BostonHerald.com - Fahrenheit 9/11 joins long line of controversial movies

BostonHerald.com - the Edge: Hot-button cinema: 'Fahrenheit 9/11' joins long line of controversial movies: "In the midst of all this 'Fahrenheit 9/11' hysteria, it's easy to forget that Michael Moore's scathing indictment of the Bush administration and the war in Iraq is hardly the first film to set off a proverbial 'firestorm of controversy.'

In recent decades, the film industry has steered a cautious berth around politics and religion, topics that divide and bedevil the American people, in the assumption that such movies would be box-office downers. This has been true even of most American independent films.

But this year, two remarkable movies have confronted those issues head-on, Mel Gibson's 'The Passion of the Christ' and now Moore's 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' stirring up more ruckus and interest among the media and the public than most of the studios' 'event' films of recent memory. "

By Jim Verniere
BostonHerald.com