My reactions to the movie, having not yet seen the way it ends.
This movie is awesome, and it is going to reach many, many people for whom Loose Change is a big turn-off. (Like, inexplicably, my 30-something hipster, radical brother who finally watched it -- and hated it. And who is no closer to questioning 9/11 than he was before he watched it, as a result.) It is going to reach many people who have not even heard of Loose Change. I will be sitting my parents down to watch it as soon as I have my own copy. I will me showing it to my mild-mannered Quaker best friend who candidly admitted she doens't give a fuck about 9/11, despite her strong social justice orientation. I will be offering to screen it on a Sunday after the services at the church where my mother is senior minister (right now that idea is freaking her out, but once she has seen it, the freaking will cease, I can guarantee.) I will be making everyone I know watch it, and offering it to the mayor and the City Council and the governor. I will host a house party to show it.
This movie is going to be an entree into this subject for a huge number of people. It also has far and away the best production values of any 9/11 doc I have seen, including a great soundtrack.
But...
Among the sort of people who frequent 911blogger, there is going to be a large percentage of very upset people. I was key in lobbying for my group's screening of this movie, although I wasn't the one who suggested it (someone beat me to that.) When the battery died and the lights came up, I was sitting with a bunch of raving hard-core conspiracy theorists who were even wondering aloud if it was CIA/NSA/XYZ disinfo. (Mystery man who brought it to us also tweaked their paranoia.) Someone said, if there's only fifteen minutes left, they better be about controlled demolition. I said "THERE IS NO CONTROLLED DEMOLITION in this movie and I made that clear to you guys when we started talking about it." (There is suggestion of the ridiculousness of the official story, though, and the collapse of Bldg 7 is shown several times.)
Their main complaint is the emphasis on Bin Ladin (especially right before our premature ending). People were talking like we should cancel the screening, if you can believe that, despite the considerable amount of promotion we've done. This would be because film MIGHT just underline the bin Ladin did it theory, thus completely destroying anyone's potential ability to question things further -- like, right after the intermission, when we show the Webster Tarpley presentation from the LA Symposium. The more level-headed amongst us calmed everyone down.
Anyhoo, I'll write more about this when I watch it again tonight and see the end.
But Jon, I think you already know this, but you're really going to have to gird your loins for the reception at blogger. Chris is probably going to have an aneurysm, for example. But jesus, maybe the spotlight will be taken off Nico for a few minutes.
I must add, too, that the film's focus on the Jersey Girls resolve and their ingenuity in doing their own research and manipulating their own media coverage (ie, yes, you can do a story on my orphaned kids at Christmas as long as you also show me ripping the Kean Commission a new one for their complete charade of an investigation) warmed the cockles of this feminist's heart.