on the election.”
Moore asked everyone to “adopt five nonvoters and bring them to the polls.” Later in the call, Pariser announced plans for “phone parties” on July 11 in which MoveOn supporters would call unregistered voters in swing states.
Conservative groups sought to discourage theaters from showing it and asked the Federal Election Commission to examine its ads for potential violations of campaign-finance law regulating when commercials may feature a presidential candidate.
“I want to thank all the right-wing organizations out there who tried to stop the film, either from their harassment campaign that didn’t work on the theater owners, or going to the FEC to get our ads removed from television, to all the things that have been said on television,” Moore said. “It’s only encouraged more people to go and see it.”
Lions Gate and IFC came on board after Disney refused to let subsidiary Miramax release Fahrenheit 9/11 because of its political content. Miramax bosses Harvey and Bob Weinstein bought back the film and went looking for independent distributors.
Also on June 28, in Sacramento, CA, the conservative group Move America Forward, whose Web site criticizes Fahrenheit 9/11, organized an advance screening of the Disney documentary America’s Heart and Soul, due in theaters on July 2. That film, directed by Louis Schwartzberg, celebrates ordinary Americans and, Disney says, their extraordinary stories. “Disney brought the movie, rented the theater, and even paid for the popcorn,” Howard Kaloogian, the chairman of Move America Forward, said. “It’s a very patriotic film,” he continued. “It’s in the finest tradition of inspiring Disney movies.”
Kaloogian said that “about 100” people attended.
Mary Lee Pennington of Sacramento said she heard about the Disney film on a conservative talk show on a Sacramento station and took her granddaughter, Paige Siri, to the screening. She said that the Disney film “makes you feel how lucky we are to live in a country that has the opportunity for freedom.”
Fahrenheit 9/11 is definitely raising public interest in the Iraq war just as the United States is attempting a nominal handoff of power to Iraqis.
The heightened public interest generated by the film and the controversy surrounding it is likely to increase the reaction to what happens in Iraq -- good and bad, analysts say.
“We haven’t seen anything like this before,” said political scientist Thad Beyle of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “I can’t recall anything this large” coming out during an election year.
Political analysts are watching to see whether the movie attracts undecided or politically inattentive voters, but say it’s too soon to say how it will influence the presidential campaign.
“What will matter most is what’s happening on the ground in Iraq,” said Robert Shapiro, a Columbia University political science professor who specializes in public opinion.
Recent polls suggest public sentiment is souring on Iraq with a majority saying last week for the first time that the war was a mistake. By a 2-to-1 margin, those surveyed said the transfer of limited power to Iraqis was not a sign of the success of US policy because it was on schedule, but a sign of failure because Iraq is not stable.
The United States on June 28 turned over limited sovereignty to Iraqis, two days ahead of schedule.
The heavy interest in the movie is likely an indication of growing opposition to the war, said Thomas Mann, a political analyst at the Brookings Institution.
The White House has dismissed the film as “outrageously false.”
“It’s not about changing anyone’s mind, are you for Bush or against Bush,” Moore said. “I think one of the very positive impacts of this movie is going to be convincing people to vote.”

Sources: Associated Press, Guardian, NY Times

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Scientists say watching TV hastens puberty

By John Hooper

Rome, Italy, June 28— Does watching television bring on early puberty? Many parents would not doubt that repeated exposure to Sex and the City or the kind of sensual variety shows common on Italian TV could as easily turn their daughters into Lolitas as stir up the latent testosterone in their sons.
But researchers from Florence University have come up with an alternative explanation: watching screens, regardless of the subject matter, helps to advance adolescence.
A study carried out last month in the Tuscan town of Cavriglia detected a huge increase in production of the hormone melatonin in children deprived of TV, computers, and video.
Among the functions ascribed to melatonin is that of slowing down the progress of children to sexual maturity.
Roberto Salti said: “We may thus be able to explain a phenomenon of recent years, which is the bringing forward of puberty in young children.”
Vast amounts of research have been conducted to the effect of television on children. But most has focused on the psychological, rather than physiological, effects.
“In our study television does not feature, as it does in other scientific studies, as a source of strong emotions, capable of unleashing emotive reactions that contribute to development,” said Roberto Tarquini, another member of the team. “For us, it is just a source of light and radiation.”
The researchers studied 74 children aged between six and 12 who normally watched television for an average of three hours a day. In the week preceding the experiment they were encouraged to do so a bit more.
They were then deprived of TV, computers, and video games for seven days. In addition, their families were asked to use less artificial light.
At the end of the period the children’s melatonin levels had risen by an average of 30 percent. The increases were particularly marked in the youngest children.
Alessandra Graz-iottin, director of the Center for Gynecology and Medical Sexology in Milan and a former president of the International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health, said the results were “very interesting and plausible.”
She told the newspaper La Repubblica: “Studies in the US have shown that the greater the exposure to television the greater the number of early sexual experiences, including teen pregnancies.”
Melatonin is known to have an influence on sleep patterns. But whether it also determines the onset of puberty is still a subject of research and debate. The Florence University scientists said they were planning a joint study with US researchers aimed at putting an end to the uncertainty.
Graziottin said the results could also help to explain another phenomenon of recent years. “Sleep disturbances, nightmares, difficulty in getting to sleep, and so on, are ever more common among children. Melatonin has a role in this area too and it is quite possible there is a link with exposure to television.”
Setting up the experiment had not been easy, Tarquini said. “Some of the parents and grandparents were frightened. They didn’t know how they were going to keep the children occupied without television.”
Some of the younger children were reported to have cried when their TV was removed, but the mayor of Cavriglia, Enzo Brogi, presented each child with a book and board game, which seems to have helped.
Parents organized card games, ball games, and fishing expeditions. They encouraged their children to listen more to the radio and arranged a collective reading of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince. The experiment ended on May 16 with a midnight ceremony in which the mayor symbolically smashed a television set in the town square.
The Ansa news agency quoted one of the children as saying seven days was not enough for all the activities that had been planned.
However, La Repubblica reported that the activities also included simulations of well-known TV quiz shows.

Source: Guardian (UK)

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