War movies

[xenophile58]

'Idi i smotri' or 'Come and See' seems to have a reputation for depicting the horror of war pretty effectively. I've yet to see more than clips but they reminded me of the opening of SPRyan.

Scary places, battlefields.
If the viewer doesn't feel that, then whatever sort of story it's telling, the film isn't a war movie. It's a military history or an adventure tale or a buddy movie. And it might be dangerous in it's sanitization of what war actually is.

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by Sikander


Yes they were rural. My uncle hunted game throughout the depression with a single shot .22. When I was in basic training we were shooting at the pop up target range and the 25 meter target was malfunctioning / not scoring hits. I complained to the nearest drill sergeant and he had the temerity to suggest that we were simply not hitting the 25 meter target. I picked up my M-16 in one hand and fired it quickly like a pistol three times, once into the target to the left, once into our malfunctioning target and once into the target to the right. As expected the targets to the left and right fell immediately while there was no reaction from our target. That really pissed him off, but we were allowed to re-shoot from another position.

I grew up on open sights and struggled a little with the M-16's peep sight. What I really hated about it was that it blocked out the area around the target, which complicates attempts to lead the target on longer shots. Of course that didn't come up in the training we had, but I imagine that it could easily do so in combat. I still prefer open sights. Scopes are marvelous for long shots but suffer even more from difficulties in orientation in a quickly changing environment. Peep sights seem like the worst of both worlds. I'd rather have a low magnification scope (like the 1.5X scope on the Aug).

I asked because there are just so many examples of the amazing shooting abilities of rural folk who hunted for sustenence through the depression (Audey Murphy was mentioned earlier).

I agree about peep sights, I just couldnt shoot well with them. I realized that scopes gave me a better sight picture when I was shooting with a starlight scope. Hell, I was a better shot with a .50 cal MG than with a rifle with a peep sight!

[Colonâ„¢]

Here's another critical article on Band of Brothers by an author who's been in close contact with many of the veterans and has published WW2 literature himself. Some of the corrections are anally retentive, a lot a matter of opinion (the author seems a bit miffed at all the attention that's showered on easy) , but there's also plenty of interesting read.

http://www.101airborneww2.com/bandofbrothers.html

[techumseh]

Has anyone seen "War and Peace" (the Soviet version)? They used an entire cavalry brigade of the Red Army in the battle scenes (Austerlitz and Borodino). It's 6 hours long. It's very rare, but I can rent it (VHS only) at a local specialty video store.

[Docfeelgood]

Those "Rambo" movies were the best documentries I have ever seen.

[molly bloom]

Peter Watkins' 'Culloden'

Culloden (BBC, tx. 15/12/1964) marked the professional debut of writer/director Peter Watkins, who developed a ground-breaking alliance of documentary technique and vivid dramatic reconstruction.

A detailed study of the 1746 Battle of Culloden and the ensuing brutal suppression of the Highland Scots, Culloden drew much of its analysis and voice-over narration from the history book of the same name by John Prebble, who was credited as historical adviser. Culloden's early section introduced the audience to the battle's famous leaders and forgotten victims alike, documenting the failures of the Highlanders' leadership and poor preparation, before graphically dramatising the battle itself.

http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/520802/

And his 'War Game':

The War Game frequently hammers home gruesome possibilities with phrases such as 'it happened in Hiroshima, it could happen here'. Historic footage of atrocities and post-bomb chaos in Hiroshima, Dresden and elsewhere are expertly intertwined with fictional sequences that follow all the rules of such BBC documentary filmmaking: the scientific quotations, illustrations through diagrams, the comments of academic experts, the interviewing of the uninformed general public and crucially, the blatant, and unemotional narration expertly supplied by Peter Graham and Michael Aspel that sounds like a cold, disturbing public service announcement.

As well as benefiting from an enhanced, crisp DVD transfer, this new BFI release also includes Watkins's difficult to find short film, The Diary of an Unknown Soldier, noteworthy both in its own right and as a prelude to the main feature. Also included are some additional scenes that, like most, are interesting rather than essential but the pick of the DVD extras is a fascinating commentary by Patrick Murphy who explains that it was a secret deal struck up between the British Government and the supposedly impartial BBC that ultimately led to the picture being pulled from the broadcast schedules.

http://www.kamera.co.uk/reviews_extra/the_war_game.php

Also an oddity of sorts:

Cavalcanti's 'Went The Day Well ?':

Conceived, like Ealing's earlier The Next of Kin (d. Thorold Dickinson, 1942), to highlight the dangers of a Nazi invasion, Went the Day Well? (d. Alberto Cavalcanti, 1942) is one of the most effective wartime films, although it suffered from the fact that, by the time of its release, the real threat of invasion had passed.

Went the Day Well? has its origins in a Graham Greene short story, The Lieutenant Died Last, published in an American magazine in June 1940. Greene's story concerns a poacher, Bill Purves, a Boer War veteran, who single-handedly overcomes a Nazi attempt to invade a rural English village. But aside from the central premise of invasion and the retention of the poacher as a minor character (renamed Bill Purvis, little of Greene's story remains in the script by seasoned Ealing writers John Dighton, Diana Morgan and Angus MacPhail.

http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/454179/

In my humble opinion, both 'The Patriot' and 'Braveheart' are utter shiite, and should be consigned to the dustbin of history, along with Mr. Gibson.

[Colonâ„¢]

Black Hawk Down: very very powerful movie, one of the better I've seen so far. Very tragic as well. Maybe it's a bit simplistic and one-sided though, but fortunately it doesn't annoy too much because of the low-key acting.

[Nickiow]

[QUOTE]

Also an oddity of sorts:

Cavalcanti's 'Went The Day Well ?':

http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/454179/

watched that yetserday afternoon over lunch, (on Uk TV ch 4)an intresting piece, more of use as to social conditions at the time than anything else.

[Nickiow]

Originally posted by Colonâ„¢
Black Hawk Down: very very powerful movie, one of the better I've seen so far. Very tragic as well. Maybe it's a bit simplistic and one-sided though, but fortunately it doesn't annoy too much because of the low-key acting.

Great entertainment. Poor history. Good authenticity for tactics. Its worth remebering theta the Pentagon gave free use of the Blackhawks and advisors to train the actors to move and look like they knew what they were doing. Free is a relative term, in exchange the story strongly puts forward a version of events that does not include aspects that unfavourable portray the US.

For instance Grimes, i made coffe through Panama etc, was then later convcited of haveing under age sex and went to the stockade before dishnorable discharge, pun intended, so the film does not fully do the character profile justice.

[Nickiow]

In my humble opinion, both 'The Patriot' and 'Braveheart' are utter shiite, and should be consigned to the dustbin of history, along with Mr. Gibson.

And who can argue with that?.

Wallace father has recently been found, seals of Wallace on the reverse have his biological father, for the first time someone thouight to look at the reverse of the sealls and see what they said, in 1997 or so, and it turns out Blind Harry was wrong and so are nearly all our books on him.

So is the Wallace collection sword of wallace, only the end third, (weapon is made up from 3 different weapons) is from the right period, and scots did not use two handed swords in the period in any event, but hey Bruce and the spider only appears in textin the 1820s when the Uk re invented scottish history, its actually a Dougl;as family traditoion, but Stevenson thought it worked better with the Bruce and so we all know the wrong history because it works better.

[Colonâ„¢]

Well, I've just watched (or tried to, gave up less than halfway the movie) Thin Red Line, and I have the feeling I need some educating on how I'm supposed to watch it like. At first I thought it was all tongue-in-cheek so I had a couple of good laughs with all the blatant melodrama and the pseudo-artistic contrasts: "Oh look at how I shock you by switching from bloody combat in one shot, to a helpless new-born chicken in the next". Kind of like Starship Troopers. But then I began to have the feeling the intent probably was serious drama. Not sure if Starship Troopers was meant to be satirical either, but at least it allows you to pretend it was.
Maybe I'm not just not in the right mood to see this stuff, and it'll work better if I try to watch it at some other time, but it hasn't quite caught on me yet. Or maybe Hollywood directors just shouldn't try to make "artistic" movies. Except of David Lynch of course.

[Colonâ„¢]

Don't understand how this movie got 7 academy award nominations, even if I am not in the right mood to see it.

[VetLegion]

It's not your mood, the movie is crap.

[C0ckney]

big fan of 'went the day well'

[Chemical Ollie]

I'm trying to download the new "Stalingrad" movie. I saw it in a video shop at Birmingham ariport the other day, but I want to see it with the original German speech and Swedish subtitles. Too bad it hasn't been released in Sweden yet.

Same director as "Das Boot", can't go wrong, can it? I hate Hollywood WW2 movies where the Germans speak English with a funny accent.