Childress

Yeah, a classic. I find most of Mel Brook's stuff tiresome and self-indulgent. But with a few gems. Just noticed on re-watching the clip that the poster appended a brief and off-the-wall profanity. Too late for editing, please delete. Sorry, Battlefront! Here's a g-rated version:

That's an easy one:

Wise policy, wise policy. The politically correct crowd, you know who you are, is unsleeping and vigilant. The government will extend its hand over over the internet, seeking unacceptable content. First they came for the swastikas, then the Stars&Bars, then the blood, then... you.

With the goal of updating my Windows 7 installation I attempted to download Windows 10 last week. Mission failure. The result has been, apparently, to corrupt Windows Update forever. Buyer beware.

At the end, the question is.... despite his formidable brain why did Hitler make so many boneheaded decisions? Egregious blunder #1:declaring war on the US after Pearl Harbor. Acquiring yet another enemy. an an intensely moralistic nation with vast potential resources? Loyalty to a Japan, a non-Aryan power? A suicide wish? Looking back, it seems inexplicable. After all, why borrow a new enemy (and a great big one) when you haven’t even beaten the enemies you already have? Why toss a new weight into the scales, one with the world’s largest industrial base by a considerable margin? Why ask for trouble? More to the point, why solve President Roosevelt’s political problems for him? FDR saw Nazi Germany, not Imperial Japan, as the gravest threat to democracy, but even this wiliest of U.S. politicians knew it was going to be difficult to get an American public outraged by the “sneak attack” on Pearl Harbor into a war against Germany.

If you've seen Youtube videos of Hitler's speeches you notice he never uses notes. Evidently he read the entire thing off a picture in his mind. Public speaking, considered one of the most psychologically daunting trials one can experience was no challenge for him, regardless of the vast audiences he often faced. He never hesitated, lost his train of though or stuttered.One is reminded of Castro's legendary 7 hour harangues. There are extant anecdotal accounts that, as a soldier in France during WW1, Hitler mastered the French language. A facility he concealed for political reasons.

Inspirational! Now where are those pesky Zulus hiding?

Once an officer in the Cuban army under Fidel Castro, Servando Gonzalez defected to the United States in 1981. His experiences in Cuba, including involvement in the Bay of Pigs operation and the Cuban missile crisis, give him unique insight into the person of Fidel CastroThe book examines the many facets of Castro’s personality, the most prominent of which is his public persona, or, as Gonzalez calls it, Castro’s symbolic self. In an interview with WorldNetDaily’s talk-radio host Geoff Metcalf, Gonzalez discusses his analysis of Castro. Q: You also mention other significant traits, notwithstanding the fact he may be nuts, but he has a photographic memory and a number of other uncommon abilities. Such as? A: He has what is called an eidetic photographic memory. It has nothing to do with people who memorize. He just reads something, and it’s like a Xerox machine. When he was a student at the University of Havana, he boasted that he was reading a book and he could tear out the pages and put them in the trash can, and then he could recite from memory the whole book. That is amazing. And he uses that to fool people that he is very knowledgeable of certain areas, like he did with the Soviet who was the one who first came to Cuba [and reported] that Castro was a Marxist. Castro was telling him about Marx, Lenin, Engle. The night before, he just read a few books about Marxism. It is an incredible ability. By the way, Hitler had the same ability. Q: Apparently, Kennedy did as well. A: People who memorize using mnemonic technique are different. This is just a born ability.

The last century's most successful demigods; Hitler, Stalin and Castro had almost identical childhoods; physically abusive fathers and doting mothers. And all three possessed photographic memories. Stalin, who never slept in a bed, would consume 500 page books in a single evening and remember every detail. And Castro's powers of recall are legendary. Hitler could walk through an art exhibit and later sketch the paintings with the most exacting precision. This capacity has been attributed by some researchers to early childhood trauma. Maser tells many stories about Hitler's photographic memory and encyclopaedic knowledge of nearly everything imaginable: He could draw dozens of public buildings from memory with photographic accuracy. He once visited an opera house in some remote city and immediately remarked that there was a technical fault in the architectural design of the building from a purely theatrical point of view -- nothing to do with the design of the building at all; the stage door was too close to the orchestra pit, or something like that. He was right. When he hired his chauffeur, who was also an expert mechanic, the driver said later that he was amazed how much Hitler knew about cars. He knew all the armaments of all the world's armies, navies and air forces; General Keitel said it was impossible to find a single mistake. During the invasion of Norway, one of his admirals complained that they needed an anti-aircraft gun that could fit through the hatch of a submarine; all the German ones were too big. Hitler said he saw a gun in Austria once that he thought would fit. The gun was located, and it fit exactly. During the invasion of Normandy, his generals asked him how far away from the beach they had to be before they'd be out of range of Allied artillery on board Allied battleships. Hitler replied that it depended on the armaments on the ships, the displacement of the ships, and the exact depth of the water at that location. He had all the figures in his head, did all the calculations on the spot and gave them the answer, right on the spot. And he was right. In 1940 he visited Paris for the first time in his life and asked Arno Breker, who had lived there for 10 years, "Is that the Chamber of Commerce?", referring to some building in the distance. Breker said he didn't think so. They drove past it, and sure enough, it was. He visited the Paris Opera and said he wanted to see the Oval Room. They said, there is no such thing. He said, "I'll show you where it is", took them to it, and it turned out that they had altered the floor plan, bricked up a doorway, built a wall or something, changed the shape of the room and changed its name in the 19th century, but basically it was still there. So once again he was right.

New thread...

I see your Clint and raise it. With his most iconic scene: 'I needs to know!' And an exchange at the police station, replete with politically incorrect dialogue. Nobody takes offense, just Dirty Harry being Dirty Harry. But unthinkable today.

Lol! Those screenwriters should have been lined up against a wall and, well, shot. That's just bad writin'. pardner. Watching these old Eastwood Westerns from the 60s it strikes me what a stud muffin he was. Even as a grizzled gunslinger. Handsome in an unsettling, scary kind of way. All 6'4 of him. Eastwood was acutely conscious of his size and appearance caused and used these assets to good effect. Living in LA, I've met two Hollywood stars, Kiefer Sutherland and Charlton Heston. My socialite sister ran a charity tennis tournament in the 70s. Heston, an avid player, agreed to lend his name to the event. We drove to his digs in Coldwater Canyon one afternoon. Heston was playing tennis, bare-chested, on his private court. A good 'B' player. He towels off after the match and strolls around greeting people, exuding masculinity and tailed by a diminutive black kid porting a tray of Martinis. We shook hands. I'm 6'1 and he towered over me. I, a twenty yr old, just met Moses.

Hmmm... The Mexican shoots the gun out of Lee Van Cleef's hand at 75 meters from a second story window. One trusts that the former's Annie Oakley-ish skill with a pistol is foreshadowed- somewhere- in the plot. One the other hand this IS a spaghetti western.

Sburke hath spoken. If any member wants to contribute to this topic, hurry up. The Thread Locking Man draws nigh.

You're referencing Shakepeare's Henry V, Borg. Inspiring material but be careful with this elitist stuff. Don't you want to be perceived as a Regular Guy? Someone we can knock off beers with? Like sburke, for example.

The point was that one suspects Battlefront anticipated that most players find these grinding battles 'unfun'. Even Omaha Beach possessed a decided 'shooting ducks in a barrel' aspect. Dieppe was worse.

Yeah, I can't get enough of the thing. You can make a case for either Hackman or Harris in Best Actor in a Supporting role. 'Make sure you don't get wet.' Lawman Little Bill (Hackman) confronts English Bob (Harris) and his groupie of a biographer.

Battlefront never offered, to the best of my knowledge, any beach landing scenarios in either CM1 or 2. Think about it.

'Who's the fella who owns this sh*thole?' The denouement of Unforgiven, the greatest western ever made. And the 1992 Oscar winner. Dark and profound. Richard Harris delivers a bravura performance in a subsidiary role.

Proverbs 1:18: And they lay wait for their own blood; they lurk privately for their own lives.

You see threads with 500, 1000, 1500 'views'. Many go on for several pages. Yet not infrequently these threads contain only a dozen posters. For every poster it seems there are twenty lurkers. Who are these people? Are they shy? Or merely prudent? Perhaps they're contributing to other topics, who knows. As a poster you get the feeling that you're a gladiator, a tiny speck on the sandy floor of a coliseum witnessed by a vast and silent audience . Thoughts?

Yes, your father-in-law might have changed history. But his subsequent life span would have been nasty, brutish and short. And no wife for you... Most of the assassination attempts had an ill-organized quixotic aspect. However there were a few that had an excellent chance of success. Notably: 1- The Beer Hall, 1939. Georg Elser conceals an intricately designed time bomb inside the podium. But Hitler shows up an hour early and delivers an unusually short speech. The bomb explodes killing a number of the remaining attendees but Hitler has already left. 2- 1943. General Tresckow smuggles a box of Cointreau concealing a plastic explosive onto Hitler's plane. It inexplicably fails to detonate. He tries again this time the explosive is hidden inside his uniform during a conference. The suicide attempt aborts when the Fuhrer again leaves early. 3- Valkyrie, 1944. Stauffenberg plans to enter the Fuhrer Bunker with two bricks of explosive. As he's loading the bombs in his briefcase he's summoned immediately, leaving the second brick behind.

More Third Reich arcana: The Forty-Two Plots. At least three of them should have worked given the laws of probability. Did the Fuhrer have a guardian angel?

Glad to serve, John. However the Trent Park transcripts remained classified until 1999. Are we talking remedial high school?

Cool! But who's going to build all those Souma S35s and Char B1s from scratch? Did you know they lacked radios? And where are the Americans? Read Friedrich Hayek on the pitlilessness of market forces.