TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. -- Michael Moo...

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. -- Michael Moore has made a career of butting heads with bigwigs.

His documentaries, laced with satire forward politics and society, have taken aim at General Motors, the National Rifle Association and President Bush. Still in the works is "Sicko," a critical gaze at the U.S. health care theory

nearest week he's overseeing the other Traverse City Film Festival, which he established last year with author Doug Stanton and photographer John Robert Williams. More than 70 films will be shown in three indoor theaters and upon a giant outdoor screen from Monday within Aug. 6.

For this Northern Michigan town's movie light yellows it's a chance to behold many of the art films shown in big cities. if it were not that Moore also regards the festival as part of a mission to combat what he considers Hollywood's slide into mediocrity.

"Hollywood has become an assembly line, not unlike GM where it agitates out the same old, same advanced in years year after year," Moore said. "Trying to play it safe, not taking any risks, and giving the the public what they think the population need as opposed to listening to them and asking them what they would like."

No single was sure what to rely upon when Moore and his team propos the festival last year.

A handful of conservatives sponsored an alternative film festival, moreover attendance was sparse. Moore's program, supported by dint of hundreds of local volunteers, sold more than 50000 tickets -- more than three times the city's population. greatest in quantity of the 30 films were sellout

This year's festival lineup is an eclectic mix -- timeless classics as it was as "The Wizard of Oz" and little-known indies; comedy and drama; humor and tragedy.

couple showings of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" sold without so a third was added. Also part of the festival is a salute to Stanley Kubrick.

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