Manipulators
On September 6, 1970, Islamic terrorists attempted the near-simultaneous hijacking of 4 separate jetliners as they took off fully fueled for a flight across the Atlantic.
3 of the 4 jets were successfully hijacked by people who had smuggled weapons aboard.
The 4th jet was an El Al flight. Then, (as now) they put more emphases on the safety of their passengers and flights then squeezing out every cent of profit. There were intended to be 4 hijackers on that flight but El Al flagged two of them as suspicious so they didn’t make it aboard. When the two hijackers onboard made the attempt multiple armed Israeli sky marshals responded and with a lot of luck (a grenade was dropped but did not explode) the only death was one of the hijackers.
The two denied boarding on the El Al flight instead boarded a Pan Am flight, there was an attempt by El Al to warn of their suspicions about the two but it was poorly relayed and ineffective.
All three of the hijacked planes landed in the middle-east, eventually every single passenger was set free but the aircraft (and a fourth hijacked later) were destroyed.
As I read this account last night I couldn’t help but seethe with rage. WTF is wrong with “us” in ‘the west’ that what little we remember we manage to take the wrong lessons from? (The first WTC bombing comes to mind as well–anti crash-through barriers and vehicle inspection but not better evacuation training or response planing.)
We threw a couple dollars at screening and x-ray and assured ourselves that everything was fine. Did we put air marshalls on trans-Atlantic flights? No, we pretended that doing the least possible must have resolved the problem and then forgot about the incidents.
Do you think TODAY there are air marshalls on every trans-Atlantic flight? Except on El Al, I mean…
About 40 years from now I fully expect somebody to be reading an account of September 11, 2001 and slapping their head in disbelief that something fairly similar was allowed to happen yet again, killing an order of magnitude more people.
In the meantime I highly recommend Emergency, Crisis on the Flight Deck (2nd edition) written by Stanley Stewart. I’ve read a lot about airline disasters and incidents but this had many that were news to me, and it is quite powerfully written.
Wow. I think the experience of Golden Compass is best described as 180 degrees different from The Legend of Narnia (AKA The Passion of the Lion).
The basic premise, the core ideas driving at the heart of the story are far more interesting than Narnia’s. But the execution, dear god. The way this movie was executed should lead to the execution of every writer and executive that worked on it, and the execution of the director should be botched and last 113 agonizing minutes.
The exposition is clumsy and damn-near endless (including a long clip at the end spelling out the need for the sequels) but the worst feature has to be the acting. Even the CG polar bear overacts dreadfully. As does every other single character except possibly Nicole Kiddman (maybe it’s the botox). After setting this trend the director makes sure you don’t miss a “nuance” by framing most shots so the face of the actor EMOTING fills the screen. Sam Eliot’s a great actor, when properly cast and with a director who doesn’t hit him in the face with the camera lens every other shot (the intervening shots are 1-shots from below, making him HEROIC). The Seafaring king reminds me of DeNiro’s mincing Pirate Captain in Stardust but somehow LESS SUBTLE.
The only thing this movie really has going for it are the visuals. There are truly extraordinary vehicles that go far beyond tired steampunk to something actually original, especially the vehicles of the Magisterium. The CG animal companions aren’t bad, and the polar bear fight towards the end is surprisingly powerful, if again overacted… by CG bears…
Having seen it I can certainly understand all the negative reviews it has gotten, but not the positive ones. Ebert gave it 4 starts for crying out loud. Maybe if you have an especially stupid or impressionable child… this would probably entertain and (more importantly) shut it up.
I suppose the underlying (if somewhat under-emphasized) message to question authority would be good for any young spawn to be exposed to… but I doubt the message carries much weight when it’s set in an explicitly fantasy world and the audience starts to root for the misbehaving little brat to fall down a well. Far more clearly than question authority the message the movie is likely to impart is LIE *alot* and everything will work out for the best.
Working in VFX I usually stay around through end credits, and I am certain I know some people who worked on this (who I’d like to congratulate–as I said, visually it is stunning in places) but I couldn’t stomach sitting through the end song to save my life. If I’d been handcuffed to the chair I’d have chewed off my own hand to get away. This movie couldn’t be more clear in its blatant attempts to copy the success of Lord of the Rings and Narnia, right down to trying to do a Lord of the Rings original song that relates to the movie. Except, that is, without anybody with talent writing (or performing) the song. “Lyraaa… LYRA, her spirit walks beSIDE her, LYRIA!” OUCH! Just bit into my wrist tendons to stop me from going through and typing out any more of that drivel… that was pretty nearly the complete lyrics though… again and again.