Too many Frederick Forsyth novels
It is September 11 by the way
I managed to avoid the TV and radio news all day, as I know it will have been filled with mawkish overstatement, lead item, even though the attacks happened in a different city in a different country half a decade ago. Anyway, I dislike "news" when it is emotive (talk of "evil" does not belong in news, and yet it crops up again and again in this case). Call me an old stick-in-the-mud, but emotion is not the job of the news. News is. I noticed that the Evening Standard had the headline, THE WORLD REMEMBERS. It would be hard for THE WORLD to forget. I respect the right of those who lost people in any tragedy to memorialise, whether in private or, if needs be, in public, but we seem to have mistaken these memorials as events of international import. And the one-minute silences have become two minutes. That's just oneupmanship (my tragedy's more tragic than yours - listen!). I don't know why people constantly replenish roadside memorials to victims of car accidents year after year either. It's a similar need to exhibit grief rather than just experience it and be cleansed by it.
Anyway, I remember September 11, 2001 very well. I am hardly trying to forget it. I watched all five hours of The Path To 9/11 today, the first half on tape , the second half on TV this evening, and the first segement of C4's latest, The Man Who Predicted 9/11, which was, even for me, one September 11, 2001 too many. I really admired the five-hour epic though, dramatised, but based on the 9/11 Commission and other transcripts, except where it wasn't. Harvey Keitel starred as John O'Neill, the FBI counter-terrorist officer who was ultimately thwarted in his efforts to nail Bin Laden, but beyond him and Donnie Wahlberg (very good as a Fed called Alex), it was a no-star cast, which added to the documentary feel - not disimilar to United 93, although director David Cunningham was a lot artier than Greengrass, with his out-of-focus shots, and inistence on cutting back to exotic foreigners playing drums at moments of high drama. It gave context, beginning with the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center and joining the dots through Nairobi, Lewinsky, Sudan, the USS Cole and the big day itself. To its credit, it criticised a lot of Americans, not least the squabbling CIA and FBI, who deserve each other, but it singled out Clinton, or at least his administration's Sandy Berger, for a big can of blame. (I liked the line attributed to the security chief who, when first told of the plot to fly planes into buildings, accused the potential terrorists of having read "too many Frederick Forsyth novels.")
I've seen criticism of the film for being right wing, but it seemed pretty delighted to show Bush read My Little Goat, or whatever it was called, and anyway, it put Al-Qaeda's case across loud and clear, and the suggestion was always that US foreign policy inflamed Islamist extremism, which doesn't exactly strike me as right wing. Surely a right wing film would have demonised the Arabs? It makes a good companion to World Trade Center, which offers no political context whatsoever and in that sense, cops out. Instead, Stone went for a film about heroes (and I don't question the heroism of the emergency services), very much a sidestep of broader issues thrown up by that day.
By the way, the man who predicted 9/11, Rick Rescorla, worked at Morgan Stanley and was born in Cornwall, although according to the first part of the documentary, it was actually his mate who predicted 9/11.
I think I might have seen enough now. It's almost September 12.
posted by Andrew Collins @ 8:14 PM
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Did you laugh as I did when the manipulative and conniving Sherie Palmer from 24 turned up as Condoleeza Rice. Shrewd casting.
Sherie Palmer was Condoleeza? I must see this...
I have never seen an episode of 24, The Sopranos, Deadwood, Lost, The Wire or The Shield. Am I missing out?
Out of all of these, if I buy a box set, which one should I get?
If I watch every series of them all back to back it will take several years to catch up won't it?
Call me a reactionary but I would choose 24 to binge on.
The acting is uniformly brilliant (expect for Elisha Cuthbert, you will see why), the stories are totally unbelievable and completely absorbing at the same time.
DVD is the best way to watch it because with a cliffhanger at the end of every episode you won't be able to wait a week for the next show.
As a former Saturday Morning pictures addict this is my Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon replacment.
Ian
The Path To 9/11 was very impressive and informative (for me at least). I found the tricksy scene-setting titles a bit annoying (making them look like they were written on doors or windows in the scene for example). In particular 9:59 am on that morning could have done without such self-conscious flashiness. And was it just me or did Harvey Keitel look a lot like Rip Torn playing Arthur in Larry Sanders?
You're right about the Channel 4 documentary. No disrespect to the subject of the programme (who was called Rick Rescorla by the way) but it was a poor effort. And they kept calling him "the man who predicted 9/11" throughout even though, as you say, that was his friend Dan Hill:
Dan Hill: And I said, "Well, I think they're gonna come back..." And he said "Well how?" And I said, "Well obviously it won't be on the ground. Those doors are shut - it's covered. It's gotta be from the air."
Voice Over: Suddenly and with eerie foresight Rick Rescorla realised that the next attack would use an aeroplane as the weapon.
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We all remember things like this and wish they had never happened, but anniversaries: the Earth has gone round the Sun once more since something has happened.
There's a video of a MSNBC journalist called Keith Olbermann criticising Bush's handling of the whole debacle on youtube, perhaps closer to what Americans really feel rather than the hollow buzzwords that spew from George's mouth.
Thanks for the name correction, Dave. (I don't know what I was thinking!) I've amended the text.
By the way, Clive, I concur that 24 is a terrific piece of entertainment, especially in box form. Being thoroughly hooked on The Sopranos again though, I'd heartily recommend the first season. If you like The Godfather and GoodFellas, that type of thing, it's a must. If not, perhaps less so. I have now completely weaned myself off Lost. Enjoyed the first series. Found the second series wanting. I think it may have been a one-time deal. They got greedy, as all networks do, and ordered it up by the yard. Even before I'd stopped watching season two, the writers seemed to be clutching a straws to make it interesting. (You may disagree.)
My other half disliked Lost after a few episodes and she shares my tastes generally... so I think I shall binge on series one of 24 and The Sopranos then, come payday. Thanks for the tips, chaps.
The only thing I watch out of all the above is Lost. It's probably the dumbest of the lot but watching it might make you clever because it makes you try to connect everything and work out what's going on. My current theory (after watching episode 22 season 2) is that Desmond is the boss. Just wanted to say that. Probably wrong.
I personally share Charlie Brooker's and Jim Shelley's assertions that the Wire and The Shield are the best dramas around at present.
Deadwood is poetic where Lost is entertaining, get past the liberal swearing and it's positively shakespearean.
honorable mention goes to slings and arrows on artsworld.
Does anyone watch Entourage - is it worth my while?
For me 24 and Lost (and Prison Break actually) are tripe of the first order - but highly enjoyable tripe nonetheless. I actually preferred the second season of Lost to the first - it felt more consistent, while the first season got a bit dull in the middle.
On 24 there's a strong sense of the writers making it all up as they go along (which just adds to the fun), but on Lost I think they try a bit harder to map out the "story arc" for the whole season before they film the first episode.
Sleeper Cell had some similarities to 24 but was a lot more intelligent and harder hitting. And whereas 24 is always happy to treat anyone with olive skin as demonic cannon fodder and anyone on "Jack's team" as being unblemished heroes, Sleeper Cell is much more ambiguous - and all the more interesting for it.
I'm halfway through The Path to 9-11 on video at the moment, and thoroughly gripped. Not perfect by any means, but still seems a pretty high-quality two-parter.
I too have never seen The Sopranos, but it's high on my list of "much watch from the first episode" DVD box-sets.
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