So we are beaming forward toward the 5-year "anniversary" of 9/11. Cool. Wonder what they've got in store for us in the fall? I can't wait.
But hey! No need to wait for the September revelries. There are some tasty morsels in the offing! Oliver Stone is wrapping up his World Trade Center flick. And the Tribeca Film Festival (itself a child of 9/11) will be unveiling Flight 93 (the story of the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, presumably taken down by its fearless passengers as it was racing to put a large flaming gash in the middle of the White House) this month.
How exciting! Hollywood is bringing us feature-length, disaster-docu-dramas to take us, one more time, back to that cloudless, timeless September day in 2001 so that we can cheerfully live through it all again. Only THIS TIME it will be so very UPCLOSEANDPERSONAL, it will be almost as if we are ON the airplanes, sharing the experience with the actual passengers and, in the case of Stone's film, we will be sharing the drama with the unwitting workers in the World Trade Center.
That Hollywood is SO amazing isn't it? Deja Vu! It's Conair and The Towering Inferno all over again! And they will be battling it out as this summer's blockbusters. All this, while continuing the time-honored tradition of milking every penny that can be sucked out of a gullible public for whom actual photos and video of real victims leaping to their deaths from 105 stories up just wasn't enough excitement.
We'll be getting Hollywood's best in sound and visual effects! Best in direction from Oliver Stone and "the Acclaimed Director of Bloody Sunday and The Bourne Supremecy." Not to mention, that hunky star, Nicholas Cage!
I am squirming in my chair, I can hardly wait for the merchandising.
20 comments:
Oliver Stone is the single worst filmaker in history. The guy does not like America, plain and simple.
don't be so cynical donkey. oliver loves America. he loves America so much he has volunteered to single handedly rewrite our history (and mold it in his own graven image...)
but worst film maker i can agree with...somebody remind me...has he ever even made a good movie?
How about Platoon? a great and entertaining movie--also a little thing called the Academy award was given for this..Best Director and 3 other categories. Problem with Oliver is he does too much cocaine.. his ideas are fucked now.
Platoon was good. But Full Metal Jacket (Kubrick, not Stone, of course) was a far better movie in my mind. I kind of thought Nixon was a good movie ... how can it not be with Anthony Hopkins and Joan Allen.
But The Doors, Born on the 4th of July and JFK were terrible movies. I never saw Natural Born Killers because ... well, I hate violence. (How can I hate gratuitious violence and be an Auroran you ask ... hmmm, let me think about that one !!).
Maybe the REAL problem is that Stone is still suffering from PTSD from his experiences in Viet Nam. It IS a bit of a current phenomenon. A lot of older vets are just now coming to deal with their Viet Nam experiences. Maybe because they are retiring and are allowing themselves to reflect.
Anyway, that's a subject for another blog post, on another day ...
oliver stone is a scumbag. he wins oscars because hollywierd is full of scumbags too.
I did like one movie that he worked on, Scarface. But he didn't direct that one.
Bottom line is, if you lived in NY on 9/11 and you went downtown and donated blood, and you saw all the people covered in dust(including warlike) and saw all the pictures on the walls of missing people that you knew were never going to turn up, you probably don't want to see a movie that recreates those last moments.
Given what Stone did with JFK and his airing of the unexpurgated Zapruder film, I dread what he he has up his sleeves with this one.
i'm going to look up the word "unexpurgated" and then get back to you on this one.
Do I need to buy you a dictionary now?
maybe you can just explain it to me in person. you know "pillow talk"
you mean i'd have to get close and whisper in those goofy leathery ears?
let me think about that and get back to you ...
how did Lily handle the 'pillow-talk' issue?
Well, i'm not the type to kiss and tell, so you'd have to ask her.
U-Turn was weird but an enjoyable movie...directly followed up by a cold shower.
As for anyone who would make a dramatic movie about 9/11, I think they should be able to...but they should tread lightly. We aren't talking about Viet Nam here, where a lot of people feel one way and a lot feel another way. I know of only one way people feel about 9/11 and that is to say, heartbroken. I smell the last movie Stone ever gets.
I think you are right about post traumatic stress. I know one person who has been affected and it is really a hard thing to see.
BTW - good first post Anita...I don't count MOTW unless it's a picture of me (Jonny Depp makes me feel inadequate)!
Thanks Gadfly. And yes, MOTW is Johnny Depp.
Well, maybe if you worked on adding a little, uh, musculature to your legs you might not feel so inadequate.
No offense of course. Just some friendly, constructive advice to a fellow Auroran of the opposite sex.
no leg press for me...the only excercises I do are with a towel and my...
Hey did you ever hear the one about the musician w/the ten inch pianist...oh wait, I think I got that wrong.
Anita: this is how you whisper in a Rhino's leathery ear: you lean close and start to talk and when he's not listening or paying attention anymore- you add tongue. Then travel. Then leave like the tease you are.
i never saw platoon, but i would suggest that if the self-congratulatory Academy Award was bestowed upon it by the annual friends of oliver stone academy than it might not be good. i didn't know natural born killers was OS. it was disturbing but pretty good. i thought it was quentin tarrentino, but now i'm thinking that maybe he wrote the screenplay.
oh, and anita, i don't want to interrupt your rhinoculous flirtations, but i have to say your use of "unexpurgated" sent me into a tizzy...talk to me about the rule against perpetuitities and we may be on to something here...
I admit my delight in using "big words." I guess that tendency aligns with my delight in the concept of "big things" in general ... not to mention my delight in using "double entendres" to just plain old keep my audience guessing ... hmmmm.
Moving on.
In this case, I was using the word "unexpurgated" in the context of a common definition of the word, which is "not having material deleted."
The Zapruder film is a home "movie" taken in 8 mm color film of the entire Kennedy assination and is the only known film of the entire event. It was taken by Abraham Zapruder, allegedly a bystander in Dallas as Kennedy's motorcade progressed through Dealy Plaza. The film is quite controversial in that its authenticity had been questioned for years. And there have been books upon books written about it. Plus, there is loads of stuff on the web as about it as well.
My point in using the term "unexpurgated in the context of Stone's JFK film is that the public is rarely shown the parts of the Zapruder film that show the top of Kennedy's skull being blown off and Jackie Kennedy, in her pink suit and pillbox hat, going into major panic mode and climbing over over the back of car and, I believe, having to be restrained by Secret Service agents.
I believe it is in Stone's film where that the most truly gruesome element of the assasination is made available to the general public. It is my personal opinion that Stone crossed a boundary of human decency in airing that portion of the Zapruder film. I don't believe it (meaning the part where Kennedy's head is blown away) was necessary in any way to the advancement of the story line. It caused huge amounts amounts of unnecessary pain and suffering and to the friends and family of JFK, and, ultimately, was in hugely poor taste.
Let me use another of my favorite big words here: it was utterly and despicably purient. And I believe many people, friends and foes alike of John F. Kennedy and his family, see it that way.
If Stone thinks he was somehow able to use the footage to make a relevant point about his own twisted theory relative to who was behind the assination, i.e., who did it, why, and how, he failed. If there was something to be learned from the film in that regard, it could have been (and I believe it was) much more succinctly portrayed in the dialogue, because hey, the average viewer of the film was not a forensics expert, but average Joe and Jane Blow. And, in the end it's my opinion that it was Stone's purpose here to get Joe and Jane Blow off on the image of Kennedy's brains falling out of his head and prim and proper Jackie losing total control in her blood-stained Chanel suit.
This is one of the many reasons why I despise Oliver Stone.
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