True enough, but I give SW in general a pass on the magic bean thing, it's why I always prefer to call it "space fantasy" rather than "science fiction".   Ditto for Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and other tales that are set in a magical world, rather than our own.   In a "wonderland" as we have come to dub it here at DIF - hey, anything goes.  Trolls and fairies and magic wands and time travel and ghosts - whatever.  Bring it.

"Magic beans" apply to movies that are otherwise set in our world, where we don't routinely travel through time or meet angels or have wishes come true, etc.   But you can get away with saying, "In this movie a guy has a teddy bear that's actually alive.   Why?  HE JUST DOES OKAY?" as long as you don't keep throwing in more impossible things afterward.

Do you mean RE-watching it, or have you never seen it at all?

If the latter, it's worth a watch.  Not a terrible movie by any means, there's good stuff in it.   

But if you mean re-watching it, then sure - I understand your reluctance.

I'd say the message is about the compromise -  it was wrong for Bob to hide his abilities and to ask his family to do it.   Or you could say it was wrong of the world to ask them to do it. Whichever.   

But at the same time, Bob (in particular) needs to learn humility.  He genuinely does want to help people, but he also misses the adoration it brought him - evidenced by the home office full of testimonials of how great he was.    As his nemesis, Syndrome represents the far end of that spectrum.  He doesn't want to do good at all - he actually creates mayhem, then solves it in order to get the recognition he craves. 

For that matter - Syndrome became a supervillain because Bob wouldn't acknowledge him - or allow him to share even a little bit of Bob's star status.   

So Bob's pride is the real problem that needs to be solved.

In the end, Bob (and the family) have found the middle ground - Dash is allowed to win races, just not by ridiculous margins that will embarrass the other kids.   And the family still fights evil even though they'll never be publicly acknowledged for it.    Which means they're doing it for the right reasons.

"Fugue For Zarbans"

*clears throat*  *blows pitch pipe*    A-five six seven eight...

You bet on John MClane
or you'll get buttf*cked, Dwayne
He's got a Zippo that can detonate an aeroplane.
Die Hard
Die Hard
The FBI's a bunch of friggin' tards
But McClane is a real Die Hard
Die hard
Die hard

And now here comes Hans
He wants those bearer bonds
He brought a multi-ethnic strike team and two German blonds 
Just so
Theo
can crack the giant safe with all the dough
But McClane he just says ho ho ho
Uh oh
Bye, bro

Ellis ain't no white knight
Powell crashed his black and white
McClane's got no shoes and he's afraid of heights
Yip-pee
Ki-yay
You're about to have a real bad day
If you make fun of John McClane's toupee
Yip-pee
Ki-yay

You will regret you laughed
You'll soon be understaffed
When McClane's up in your ventilator shaft.
Die Hard
Die Hard
You can call him Roy Rogers, pard
He doesn't care if he gets bloody and charred
Die Hard
Die Hard

I tell ya, this McClane
He can be inhumane
Just ask the Russian ballet dancer hangin' from a chain
Die Hard
Die Hard
That dude is a real Die Hard
Even when his feet are full of shards
Die Hard
Die Hard

And if you touch his wife
McClane will end your life
With just one bullet, like Barney Fife
Die Hard
Die Hard
So if you ever drop your guard
You'll be a stain on Century Boulevard
Die Hard
Die Hard

And in the opposite corner... Zack Snyder.  Again.

Well, there's just the simple fact that Williams is 80 years old, and by the time there's a movie to be scored he'll be 82.    Disney's going to be making these for years to come, and there will have to be a handoff of the composing job at some point.   It's just a question of when.

Well sure - in a documentary such a thing could be acceptable, obviously there are plenty of docs about 9/11 and other topics with horrifying real imagery in them.  There can be arguments about how much horror should be shown, of course - just because footage exists, it doesn't necessarily mean it should be used - but that depends a lot on the point of the doc and the filmmaker's discretion etc. 

Werner Herzog opted not to play the actual audio of Timothy Treadwell being eaten by a bear in Grizzly Man, and I suspect that was a good call.   On the other hand, Spike Lee used graphic morgue photographs in Four Little Girls, and although that was pretty awful to look upon, I think it was "appropriate" for that doc.

I just remembered the term for the difference between being realistic and being real in a fictional work:  Aesthetic_distance.   To violate the aesthetic distance is to do something that bursts the bubble of fictional reality that a fictional work intends to create.   Really, it's just the fancy term for "breaking the 4th wall" but nowadays we tend to use the latter term to mean characters talking directly to the audience, whereas "aesthetic distance" is more general.

David Mamet wrote about this in On Directing, his example was when a movie shows an actor playing the piano, and does the obligatory tilt from his face to his hands to say "look, he's really playing!".   Which makes the audience think "Hey, Will Ferrell can actually play the piano!"   And you don't want that.  You've just  pushed them out of the world you're trying to create and back into the real world.

Admittedly, breaking the 4th wall can work in comedies... a comedy can get away with saying hey folks, none of this is real and we all know it!     But a movie that intends to be serious violates the aesthetic distance at its peril.

So in the case of ZD30, just from a creative standpoint if not a moral one -  beginning the movie with the voices of real people who are really about to die undercuts the movie's intent to make us care when Jessica Chastain gets fake-injured by a fake explosion.    Walk it off, Jess - we just heard the real thing.  You ain't actually hurt.

So, you can tell a story about 9/11 with actors and dramatic re-creations, or you can tell the story of 9/11 as a documentary with the real footage and the real horror, but mixing the two is a tricky business that risks alienating or confusing the audience.    That works both ways too - we've all seen documentaries that suddenly switch from real footage to a sketchy re-enactment and immediately thought "bogus!"

The  lyrics are still owned by the original owner.   The music is still owned by the original owner.   The performance of the two together is owned by you.   

And the law covers everyone - neither of the original owners can just take your cover and do what they like with it.     They may force you to stop distributing it if you haven't gotten the proper licensing.   But they can't sell or distribute your version without your permission either.

And I believe that using the voices of innocent people is crossing the line.   

"Re-creating" and "faking" are the same thing, why is re-creating that one particular thing unacceptable? Jessica Chastain didn't find bin Laden, so is it an insult that she pretended she did?   The actors portraying torture victims weren't actually tortured,  should real footage of waterboarding have been inserted to prove how serious this movie intends to be? 

I have no problem with a movie dramatizing a serious event, but using actual audio of the final moments of real humans suffering - when everything else in the movie is artificial - to me, that's inappropriate.

And unnecessary.   How many people would have known whether those were real voices in the opening scene?  ( I didn't - I just asked the question and Teague knew the answer.)   Would there have been a mass walkout in theaters if the audio wasn't the real thing?  "Hey, those aren't real people dying!  This movie is being disrespectful!"   I doubt it.   

That's not what I said.  What I said was that no matter how seriously they approached the material - and I'm sure they were totally serious about it - in the end they were merely crafting a dramatic interpretation of a real event.   9/11 and the hunt for bin Laden were profoundly important events that changed the course of world history, affected countless lives, and involved the deaths of thousands of people.   Zero Dark Thirty... is a movie.   As a great man once said: that ain't the same league.  It's not even the same fuckin' sport.

As you pointed out,  I've said this about other movies as well.  I don't like the slaughter of a buffalo on-camera in Apocalypse Now, I don't like the footage of a man being shot dead in the opening of The Road Warrior.  I am bothered by the inclusion of concentration camp footage in the special edition of The Abyss.   I'm even bothered that they stepped on live cockroaches in Starship Troopers.   I have no love for cockroaches, but killing one just for a damn movie is wrong to me.   So it shouldn't be surprising that I don't condone using the last terrifying moments of a real person's life as a dash of extra-dramatic spice in a movie, either.

Maybe it's because I'm in the business myself and have no illusions about what we do, but I am bothered whenever my colleagues blur the line between putting on a play - which, whatever the subject matter, is all we're ever doing - and real suffering.

So I like Zero Dark Thirty for what it is: a dramatic approximation of real events. Retelling a serious true story is fine, being serious about telling it is important, and Zero Dark Thirty succeeds at both.   But in the end it's just a movie, and thus no more "real" than Starship Troopers.   And unfortunately it chose to be a genuine snuff film in that opening scene.   I won't give any movie a free pass on that, no matter how serious the topic is.

And for the record: If I am ever murdered and any of you want to make a movie about how my murderer was brought to justice, you have my permission.   However, if you would like to use the actual recording of my murder in your movie... um...  that's a big no.   Kthx.

Deadline has it too - and they usually have the straight dope, so...

http://www.deadline.com/2013/01/j-j-abr … or-disney/

So Moulin Rouge is like Sunset Boulevard except really loud and French?