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see all sections about filmsite.org: filmsite.org is an award winning website for classic film buffs, students, moviegoers and anyone else interested in the great movies of the last century. Detailed plot synopses, review commentary and film reference material are just some of the features available on the site. The site also contains film analysis, original content, information on the top films and most memorable movie scenes. Milestones and turning points in the industry, and background and descriptions for hundreds of classic hollywood/american and other english language movies from the last one hundred years. In the mid 1990s when it was first launched, filmsite.org was one of the first websites to initiate the trend to select 100 greatest films in the history of cinema. Tim dirks created the popular filmsite.org website, aka greatest films.

As of september 2008, the site was acquired by american movie classics amc llc, and then as of july 2011, it became part of a new company called amc networks, inc. Tim continues to manage and add content to filmsite, and often writes blogs and other film related articles, including those for sundance tv's series 1001 movies you must see before you die. The site averages about 50 million page views per year see visitor and traffic statistics on filmsite . Film critic and columnist roger ebert, author of the great movies 2002 .

And the great movies i 2010 has made many detailed references to filmsite.org in his chicago sun times answer man column and in his many writings about the great movies over the years. He has written that the site is an invaluable repository of movie descriptions and dialogue and that it is an awesome website that contains detailed descriptions of 300 great american films, along with many other riches. Michael moore's bowling for columbine, a documentary that is both hilarious and sorrowful, is like a two hour version of that anecdote. We live in a nation of millions of handguns, but that isn't really what bothers moore. Canada has a similar ratio of guns to citizens, but a 10th of the shooting deaths. What makes us kill so many times more fellow citizens than is the case in other developed nations? moore, the jolly populist rabble rouser, explains that he's a former sharpshooting instructor and a lifelong member of the national rifle association.

In bowling for columbine, however, he is not so sure of the answers as in the popular roger amp me, a film in which he knew who the bad guys were, and why. Here he asks questions he can't answer, such as why we as a nation seem so afraid, so in need of the reassurance of guns. Noting that we treasure urban legends designed to make us fearful of strangers, moore notices how tv news focuses on local violence if it bleeds, it leads and says that while the murder rate is down 20 percent in america, tv coverage of violent crime is up 600 percent. Despite paranoia that has all but sidetracked the childhood custom of trick or treat, moore points out that in fact no razor blades have ever been found in halloween apples. Moore's thoughtfulness doesn't inhibit the sensational set pieces he devises to illustrate his concern.

He returns several times to columbine high school, at one point showing horrifying security camera footage of the massacre. And columbine inspires one of the great confrontations in a career devoted to radical grandstanding. Moore introduces us to two of the students wounded at columbine, both still with bullets in their bodies. He explains that all of the columbine bullets were freely sold to the teenage killers by kmart, at 17 cents apiece.

And then he takes the two victims to kmart headquarters to return the bullets for a refund. This is brilliant theater and would seem to be unanswerable for the hapless kmart public relations spokespeople, who fidget and evade in front of moore's merciless camera. But then, on moore's third visit to headquarters, he is told that kmart will agree to completely phase out the sale of ammunition.

Who suggests that our problem could be solved by simply increasing the price of bullets taxing them like cigarettes. Instead of 17 cents apiece, why not $5,0? at that price, he speculates, you'd have a lot fewer innocent bystanders being shot. Moore buys a map to the stars' homes to find where charlton heston lives, rings the bell on his gate, and is invited back for an interview. But heston clearly knows nothing of moore's track record, and his answers to moore's questions are borderline pathetic.

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Heston recently announced he has symptoms associated with alzheimer's disease, but there is no indication in this footage that he is senile it's simply that he cannot explain why he, as a man living behind a gate in a protected neighborhood, with security patrols, who has never felt himself threatened, needs a loaded gun in the house. Heston is equally unhelpful when asked if he thinks it was a good idea for him to speak at an nra rally in denver 10 days after columbine. Bowling for columbine thinks we have way too many guns, don't need them, and are shooting each other at an unreasonable rate. Moore cannot single out a villain to blame for this fact, because it seems to emerge from a national desire to be armed. If you're not armed, you're not responsible, a member of the michigan militia tells him. At one point, he visits a bank that is giving away guns to people who open new accounts.

He asks a banker if it isn't a little dangerous to have all these guns in a bank. Note: the movie is rated r, so that the columbine killers would have been protected from the violent images, mostly of themselves. The mpaa continues its policy of banning teenagers from those films they most need to see. What utopian world do the flywheels of the ratings board think they are protecting? courtesy of berlin film festival february 18, 2016 1am pt chief asia film critic @maggiesama in china, life is cheap but compassion is expensive mdash a message that old stone delivers with caustic power through a taxi drivers misfortunes, following his refusal to follow custom and do a hit and run.