Any topic is fair game. 9/11 isn't particularly sacred or exempt. Nor should it be.

However I refuse to sit for two hours watching Maggie Gyllenhaal pretending to give a crap about 9/11.

That is all.

I just got back from seeing WORLD TRADE CENTER, and it disappointed me from every angle. I truly expected, and wanted, to like it.

It was maudlin. (Mawkish, oversentimental, Hallmark-inspired...shall I keep going?) My favorite movie review site is ROTTENTOMATOES.COM, and I am still stunned by the overwhelmingly positive reviews there. My only explanation is that reviewers are afraid of being labeled unpatriotic if they pan this thing. What cowards! Have we learned nothing in the wake of the fearful period immediately following 9/11 when everyone was stifled into praising America and George Bush? That kind of behavior got us into war in Iraq, folks.

I keep seeing the following two things in relation to WORLD TRADE CENTER:

1. "Are we ready yet for this movie?" or similar bullshit. What irrelevant crap. What high school counselorish condescending baby talk. Jesus! What, are we all a collective borg or something? Since when are "WE" all ready for anything--ANYTHING--at one time? I mean, we're not all the same person, for godsakes! It's just a stupid question to ask and it annoys me that it pops up in every review. I've yet to hear a SINGLE real, actual person ask or mention the timing of this movie; it's just become THE issue to address in the media.

2. "This film is not political." Bullshit again. If you're into hero worship, flag-waving, revenge-themed, war-mongering, hokey unrealistic flashbacks, "America is uniquely strong and Americans are uniquely brave" themes.....then this is the movie for you. In other words, it's a red state movie all the way. Sure, anybody can enjoy the old-fashioned, simplistic, hero-driven, Disneyfied movie once in a while; just don't call it apolitical.

for someone to make a movie about the 10,000 people each day who die of diarrhea because they don't have access to clean water.

I have to say that it was a pleasureto read such a well-written and almost poetic review and whether or not I agree with everything Zacharek says, matters little .

Her intelligence, sensitivity, expertise in the medium and her measured voice were just really great ... and surprising. I haven't read her before, but I look forward to more reviews. I think Zacharek does just what a reviewer ought to do.

als

Keep the Aspidistra Flying states "That the number of people who voluntarily checked off the box on their tax forms to contribute to the 911 fund had dropped off to 15,000 last year."

What box on what tax forms? I don't see it on my 1040, nor on my New Mexico PIT. Is this some local New York thing?

By the way, I'd like to thank all the writers who challenged the notion that it was "too soon" to make a movie about 911, or that such movies should "never" be made. Some of us may be delicate flowers; others crave a more personal experience of what "they" may have gone through - and that can only come from Art - or documentaries, or movies. We want to know and feel MORE - not less.

Two quibbles:

One about a phrase in the article itself, ¶3, which mentions "a shot of a body falling from one of the upper floors." Can't we assume, and be horrified, that what fell (and fell and fell, and we should be grateful we didn't see that over and over on television) was a living person, at least momemtarily?

One of the letters contains the phrase ". . . after the tower was hit by a local shock jock . . . ." If only it were so. No matter how awful, a single person armed only with voice, pen, and bravado could not have done very much damage.

Nobody drives me nuttier than Stephanie Zacharek. She's a very good writer and a tough critic, but her tastes are aggressively middlebrow. She enables her audience to placate themselves on inoffensive Lifetime TV-movies while avoiding anything that might make them upset or possibly challenge them even a little. It's not just that she's a wimp it's that she has nutured in an environment where wimpiness is venerated. I would feel a lot better if she was cynically sucking up to the Salon readership, maybe 75 percent of which are whiny politically correct pansies (i.e. the amount of letters attacking Keith Knight's "101 Things to do with a Dead Hippy"; sort of making the Salon readership the leftwing equivalent to those rednecks that wrote in defending Judge Ray Grimes). But no. She counts herself among their numbers and that is endlessly maddening.

Chalk up the Zakker's preference of World Trade Center over United 93 with her preference of Ray, The Fantastic Four, Casanova, Coach Carter, Ladder 49, and Mr. 3000 over Dogville, Batman Begins, The New World, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Birth as evidence that she is a wuss beyond all repair. My grandma has more edge.

Granted she did really like Sin City, Oldboy, and Unleashed suggesting to me that they were stylized enough to slide under her radar. The real pathetic thing is that she thinks that she's being bad in liking them.

This is not Oliver Stone "trying to make sense" of the tragedies of September 11th, 2001. This is Oliver Stone trying to make a buck (or more ) off of the tragedy. Yes we need artisits - photographers, filmmakers, actors and yes people need to-in their own way-make sense and deal with 9/11, but Nicholas Cage, in a cheesy moustache, being directed by conspiracy theorist Oliver Stone is far from theraputic.

If Mr. Stone was truly interested in "working through his pain" of the events of 9/11, he would not have created the tacky marketing ploy of 10% of the first day's proceeds going to the victims families... he would have donated all of the proceeds. That would be admirable. Anything less at this point in time is purely sickening, opportunistic greed.

Is anyone holding a gun to your head to go see them?

Isn't there anything else at the Blockbuster to rent?

Couldn't you stay home and send the money to charity instead?

Jeez, people. Get a fucking grip.

I'm not interested, so I'm not going. I saw the French brothers' documentary; I lived through the day, I don't need to relive it with a bucket of popcorn. But I don't give a rat's ass what Ollie Stone does with his time and the studio's money.