FILM 1872: WORLD TRADE CENTER

FILM 1872: WORLD TRADE CENTER 

TRIVIA: Test audiences believed that Dave Karnes (Michael Shannon), the former Marine, was a Hollywood invention. This is, in fact, a true story that occurred. Karnes later re-enlisted in the Marine Corps and served two tours of duty in Iraq. Also, as reported by the Associated Press on August 14, 2006, the Marine identified only as Sergeant Thomas (who disappeared shortly after 9/11) has been identified as Jason Thomas, a former Marine who grabbed his uniform and immediately drove to Ground Zero to help. Because his identity was unknown at the time of filming, Sgt. Thomas - who is black - was portrayed by William Mapother, a white man. The producers have since apologized to Sgt. Thomas for the miscasting. Thomas has laughed it off and told them not to be concerned, stating, "I don't want to shed any negativity on what they were trying to show."

The city of New York absolutely prohibited the recreation of 9/11 destruction or chaos on location. The filmmakers were not even allowed to film actors looking upward toward where the towers would be. The drive of the officers up to the site was permitted to be filmed, but all scenes depicting events at or near the WTC were filmed in Los Angeles.

In preparing for his portrayal of Sgt. John McLoughlin, Nicolas Cage focused on accurately speaking with a New York accent. And to also capture the fear and claustrophobia of McLoughlin's ordeal, Cage spent hours in a sensory-deprivation tank in Venice, California.

The first theatrical film to recreate the collapse of the World Trade Center towers.

Officer Scott Strauss, a first responder with the New York City Emergency Services unit, was offered the chance to play himself in the film. However, Strauss refused to do so and Stephen Dorff was then cast to portray him. Strauss's services as a consultant were retained for the film to which he didn't accept payment.

Due to her infamous quote that "America is responsible in some way" for the 9/11 attacks, Maggie Gyllenhaal personally offered to withdraw from the project to Officer William Jimeno and his wife Allison Jimeno. They both declined and gave their blessing for Gyllenhaal to take the role.

Director Oliver Stone's first two choices to play John McLoughlin were Mel Gibson and George Clooney.

Feature film debut of Jon Bernthal.

BOOK 126: SATURDAY: IAN MCEWAN

Saturday is McEwan's ninth novel, published between Atonement and On Chesil Beach, two novels of historical fiction. McEwan has discussed that he prefers to alternate between writing about the past and the present.

While researching the book, McEwan spent two years work-shadowing Neil Kitchen, a neurosurgeon at The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in Queen Square, London. Kitchen testified that McEwan did not flinch in the theatre, a common first reaction to surgery; "He sat in the corner, with his notebook and pencil". He also had several medical doctors and surgeons review the book for accuracy, though few corrections were required to the surgical description. Saturday was also proof-read by McEwan's longstanding circle of friends who review his manuscripts, Timothy Garton Ash, Craig Raine, and Galen Strawson.

There are elements of autobiography in Saturday: the protagonist lives in Fitzroy Square, the same square in London that McEwan does and is physically active in middle age. Christopher Hitchens, a friend of McEwan's, noted how Perowne's wife, parents and children are the same as the writer's. McEwan's son, Greg, who like Theo played the guitar reasonably well in his youth, emphasized one difference between them, "I definitely don't wear tight black jeans".

The "set-piece" construction of the book was noticed by many critics; Mrs Scurr praised it, describing a series of "vivid tableaux", but John Banville was less impressed, calling it an assembly of discrete set pieces, though he said the treatment of the car crash and its aftermath was "masterful", and said of Perowne's visit to his mother: "the writing is genuinely affecting in its simplicity and empathetic force." From the initial "dramatic overture" of the aircraft scene, there were "astonishing pages of description", sometimes "heart-stopping", though it was perhaps a touch too artful at times, according to Michael Dirda in The Washington Post. Christopher Hitchens said that McEwan delivered a "virtuoso description of the aerodynamics of a squash game," enjoyable even "to a sports hater like myself", Banville said he, as a literary man, had been bored by the same scene. Zoe Heller praised the tension in the climax as "vintage McEwan nightmare" but questioned the resolution as "faintly preposterous".

John Banville wrote a scathing review of the book for The New York Review of Books. He described Saturday as the sort of thing that a committee directed to produce a 'novel of our time' would write, the politics were "banal"; the tone arrogant, self-satisfied and incompetent; the characters cardboard cut-outs. He felt McEwan strove too hard to display technical knowledge "and his ability to put that knowledge into good, clean prose".

Saturday won the James Tait Black Prize for fiction; and was nominated on the long-list of the Man Booker Prize in 2005.

MY VERDICT: I have to say I was not a fan of this novel. I’m not saying it’s badly written because I think the fact that McEwan can write is, just that, a fact.  I didn’t find it engaging at all.  The most interesting part of the book, the real confrontation only peaked my interest a little and I found the whole book flat and uninteresting.  I think it suffers from a little too much detail and too much description which, coming from a fan of Perec’s Life: A User’s Manual, is really saying something. This could, in my opinion, made a much better novella.

Film 1088: Zeitgeist

Mythology and belief in society today, presenting uncommon perspectives of common cultural issues.