Where In The World Is Osama Bin Laden?

[GregMcduck]

Holy shit, you guys.

If Michael Moore is America's number one documentary filmmaker, then after releasing Super Size Me Morgan Spurlock definitely became number 2. Except while Moore makes more point of view movies, Spurlock's work is a lot closer to being what we think of when throwing around the word "documentary".

His next project is by far, his riskiest yet. Spurlock has finished his new movie Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?, in which he sets out to do what the United States government has apparently failed to do: Find Osama Bin Laden. The Weinstein Company bought the thing after seeing only 15 minutes of it at the Berlin Film Festival, and here's where it gets really interesting. Rumor has it that Spurlock actually found Osama Bin Laden.

The film's director of photography told SlashFilm that Morgan "definitely got the holy grail." Since the movie is about him hunting Osama, that would make him the holy grail... wouldn't it? For now though, everyone around the production is keeping things locked down.

The film is supposed to debut in Park City at Sundance this year, and since tomorrow is the deadline for them to notify people who have received press credentials and I still haven't heard anything, I guess I won't be able to report back on it. I'm sure someone more important than us will. Whenever we all finally get around to seeing it, I can't even begin to imagine the media madness this film will unleash if Morgan Spurlock actually found and hung out with Osama Bin Laden. It instantly raises a lot of important questions like... if mustachioed Morgan Spurlock can find him, don't you have to assume the US government isn't even trying?

http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Has-Morgan-Spurlock-Found-Osama-Bin-Laden-7091.html

Not to be all "bush dumbed the facts" or anything, but while I'm healthily skeptical I'm not ready to discount the possibility. As I recall, bin Laden was last interviewed around 1998 when an independent journalist went through an insanely rigorous process (including several strip-searches, being blindfolded, having all of his recording equipment disabled, etc.) to interview him. The resources we spent toward finding him then aren't all that dramatically less than the ones we are spending to find him now, and bin Laden likes attention. I think that someone with a taste of journalistic success/hubris could stand an outside chance of pulling it off.

More likely, My guesses are evidence that bin Laden is dead (or has been dead for a while), or getting somebody from our own government on tape saying something they shouldn't have. Those are the two things I can think of.

[Tyrant]

  Wow. Just....wow.

Not to be all "bush dumbed the facts" or anything, but while I'm healthily skeptical I'm not ready to discount the possibility. As I recall, bin Laden was last interviewed around 1998 when an independent journalist went through an insanely rigorous process (including several strip-searches, being blindfolded, having all of his recording equipment disabled, etc.) to interview him. The resources we spent toward finding him then aren't all that dramatically less than the ones we are spending to find him now, and bin Laden likes attention. I think that someone with a taste of journalistic success/hubris could stand an outside chance of pulling it off.

More likely, My guesses are evidence that bin Laden is dead (or has been dead for a while), or getting somebody from our own government on tape saying something they shouldn't have. Those are the two things I can think of.

  Well, I think it's worth the effort. Assuming Bin Laden is still alive, you've got a really good point about him liking attention. However, my doubts on Bin Laden being interviewed by this guy stem from the fact that 1) He's not exactly the most popular person right now. 1998 was well before 9/11 and he's an even more wanted man now than he was then. He's not stupid. If he made a reporter go through all that pre-9/11, can you imagine what he'd make one do NOW? 2) Military intelligence has been trying to find this guy for over six years now (assuming our government isn't lying to us about that). Although I don't discount the possibility that a non-military specialist may be able to get into places a trained operative can't, it does stretch the imagination a bit. 3) You may be right, and Bin Laden may be dead.

I guess no one will know until this guy tries it.

[MrTorso]

This might be worth checking out. Never was a fan of Super Size Me. If anyone really didn't know that eating McDonalds every single day for every meal would be bad for you then you deserve the health problems. 

[sarcasm_made_Easy]

i thought supersize me was gonna suck and be simple minded.  the reality it was amazingly insightful with lots of info.  anything that guy puts out ill check out. 

[BathTub]

yeah the McDonalds Diet was just the gimmick to sell the Doco, othewise no one would have given a toss, it was very interesting. Personally I think OBL is dead.  But this will be spoilt before I ever get to see it, will be interesting to hear what the big scoop is.

[Hebs]

The Warrant!  Oooooh the chaaaaase..... ooooh the chaaase...
Monday Through Friday at 5!!  *sigh* I loved that show.



Whoa - I'd like to see that.

I like Spurlock a lot, I think he has a good amount of integrity in his film making.  30 Days is a pretty good show. 

[ShawnBoy]

My comment here has nothing to do with what your all talking about but rather with the title of this post.  Looking at the side by side pics there I would have to say this we may not know where Osama or his mama are but we do know this, he is still able to stick his hand up when they call out his name when the curly fries are up. Oh oh wait maybe he is saying " yes please I would very much like fries with that, thank you very much ".  Or better yet " I swear to tell dee truff an nud ding butt da truff so elp me allah ".  Ok ok that was a bit wrong there but hay if you can't laugh at a looney toon like Osama who can you laugh at.

[Tyrant]

My comment here has nothing to do with what your all talking about but rather with the title of this post.  Looking at the side by side pics there I would have to say this we may not know where Osama or his mama are but we do know this, he is still able to stick his hand up when they call out his name when the curly fries are up. Oh oh wait maybe he is saying " yes please I would very much like fries with that, thank you very much ".  Or better yet " I swear to tell dee truff an nud ding butt da truff so elp me allah ".  Ok ok that was a bit wrong there but hay if you can't laugh at a looney toon like Osama who can you laugh at.

  *gasp* That's it!!! He's hiding in a McDonalds resturaunt!!!!

[ShawnBoy]

So that's why Ronald smell's like week old donkey arse ... man that's the last time I sit on the bench next to a supposed plastic Ronald.  Guess when Osama heard them say have it your way he thought they meant the disquise.

[BBQ Platypus]

The Warrant!  Oooooh the chaaaaase..... ooooh the chaaase...
Monday Through Friday at 5!!  *sigh* I loved that show!

Damn, I actually GET that reference!

[Chaos]

The Warrant!  Oooooh the chaaaaase..... ooooh the chaaase...
Monday Through Friday at 5!!  *sigh* I loved that show!

Damn, I actually GET that reference!

uh... I found and compiled several episodes of all my favourite kid shows. I'm saving them until my daughter is old enough to enjoy them (and so I have an excuse to enjoy them again, vicariously). They're nearly frickin' impossible to find, but it's worth the effort. I've got all kinds of Nickelodeon shows and other fun ones like Carmen squirreled away. Rockapella!

[GregMcduck]

hey I came upon a review for this today and it is, uh...unkind.

http://www.splicetoday.com/moving-pictures/film-review-i-where-in-the-world-is-osama-bin-laden-i

It's never made clear to what extent Spurlock considers his mission to be tongue-in-cheek. One would have to assume it is, if only to prevent thinking that Spurlock is the dumbest man alive. Yet he told Deborah Solomon in the April 6 New York Times Magazine, "Anybody who buys a lottery ticket doesn't buy one saying, 'I am not going to win.'" So in addition to having pitiful grammar, Spurlock did indeed hold out hope that his arsenal of instructional cartoons, rapid-fire editing, and antic mugging could achieve what the U.S. military has been unable to do for the last six years. More accurately, Spurlock uses this five-month journey to right the wrongs of the U.S.'s military action in the Middle East—to get on the street, meet some people, and arrive 90 minutes later with some Oprah-like platitudes about how the media feeds us barbaric depictions of Arab people when they're really just like us.

He continually shoots himself in the foot, however, by traipsing through Egypt, Morocco, Afghanistan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan as a virtual embodiment of Ugly American tourist behaviors. See Spurlock, dressed in flowing white robe and headdress, walking through a Saudi Arabian shopping mall and asking groups of burka-covered women if they'd like to talk in front of an American camera. See Spurlock, responding to an intelligent Egyptian man's somber claim that even a phone can be used to kill people nowadays, saying, "And sometimes my phone kills my bank account, too!" See Spurlock, editing in the cheapest action movie music imaginable over a scene where Israeli police inspect a possible bomb in Tel Aviv, then seconds later showing himself walking along the street with the bomb-diffusing robot, saying, "Good work, pal." And of course he adds R2D2 sound effects for the robot's response.

The litany of Spurlock's cultural and journalistic indiscretions is nearly endless, but that last one sums up the general problem: he feigns compassion and interest and solemnity at every turn, but he's nothing more than a privileged American boob who equates grim nodding with earnestness and pop-culture references with comedy. Right after the Star Wars homage, a group of rabbis gather around Spurlock and his crew to call him scum and howl for his immediate removal from the gate of their temple. And how could they not? This man makes a mockery of attempted cultural understanding by turning downtown Tel Aviv into his own private television studio. As if to prove the point, his only response to the rabbis' call is an address to the camera: "Dude, this is messed up."

[Gaseous Snake]

The thread title cut out at Osama Bin Laden. I thought this would be about Carmen Sandiego.

[Tripe]

Well the film's after party had a possibly interesting bit of gossip

[BBQ Platypus]

Well the film's after party had a possibly interesting bit of gossip

Woo-hoo!  Go, David!