11'09''01 - September 11

11'09''01 - September 11 has an unwieldy title. And some of the segments are terrible. The Egyptian one was some of the worst 11 minutes of my movie watching life, completely self-centered and just stupid in every way that a film could be stupid. And Sean Penn's wasn't much better, although seeing Ernest Borgnine still alive was a surprise. Alejandro Gonzalex Inarritu (too lazy to pull accents) for him was very uncomfortable. But the others: Claude Lelouch, Amos Gitai, Shohei Imamura, Ken Loach, Samira Makmalbaf, Mira Nair, Isrissa Ouedraogo, and Danis Tanovic all did a good job. Imamura's was, by far, the strangest. Very snake-y. Ken Loach definitely took advantage of the coincidence of September 11th, and our completely fouled up relationship with dictatorships. Lelouch's was hokey, but still done well. Makhmalbaf's was interesting, as was Mira Nair's, although neither really stood out. Ouedraogo's was a goofy little story about Osama being seen in a small Burkina Fasoan town, but turns out that it's actually about how much our money that we waste could actually help improve the lives of most Africans. The Bosnian one was, by far, the most heartfelt, as sufferers of one tragedy are capable of remembering more than one at a time. Something of which not enough Americans are capable. But my favorite one was Amos Gitai's segment. An outstanding 11 minute shot of the aftermath of a car bombing in a crowded Jaffa marketplace. As much as I couldn't stand Kippur, this one makes me very impressed with his fimmaking abilities, as making an 11 minute shot is difficult, especially one as complicated as this one was (although that hesitation at the beginning distracted me a little... you'd think they could have covered that up better). My favorite tracking shot is still the opening to Touch of Evil (the restored version, of course), and then The Player, but all extremely long tracking shots are impressive. Unless they're done by Brian DePalma at the beginning of Snake Eyes, and then they suck, because the movie was so terrible.