Inspired by an actual event in her native Russia, current New Yorker Julia Loktev’s “Day Night Day Night” offers a chillingly effective look at the ease with which a suicide bomber could wreak havoc on U.S. soil – specifically in Times Square.

“Chillingly effective look at the ease which a suicide bomber could wreck havok on U.S. soil.”

Nonfactor, you see anything queer as in creepily out of date and stupendously obtuse about this review?
“Especially in Times Square?”
Hint: How many blocks is Times Square from lower Manhattan? Uh, huh. THAT Lower Manhattan. The one where it was stupendously simple for a bunch of jacked up Muslim terrorists to ram two planeloads of innocent passengers into two high rise buildings, using them as unwilling instuments to murder as many of their fellow Americans as the terrorists hoped possible.
What’s the point of fake drama when the real one is right there? How gross is a review that doesn’t acknowledges that New Yorkers, Americans do not have to be warned about the “ease with which a suicide bomber could wreck havok on US soil.” Yeh, one pretend suicide bomber is chickenshit next to 3,000 who were really murdered down the street.
And the part about no accents is laughable. Plain as day American accents, not even a Canadian abooot. Not Austrialian, not British, not Kenyan, not Nigerian, not Euro second language English, not South Asian New Delhi or Bollywood – let’s tour the Anglophone world – and ESPECIALLY not Elite Saudi boarding school. American.
Kafka. Yeh. Self-absorbed with narsissist joy in one’s cleverness. Pointless.
Have your laugh. It’s pointless, too.

Is that so unreasonable?

naliaka on June 19, 2007 at 11:01 PM

Nope.

Nonfactor on June 19, 2007 at 10:29 PM
Okay. But, it’s not my fault if their marketing misses the mark. If I wanted to sell a film, I’d make teasers attractive to browsers. Is that so unreasonable?

naliaka on June 19, 2007 at 10:07 PM

Okay, you don’t want to see the movie and I don’t want to spoil it for everyone. So why don’t you read the spoilers online and see why I think what you (and others) are saying is so hilarious.

Now go see the movie and laugh at yourself.

Nonfactor on June 19, 2007 at 9:54 PM

Well, does killing Americans have a thrill for you? You didn’t answer that.

Furthermore, why should I hand over my good money to a movie that sports a trailer so pathetic that it turns me off?
The movie sold itself to YOU. It has not sold itself to ME and Rule No. 1 of business is: the customer is always right.
They all squeal “art” but it’s just a product FOR SALE.

naliaka on June 19, 2007 at 7:09 PM

Now go see the movie and laugh at yourself.

That’s how laughable you guys seem when I read your comments, comments from people who haven’t seen, and who don’t even want to see, the movie.

Nonfactor on June 19, 2007 at 2:16 PM

You yourself said there was nothing but suspense and thrill, but how can there be even that? It’s bad enough without a plot, a motivation, a conflict.
We know from the get-go the idiot blows herself up in TIMES SQUARE, for no known reason. If that doesn’t put wooden stake thru the heart of “suspense,” don’t know what does. And Thrill? You get a thrill out of some cold robot babe blowing up and killing Americans? Especially after 9/11 – with the ghosts of over 2,000 murdered people wafting about the neighborhoods of Manhattan Island? Hmm? Reaaaally?
Would you have had a thrill had she blown up, say, Egyptians standing by the Sphinx instead?

That’s how laughable you guys seem when I read your comments, comments from people who haven’t seen, and who don’t even want to see, the movie.

Nonfactor on June 19, 2007 at 2:16 PM

It is possible to learn a few specific facts about something to have all that is necessary in order to draw a conclusion about it. You claiming this movie is not political is like me telling you that a movie about a Hezbollah member who walks accross the Southern US border and detonates a bomb in NYC is not political. Of course it would be political and I wonder how well received that movie would be by you and your ilk?

And believe me Nonfactor, it is us laughing at your comments. The director admitted this film is leftist propaganda yet you are still attempting to claim that it is not a political film. Jeesh.

That’s how laughable you guys seem when I read your comments, comments from people who haven’t seen, and who don’t even want to see, the movie.

Any yobbo with a camera and some money can make a film these days… It doesn’t make him/her/them real filmmakers.

tickleddragon on June 19, 2007 at 12:12 AM

Heh. We can give profitsbeard a camera – the little he’s got has more of a point than this nasty piece of film.

How about this:
There’s one more “little” problem with this evil film. The woman is accent-less, no explanation for what she does, nothing, no origins, nothing distinctive …
But it’s TIMES SQUARE! Wow! TIMES SQUARE! The BIG APPLE! New York City of that PLAINLY identified country United States of AMERICA!

The blankness of everything else only heightens the attention to the ONE identity that is allowed in the film. TIMES SQUARE. It’s just a reworked Left morbid fantasy – no better than the computer-generated (as in the entire script was lifted and pieced togather from lines pirated from other films)Independence Day movie and the scene when the camera rests lovingly over long-drawn-out visions of CG alien spaceships zapping the crap out of … New York. Wasn’t it, TIMES SQUARE, too?

Had the director been truly honest, the target would ALSO have been nameless and unknown and indeterminate. The “unknowingness” of the piece would have been complete.

I doubt that one would be called a ‘tour de force’.

Kralizec on June 19, 2007 at 1:46 AM

Good for you.

[Etc., etc.]

Nonfactor on June 18, 2007 at 11:06 PM
On the contrary, Nonfactor, I haven’t watched the trailer or gone off to read the quote from the director. I’m relying almost entirely on your representations, and on that basis, I’ve decided not to see the movie. I’m already pretty busy, testing predictive models of stock price changes, reading a commentary on one of Plato’s dialogues, writing blog comments advocating attention to demography, and slapping around intellectuals who, not suspecting their own fifth-ratedness, compound that offense with the further one of standing up for almost anything, as long as it’s not something that’s evidently advantageous to me and my countrymen. So I’ve decided not to see this particular “drawn out” “suspense/thriller” “movie about the life of a girl leading up to an event.” I’m going to wait and see the next bit of “Art” that “subverts the regular expectations,” or the next one, or the one after that.

CUT TO:

A piece of striped Mime shirt, smoking and charred, flutters to the ground in SLO MO from a great height, never reaching the earth.

NYC. TIMES SQUARE. DAY.

A transplanted red English double-decker bus is taking on tourists at the curb as a white-faced MIME enacts WINDING a key in his tummy, uber-theatrically, and BUGGING his mascarra-rimmed eyes with each “twist”.

Several passing TEENAGERS from New Jersey sneer at the guy and make “koo-koo” corkscrew motions at their temples, hooting their derision for his ‘art’. The Mime gives them a hateful sidelong glance.

HAND-HELD CAMERA FOLLOWS the Teenagers getting onto the double-decker bus, running up its rear spiral steps for their roof seats, chuckling together, and one by one they look down over the railing edge at where the Mime was.

But he is gone (!).

SHOT FROM HELICOPTER -of bus as it pulls out into snarling, stop and start, NYC traffic.

MEDIUM SHOT -on the upper bus deck of the Teenagers sharing around a pack of smokes, surreptitiously. An OLD LADY gives them a dirty look as they light up.

ECU of one Teenager about to blow out a match used to light his cigarette- BUT it is blown out by someone else.

The Teenager looks up, surprised, and is somewhat startled to see the white face of the Mime inches from his own.

TEENAGER 1

What the f…

MIME
(interrupts with finger over lips: SHH!)

CAMERA PULLS BACK to include all teenagers and the Mime.

TEENAGER 2
How the hell’d you get up here, freak-atard?!

MIME
(mimicking winding his tummy again)

TEENAGER 3
Christ, here goes Mr. clocksucker, again!

MIME
(raises a warning finger to silence them)

For some reason, they DO fall silent.

SOUND EFX: echoey clock-winding clicks

The Mime WINDS the imaginary key in his stomach tighter and tighter, his face straining with effort and agony.

Teenager 1
(in a normal, modest tone)
What’s the deal with the winding, man?

ECU of contorted Mime’s face, as the ‘key’ is almost impossible to turn.

SHOT OF ENTIRE UPPER BUS DECK

Mime
(makes a small grunting noise)

Teenager 2
(Hey!) No fair, you made a sound!

Teenager 3
Yeah, loser, we heard that!

The Mime opens his arms wide, then reaches toward his nose with one fingertip.

Teenager 1
Now what? Can’t take constructive criticism?

Mime
(speaks for the first time)
Allahu ackbar!

Three

Nonfactor, if this was 1944, you would argue a film about a girl getting into a single-passenger airplane and flying it into an aircraft carrier bore no allusion to Japanese kamekazis.

naliaka on June 18, 2007 at 11:34PM

Thanks, naliaka…for the backup. I’m sorry, but nothing chaps me more, film-wise, than people trying desperately to compare some of the hacks we have out there right now, to MASTERS, like Hitch, or even Welles. There is just no comparison. And to suggest otherwise, is just insulting and ignorant of film history.

Any yobbo with a camera and some money can make a film these days… It doesn’t make him/her/them real filmmakers.

It’s okay, I still love you. ;-)

Note: Apparently this move is NR or “not rated,” although it has been out for a while.

Since (to my knowledge) communists rarely do suicide bombings, and most religious groups enjoy the glory of “man to man” combat, I wonder what extremist group of spiritual people actually wear masks and detonate themselves?

It must be those Christianists!

Lets see how many people miss the point of a movie they haven’t seen.

Nonfactor on June 18, 2007 at 7:49 PM

Right on cue, here you are to defend it. You’re twice as predictable as we’ll ever be.

Allahpundit on June 18, 2007 at 7:49 PM

Total, fvcking pwnership.

Suspense? Yes. Thrill? Yes. Period.

Nonfactor on June 18, 2007 at 11:06 PM

So, what’s the point?

A 19-year-old girl prepares to become a suicide bomber in Times Square. She speaks with no accent; it’s impossible to pinpoint her ethnicity. We never learn why she made her decision — she has made it already. We don’t know whom she represents, what she believes in – we only know she believes it absolutely

.

Sorry but this is pure Left, “things are so unknowable.” It permeates our education system – like deagraded clones of Maupassant – intently fixated on nothing, then suicide. Lefties tell themselves it’s somehow “deep” but Mark Twain would have made mincemeat out of these people and their “art.”

Typical, exactly like what the French push on their kids to read for edification, only it just screws them up.

Nonfactor, as a Film Degree holder, and a long time study of Hitchcock, I’d like to ask that you STOP trying to compare this filmmaker’s work to Hitchcock’s. The filmmaker’s intentions ARE important, and Hitch would NEVER have made this sort of lefty, morally relative, propagandist mental masterbation.

Hitch INVENTED suspense, and yes it was through never showing you the thing you feared…but if this is homage, it’s POOR homage, and is insulting to Hitch’s memory.

tickleddragon on June 18, 2007 at 9:40 PM

Boy, are YOU right! Everybody go out and rent a couple of Hitchcock this week and watch the things. North By Northwest, Rebecca, Spellbound, Notorious, The Man Who Knew too Much. Rebecca – NOTHING happened and our kids bolted from the room – three times! We adults wanted to bolt, but had to maintain decorum.
Hitchcock was brutal on communists and traitors and evil guys. None of this “Ohh, what’s it all about?”

My recommendation? Watch the movie. It’d be great to see your expectations when you go in to see the movie and what you thought about it when leaving. The director isn’t sympathetic to the shadow groups cause or even what the main character is doing because the cause is unknown! The director isn’t commentating on how suicide bombings are just or a good way to make a point because there is no political discussion in the movie at all! It is a story about a girl of unknown origin who is going to blow herself up in Times Square for reasons unknown. Not left, not right, not pro-Islam, nor anti-American; it’s just a movie about the life of a girl leading up to an event.

Suspense? Yes. Thrill? Yes. Period.