English Club Chatter

the last movie i saw in the theatre was "monster house" Yes i went and saw it. Kids movies are scary these days though. Although I would wait until it was in the dollar theatre if you wanted to see it.

Thursday and Friday I have off--any good rentals ro recomend? if not i might just settle on my favorite--shakespeare in love ---ahhhhh ;)

not that, that would be a horrible thing to settle on...

Enjoyed Match Point, A Good Woman, and Mrs. Henderson Presents.

Just watched the Final Destination 3 DVD last night, and it's kind of fun to choose how and if people will die with just a click of the DVD remote.

Leave it to Nic to recommend the "Choose Your Favorite Death" DVD! ;)

A History of Violence and Crash are excellent if anyone hasn't seen them yet. Both are intense and poignant, if not perfect.

I'd also second the recommendation for Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. Val Kilmer got his start with comedies like Top Secret! and Real Genius, so it's nice to see him do something funny (but still f*cked up) again.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

"We're in bat country!"

Sarah - you have to watch Welcome to the Dollhouse. It's right up your alley, I believe.

Welcome to the dollhouse...good chioce MM.

you know you want to follow this link...

At least Nic's found something "productive" to do besides sleep on my floor!

I miss English Club movie nights...

No reason movie nights can't happen in the summer! It seems like everyone is watching movies, so all that would have to happen is that the movie watchers come together in front of the same screen, whether on campus, at home, or in a theater. Drive-ins anyone?

Yes, why don't we plan one in the next couple of weeks? I liked the system where each one of us picked a favorite movie to share, and Sarah hasn't shared one yet (nothing too gory hopefully ; ) Anyways, if anyone is interested in doing that, let me know by email or on here what night is best.
Or we could all go out to the movies together... not really much playing that's interesting though. It's a sad summer...

Yeah, a grim summer for new movies. You can check out what's coming at Rotten Tomatoes:

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/movies/upcoming.php.

The trailers for "Little Miss Sunshine" look great, and it might even come to Mansfield (opens week of Aug. 18). The biopic of Charles Bukowski ("Factotum") might be interesting, and has an obvious literary appeal, but I'm willing to BET it won't make it here. You might get better films if you rented.

I've seen a film about Bukowski before about 2-3 years ago. I don't know that it's the same one; I haven't got time to follow the link right now, but I'll double check later. That said, let's go to the theater and see "Snakes on a [motherf*ckin'] Plane" with Samuel [motherf*ckin'] Jackson.

Since Bukowski has been mentioned, I'd like to recommend "The Source." It's one of the best films about the Beat Generation, and general subversive literary behavior through the decades that followed. Johnny Depp plays Kerouac, Dennis Hopper plays Burroughs, and it's a wild, beautiful, hilarious film. Watching it always makes me want to write.

Jesi: Welcome to the Dollhouse is sooo funny and soo wrong and I love it, of course.

I would also suggest "Session 9" for a "gory" film without the typical gore. It's the most psychologically frightening movie I've ever seen.

Also, and maybe most importantly, I advocate that everyone watch "Paradise Lost; the childhood murders in Robin Hood Hills", and the sequel "Paradise Lost; Revelations." The first film was originally created by HBO, but caused such interest/outrage, that they released a sequel after. It's a true case, and you can learn more about it at WM3.org I'm hoping some of you have heard of it.

Has anyone seen "May" or "Sweet Jane"

I hope you've all seen "Ghost World" with Thora Birth and Scarlett Johanssen.

"Let's go to the theater and see "Snakes on a [motherf*ckin'] Plane" with Samuel [motherf*ckin'] Jackson"

yessssletsssss

"Snakes! Why did it have to be [motherf*ckin'] snakes?"

I might be distressed by English Club movie tastes (!), but, of course, snakes (or one anyway) feature prominently in Milton's Paradise Lost, so what can I say? D.H. Lawrence also wrote a poem called "The Snake," but it's not really about a snake. Any other Snake Lit.?

On a different note, "Snakes on a Plane" seems to me destined to make it into film histories for making a marketing breakthrough: the first studio film to celebrate and flaunt its own obvious awfulness. Usually these things are left for the late night movie channels. Where next?

Other than the Bible?

I'm offended. My movie tastes are in no way "distressing!" I'm offended. Close this thread now, before I go indecent

;)

MirrorMask is a wonderful film, an "adult" fairy tale, if you will. It's yet the latest project from The Henson Company in association with Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, the creators of Sandman, Black Orchid, and a host of groundbreaking graphic novels. Kudos to Nic for hyping it to everyone he can. :)

Primer, a former Sundance winner, is the best low-budget ($7,000) speculative fiction film about time travel that you'll ever see. Be prepared, however, to watch it at least a couple-three times to fully appreciate the story--and the art of making a serious "sci-fi" film with nearly no money.

And for those of us whose tastes are less refined, myself included, Bruce Campbell's Man with the Screaming Brain is now out on DVD. (As are Terminal Invasion and Alien Apocalypse.)

As for snakes/wyrms, the Great Goddess often had snakes as her familiars, and they were worshipped as guardians of her Mysteries. (Not to mention the cults of Orpheus, Dionysus et al.)

http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/moc/index.htm

My personal literary favorites include Stoker's The Lair of the White Worm, the first three Dune novels by Frank Herbert--David Lynch's film ain't bad, either--and the Brothers' Grimm "The White Snake."

http://www.sacred-texts.com/goth/lww/index.htm

http://www.dunenovels.com/

http://www.literaturepage.com/read/grimms-fairy-tales-146.html

Finally, V for Vendetta is now out on DVD. Buy it. Watch it. Share it.

How many movies have been marketed ironically? And has HH actually watched the snake movie to be distressed by it? Or, are we simply trashing things without giving them proper consideration? Just a thought....how many of good old William's plays were considered 'B theatre' at the time -- but since we've venerated him through the distance of time they seem high art -- today's B movies *are* tomorrows high art.

I'm reminded of imdb.com's plot summary for Darren Aronofsky's upcoming film Flicker: "After becoming obsessed with the work of a hack filmmaker, a Los Angeles film student concludes that B movies are part of a plot to obliterate life on Earth."

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0366452/

Hey, Meursault, take the Shakespeare class, you get to discuss all the points you just brought up and glean the history behind them from our very own English Club Advisor, Prof. Hamlin. But anyways, I love the existential angle as applied to film--very timely when you consider that we're all out shooting Arabs. And back to the Shakespeare thing, maybe our reverence of his plays reflects the over all lack of standards and quality in our modern art/film/theatre? Don't get me wrong, I loved BrokeBack Mountain, Crash, and Lady in the Water, but what criteria is our generation's art up against? Sometimes it just seems like people with connections, i.e. big money producers, feed us their idea of culture/art and we eat it up. Yum.

It seems taht way because it is that way. It's not necessarily "we" who eat it up, but enough of "them" do to merit the marginality of mass cultural consumerist crapola. I blame Disney and advertisements geared to create intense desire in children and intense conflict betweeh parents and children.
Sometimes I pick up a DVD and say, "This sounds good." Well, if it doesn't sound good on the box, then someone's not doing a good job. Then I feel kind of stupid. Especially when the movie sucks.
Thank goodness there are enough decent films to placate "us".

Sometimes you get a Napoleon Dynamite, or Blair Witch Project.
Of course, we shouldn't be so focused on "new releases" or films that are so recent. What about Film Noir, or foreign films? Are we just lazy?

It's true, Meursault, that trashing something one hasn't seen is both risky and unethical. Normally I would resist the urge. At the same time, I feel pretty sure that "Snakes" will prove not to be a masterpiece, and part of the reason for this is that the studio has decided to market it precisely for its (presumably delightful) badness. This does seem new to me, though I'm open to correction. I enjoy a really bad movie (not quite the same as a "B" movie) as much as the next person, but usually these movies aren't consciously marketed as awful. Even Ed Wood ("Glen or Glenda," "Plan 9 from Outer Space") seemed to feel he was making good films! All right, maybe "Killer Tomatoes" was meant to be bad.

As for the broader question of taste, quality, and popularity, it's complex. "Streetcar" and "Glass Menagerie" were never considered "B" fare, nor were the works of Shakespeare, though they were very "popular" (another copmlex term) in their own day. The "B" plays in Elizabethan England were at other theaters like the Red Bull and the Cock Pit, where they specialized in pirate adventures, things blowing up, and raunchy romance. And if you really wanted cheap thrills, you could walk around the corner from the Globe Theater and watch bull baiting.

My sense of this issue is that what often irritates is not the sense that some things are better than others (would anyone really argue that "American Pie" is a better film than "American Beauty"?), but that this judgment is being imposed on them from on high. But does this happen? A professor can tell you Shakespeare is great literature, but you need to prove this for yourself for it to mean anything. Same goes for Williams, or Arthur Miller, or anything. And I'm not sure that the canon of "great works" is ever really set by academics, or publishers, or critics, or culture police. It's set by readers and writers. If Milton, and Samuel Johnson, and John Keats, and Dickens, and Emerson, and James Joyce, and Faulkner, and Tom Stoppard, and Akira Kurosawa and dozens of other major artists up to the present have thought Shakespeare was great, who's to argue? Plus we need to have read Shakespeare to make sense of Keats's poem on King Lear or Jane Smiley's adaptation of it in "A Thousand Acres" (or I guess Patrick Stewart in "King of Texas," shifting to "B" mode).

Thoughts anyone? Are there certain novels, plays, poems, films we ought to know? Are some "better" than others, and if so what does "better" mean? How about the question of taste? Do we just go with what we like or should we try to cultivate our taste (and how)? So many many cans of worms, so little time.

I get into this argument with my mom all the time. She tries to get me to read popular mystery novels, and when I refuse it's like I'm being an elitist. What I tell her is that I don't necessarily think Janet Evanovich is not worth my time, but that there are so many books that I feel are the best, ones that I want to read, that I'll probably never get to those that she suggests. No one ever really told me that the books I prefer were inherently better than popular mystery novels, but those are the ones I gravitate towards. Judging from what everyone talks about here on the blog, we all sort of gravitate towards a certain genre or time period of book. For some it's science fiction and graphic novels, for others it's Victorian era novels, for yet others it's about Tom Robbins or Harry Potter. I think it's kind of fundamental that everyone tends to think that their own tastes are superior; it just happens that those with traditionally "high-brow" tastes are somehow branded as elitist. Well, I don’t impose my particular taste in books onto anyone else, even though I feel they’re better literature than others. I think what Dr. Hamlin said was true; that there are books that many people just know are good because they’ve made it into to pantheon of works that changed the way people think, write, or live. Not everyone has to like the work in question, but liking it and admitting that it has had a major impact on the world are two different matters. I’m all for subjectivity and keeping an open mind, but there are books that I simply refuse to take time to read, just like there are movies I won’t watch- you don’t get that time back, it should be worth it.

P.S. Even I will admit that though my list of to-read books consists of those I feel are part of the canon, I do enjoy newer stuff quite a bit. And after I took Dr. Cautrell's Rhetoric of Science course, I had a new appreciation for the questions raised and commentary made by science fiction, a genre I had never taken seriously before. So, to contradict myself (which I will always, always do), I will say that perhaps someday I will read a mystery novel and my outlook on life will be changed. Who knows?

Evanovich. Is her work part of what is now called Chick-Lit? I'm trying to comprehend this term.

Trish--going off your comment of life changing books, for a lonnng time i resisted reading Harry Potter, "no, its a kids book." "not it just sounds stupid" etc.

and i wont tell you what acctually changed my mind ( a tall ,blond haired, chissled abbed,extremly good looking gentleman... perhaps, or perhaps my own sway...)

anyway trish (and anyone else reading this blob of a rant thinking its important) , on a more VERY VERY serious note. READ HARRY POTTER, Harry will not only change your life...He will save it. ;)

(my next big essay will be entitled "WHY the world NEEDS a HARRY POTTER")

yours truly

no jim Chick-lit is a small square piece of candy coated gum, sold in a colorful yellow confetti package.

;)

I like Jesi's answer, but I actually heard the term Chick Lit. when I was teaching high school (1992?), so it's been around a while. My sense is that it tends to be a derogatory term, used by men for books that are too "feminine" (involving romance? emotions? not so many things blowing up?). Has it morphed into a legitimate genre now, or is it still a term for books not allowed into Hooters?

I was under the impression that the current notion of chick-lit is like the literary equivalent of Sex and the City. I think the strong woman/fashionista thing grew into a larger genre with the popularity of the show and its characters, and I think the strength of it lies in the fact that it melds the feminist ideal of independent women with the desire to be pretty, which I guess are hard to reconcile.

In retrospect, my last post seems a bit snobbish sounding, which I didn't mean. Though I have never actually read Harry Potter, I liked the first movie, and I will probably read one sometime. And, in the vein of Chick-lit, I did go to see The Devil Wears Prada (based on the book of the same name), and I really liked it. I won't be secretly shameful about it anymore. Plus, I really like Tom Robbins, who I don't think is on any scholarly must-read list.
What I meant to convey was the fact that there are certain books that don't appeal to me, namely romances and mysteries. Once, someone asked me, "You like literature, don't you?" and then handed me several books in which a woman solves a mystery with the aid of her cat. They might be entertaining, but are they considered "literature"? And am I a snob because I don't want to read them?

you are a snob. ;)

Chic-lit makes me think of some Danielle steele novel with some broad chested man wearing an exposed white shirt is on the cover(and a women in the corner crooning).

(love you trish)

The only time someone has said "chick-lit" to me, is when they were asking me what the hell it was.
Everybody here seems to have a type of opinion, and it's interesting how they all stem from a personal experience of some sort.
All the small, worn paperbacks with pretty men and women with long, perfect hair. Lots of Native Americans - lots of cowboys. That's what a lot of people consider to be "chick-lit."
I worked at a public library for two years, and was exposed to so many different types of readers. More "general public" people came into that library than college students or "scholars." Of course, it was a public library, but Shakespeare and Evanovich danced there, together. I liked to watch people, and what books people chose to borrow. The people I was fascinated with the most were the youngish mothers who brought their children to the library and had them play in the children's section while they browsed elsewhere. They were typically overweight with bad skin and lightened hair. I helped man the circulation desk and shelved books. I watched them picking and sorting - looking for a romance they hadn't already read before. Most of them came in at least once a week, and checked out books repeatedly. I do the same thing sometimes. The point is, (if there is one) these women weren't just looking for a book to read. They wanted to go somewhere - preferably with a man who might do to them what they desired. Those books are easy to read, and you don't have to pay very much attention to follow. They walked out with seven or eight of those books, kids in tow. I knew I'd see them next week.
I could have felt sorry for them - how their lives must be so horrible and boring that they have to resort to such crap to get away from it. But I do the same thing. I just don't choose the same portals as they do. I am in no way "better" than they are. Yes I read books in order to attain knowledge and expand my mind, but happiness comes to the wise as well as to the simple; perhaps to the simple more easily. That's what those women were after, and that's what I'm after as well. The words don't care either way. And neither do I.

I'm sorry Jesi. I tried to read Harry Potter, and couldn't get through the first book. I don't know why. I wish I could have! I liked reading all the books which responded to the series. They were usually written by a Christian pastor, or "scholar," and informed frantic parents why the Harry Potter series would lead their innocent children to give their souls to the Devil. Or blow up the house with all the "spellwork" the books encouraged.

On the subject of whether Shakespeare was "B" or simply "popular," what about Lord Byron's (in)famous quote? . . . "Shakespeare’s name, you may depend on it, stands absurdly too high and will go down. He had no invention as to stories, none whatever. He took all his plots from old novels, and threw their stories into a dramatic shape, at as little expense of thought as you or I could turn his plays back again into prose tales. That he threw over whatever he did write some flashes of genius, nobody can deny: but this was all. Suppose any one to have the dramatic handling for the first time of such ready-made stories as Lear, Macbeth, &c. and he would be a sad fellow, indeed, if he did not make something very grand of them. [As] for his historical plays, properly historical, I mean, they were merely redressings of former plays on the same subjects, and in twenty cases out of twenty-one, the finest, the very finest things, are taken all but verbatim out of the old affairs. You think, no doubt, that A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse! is Shakespeare’s. Not a syllable of it. You will find it all in the old nameless dramatist. Could not one take up Tom Jones and improve it, without being a greater genius than Fielding? I, for my part, think Shakespeare’s plays might be improved, and the public seem, and have seemed for to think so too, for not one of his is or ever has been acted as he wrote it; and what the pit applauded three hundred years past, is five times out of ten not Shakespeare’s but Cibber’s." (Letter to James Hogg, 24 Mar 1814)

I think the current idea of chick-lit is embraced by many women, as opposed to its being a derogatory term employed by men. Much of it, I think, centers around female detectives and the like. What I find facinating is that, aside from one V.I. Warshawski film, these books don't seem to find their way to the big screen. What we do find, instead, are beautiful killing machines. I think this displays a not-so-subtle difference between film and literature (here meaning any books) as regarding the roles for/of heroines. It may be the same for male roles. I'm making this up as I go along.
Would these works not translate well to the screen or is it just that young people wouldn't go see them? For some reason they'll go see Jessica Alba and Charlize Theron kicking the living crap out of everyone on the screen, which, with the sound off, I also find watchable, but I doubt too many went to see Kathleen Turner kick the crap out of a few people within the intelligence of a detective mystery.

I love it when Trish types "Tom Robbins". Something special about that boy. It's what I like to think of as unserious literature. There are plenty of thought provoking ideas, but the fact that these ideas frolic and cavort in such unusual and fun ways tends to diminish Robbin's works in the strained and port-soaked eyes of the canonical muckety-mucks. One professor at this school made it clear to us that Tom Robbins is not and never will be Literature. But then this professor had us read stuff from Cabeza De Vaca, which I think translates to something like "head of the cow". Dull!

Any author that romanticizes a disgusting, bloody vegetable so well and makes immortality sound plausible is a hero in my world.

Concerning Byron's letter to Hogg, what do we know about Hogg that would insist upon our taking Byron's words at face value? Perhaps it was ironic. Perhaps he wanted something from Hogg and, so, chose to agree with Hogg in order to get on his side.
I guess the larger question is whether the person who included that letter in this blog agrees with the sentiments within. Maybe half of what Shakespeare put on the stage came from other sources, yet he was able to adapt other works to fit his stage in his time and place. The fact that his plays were seldom performed verbatim in other times is largely owing to the perceived audience capabilities and tastes at any given time or space, but may also be because the producers/directors didn't fully get Shakespeare.
The suggestion of that blog, as I see it, is that Shakespeare is overrated and that we who don't think so are starry-eyed wannabes or sheep pretending we know what we are talking about when we say that what Shakespeare did was amazing. Baaaa!

Ok, I had to research it...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_lit

http://www.utne.com/pub/2004_122/promo/11091-1.html

I think the Danielle Steel/Harlequin/Fabio-on-the-cover novels that housewives love qualify as romances. Though I think romance plays a large part in chick lit novels, there is also a lot about career, individuality, friends, and modern womanhood in general, etc.

Ah, thanks. So it's more like Bridget Jones, etc. Well that shoots my notion about chick lit not making it to the big screen.

Suddenly the thread heats up!

On the matter of literary genres and "A" and "B" lit., I've always felt that one can't use "literature" as a term of quality. They do in some bookstores, but this doesn't make any sense. Danielle Steele's novels are literature just as much as Jane Austen's. What we need to do is distinguish good literature from bad (or more interesting and rewarding from less, or complex from simple, or whatever criteria you prefer). I think it's important to try to remove the stigma of class from qualitative distinctions. Austen is a better writer than Steele, and this has nothing to do with social class, or academic canons, or anything else but literary criteria. Figuring out exactly what those criteria are may be tricky, but I don't think that invalidates such judgments. On the other hand, I don't think it's really worth spending too much time making "Top Ten Writers" lists. I do end up having to make claims for writers, but that comes with the job (i.e., take the Shakespeare course, he's great!). For the most part, though, readers can make up their own minds who's worth reading and who's not, and such decisions aren't moral judgments either (this confusion may be a result of the term "better"--some "better" writers were moral monsters, just as some of those who read them were or are).

And on the Shakespeare note, Meursault, you've REALLY got to take Shakespeare. Or have you? (Who's lurking behind Camus?) I like some of Byron's poems, but on Shakespeare he was a moron. Same goes for many writers (George Bernard Shaw, for instance). Byron's judgments have partly to do with his lack of knowledge, partly with his inability to escape his own Romantic sensibilities. For the Romantics, "originality" was all the rage (as it is for us too, more or less). In Shakespeare's day, people were not looking for originality in an absolute sense but often for an original treatment of familiar material. Shakespeare may have based most of his plays on pre-existing sources (histories, novels, plays, poems, etc.), but who remembers these works today? Countless people know Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" and "Hamlet." How many know Arthur Brooke's "Romeus and Juliet" or Saxo Grammaticus's "Historiae Danicae"? And who's Byron to talk anyway? His longest poem, "Don Juan," is just a retelling of one of the most often-told takes in Western literature! Harumph!!

I didn't get a "Harumph" out of that guy.

I am happy beyond all belief that you dedicated English Clubbers and English majors are reading and watching movies. The only thing I have had time to read besides essays, response to readings, rough drafts and such, is "Green River Running Red, by Ann Rule, who of course worked with Ted Bundy in a crisis call center. He use to walk her to her car late at night after work and call her to make sure she got home on time. Wonder what he was really thinking? But, anyways, she has done a pretty good job with this book. If you are into the psycho killer thriller thing, definitely a good read!!!

What does a "Harumph" sound like, exactly?

i believe it sounds like a fairy masticating loudly....

or a gnarple burp.

It's pronounced just like it sounds, in as deep a voice as possible, with a strong accent on the second syllable. (Arched eyebrow optional.)

At the risk of opening yet another can of worms, I'm wondering how everyone else feels about Oliver Stone's film World Trade Center. I realize most of us won't yet have seen it when commenting, so I suppose my curiosity has more to do with the idea of potentially profiting (via movies, books, TV shows, t-shirts, etc.) from tragedy than with the film's content per se.

On the one hand, lots of people are understandably leery of anything that looks like Hollywood's trying to cash in on the tragedy of 9/11, especially as this film comes on the heels of United 93. On the other hand, Stone and his supporters have argued that the film is a tribute to the very values (courage, honor, compassion) that terrorists supposedly want to destroy.

Where do we all come down on the question? Or is it too complicated to do anything more than remain ambivalent?

Before I get into Dr. Cautrells' question, I'd like to add a few things about movies and books I've experienced this summer so far. I recently bought and rewatched Peter Jackson's masterpiece Dead Alive (aka Braindead). While the story is little more than B quality camp, the special effects, cuts, and edits in this movie are phenomenal. The switchovers between live actors and props during dismemberment scenes and zombie turns are amazing. One particular scene features a closeup of a guy screaming as zombies pull at his hair/scalp. Though not physiologically possible, when his skin gives way at the neck and his skin is pulled off his head revealing his skull (imagine wearing a halloween mask that covers your whole head and pulling it off from the top), the switch to an animatronic skull screaming is flawless.
I'll second the previous mention of Primer also (Thanks, Aaron). I watched it for the fifth time this weekend and then saw Donnie Darko for the first time. Some interesting time-travel stuff going on in both.
As for books, I've been thouroughly enjoying some old svhool Choose Your Adventure books. One puts you in the role of a space explorer from a not Earth planet, and in one particular sequence you end up stuck on Earth waiting for the days of an unsolvable energy crisis and world involvement in wars in the middle east. It was published in the mid-80s (which fits that era very well, bu is interesting in a new way from a 21st century perspective). The other is a fantasy style book published by TSR in the early 80s.
I'm also in the middle of a sci-fi trilogy based on the Transformers. I've been working on it for a couple years now, and the thing that holds my attention the most is the huge loss of human lives amid a war of terribly destructive war machines and the impact that has on the few human characters. Some of them see opportunities for greed and gain from terrible tragedy, while others lose their lives in short instances of heroics. When the focus shifts to the stars of the series, we see the infinitely compassionate "good guys" torn between the loss of human life and their struggle to end their war versus the cruel, conscienceless "bad guys" pursuing their own agendas.
I'm still trying to work through House of Leaves (a 3-year project so far) and make some sense of, but I keep stopping and going back trying to stay focused.
Lastly, I've got an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel on deck for when my spanish classes finish up here in two weeks.
Now, as far as Stone and World Trade Center, I'm kind of divided. On the one hand, I think Stone can handle the subject matter in a respectable manner, though I think he could have at least waited until the ten year anniversary. On another hand, immediately following 9/11/01, I was completely appalled at the overt commmercialism of patriotism that surrounded all of us. I was not one the people with an american flag hanging on my car window, exposed to the elements day and night until it became a shredded faded piece of cloth destined for a land fill (which is improper display and disposal of the flag). I also did not ruch out and buy an "american flag" or "proud to be an american" t-shirt. In the sixties, the "hippie" culture would take flags and cut them and alter them into clothing and mainstream america saw this as desecration, but in today's commercially focused america it's possible to get a shirt that not only allows you to sweat all over the flag and spill ketchup and mustard from your hot dog all over it, but you can buy a shirt that is more an allusion to the flag than the falg itself (run a google image search on american flag to see both patriotic ones and ones touting guns or guitars). I recall one shirt in particular that featured thirteen horizontal red scribbles and one big blue scribble with less than thirty white blank spots (that I assume represent 50 stars). Now. I'm not saying that the flag is somehow super sacred (I'd burn one if their was a cause great enough for it in my lifetime), but the point I'm making is that everythig is capitalized upon in today's society. Wanna piss on those that piss you off? I'm sure you can find a urinal pad somewhere with bush or osama's face on it.
Back to the point of the movie though, it just seems to me that a movie like this might be running too soon on the heels of the actual events. I've refused to see Flight 93 for much the same reason. If the movie were intended to be for some purpose other than making money, the filmmakers would subsidize ticket costs to help people everywhere be exposed to this tribute to nobility surrounding the events of September 11, 2001. I made much the same argument when The Passion came out. If Mel Gibson really wanted us to be exposed to the wonder that is Jesus he could have subsidized ticket costs and DVD costs to help us all live our lives as purely as he does his.
No, I'll only be seeing one movie with any planes as a central plot point this year, and anyone who doesn't agree with me on the potential of it being a well made action-thriller gets a big "Harumph" from me.

(this is where i insert short quik one-liner)

someone should tell Mel that Jesus is Jewish...

My feeling concerning 911 is that a lot of people suddenly became a part of something. Each person in this country could choose to begin to define herself as American in whatever sense of the word they understood. My sense is that for many of these people, the fading away of the collective emotion left them feeling somewhat emptied. There will be an audience for this film, though I doubt I will ever choose to watch it.
I think it is a viable vehicle for Stone. He is adept at raising emotional questions and at delivering a stab at truth.
Ah hell, put me down for ambivalence.

I guess my point is that the movie, like so many these days, wasn't made for me. I've met plenty of people for whom this is likely a must-see.

OK, fine. I'll wait to see what you all think of snakes, plane, and Samuel L. I hear some of the snakes are really very fine actors.

On the 9/11 films, I did see United 93. I thought I wouldn't like it (was expecting the sort of commercialing Nic mentions), but I did, very much. I understand anyone who would rather not see a 9/11 film yet, but this is really a remarkable movie. It's not at all exploitative, and very un-Hollywood. I think what makes it so powerful is it's resistance of anything hyperbolic, or sentimental, or even judgmental. For instance, the film pays quite a bit of attention to the anxieties of the terrorists as well as those of passengers and crew. This doesn't come across as an apology for terrorism, but rather as a humanizing of the story, exploring it in all its complexity. The intensity of the film is amazing, and so too the sense that basically everything and everyone on the ground was in complete chaos -- no one knew what to do. I recommend this one. I haven't seen Stone's film yet, so I'll reserve judgment, but everything I've seen in the trailers tells me it's the exact opposite of United 93 -- sentimental, jingoistic, very Hollywood. I'd be happy to be proved wrong, but this is not a film I look forward to seeing. If anyone sees it, let us know how it does.

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