May 17, 2006

• WHAT.
• Bit more description would be nice. Not a searchable post.
• I'm quite willing to let the terrorists win.
• 'Tis true, Chyren, 'tis true. /stands before the cross, lashes back once, twice, thrice, sqeezes eyes shut in evil-albino ecstasy cum penance.
• Bah. Stone. I was expecting 'If you advance frame-by-fame, you cans see what looks like a pod under the plane..', and we get a buddy film?
• It's too bad Cage isn't playing the hopped up ambulance driver from Bringing Out The Dead.
• In general, I don't find the horrific flaming death of thousands at the hands of psychotic scumbags and the equally horrible bereavement of even more thousands of husbands, wives, children and other assorted loved ones to be all that entertaining, but hey, whatever floats your moviegoing boat. this is unbelievably, wildly, insanely inappropriate, and Oliver Stone will never get another dollar from my pocket. Pure ghoulishness.
• Let me rephrase: fictional mayhem on a grand scale is fine. But it's far too close. Another couple decades, please.
• Or maybe if David Lynch had directed...
• But Fes! Their fictionalized stories deserve to be told!
• Agreed. Much, much, way much too soon.
• Oliver Stone is bugfuck crazy.
• So we start with the Flight 93 movie, progress to a Twin Towers movie...is the Pentagon movie far behind?
• While this movie will undoubtedly be trite and hamfisted, I've heard good things about "United 93" (anyone seen that yet?). Personally, I don't feel it's too soon to be covering this subject matter, as long as it isn't exploitative, which Stone's film almost certainly will be.
• "Too soon"? One day of "horror" for Americans does not equal the degades of horrors going on in the third world for American luxuries. But don't forget we are the victims!
• "The world saw evil that day" is the scariest think about this trailer, implying: "evil is all around us" - clearly the terrorists have won.
• glamajamma - Don't you dare fuck with my standard of living. (that's the sad truth)
• We Merkins are in love with drama. We're going emo!
• ""The world saw evil that day" is the scariest think about this trailer, implying: "evil is all around us" - clearly the terrorists have won." You hate America. I would notify the NSA but they probably already know.
• Ya know what I just realized? This is kind of eerie... The morning we were watching the towers fall on television, amidst the shock and horror and fear I was feeling there was also a peculiar craving for fake-buttered popcorn and a gallon of over-priced coca cola. I didn't do anything about it at the time, and I've regretted that decision ever since. ' Thank god that hollywood will allow me to exorcise that particular ghost.
•        They didn't see it coming.       They didn't have it coming.   But with one cry of "Let's Roll!", it came. And their lives would never be the same again.     SHANKSVILLE, PENNSYLVANIA          A Werner Herzog film.                 Rated R.
• Seriously, this is a joke, right? A bad meme-gone-wild? A Snopes dry run?
• Nickdanger, you weren't the only one.
• A couple of years ago I saw a play called Hole in the Sky. It's about the people inside the towers, who don't know anything other than they've been attacked. It vacillated between being heartfelt and tearjerking, and being compeletly trite and annoying. This looks much worse.
• In general, I don't find the horrific flaming death of thousands at the hands of psychotic scumbags and the equally horrible bereavement of even more thousands of husbands, wives, children and other assorted loved ones to be all that entertaining, but hey, whatever floats your moviegoing boat. SOOO, I take it you've never watched a WWII movie? I don't know, my reaction was exactly the opposite of you all. This trailer makes me want to see this movie. Auctully, the movie I really want to see is a 9/11 comedy, you know like Pearl Harbor.
• Reasons why it's too soon: 1) Plea for emotion bias outweighs any semblance to heroic disaster genre. 2) Oliver Stone is a certified twat: I've seen the papers; please, Mr. Stone, you really aren't that good of a director. 3) To whomever concieved this and saw it through: "You hate people." Let the dead rest in peace, you motherfucking grave-robbers. You hate terrorists - my ass. 4) What Berek said.
• Re: WWII Although it seems very different, I maintain it's too soon. Capt.: Great, real life has become an Onion Article. That's a sign of something. Was it the whole irony-is-dead thing?
• SOOO, we should only make art about traumatic events long after those events have lost any meaning to us? I couldn't disagree more. In my opinion it is not soon enough. If more people of Stone's skill, and like him or hate him he is one of the country's most influential filmmakers, had made films about 9/11 sooner maybe it would have cuased us to think more about it and take less knee jerk responses.
• SOOO, I take it you've never watched a WWII movie? And I take it that you didn't read my very next post. But yes, I have watched them. 40 to 50 years after the events they depict, events relegated to the realms of history before I was ever an itch in my pop's pants. But whatever, I'm a hypocrite. I still disagree with every one of your contentions. He's popping a scab and serving up the pus. Drink if you want, but I'll pass.
• Do you want me to tell you how it ends?
• Nah, I read the spoiler thread at rotten tomatoes.
• Berek, I don't mean anything personal against you, this is just a difference of opinion. The whole thing cuts against my grain, but I realize that people have different opinions about this. Anyway, I don't mean to be too prickly, and certainly don't mean to attack you personally over this. Just so you know.
• It turns out the chick was a man.
• Aw, DUDE!
• to all the posters offended by the movie, I quote Clarence from Wonder Showzen. "stab me with your 4 inches of victim hood"
• And in a total derail -- that exact same thing happened to a friend of mine a couple of weeks ago. Another friend was hosting a 'sex party' at her house, where'd they show off lingerie and watch porn and stuff, which -- to the host's horror and surprise -- turned into a full-blown orgy. My friend was making out all night with this hot chick, only to discover Pebbles and Bam-Bam. We're still laughing. And no, it wasn't me. Wasn't even there. I knew about it, and knowing the people involved, realized it couldn't possibly end well. Which it didn't, but that was more to do with the coke than the transvestite. But not as far as my friend is concerned. Now back to your regularly schedule programming.
• That was directed to pete's comment, obv.
• "stab me with your 4 inches of victim hood" I don't know if I'm "offended" by the movie. I do think it looks like a heap of exploitive, tacky crap, though. Can I stab you with that?
• i guess the people to address the anger at are john mcloughlin and william jimeno, the two port authority police officers concerned. they're given writing credits on the imdb, along with two women who share their respective surnames. the way i see it, oliver stone is doing a job bringing a screenplay to the screen. he's a director; studios contact him when they have a script they want to develop. maybe he should've declined this one, but to lay it all at his feet is excessive. condemning the movie on the basis of a trailer is also excessive.
• condemning the movie on the basis of a trailer is also excessive. But that's why they have trailers. So that we can decide whether or not it looks like a movie worth watching. This one falls firmly into the 'not' category.
• exploitive - yeah thats capitalism for ya. Ya know if they really thought this was a serious issue and really important to people and was really a "psychological hurdle" for the American people the studios obviously will be sending all profits beyond original cost to the victims families.... right? tacky crap - hard to beat this one
• I guess it depends on the degree of control the director has over the script. In every theatrical endeavor I've been involved with, that degree is "total." If the writer himself wasn't available to make edits, then the director edited it himself or engaged someone else to do it util he was satisfied. Then, it was his job to bring those words to life in a meaningful way. The fact that he had the most responsibility to make sure it turned out uncrappily is the burden he bore for having his name at the top.
• derail addendum: so, capt., yr friend hosts a 'sex party' and is horrified that it turns into an orgy??? In my pervo-freak california neck o' the woods a sex party IS an orgy...so you might want to inform yr friend...otherwise, great story! just goes to show you shouldn't make easy assumptions... so capt. why weren't you at the party???

• condemning the movie on the basis of a trailer is also excessive.

  But that's why they have trailers. So that we can decide whether or not it looks like a movie worth watching. This one falls firmly into the 'not' category.

  sure, on the basis of the trailer you decide that you won't go to see the movie. that's sensible. what i've read in the comments above is a little more than this, however. re directorial control: yes, a lot of how the movie turns out is down to stone. what i'm reading above is complaints that the movie has even been made - for which i think you've got to go back to the people who pitched the script and the studio that employed stone (without entering into the question of whether he should've taken it on). whether he should've taken it is a valid question, but he's not to blame for the entire endeavor. my personal opinion is that it's too early to make a movie that relates to the destruction of the wtc. nevertheless, i won't condemn it without having seen the film.
• I haven't watched a new release from Hollywood since 2003. Well, I was hardly ever a fan of big budget Hollywood movies, but to me it just seems like one long stream of cliché sludge slopped on a styrofoam plate. Pull out the analyts, calculate the returns... This doesn't seem any different to me.
• Speaking of timeliness issues, one of my favorite movies is "To Be or Not to Be" (1942). It was a WWII comedy released in the middle of the war. Not only that, the release came a few months after the leading lady was killed in a plane crash. Needless to say, the movie died at the box office. But now decades later, it's seen as a classic. So um, my point being... uh, whatever.
• Springtime for Osama.
• monkeyfilter: more to do with the coke than the transvestite
• also coke != boners bad party favor for an orgy
• Further thread derailment: You balk at wacky, druggy girls; at size-plus girls, at sex-seeking mature ones, and at transvestites! Why, you're a tough man to please, eh?
• Think of all the money I'll save not buying tickets! If Stone had wanted to make some real drama, I can think of plenty of nautural and man-made disasters involving an immense loss of life that would be worthy stories for the cinema. Tsunami, Kashmir earthquake, 1918 World-wide flu pandemic, Famine in Rwanda, Bhophal, Nevado del Ruiz eruption, Chernobyl, Wilhelm Gustloff sinking, Sarin gassing, on and on. But wait! Not OUR American disasters? Not interesting. MonkeyFilter: a heap of exploitive, tacky crap
• People like a bit of distance so that they can have a bit of perspective and nostalgia for a time that has passed. Hollywood recently made movies about Ray Charles, Johnny Cash, and Howard Hughes, not about Usher, Kenny Chesney, and Bill Gates. TV makes movies about things less than twenty years old. Hollywood makes movies about things more than twenty years old.
• I bet there where snakes on those planes.
• "also coke != boners" Untrue. If you can get it all in (sorry) in the first ten minutes or so, you're good! It's after the dopamine been burnt that it all starts to fall flat. Of course, this gets worse with age. However, if you're young, virile and have a relatively cardiomyopathy-free ticker, you can lay a nice fat bump right in the top crease, which will increase (sorry) your willingness for a little ATM or whathaveyou. (Depends on the party, n'est-ce pas?)
• Considering the number of thought provoking, intelligent movies he's made I find the approbation aimed at Stone surprising. It is it really all that hard for you all to judge a film on its merits and not on your political biases? If a film or show is well made I can watch it and get things from it even if I disagree with the philosophy it espouses. Another thing I don't understand is the fearful homophobia in this thread. If you're attracted to someone, find them sexy or charming or interesting, why should it matter what's between their legs?
• Considering the number of thought provoking, intelligent movies he's made I find the approbation aimed at Stone surprising. It is it really all that hard for you all to judge a film on its merits and not on your political biases? If a film or show is well made I can watch it and get things from it even if I disagree with the philosophy it espouses. Another thing I don't understand is the fearful homophobia in this thread. If you're attracted to someone, find them sexy or charming or interesting, why should it matter what's between their legs?
• Considering the number of thought provoking, intelligent movies he's made I find the approbation aimed at Stone surprising. It is it really all that hard for you all to judge a film on its merits and not on your political biases? If a film or show is well made I can watch it and get things from it even if I disagree with the philosophy it espouses. Another thing I don't understand is the fearful homophobia in this thread. If you're attracted to someone, find them sexy or charming or interesting, why should it matter what's between their legs?
• AAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Sorry sorry sorry about the triple post. Monkey is acting wierd!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• Well, I guess it COULD be fantastic. Seems unlikely though. It REALLY looks like they've gone the apolitical, pat ourselves on the back, sweeping drama with well known actors and (above all) an EASY sucker punch heart-string pull shock and awe shake your memories of that day loose so that they can make a buck off of them ending. I urge a boycott of this movie because it looks like it sucks. See also Da Vinci Code and X3.
• Monkeyfilter: fearful homophobia fearful homophobia fearful homophobia
• homophobia?
• That's enough, Berek.
• That's enough.
• Dammit, I SAID, that's enough!
• Oh, whoops, sorry. I didn't realize I was thinking that out loud.
• This film sucks. Unlike the capt's 'friend'.
• Why wasn't I there? That part of my circle of friends tends to attract police attention, and while they're fine to toss back shots of gin with at the bar, going to their house might end with me somehow getting disbarred. Plus, I wasn't invited. As for the host-friend who was horrified, she can be pretty naive sometimes. Also, she's pretty deep experimenting with lesbianism right now -- which may be fairly standard for up-and-coming models -- and she was otherwise distracted. Didn't notice the pig-on-a-spit action happening in her living room. Also didn't notice our other friend making out with the girl who was all that and more.
• Another question, does the prohibition about it being to soon only apply to film or should all art that concerns 9/11 be banned? Are books okay, but painting not? How do you all make the distinction? Also, why wasn't Spike Lee's movie condemned for being too soon? Also methinks that those expressing the homophobic fear of the girls with something extra are trying to cover up their own desires.
• Homophobia? I still don't get that, sorry. Personally, I find humour in the fact that my friend didn't know. The transvestite herself doesn't even factor into that. The guy had been making out with her for a couple of hours, and you'd think that during that time, he would have noticed something. Two hours of dry-humping on the couch and he didn't find out? Yeah, I think that's funny. But it has nothing to do with the transvestite -- it's all about laughing at my imcompetent friend. And if we can't mock our friends, what good are they? That's what this war on terror is all about. The freedom to mock our friends.
• And coke and boners.
• Of course. That goes without saying. Terrorists hate us for our coke and boners.
• terrorists want our coke and boners you really do SHOTS of gin?? that is incredibly nasty. are you friends with lots of lesbo-experimental up-and-coming models capt.??? and finally, its called "rotisserie chicken" not "pig on a spit"! one of my favorite spectator sports!
• Of course, shots of gin. Jaeger is sooooo demode. Nice shot of Gibson, scratching your throat on the way down -- mmm mnn! Separates the men from the emos. And no, she's the only lesbo-experimental up-and-coming model I know. Stunning woman. She goes from one burly boyfriend to another, everyone entertained by her girl-on-girl displays on the dancefloor. Has the conversational abilities of a newt.
• Another question, does the prohibition about it being to soon only apply to film or should all art that concerns 9/11 be banned? Are books okay, but painting not? How do you all make the distinction? Also, why wasn't Spike Lee's movie condemned for being too soon? I don't think anyone's saying that. I can only speak for myself, but my antipathy toward this film, and my feelings that it's too close to the event for this movie, is grounded in the idea that almost certainly this movie will be exploitive - either overtly politicizing a tragedy, portraying it overly maudlin or overly glib, when the afteraffects of the event itself are still working themselves out, and the survivors are still dealing with the effects. There is still a hole in Manhattan, and there is still a hole in the victims, and for many of us who weren't directly affected by 9/11, there is still the very real feeling of (exposure? danger? enmity?) that we perceive the world to have for us. To continue the movie analogy: 9/11 was for a lot of Americans what the discovery of the FBI accountant in the elevator in The Untouchables was for Kevin Costner and Andy Garcia: on 9/11, I think Americans for the first time came to the realization that we were *touchable*. So I suppose, my underlying irritation with this movie stems from the opinion that it embodies an distinct lack of respect for the suffering and loss of those people who are still very much living with the consequences of 9/11. I believe in freedom of speech - but I also believe that one ought to respect for people, and that the right to say something doesn't mean that one *ought* to say something. Self-censorship? Maybe. But we have so much divisiveness, so much loud, grating antipathy in this world - do we really need to rip off that scab? Why not say, with a measure of gentility and respect for people, I choose not to make a movie about 9/11.
• My feeling is that it may not be too early to make a movie per se, but too early to make The Big Large Hollywood Blockbuster Statement Movie®. I think that a tasteful drama about the human effects of the attack on a person or family wouldn't bother me at all. More of the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself and less of When will I be blown up? Something that doesn't call for big-budget special effects. What I think it may be too soon for, is the understanding of everything that went into the attacks, and everything that came out of them. I don't think it's as clear-cut as a movie like this will most likely make it out to be.
• Has the conversational abilities of a newt. She got better.
• But if it was Newt Gingrich ...
• He got bitter.
• I think Americans for the first time came to the realization that we were *touchable*. Mmh. I just know I'm gonna regret posting this... I certainly don't want this to be considered a personal insult or mockery of a terrible event, but... hey. Do you really mean that?
• I do. It's been a long time since Pearl Harbor, two generations (almost three) have passed since then, and I don't think a lot of America felt, before 9/11, that this sort of thing, a serious attack on our largest city, was even possible. The cold war was over. The enemies we all grew up with had given up and become (more or less) our trading partners and friends. Even Vietnam was the stuff of history books for a large portion of the population. America has always been in the world, but not *of* it, if you get me. Terrorism was a somebody-else's-problem sort of thing. Then, 9/11, like a big fat sucker punch right in the teeth. We didn't expect it, we didn't see it coming, and I think a lot of us had never even conceived of the idea that such a thing could actually occur. We felt we just weren't a part of all that. Now we are, big time. Maybe that's just a flyover perspective - I'm a midwesterner born/bred, with a midwesterner's sense of cushion, a midwesterner's sense that things happen over there rather than in my backyard. But before 9/11, I don't ever recall thinking that Americans had a target on their back abroad. Adjudged rude, backward, puritanical, loud, cavalier - sure. But hated? *Killing* hated? never. 9/11 proved me shockingly wrong about that, and I think it's a revelation that struck a lot of people similarly.
• Just a comment-- does anyone else here tend to think that the "action film" version of events winds up corrupting the actual facts of the historical record? People I talk to who have actually lived through different things tend to view the reality through the depictations on the screen--even if the truth is distorted there.
• Kevin Murphy wrote that it's easier to find a picture of George C. Scott as Patton than one of Patton himself.
• Zoolander!
• I wonder if you all watched the same preview I did. It looks to me like this isn't a typical Hollywood big budget thingy. The preview maikes it look like the movie concentrates on the personal story of two everyday men who got caught in something beyond their understanding. I sam absolutely nothing in the preview that looked political.
• Everybody has agendas, Berek. And previews are just SOOO predictive of the actual movie. Right, kids? Right? Right? *crickets You gottit, TUM. And we all know Cleopatra had those violet eyes.
• does anyone else here tend to think that the "action film" version of events winds up corrupting the actual facts of the historical record? The medium that constitutes "historical record" is contingent upon the nature of the civilisation in question. It's a well known fact that in middle kingdom society, the only culturally accepted record was written on papyrus; while Romans of classical times preferred ascii art - and thus all we know of the depravity of Caligula through Suetonius' delightful combinations of dash, period and comma that depicted the most significant orgies. 18th Century England preferred the palm-pilot, hence Pepys' Diary, a collection of his dentist's appointments and regional television appearances. Thus, as human societies develop, they choose the most flexible and rich media in which to inscribe their history. 21st century Western societies consider the "action film" the very acme of their arts, combining as it does the prose screenplay, the actors’ mimesis, cinematographic wizardry, music (both incidental and anthemic, e.g. “Highway to the Danger Zone”), costuming, the subtle craft of editing, and so on. Like (and yet surpassing!) the Opera before it, the action film gathers together into one work the greatest possible achievements in the various artistic disciplines and also Nicholas Cage. Hence the constant bickering of various sects when an action film is produced that seeks to re-write or update stories previously canonised in another medium. I need only refer to the Catholic Church's current disapproval of "The Da Vinci Code", in which Jesus Christ is portrayed as Tom Hanks' homosexual lover and the Holy Grail is played (with such aplomb!) by a nubile Andre Tattoo, France's only dwarf giant. However, the process of the "action-filmisation" of history is both inevitable and entirely beneficial. Consider the story of Mahatma Ghandi - brought to the screen so sensitively by Lord Attenborough and Ben Kingsley as "Ghandi Bigalo, Pacifist Gigilo". Who now thinks of the doctrine of non-violent protest without also marvelling at the hot-blooded conquests of India's most successful dildo salesman? And would the British have ever left the subcontinent had not the Viceroy's daughter been seduced by Ghandi's amorous plan of collecting salt from her armpits? Sure, the final battle scene with Mountbatten could be improved, but when Ghandi-gee pulls the hand grenade out of his simple white robe and yells "YIPPEE KI-YAY MOTHERFUCKER" I know which text I would rather consider "authentic".
• YAY!
• Oh, thank Mothra! Quiddy's back! It was getting pretty tiring, everyone having to lean on pete and I for the nonsensical ravings around here...
• Go for the extra point!! Go fer th' @#%! extra point!!! *swills beer*
• ah! I feel all nunctastic inside :)
• Q u i d d y ! OK, who brought the bodily fluids?
• Ah, yes. The most eloquent Quid can embellish, nay, actually riff on the most trite of statements...