Letters to the Editor
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there would be a picocell ON the plane
5 miles is about the maximum distance of a CELL PHONE call.
On the ground, numbnuts! From the air, unobstructed by trees, buildings, etc., a cell signal travels quite far. That's why the FAA floated the idea last year of allowing cell phone use on commercial flights. Now why would they do that if it was a technical impossibility?
Some people seriously need to get a life.
There would be a picocell installed on the plane, not the use of ground based towers.
This article: http://www.arinc.com/news/2005/04-05c-05.html explains how it works.
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Loose Change, 2nd edition ...google it
This film is being bankrolled for one reason and one reason only - to make
people stop questioning why the towers looked so much like a controlled demolition.
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Why is the hat always made of Tinfoil?
And not something really impenetrable?
I don't claim to have all the answers on physics or cellphone technology and I'm certainly not going to hypothesize on the reasons why phone calls may or may not have been faked. That being said, I've always been a little skeptical of the infamous cellphone calls (having tried to call with one while on a plane in 2000), but the recommended site (http://www.physics911.net/cellphoneflight93.htm) that started this whole discussion out does give one pause. Here's a relevant quote:
"As I have pointed out elsewhere, cellphone calls from commercial aircraft much over 8000 feet are essentially impossible, while those below 8000 feet are highly unlikely down to about 2000, where they become merely unlikely. Moreover, even at the latter altitude (and below), the handoff problem appears. Any airliner at or below this altitude, flying at the normal speed of approximately 500 mph, would encounter the handoff problem. An aircraft traveling at this speed would not be over the cellsite long enough to complete the electronic "handshake" (which takes several seconds to complete) before arriving over the next cellsite, when the call has to be handed off from the first cellsite to the next one. This also takes a few seconds, the result being, in the optimal case, a series of broken transmissions that must end, sooner or later, in failure.
"It must also be remarked that the alleged hijackers of the Cellphone Flight were remarkably lenient with their passengers, allowing some 13 calls. However, it would seem highly unlikely that hijackers would allow any phone calls for the simple reason that passengers could relay valuable positional and other information useful to authorities on the ground, thus putting the whole mission in jeopardy."
I'm not sure what this means, but after such crap as the Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman debacles, I'm really not willing to give any side, especially the Bush administration, the benefit of doubt. Its sad but its what W. has brought upon himself.
The cockpit transcripts that were released are sketchy at best (although if the passengers had gotten into the cockpit its hard to see how the hijackers could have said "Allah is great!" 7-9 times before the crash). It might be one of those things, like JFK, that will always be "unknowable".
I'm also concerned that this movie, as well as the upcoming Oliver Stone 9/11 opus, will become a point of reference for right-nutter, mouth-breathers country-wide who'll reference these movies endlessly as unadulterated truth. Worse yet, like the spacially-challenged poster "AC", it'll be used by the militant right as a rallying cry for those who would rather turn America into a fascist police state than ever see another 9/11.
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no expansive truth?
I have mixed feelings about this film, but:
Stephanie laments that the film didn't offer any 'expansive truth' or 'transcendence'. Huh? The expansive truth is that of humans recognizing that they always have a choice in life, even if none of their possible choices in a given situation necessarily have a safe, happy or guaranteed good outcome.
The people on flight 93 realized that they didn't have to submit to another's plan for their lives, for their deaths - they could decide their own. They transcended their terror, and the paralysis of comforting false hopes (this can't be happening, everything will be okay) by acting decisively in the face of unbelievable menace and danger.
That is quite enough expansive truth and transcendence, in my book - and it's the real kind.
People tend to want ultimate reassurance and big, hopeful, thoughtful, meaningful social backdrops to disasters, death, injustice - and we expect 'movies' to provide them.
This isn't a feel good movie subject, unfortunately...it was a real event, and shouldn't be cheapened by distracting the viewer's attention from the agony and efforts of those who were there, directly experiencing the horror of that flight.
Not wandering into other story territory to make some larger point was the right choice - I doubt that the passengers were thinking about larger issues or shades of meaning while they faced their own destruction. It should remind us that even though there is horror, death and pain in the world, that even though not every situation can have a happy ending -that our human desperation, suffering and courage is story enough.
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Responsible Government
So, i only have two points:
1) If people want to make this movie, fine.
2) flight 93 was 15-minutes flying time from downtown washington dc when it went down. if you were in charge, wouldn't you order it to be shot down? I know i would, rather than having it crash into some monument, or some residential area in the DC vicinity. I know that our current government is incompetent, but i hope they had enough sense to shoot the goddam plane down over a field. otherwise, they're more incompetent that i ever imagined.
so, i find it hard to believe that it wasn't shot down.
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"What's the value of artistry that sucks the life out of you?"
Only the most important emotion human beings are capable of experiencing: empathy.
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Interesting
My only comment is that the reviewer in this case was already filled with dread going into this movie. Fair enough, how could you not be, really? I mean, just think about "United 93" directed by Michael Bay and you can see why this movie has a serious potential to be horrifying. I *do* think that it'll be nearly impossible to find anyone watching this movie for the length of its theatrical run who won't walk in privately dreading what they might see (despite any positive reviews they might hear). But at the same time, it does seem that they should've ideally had a more 'blank slate' reviewer - someone with fewer expectations, positive or negative. However, given the subject nature of this film, if Stephanie Zacharek was the most clear-eyed reviewer they could find (and that would not be entirely surprising) then so be it.
And as much as I loathe using the letters section to reply to previous letter writers or the topics they've brought up (but since I've never done it before, I hope I can be forgiven for this one time), I merely wish to express my sympathy to everyone else who's waded through that slurry in search of an interesting point of view on the movie. Rest assured that a look back will only provide you with pseudoscience spouting lunatics hurling accusations of ignorance or apathy at those who actually like a little 'fact' in their beliefs about events; people whining about minor details of the movie not reflecting the things they'd hoped it would (no thinking person cares if someone's elderly mother wasn't portrayed performing a flying tackle on a terrorist - if the director ever said he was showing every passenger as a 'hero', he clearly intended to use that word as it's defined in the Bush administration's lexicon, i.e. "any American who dies without criticizing Bush, anywhere, ever", and can be forgiven for making a movie a tribute, rather than a mockery of actual events with every passenger dog-piling onto the terrorists, complete with humorous ground-level shot of a six-year-old girl clinging to her teddy bear in one hand and biting a terrorist's ankle); and people trying to insist that the point of this movie is something that it's not. Hopefully (if you've waded through this) then I'll have saved you 15 IQ points and a good 10 minutes.