Rita doing her thang. The movie Pal Joey with Frank Sinatra was on over the weekend. Great stuff.

Yes that’s the head of the Statue of Liberty at the end. Poor quality I know, but these videos are hard to find.

Dailymotion still have it:

Stunning.

I just can’t imagine someone else acting the role of Captain Kirk other than William Shatner. At least we have another Star Trek film to look forward to though.

But I found Flight 93 to be a better film overall. There are two chief differences between the two films.

First, Flight 93 shows the people at the other end of the phone. We get to see a wife’s or mother’s reaction to their loved ones calling them. There are protracted heart wrenching conversations between families, during the course of the hijacking. This makes Flight 93 a far more emotional experience. Much of the film is devoted to these phone calls.

Second, Flight 93 showed very little military reaction. The film instead centered on the passengers and the hijackers. No scenes of the planes hitting the WTC, only word coming through on the phones. The early parts of United are almost entirely devoted to air traffic control and NORAD reactions.

Two different approaches to tell the same overall story, I found Flight 93 to be the better of the two.

I have to say I did rather like it as special-effects extravaganzas go, especially since almost none of the filming was done in San Francisco, and yet almost the whole film is based there.

If you do go to see it, do stay until the end of the credits, it is a rather critical scene.

Cian has incidentally moved to a new home over at cianboland.com.

I actually didn’t realise it was released straight to DVD last week until I spotted it in Xtra-vision, whereupon I instantly rented it.

And I have to concurr with the reviews I have read from bloggers in the States. It is a film done with taste and and with a rather unnatural sense of familiarity. At many points you do feel like one of the passengers, and there appeared to be various devices used by the director to hook the viewer into associating with the film. Anyone who has travelled on planes will find themselves questioning themselves, and what they would do in that position.

In some ways it is like the discussion of the Falling Man picture earlier. It is compelling to watch.

At times it is difficult to watch the phone calls between passengers and their families, but I recommend United 93 nonetheless.

Update: Thanks Simon, got mixed up between the website URL and the film title. But it is the one that was just released in the US.

via Boing

Update, June 17, 2005: The video link appears not to be working now, so try this one instead.

Cinemas using the technology will be able to download the latest releases to a computer server via satellite at a lower cost.

That would have to be one quick connection, I think these films are really really big files.

I will be glad to see the back of flickers and scratches on the reels. Now if only someone would invent something for getting people not to talk during a film.