Studio Lag

[matthew]

El vomito.  

Donut is so quotable.

[matthew]

Nazca Lines are pretty swell.

Do they count as architecture?

[matthew]

World's wildest architectural designs.

[Doctor Rock]

El vomito.  

Donut is so quotable.

[attachment deleted by admin... had to make some room, kids]

[Doctor Rock]

Paris peddles bike service to curb traffic jams, pollution

Now this has the Rosa seal of approval!  

[Just Some Girl]

Aw, man, way to post better pix of the Sharp Centre than I, Dan.

[Just Some Girl]

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/1_t44siFyb4" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/1_t44siFyb4</a>


"The humor of the entire situation suddenly gave way to a run for survival." "Fortunately no human was hurt as badly as the car." Ugh.

Apologies if someone's already posted this before.

Apologies to everyone with a soul.

[Just Some Girl]

Also sympathetic to the bull that gored the idiot humans.

[Moetown]

Two thumbs up for Ratatouille. I haven't enjoyed myself so much watching a movie in quite a while.

[Moetown]

Jeez. I just found out Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass has already been filmed. It's the first of a trilogy called His Dark Materials . Do you guys remember when I was reading those? No? They were really fun books. For some reason, I can't bring myself to even look at a H-a-r-r-y P-o-t-t-e-r book, but I was really drawn to Pullman's books for some reason. I only mention H.P. because it's kinda the same genre and classified as young adult fiction.

[Moetown]

I don't know. The trailer didn't get me revved for the movie. Pretty dull as far as trailers go I'd say.

[matthew]

Shit...I really, really put off watching United 93 for the longest time, thinking that it would really put me in a bad, bad place. The reviews said it was brilliant/non-Hollywood and it was made by Paul Greengrass, the writer/director of Bloody Sunday and the writer of Omagh. I felt that if he was able to accomplish what he did retelling those horrific events, that I was in for a painful wrenching of the guts. Unfortunately, he was also responsible for the direction of The Bourne Supremacy & The Bourne Ultimatum (but then they did say that this was a simple, straighforward retelling with no big names, so I assumed it would be more along the lines of Bloody Sunday and Omagh).

It ended up being along the lines of none of those films, and was merely terribly overrated.

The air traffic control and NORAD scenes were the equivalent of the Normandy Landing of Saving Private Ryan - portrayed brilliantly, while the rest of the film was sub-par to atrocious. The rest of the film and everything that occurred on the planes fell flat in its depiction and was very artificial and simplistic and the fact that it was almost entirely conjecture and supposition was all too obvious. It felt stagey and almost soap operaesque in parts. Seeing as no one survived and that we have only phone calls to go by, I believe it was a tragic error to give so many real individual final words that we have no proof of. There was evidence to be displayed, but they should have utilized more editing techniques and muted dialogue and implication of direction.

Though I had heard that this was how the film ended long ago, I remain simply horrified that they depicted them successfully storming the cabin and tackling the pilots when we know for a fact (and we knew this for YEARS before the film was made) that the cabin door was never breached by the heroic passengers of United 93. We do not even "know" that they overcame the other two hijackers on passenger detail, there is only evidence that the plane was shaken to disrupt any attempted rebellion.

It is possible and perhaps even likely that the passengers had some hand in the plane not making its destination, as the passengers were aware of what happened to the other hijacked planes, and 93 was facing the fact that it was waaaaaaay behind schedule (heavy delay before takeoff) and off target by the time they did take the plane. Their mission was the fucked up one. So, the passengers did plan to disrupt and there is evidence that suggests that they tried to fight back and that is why the plane was rocked. There are some words by the pilots that suggest that they simply decided to cut their losses and ditch the plane and they still crashed the plane and killed everyone on board (sorry folks, they still succeeded) and TELLING THE STORY AND PLACING THE IMAGES OF WHAT WE WISHED HAD HAPPENED IN THE PLACE OF THE SAD TRUTH IS NOT GOING TO CHANGE WHAT REALLY HAPPENED.

I would give it a 3 or 4 out of 10 for the excellent sequences dealing with the flight towers and NORAD, but I cannot bring myself to do even that and I would give it a straight 0 if I could.

A travesty based on a tragedy.

Instead of being emotionally distressed, I am actually angry.

Which is a form of distress.

[matthew]

And goddamn, they actually had the nerve to single out the one EUROPEAN on board the plane and make him look like a TOTAL FUCKING COWARD WHO ONLY WANTS TO APPEASE THE TERRORISTS.

As you can see, there were only two non-Americans on the plane (other than the four Saudis).

37 year old German, Christian Adams and 20 year old Japanese, Toshiya Kuge. Kuge is shown a couple of times in the establishing scenes, but vanishes during the hijacking. Adams is depicted as an asshole and then a coward from beginning to end. Was this picked up in the forensic research of the crash site? Was his cowardice picked up on the black box recorder? Did someone call their family on a cellphone and say, "I love you honey, you know that, I really do. Tell the kids that their father loved them. We are going to try and rush the cockpit now and take over the plane. We've gotta try. I love you honey. I really love you. Okay, we gotta try...we got to. I love you. I just hope this pussy Euro onboard doesn't fuck everything up."

[Tripp]

yeah, there's even some evidence that 93 was shot out of the sky by our air force but it makes such a great recruitment tool having everyone fight back.