29 Apr

UPDATE: United Flight 93 Film to Open NY Film Festival

Update to this post:

 



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From Chris Driscoll, he is the son of Patrick “Joe” Driscoll, Flight 93

” I have not seen the movie yet but I expect they’ll have a private screening for the families very soon. Universal has been tremendous with communicating with the families throughout the production. I’ve gotten in touch w/ the lad who plays my father – Michael Reynolds…he live is England. I have a feeling you’re not going to get some Hollywood-whitewashed version. They seemed to be VERY careful about depicting things as they saw them happening – which is why the families were so cooperative in putting this film together.”

September 11,2001
Four planes were hijacked
Three of them reached their target
This is the story of the fourth

From the director of Bloody Sunday and Bourne Supremacy
Please click United Flight 93
Once at the site click ENTER the site
Click MENU in the bottom left corner
Click VIDEO
You can also click Trailer
There are also other things at their site you can visit as well. Also, at this link “A Look Inside” has a conversation with the director, and comments by some family members of Flight 93 passengers.
Reuters

September 11 plane drama to open NY film festival
By Claudia Parsons
Wed Mar 29, 5:29 PM ET
“United 93,” a film dramatization of the events on the hijacked plane that crashed in Pennsylvania on September 11, will have its world premiere at a New York film festival next month.
“‘United 93’ recreates the doomed trip in actual time, from takeoff to hijacking to the realization by those onboard that their plane was part of a coordinated attack unfolding on the ground beneath them,” organizers of the Tribeca Film Festival said on Wednesday.
The festival was founded by actor Robert De Niro in 2002 to help revitalize lower Manhattan after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
Opening films in previous years have been comedies such as “About a Boy” and “Down with Love” as well as the thriller “The Interpreter” last year. This year’s choice of “United 93” as the opening film returns the focus to Tribeca’s roots.
“The festival was basically created eight months after September 11 and it was to give our neighborhood something to look forward to and to help the renewal, and to do that you need to laugh,” the festival’s co-founder Jane Rosenthal told Reuters.
“We found ourselves for several years saying we need a comedy. In year five, we need to remember,” she said.
Written and directed by Paul Greengrass, director of “The Bourne Supremacy,” the film is billed as a drama about the passengers, crew, their families on the ground and the flight controllers who watched as events unfold on the fourth airline hijacked on September 11, 2001.
Two of the planes crashed into the World Trade Center and the third into the Pentagon. Passengers on the fourth plane sent messages to loved ones saying the plane had been hijacked and they were going to try to overcome the hijackers.
Rosenthal said that after nearly five years there was a danger the events of September 11 were fading from people’s memories. “A lot has happened in the world and as a country we seem to have a short term memory loss,” she said.
Some of the relatives of those who died on United 93 are expected to attend the premiere in New York on April 25, the first night of the festival which runs until May 7.
“It is never easy to relive the events of 9/11, yet I support ‘United 93’ as a tribute to the heroism of my brother and the 39 other passengers and crew who collectively chose to say ‘no’ on that fateful day,” Gordon Felt, who lost his brother Edward on September 11, said in a statement.
The films in competition at the festival include several with political themes, particularly related to the Middle East and the war in Iraq.
“We’re a festival that was started because of an act of war, so we have always had films and panel discussions that bring up difficult subjects,” Rosenthal said.

Wild Thing’s comment……..
Just a little I would like to share about that day with all of you.
My husband and I have a nephew that is a firefighter in New York. He lost 2 chiefs and 11 other firefighters from his fire station. 5 of those I mention here of the 11 fellow fire fighters that died on 9-11 had visited us and stayed at our home several times when they came to visit us when we lived in California. They became friends of ours as well. Mike Moran and his brother were two of the friends we made from our nephews station.
Remember when Mike Moran was in the audience at Madison Square Garden,shortly before his turn to go up on stage to introduce a band. He detested Hillary and was a big Bush supporter. Then Hillary got up to speak and was booed. Mike’s remarks became well known around the world………”Kiss my royal Irish ass!”
After his comments the crowd went wild, and as Moran tried to walk off stage the stage manager pushed him back out. So, he said, he went back over to the microphone and took off his hat, and said, “This is so you can see my face,” and called Bin Laden a bitch.
The crowd responded by chanting USA.
I pray it is like they say, that this film will be true and honest in what happened and not slanted to please the left. A film to pay tribute to those heroes on Flight 93 and to their families.
September 11, 2001 page at my website

* The Cotillion

TomR says:

I wish Mike Moran would run for Senator from NY.
Yes, let’s hope the film is honest and not slanted.

Wild Thing says:

Good one Tom it would be so wonderful to have politicians that speak up like he did to jerks like Hillary and others. Instead we get kiss ups and that makes me furious.
Thank you for your input on this.

Jack Hamilton says:

By the way Chrissie I want to announce my new business on your site. It just happens I was born with a birthmark on my ass that looks just like Mohammed. So I am going to cover said birthmark with paint then sit on a canvas. I will sell it to the Devout moslems for $1995.I will give Bin Laden one free he just has to pick it up in person.So from my ass to there heart.so to speak.

Jack Hamilton says:

Chrissie I pray it is to. I would like to ask when you were acting in Hollywood were a lot of the Actors like they are now anti American? I mean I know Fonda the pig was. But what about some of the others?

Wild Thing says:

Jack H. LMAO love it!!!
About Hollywood, yes they were. I never ever discussed politics during my acting career or modeling career either. I wanted to so much but knew I would not work again if I did. Only stars like Bruce Willis, Bo Derek and others can take that chance and it still hurts them to a degree too.
A friend of mine a columinist James Bacon, wrote a book called ” Hollywood is a Four Letter Word” and he is right. He meant it in the sexual way but I think of it in the way it is totally F*&#ed up and it is.
Right now Hollywood could be making awesome films about our war on terror and they are not. Instead they make movies against our military like ” Jarhead” etc. What a difference in how it is now in America and how it was long ago during WW11 when so many in Hollywood supported the war and our military. I wish I was like it was back then before I was born.

Billy says:

Wild Thing,
My best friend is a United Airlines pilot. On 9/11 she was based out of New York and typically flew out of LaGuardia. That morning she was left seat on a 727 out of Newark to California. I happened to be on a remote jobsite in ST. Thomas in the USVI, where I was living at the time. The initial reports were vague as all we had on the site was an AM portable radio and my cell phone. I was unable to speak with her until late that afternoon as she was a little busy diverting to Moline after the order came through to ground all the flights. She has told me that after United informed her of the situation they locked the cockpit door and the co pilot had the crash axe handy if anything were to transpire. She was shaken. She lost co workers who were both friends and aquaintances. Just the other day she was by and I happened to be on a site on the computer that showed the ID tag of one of the flight attendants on 93, Cee Cee Lyles. She remembers Cee Cee because she has a twin sister who is a flight attendant with Delta named Ci Ci and they conversed about the difference in the spelling before boarding passengers on a flight one day. When she saw the ID tag, she lost it. I grew up in NY and watched as the towers were being built. I had friends who worked there. In fact I spoke with one of them just days before the attack. He had just started working there with his brother who has worked there for 25 tears or more now. His brother left on vacation to Italy 3 days prior and he had called in sick that day. I know of one girl I went to school with for eight years who died, and though we never continued to stay in touch after I left the city, her face will always haunt the images of that tragedy for me. There may be others that I’m unaware of through name changes brought on by marriage, I don’t know. Also, the names of the injured have never been published to my knowledge. My friend and I have talked about seeing the movie and we’re both somewhat conflicted over it. Thank you for your update on the film. I am glad to hear you say that they took the personal stuff out of it. I was afraid they would try to Hollywood it up. The story doesn’t need any extra drama. We will probably see the movie and I’ll be able to get her insight as to the factual depiction of the film. I don’t really want to see it but I feel an obligation to. Again, thanks for the update.
Billy

Wild Thing says:

Jack hahahahaa that is wonderful. The best of luck in your new business. hahahahaha
Regarding hollywood and actors being anti-American. Yes,friends of Hanoi Jane and they agreed with her were Gregory Peck and Donald Sutherland.
I think most of them have always been very left, socialist and communist. Nick said so too and the only thing that kept some of them silent was long before my time the big studios would not allow the actors to say anything that was not scripted to the press. Image was everything, now they mouth off about anything they want to, protest, march…..you name it.
It makes me sick how hollywood is. There are political conservatives but not a lot and certainly not the amount the left has.
Honestly I think only during WW11 there was unquestioned support for the troops.
I am glad I got to meet some of the politically conservative ones. Like Jimmy Stewart,Heston, Bruce Willis, Bo Derek etc.
There was an old actor not my era that was such a strong conservative and his daughter wanted nothing to do with him. His name was Robert Montgomery. His daughter is Elizabeth Montgomery (she did Bewitched the tv show).

Wild Thing says:

Billy it is not an easy movie to see. I can totally understand why some people just can’t watch it.
Thank you for sharing about this, and your friends and oh so many things that you will never forget.

Keith Demko says:

I know this one will provoke the same strong reactions in me when I finally get up the nerve to see it later today .. great stuff

BobF says:

I watched an interview last night on Fox News with the father of Todd Beamer (let’s roll). He had nothing but praise for the movie, saying all Americans need to see it as it was very factual. He talked about how our enemies in the Middle East danced in the streets when the twin towers came down. He said that the aircrew and passengers of Flight 93 were our nations first counter attack to our nation being attacked…I agree with him.

raz0r says:

Maybe Jack can get with Aaron on his new business venture. Aaron seems to draw a great deal of traffic from the mid-east.

TomR says:

It will be a while before I work up the fortitude to see this movie. Also, I want to get this May first illegals crap out of the way. I almost don’t trust my rising anger.

Wild Thing says:

Keith your review over at your blog is excellent.

Wild Thing says:

Bob………..
“He said that the aircrew and passengers of Flight 93 were our nations first counter attack to our nation being attacked.”………
wow Bob he is right!!!

Wild Thing says:

Tom I understand just how you feel.

BobF says:

After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Hollywood started making movies about the sneak attack against the United States. Nobody cried “It’s too soon” and “The nation isn’t ready for a movie on Pearl Harbor”. No sir, we made movies of how Americans died without provocation. Movies which united our nation and incited its people to wage war against the perpetrators of this attack. By continually reminding the American Public of the unprovoked attack, American Citizens sacrificed in way never before in history, all the while recovering from a Depression which had devastated the nation from within.
As a nation, we need this movie and more like them and we need them NOW.

Wild Thing says:

Bob I love what you wrote.Thank you soooo much.

United 93 Round Up

The Cotillionettes, about as fine a group of female bloggers as one could hope for, have spoken. Their reviews are in for the film United 93. I, however, being the slacker of the bunch haven’t even seen the film yet…

Cotillion says:

United 93

I don’t like to think about it. What happened on that day. I prefer to continue my life’s pace in my new “normal” existence without remembering. Because that quite honestly, is the easy thing to do. If I allow my…