World Trade Center

Started by Gold Trumpet, November 02, 2005, 08:05:48 PM

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Alexandro

For me, it was too manipulative to be emotional. So politically correct they end up peeling off any context whatsoever. You could change the towers for mines or a spaceship or a submarine stucked in the bottom of the ocean and call it "The Miners" or "Apollo 13" or "The Submarine" (I mean they called this World Trade Center, which sucks), and it would be the same movie, exactly. They used 9/11 only as a selling point cause the film itself tries all it can to not even mention 9/11...strange that, to me, so much fear drove them to look as if they were maiing an opportunistic move, cashing in on the tragedy but without getting too much into it...So, Oliver Stone has now proved he can make an easy going, sellable, non political movie about the most political subject in the world. Ok, he can do it. Let's move on.

These characters were non-characters. Apparently, they didn't have very interesting lives. So instead of playin along with that vibe or try to honor it in some way, they try to give them "arcs" to make their experience more trascendent in the moment, when, in reality, that trascendence was something they surely digested, but maybe even a few days later. By reducing the approach, and make it narrower, by being scared of offending people if someone in the movie says an opinion, or if the "heroes" are shown in any kind of "negative" way (Cage had marriage problems, but they were so no real problems by the way they shown them, God forbid an american hero is about to divorce) the story becomes boring. There's no suspense to cling to cause we all know theyw ill survive, but Stone anyhow reaches for it: will they survive? will they not?

Whatever, this is disapointing.

Alexandro

Also, I read all the strange critiques GT and others made on UNITED 93, which is vastly superior to WTC just as a cinematic experience. WTC is boring, generic and timid. UNITED 93 jumps at you and just for being so visceral gains better responses. I don't think anyone has mentioned, about UNITED 93, one of the main things that come out of it, is the fact that people's response to what was going on that day was agonizingly slow. And the reason for that is because in this modern days, we are so used to be passive, the moment you get to an airport is like "ok, i'm in these people's hands now". And it was such a revelation in a way, to get to the moment when what was obvious became visible: they were 30 plus passangers against three guys with no big weapons, and if they didnt do something they would die. For me, the main point about United 93 was something along those lines.

Gold Trumpet

Quote from: Alexandro on September 30, 2006, 05:43:37 PM
Also, I read all the strange critiques GT and others made on UNITED 93, which is vastly superior to WTC just as a cinematic experience. WTC is boring, generic and timid. UNITED 93 jumps at you and just for being so visceral gains better responses. I don't think anyone has mentioned, about UNITED 93, one of the main things that come out of it, is the fact that people's response to what was going on that day was agonizingly slow. And the reason for that is because in this modern days, we are so used to be passive, the moment you get to an airport is like "ok, i'm in these people's hands now". And it was such a revelation in a way, to get to the moment when what was obvious became visible: they were 30 plus passangers against three guys with no big weapons, and if they didnt do something they would die. For me, the main point about United 93 was something along those lines.

I do think there is more to WTC. In my review for Alternate Takes, I summed the film up as a religious work. The comparison of World Trade Center to certain Robert Bresson films is there. Both filmmakers utilized characters that stood less for characterization and more for symbolism. The symbolism is entrenched in Catholic themes. The 1913 play Saint Joan argued that it was saints who were to kneel before those who did good. I feel Oliver Stone was kneeling before those who lost their lives or survived this catastrophe. It is a very touching thing for him to do. Before he was a filmmaker he was a Catholic school teacher. Later he denounced the religion, but he used religious symbolism in Platoon and a few other films. It just wasn't as thorough as in this film. Then I also applaud the film for certain moments. He uses various photography of New York City to act as both prologue and epilogue to the story. The depth of his photographic eye is evident and shows he could have been a professional photographer also.

I could go into further detail (well, I actually do in my review) but I think World Trade Center is the film that better compliments every part of the filmmaking canvas. United 93 hinges on the accessability that filming for mayhem will cause mayhem to be felt in the viewer. Horror will always have the benefit that people will never know what around is a corner and can be scared by it. I just don't think they are very important things to be based on. Of course I've already gone into detail about this.


polkablues

Quote from: The Gold Trumpet on September 30, 2006, 08:59:03 PM
The comparison of World Trade Center to certain Robert Bresson films is there.

The problem is, so is the comparison to certain Michael Bay films.
My house, my rules, my coffee

Alexandro

Interesting, but I don't buy it. Bresson has nothing to do with WTC, you can stretch it, but its true that Michael Bay is closer. WTC is Stone's way of saying I'm sorry for Alexander, please give me another job. It's WTC the one movie that, without the 9/11 context, would be a totally uninteresting, boring non action film filled with common places and gratituos sentimentality. WTC feels nothing like september 11 of 2001 felt, which is one of the objectives, but Stone is too cornered by all sorts of things to pull it off. If the movie had the teary vibe of the trailer, at least it would have been moving. Instead you get slo-mo takes, and we all know slo-mo takes are bad in this case cause it makes the movie trickery more noticeable. I mean movie trickery is unavoidable, but slo.mo is reminiscent of Jerry Bruckheimer, specially in this context.

93, indeed, could be just as exciting as an action film without the 9/11 context, and in my view, that's a plus. The truth is that back in that day, the biggest true we had chosen no to aknowledge about western civilization became unavoidable: USA can be an easy target. That's the horrific realization that United 93 ilustrates so well, besides the numb pasive state in which we are accostumed to behave even in the most desastrous situations.

In any case, time will tell.

Pubrick

hey alexandro, let's form the next latino trio together with crono. whaddaya say? (sorry fernando)
under the paving stones.

Alexandro


ASmith

11'09''01 - September 11 is the 9/11 movie to see.  For those who haven't heard of it, it's actually 11 short films from 11 different directors, each 11 minutes, 9 seconds, and 1 frame long.  The idea is to show a variety of perspectives on the event.  Overall, this film is really beautiful. 

MacGuffin

Etheridge, Stone score on F&TVM panels
Source: Hollywood Reporter

The subtleties of dealing musically with the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks and the threat of global warming were addressed by director Oliver Stone and musician Melissa Etheridge, respectively, during panel discussions Tuesday at The Hollywood Reporter/Billboard Film & TV Music Conference.

Discussing his feature "World Trade Center" on a panel at the Beverly Hilton with his composer, Craig Armstrong, and music supervisor, Budd Carr, Stone said that Armstrong was not his first choice to score the picture. "John Williams turned us down," the Oscar-winning writer-director said. "I listened to dozens and dozens of composers."

However, Armstrong -- best known for his work with Baz Luhrmann on "Romeo + Juliet" and "Moulin Rouge!" -- ultimately impressed Stone with his delicate approach. "It was very, very subtle music," Stone recalled. "The very first piano theme was right on."

Surprisingly, though shooting was well under way when the Scottish composer joined the project, Armstrong wrote his key theme on the basis of the script.

"It's very helpful to write away from picture, to get the emotional truth," Armstrong said.

The sensitive nature of the subject matter in "WTC" -- the struggle to rescue two New York policemen trapped in the rubble of the towers, and the impact of the search on their families -- was addressed by the filmmakers.

"It's a small movie about four characters and their relationships, and you have to be careful," Carr noted. Stone added: "Overproduction was the issue. ... The tendency is to add on, to make it better."

While some of the film's most powerful scenes utilize spare scoring, the filmmakers explored several approaches. "We'd record it for full orchestra," Armstrong said, "then for strings and flutes ... so we'd have control over the size of the music."

Stone recalled: "The first mix was a complete disaster. There were so many effects ... I was white."

The director admitted that he and Armstrong "fought hard" over a guitar-based theme for a sequence in which one of the trapped officers experiences a vision of Jesus Christ. But, Stone added, the theme "was crucially important, and it had to be delicate."

The sometimes prickly director praised his composer, saying "Craig was the best. You couldn't insult him. He has skin of steel." Said Armstrong, "He gave me a lot of freedom to experiment."

Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Etheridge detailed how she became involved with Davis Guggenheim's documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," about the environmental crisis, at the behest of former Vice President Al Gore, whose observations about global warming are the core of the film.

"This was a very special opportunity for me," Etheridge said. "I had just been through my own special awakening, after being diagnosed with breast cancer. After that, when my perspective and my life had changed, I realized that I am not on an island."

She said she grappled with the best way to approach the film's themes, and "kinda drove myself crazy." She ultimately penned the song "I Need to Wake Up" after her partner told her to write about what she was feeling.

Etheridge asked herself, "What do I want to hear? I want to hear somebody else who feels the way I feel, which is, 'My God, have I been sleeping?' "

The musician said the experience of working on the film wrought eco-friendly changes in her professional life. "All my buses and all my trucks ran on bio-diesel (fuel) for the whole tour," she said.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

MacGuffin

Talking with: Oliver Stone
The award-winning director takes on first feature film about 9/11 with dignity and class.
Source: Los Angeles Times

Though Paul Greengrass' "United 93" -- the first feature film dealing with the tragedy of September 11, 2001 - has been receiving awards from critics' groups, Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center" actually was the bigger box office hit and garnered the best reviews for the Oscar-winning director in several years.

Stone, 60, received the Hollywood Film of the Year award from the Hollywood Film Festival, as well as the Freedom of Expression honor from the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures for "World Trade Center."

Nicolas Cage and Michael Pena star in the harrowing drama as two Port Authority policemen, John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno, who were trapped in the rubble at Ground Zero and were two of the last survivors pulled from the devastation.

Stone won his first Oscar for the screenplay of the 1978 thriller "Midnight Express" and picked up Oscars for directing the 1986 best picture winner, "Platoon," and for 1989's "Born on the Fourth of July." He also directed Michael Douglas to his best actor Oscar for 1987's "Wall Street," and helmed such controversial films as "JFK," "Nixon" and "Natural Born Killers" and "Alexander.".

Q: You have won three Oscars and countless other awards. What are your feelings about awards and especially the hype during movie awards season?

Oliver Stone: It is like root canal. It's like a medical condition. You go through it. You can't deny it and you can't aggress it. You perform the duty to the film because the film is the effort and we're all behind that. And the more the film is seen, the happier we would all be. It's a slow film to discover because it's grown. It made $70 million in the U.S. and $90 million abroad. Those are big numbers for a film like this that cost in the mid-$60 million to make. It was a successful film, but a lot of people in America didn't see it at the time because it was a tough subject to handle and there is no question that it takes people time.

Q: You usually write your own scripts. What is it like to work on a project you didn't initiate?

OS: I have done it before. "Natural Born Killers" was a script that existed but we changed it completely. This was a script that I loved. It was a very emotionally strong and simple and it was a challenge to me to do that simplicity of a rescue, of a disaster and at the same time, recognize that this had actually happened. This is quite different if it had come to me as a piece of fiction. I don't know [if I would do it]. I think I did it because it was a chance to contribute to this understanding of the event and to build a memorial to those people and to honor the feelings of those who were there that day, and especially the feelings of what they call the first-responders to any situation in an emergency

Q: Also the heroes of "World Trade Center" are everyday citizens pushed into extraordinary situations.

OS: And behaving as ordinary people would. Except for the first-responders, [everyone else] were essentially in a passive position. It wasn't the typical movie where you have a rescue situation and you help get yourself out or you bite your hand off and manage to be very smart and clever and survive. It doesn't happen that way for the most part. It happens like this. These guys, not only was it hard to find them as you can see in the movie, but hard to get them out. There are two rescues at the end of the movie - each man, a different rescue. To me it was a challenge because it could easily have descended into a cliche. This films is very close to me because it deals with many of the themes I've dealt with in the past, which were essentially trauma, a sense of overwhelming defeat, followed by survival and a return to some sort of - call it heroism - or return to a more enlightened place. I like high challenges, I guess.

Q: Wrll Jimeno and John McLoughlin had amazing fortitude.

OS: The rescuers were crucial to getting them outmbut they also survived because of some internal qualities. I think it's important to remember that the movie focused on that as much as the rescue. These guys are able to communicate with each other barely, but they do and they were lucky enough to have strong family lives. The memory of the wives and the interdependent quality of their families really gave them the hope and internal strength and internal faith.

Q: Were Jimeno and McLoughlin on the set?

OS: At times, yes.

Q: It must have been so hard for them.

OS: It was, but they were both game for it and they helped us enormously. was eager for their co-operation. I wanted to get it right. But at the same time they gave me freedom. I didn't feel imprisoned by being watched.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

modage

i'm not sure why this was so shat on after United 93 was so praised.  i thought this was good and if you trimmed about 3 minutes where the sentiment runs a little wild i'd say its as good a film as United 93.  both films take a limited view and show you what a few people went through that day.  i think edited together or shown back to back they begin to paint a picture of 9/11.  i do think a third film should be made that shows the political side of things and it would seem Stone is a good man for the job.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

Kal

i saw this one yesterday and united 93 today... and i agree with what most people say... stone fucked it up again

its a true story but it does not make you care about the situation or the characters like ual 93 does... or at least for me