{"id":646,"date":"2006-08-12T00:38:11","date_gmt":"2006-08-12T00:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=646"},"modified":"2006-08-12T00:38:11","modified_gmt":"2006-08-12T00:38:11","slug":"grabbag_of_local_movierelated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2006\/08\/12\/grabbag_of_local_movierelated\/","title":{"rendered":"Grab-bag of Local Movie-related Items"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few interesting items gleaned from the blog<\/a> of local movie critic Sean P. Means:<\/p>\n


\nFirst, it seems that Captain Jack Sparrow and the good ship Black Pearl<\/i> made a brief stop out at the Bonneville Salt Flats<\/a> last week. An article<\/a> in the Tooele Transcript-Bulletin<\/i> breathlessly reports that a film crew was shooting scenes for the next Pirates of the Caribbean<\/i> movie, and that Utah’s governor had lunch with star Johnny Depp and director Gore Verbinski (the article misspells his name, of course, but then Tooele is a small town; the local journalists probably can’t get that IMDB<\/a> doohickey on their old Underwoods<\/a>). The article also goes into exhaustive detail about how the Transcript-Bulletin<\/i> staff learned about all of this (they overheard the governor’s transportation arrangements on a police scanner) and how their reporter got booted from the set. But what I really loved was how the article’s writer seems to think there’s a big mystery about what connection Utah’s most landlocked and desolate corner could have with a story about ocean-going pirates. Um, your first clue might be in the rumored subtitle of the third Pirates<\/i> film, At World’s End<\/i>. Anyone who’s ever stood on the Flats, or even just driven past them on the way to Wendover<\/a>, can guess what role those vast white plains might play in a story about the ends of the earth.<\/p>\n

Moving right along, Means also clued me in to the news<\/a> that Cinemark<\/a>, the theater chain I worked for back in my usher-and-projectionist days, is gearing up to buy another chain, Century Theaters<\/a>. And this is interesting how? Well, for one thing, I always like to hear what my old employers are up to, but the other, more important note is that, after this deal goes through, it will essentially leave the Salt Lake area with only two competing theater groups, Cinemark and the home-grown Megaplex<\/a> chain owned by local gazillionaire Larry H. Miller. (You outside-Utah readers may remember his name from the Brokeback Mountain<\/i> fiasco<\/a> I wrote about a few months ago.) There are a handful of independent and smaller-chain houses around town, but all the major complexes will be owned by these two organizations now. That worries me, for all sorts of reasons. Even though I usually go to one of the Megaplexes, I like at least the concept of variety, and I quite like the new Century theater complex in Sandy. I also wonder if Cinemark isn’t setting itself up for failure in this market through over-saturation, like its old rival Cineplex Odeon did back in the early ’90s. We’ll see what happens, I guess.<\/p>\n

Finally, Means has a few words<\/a> about the new Oliver Stone movie, World Trade Center<\/i>, and they’ve helped me clear up something in my own head. You may recall that I wasn’t interested<\/a> in seeing this summer’s first 9\/11-themed movie, United 93<\/i>, and I never could quite articulate why. I now understand that I essentially had two problems with that film, neither of which were related to the timing of its release as I initially believed . One problem was that I really didn’t want to explore that horrific scenario; the passengers of U93 may have gone out as heroes, but they still all died in a shitty, hopeless fashion, and I didn’t see how any kind of positive emotion could come from experiencing their story any more vividly than I already have in my imagination. But more than that, the thing that I couldn’t quite bring myself to say when I was talking about the film, was that I was uncomfortable with the political baggage that I thought would be attached to it. I find the belligerent, Toby-Keith, “wave-the-flag-and-kick-some-ass” stuff extremely distasteful, and more than a little frightening. The true-life story of U93 easily lends itself that sort of reactionary screaming, and I just assumed that the film United 93<\/i> would fall into that vein as well. Frankly, I wasn’t interested in being beaten over the head with an ideological perspective I don’t agree with, which is something I get quite enough of just by living in Republican Utah.<\/p>\n

(To be fair, I have since heard that United 93<\/i> was not at all political, and that it was uplifting in the same way as Schindler’s List<\/i>, i.e., a grueling experience that makes you feel like a better person for having endured. But I still don’t want to see it. Glorious deaths are still deaths, and I’m more interested in stories of survival than lost causes.)<\/p>\n

However, according to Means, Oliver Stone has done something different with his movie. For one thing, the events it covers are more in line with the traditional Hollywood disaster film in which a few<\/i> people make it out alive, and the viewer feels uplifted by their rescue. But the thing that really piqued my interest was this:<\/p>\n

Oliver Stone’s greatest achievement with this movie isn’t just in re-creating what happened that day. It’s that he has transcended politics to reclaim 9\/11 for everybody, no matter how they vote.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s surprising, given Stone’s reputation for politicizing everything, and even heartening. 9\/11 was, in my view, an opportunity squandered. It could’ve brought our nation and our peoples together in a way my generation has never experienced, and for a very brief time, it did. But it all too quickly became one more political weapon to use against those who didn’t want to march along in lockstep. Maybe one day we will be able to put all the events of the last few years into some kind of objective framework that rises above the partisan finger-pointing and name-calling, and maybe World Trade Center<\/i> represents the first step toward that halcyon day. Will I see it? Maybe, maybe not. I’m thinking about that. But from what I know of the plot as well as what Means says about it rising above the muck, my curiosity is definitely piqued in a way that it never was for United 93<\/i>…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few interesting items gleaned from the blog of local movie critic Sean P. Means:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film-studies","category-local-color"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}