Heat things up with this DVD

The pre-election release of Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" on DVD is a cause for celebration. Forget "America's Heart and Soul." This is the most patriotic film of the year, provided you know what patriotism really means (hint: it's not the forcible spread of American democracy abroad by way of military force).\nOn one plane, Moore has fashioned a scathing portrayal of the current presidential administration as the friend of corrupt corporations whose agenda actually harms its most ardent supporters. The culture of fear Moore described in "Bowling for Columbine" is fleshed out even more as a nation that's now being kept in check by color-coded threats and the infamous Patriot Act. More convincingly here than anywhere else, Moore proves that Operation Iraqi Freedom is far more about oil and misinformation than creating some magical utopia of "freedom" and "liberty."\nOn another plane, the film's core, Moore shows us the personal side of war in Lila Lipscomb, my new heroine and mother of a young soldier killed in Karbala. Her grief becomes our own in a few of the most emotionally charged moments in recent film history. She bluntly and bravely calls attention to the "ignorance we deal with in everyday people," and her husband asks one of the film's simplest yet most potent questions. Their son died "for what?"\nThe DVD incarnation of "Fahrenheit 9/11" is packed with meaty, substantive features that up the damning ante on Bush and his legions. Bush and Condoleeza Rice's suspiciously dodgy, arrogant and dismissive statements about and in front of the 9/11 Commission are startling. Featurettes showing the plight of post-9/11 Arab-American comedians, the realistic pre-Shock and Awe Iraq and further delving into the microcosm of Operation Iraqi Freedom that is Abu Ghraib Prison all work to positively amplify Moore's case. A montage of release buzz surrounding the film, as well as a tearful endorsement by Lipscomb herself at the D.C. premiere, drive the point home that unless you've actually seen this film, you have no legitimate excuse for denouncing it.\nWith 19 days between the date of this review's publication and the day we as a society choose who's in the hot seat for the next four years, the more open-minded people that see Moore's work means the higher the likelihood that this country will make an educated decision at the polls.