Looks like Many WW2 Movies Coming!

[Sybma]

Hi all,

Seen this one, same producer as Brotherhood of War:

[Erwin]

Just be aware that Saints and Soldiers is an LDS (Mormon) film which means proselytizing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saints_and_Soldiers

eg: "As Gould sees Deacon's body being carried away, he takes out Deacon's Book of Mormon, places the photo of Deacon's wife into Deacon's hands and keeps the Book of Mormon because Deacon had offered it to him earlier."

However, loved PIECE OF CAKE and the FOYLE'S WAR series I saw when in the UK.

I have mentioned elsewhere that MY WAY is a very impressive depiction of Japanese fanaticism in a HUGE war film that starts in China, travels to the East Front and ends in Normandy. Great relationship drama as well as amazing set-piece battles. You never heard of it cos it was made by Koreans(!). Seen it and it is amazing.

I must see Brotherhood of War...

[Boche]

Hi all,

Seen this one, same producer as Brotherhood of War:

Im totally watching this one...Japanease films have almost always been superb.

[Erwin]

Except that these are KOREAN (and do not portray the Japs sympathetically).

[noob]

Because they're just movies, not documentaries. Made just to entertain and tell a story. Nothing more.

Some would argue that it's more important to get things right in a film, as movies have a greater impact on the senses, and probably contribute more to creating peoples idea of reality than documentaries, so in SPR, the film was superior to any other war film or documentary in the way it represented the violence of combat, irrespective of any plot devices or liberties taken with props, it did what most war movies fail to do, and that is traumatise the audience, after i saw it at the cinema, it made all previous war films i had seen seem like a bad joke, the movie had done more than just "entertain", it had enlightened, so IMO movies aren't just to entertain, they have much more potential than that.

On the opposite side of the coin, there is the film U 571, which caused a stir in the UK as this quote from Wiki states "The film caused irritation and anger in Britain. At Prime Minister's Questions, Tony Blair agreed with questioner Brian Jenkins MP that the film was "an affront" to British sailors.In response to a letter from Paul Truswell, MP for the Pudsey constituency (which includes Horsforth, a town proud of its connection with HMS Aubretia), U.S. president Bill Clinton wrote assuring that the film's plot was only a work of fiction."

Then there is this about the same film "The movie portrays a scene in which the U-boat sailors kill the Allied merchant crewmen who have survived their ship's sinking, in compliance with naval policy and so that the survivors do not report the U-boat position. Although German U-boat crews were under War Order No. 154 not to rescue survivors, which was also the policy of the Allies, out of several thousand sinkings of merchant ships in World War II, there is only one documented case of a U-boat crew's deliberately attacking the ship's survivors: that of the U-852, whose crew attacked survivors of the Greek ship Peleus."

So would you say to the people that took umbrage to a film that played fast and loose with history "Relax, it's just a movie" ?

They tell a story with the tools they have on-hand, and they're usually fun movies to watch despite some wacky things that are in most of them.

Your not really a history buff are you ?

A lot of it is that when people know a lot about a subject, they can let it take over and can't enjoy watching shows, movies, or even novels because of it.

You mean they are passionate about the truth ?

Despite a movie being about the subject matter they like the most, they won't watch it, or will be filled with disgust, because some guy wore his hat the wrong way, or they used footage of an F-15, and it's supposed to be an F-14.

I think your over egging the pudding there, anyone that would get that bothered about the things you mentioned would have mental health issues, but they haven't, because you just made that up, and i'm insulted that you would think i would think that that was an acceptable way of backing up your opinion.

[Boche]

Except that these are KOREAN (and do not portray the Japs sympathetically).

Wooooooooooooooooooooops!

[Erwin]

I know what you are saying noob. But, if you want the "troof, the whole troof and nothing but the troof" don't watch any movies or TV (or read fiction books). They, like games, including (gasp) CM, are entertainment products (and I include most "News" shows in that description as well these days).

[Ted]

Including a new looks at Arnhem,Stalingrad,Battle of Britain

These trailers look pretty good......

I just arrived at this thread.

Thanks W2010 for starting this up.

No matter if you like the flicks or don't it was good of you to bring them to our attention.

It certainly brought on plenty of responses and gave attention to other movies coming out too.

Bon Jurno!?

Say it again, it's like music to my ears......

[Ted]

It's funny.

My brother is a doctor.

We went to see "Thor" with the kids.

We sat through the whole beginning, what with Mount Olympus, battle of the gods, Thor being cast out, the humans driving in the dessert looking for strange things, Thor after being cast out lands on earth landing right next to their pickup truck claiming he's Thor the Thunder god and then being taken to the hospital as a wacko.

The next scene pans out showing Thor is in a hospital bed, alone in a room, and strapped down to the bed at the hands and ankles.

My brother leans over and with outrage in his voice says "They would never leave patients alone with four point restraints!"

I looked at him, laughed, and said "Now you don't believe the movie?!"

Just goes to show, sometimes you need to suspend your imagination a little to enjoy a Hollywood movie.

[Boche]

It's funny.

My brother is a doctor.

We went to see "Thor" with the kids.

We sat through the whole beginning, what with Mount Olympus, battle of the gods, Thor being cast out, the humans driving in the dessert looking for strange things, Thor after being cast out lands on earth landing right next to their pickup truck claiming he's Thor the Thunder god and then being taken to the hospital as a wacko.

The next scene pans out showing Thor is in a hospital bed, alone in a room, and strapped down to the bed at the hands and ankles.

My brother leans over and with outrage in his voice says "They would never leave patients alone with four point restraints!"

I looked at him, laughed, and said "Now you don't believe the movie?!"

Just goes to show, sometimes you need to suspend your imagination a little to enjoy a Hollywood movie.

LOL! so true!!

my mum who is a nurse used to say things like that all through watching "House MD".

And hell I think we all do it, when we see something inacurate in a film on a topic we know lots about, you just have to use your imagination.

[eltorrente]

So would you say to the people that took umbrage to a film that played fast and loose with history "Relax, it's just a movie" ?

Yes.

Screenwriters and directors aren't politicians, and care only about their movie making money. If they want to keep it totally accurate, it wouldn't have as many cool explosions, and the studio wouldn't give them money to make it in the first place.

I'm fully aware that most movies will butcher history for the sake of more drama or explosions.

Your not really a history buff are you ?

Of course I am. That's why I play this game and other wargames.

Getting upset over inaccuracies in a war movie isn't required for a histroy buff, I don't think. I take note, and get on with the movie.

Like I said earlier, I am an ex-submariner and every single sub movie I see is filled with so many crazy inaccurate things, but whatever. It's just a movie. Even if the writer wrote it totally accurate, it would get changed around for dramatic effect to appeal to the masses.

You mean they are passionate about the truth ?

Yes - apparently to a fault. From movies, television shows, video games - it's all the same when discussing this subject. People often get too upset when looking at an entertainment product, and it seems to ruin their experience.

I was reading on this thread someone talked about a guy who refused to play some video game, like Total War or something like that, all because some uniform patches were wrong.

Best to just take note of the inaccuracy, and relax, and maybe the rest of the product is pretty good. Same thing with this game - some folks have proclaimed it to be so inaccurate in some respect, that they simply can't play and enjoy the game. That is funny to me.

Maybe 100 years from now when everyone has quantum computers we can have AI that behaves realistically, until then, we play because it's fun despite the deficiencies.

I think your over egging the pudding there, anyone that would get that bothered about the things you mentioned would have mental health issues, but they haven't, because you just made that up, and i'm insulted that you would think i would think that that was an acceptable way of backing up your opinion.

I'm sorry I insulted you.

[LongLeftFlank]

Yeah, to paraphrase John Cleese on wine ("Wine for the Confused"), don't let anyone tell you what you like!

For example, I love the Train, the Fugitive and the Bourne films (in spite of the latter's progressively more left wing subtext), as escapism: the character would never really get away with the things he gets away with, it requires a series of nearly impossible coincidences. But they still "work" for me because, having laid out the conditions for suspension of disbelief, the screenwriters and directors pay me the respect of remaining faithful to the premises they've set. Same with really good sci-fi like Dune (the book and the TV adaptation, not the notorious Lynch adaptation).

[JonS]

Some would argue that it's more important to get things right in a film

No, everyone would argue it's important to get things right in a film.

What we're discussing are which 'things' are important to get right.

For me, in a WWII movie, it's: acting, script, and story are the most important. Setting, climate, uniforms, weapons, and equipment, need to be generally period, but I'm not going to lose much sleep over it. If they're close enough, and the acting, story, and script are good I probably won't even notice. "Pearl Harbor" is full of fail, in loads of ways, but the Aegeis Class destroyers being attacked was especially egregious. To me.* But I know a lot of viewers would just have seen a ship painted grey and been fine with that. Which is fair enough - there's more than enough to quibble about in that movie to get too hung up about the particular class of ships being used as targets

In SPR apparently the helmet chinstraps were wrong, and that 'spoiled' the film for some people. Give me a friggin break I just very that as people feebly attempting to gain bragging rights by showing off the amount and level of arcana they're familiar with, and is not a real criticism of the movie. Same with the SPR Tiger - to me it looked enough like a Tiger, and more than enough like an "OMFG BIG SCARY TANK THING THAT WE CAN'T DO ANYTHING ABOUT!!!" to suit its narrative purpose in the film.

To put this another way, the harrowing scenes in SPR would have been just as harrowing even if all the US soldiers in the beach scenes had been armed with M-16s and wearing kevlar 'Fritz' helmets. It wasn't the kit that made the scenes harrowing - it was the story, script, acting, and direction.

Jon

* although by that point in the film I was already so annoyed with it that I was actively looking for things to be annoyed about

[Boche]

In the end a film is a story, and its basic purpose is entertainment. One should never really watch something forgeting that.

[Baneman]

Inaccuracies of equipment don't irk nearly as much as historical inaccuracies.

I'm not talking about changes made in order to improve/move the narrative, but simply butchering history for ... I don't even know why.

Eg. The Red Baron movie.

There's plenty of actual events that would make for dramatic tension, character development studies etc. yet the film makers saw fit to rewrite history and then wrote cr*p !

It boggles the mind sometimes.

[John Kettler]

weapon 2010,

1. Moby Dick on treads! I'd see it just to see real tanks, and this one's got a bunch, including late model T-34/76s.

2. OK, from what I could tell.

3. Reminds me a bit of Apocalypse Now. Surreal looking.

Steiner14,

You've never encountered portly, barrel chested Germans? My dad's side of the family was full of them. And my aunt on Dad's side could break a lot of men like twigs.

Everybody in SPR was put through a pretty severe basic course by Dale Dye, a former Marine. The Germans in SPR, especially the non SS types, could very well have been portrayed by beefier men, considering they had garrison duty in a really nice place, with good food and wine readily available, from what I can tell. In Carrell's INVASION!, he reports many of the German soldiers had Calvados, not water, in their canteens.

__Yossarian,

Slavs tend toward rounded or beefy faces. One of the guys I worked with at Rockwell had a face and body type like a big Botticelli cherub, and when in Russia during the Cold War as a visiting student, was almost not let back into his tourist hotel in Moscow because the guard thought he was a Russian trying to enjoy the high life. Also many of the Asiatic troops have round faces, as in the dreaded Mongolian troops that stopped the German drive on Moscow.

Regards,

John Kettler

[noob]

I'm sorry I insulted you.

Forget about it, i'm sorry i responded to the original post

[JonS]

Slavs tend toward rounded or beefy faces. One of the guys I worked with at Rockwell had a face and body type like a big Botticelli cherub, and when in Russia during the Cold War as a visiting student, was almost not let back into his tourist hotel in Moscow because the guard thought he was a Russian trying to enjoy the high life. Also many of the Asiatic troops have round faces, as in the dreaded Mongolian troops that stopped the German drive on Moscow.

About as relevant as pointing out that fat Ethiopians exist.

[Schmoly War]

Ill argue that the only satisfactory WW2 material with actors in it are so called dramatizations. My two top votes goes to the dramatizations in the russian documentaries below. I want it gritty and I want it real.

Although the acting is very brief (they dont even have dialogue), it cuts trough the bull**** and shows us personell and decisions that really shaped things. Of course, these dramatizations would only adhere to a niche market, just like us wargamers.

Betrayal: The story of a Vlasov's Second Shock Army:

Rzhev: General Zhukov's Unknown Battle

[John Kettler]

Two really good war movies are from Japan. See them with English subtitles.

For Those We Love 1945

An IJA Kamikaze squadron working up, shipping out and attacking ships.

Yamato

Regards,

John Kettler

[John Kettler]

Long Left Flank,

I thought the way the females were treated in COI to be both unfortunate, but all too credible. And the fearsome scale balacing that resulted made my skin crawl--all the worse because my imagination supplied the outcome. I think I can safely say I'd never seen women as line combatants in a war movie prior to that. Partisans and resistance fighters aplenty, to be sure, but not female soldiers.

Regards,

John Kettler

[John Kettler]

Baneman,

Discounting the obvious T-34s in the first movie (thrilled to see any T-34/76s), I thought I saw a Stalin in the background. There was definitely an M24 Chaffee in the film where the Airborne is attacking with tank support. Don't know about the Pershing, but may go back and check.

eltorrente,

Where were you when I was writing two deck Attack Sub scenarios for Avalon Hill?

I agree with you on your submarine film comments. Got to see Das Boot at a theater with the then new Dolby sound and remember first hearing, then later feeling the depth charge rumbles when I touched the back wall while waiting outside. Saw it in German with English subtitles and was blown away. Came out feeling like I'd lived it rather than watched it! And I've been reading about U-Boats since I was a young boy. Hunt for Red October and any subsequent film depicting the U.S. Navy submarine force have technical advisors there whose job is to provide sub flavor without compromising actual sensitive procedures and information. I used to have a friend who was Reactor Officer on an Ethan Allen class boomer.

Regards,

John Kettler

[eltorrente]

A lot of people mentioned Saving Private Ryan and Inglourious Basterds, and I thought both of those movies were excellent.

Basterds was all about the dialogue. It had several scenes that built up the tension and made you feel like you were right there.. I was always empathizing and hoping they'd say the "right" thing. So what if Hitler didn't really die getting his face blown apart in a theater? It was a fantasy-reality and it was satisfying to me. It was like Tarantino was like, "I'm gonna do what so many people would have loved to have done to Hitler". Hey, fine with me.

I think Brad Pitt is a good actor, too. I just thought he overplayed his part. His character "worked", though - lot of funny parts. I don't think anyone was really much caring much about his character anyway, necessarily, since it was really about the theater owner.

SPR was the most moving war movie I've ever seen. I think it was because it was the first of its kind. I saw it in a theater with my girlfriend and some other friends. We were all blown away by the experience. I liked the story, also. No love triangle - just a war weary squad charged with risking their lives for someone they didn't know. I wanted them to succeed and was invested in their characters. Great acting all around, too. I felt like I had been through a war when I walked out of the theater.

Steven Spielberg did a masterful job with SPR, and that led naturally to his involvement with Band of Brothers and The Pacific. I loved both of those series, but I must say that Band of Brothers was much better, in my opinion. I really enjoyed the Pacific, and looked forward to the next episode(s), but I just didn't feel like I knew much about the main characters.

I think since Band of Brothers started in training, and we got to go along with them through the war, I got to know everyone. I cared about what happened to them. The various officers, down to the newest replacements all mattered to me.

[eltorrente]

eltorrente,

Where were you when I was writing two deck Attack Sub scenarios for Avalon Hill?

I agree with you on your submarine film comments. Got to see Das Boot at a theater with the then new Dolby sound and remember first hearing, then later feeling the depth charge rumbles when I touched the back wall while waiting outside. Saw it in German with English subtitles and was blown away. Came out feeling like I'd lived it rather than watched it! And I've been reading about U-Boats since I was a young boy. Hunt for Red October and any subsequent film depicting the U.S. Navy submarine force have technical advisors there whose job is to provide sub flavor without compromising actual sensitive procedures and information. I used to have a friend who was Reactor Officer on an Ethan Allen class boomer.

Regards,

John Kettler

I would have like to have contributed to your scenarios. I was on the USS DRUM (SSN 677), which was a fast attack submarine.

Das Boot.. such a great movie. I've watched it so many times through the years.

The thing that makes it so realistic is how it potrays the various characters and relationships onboard. Now, I'm talking from experience on an early 90's american sub and comparing it to a german u-boat - so it might sound like a stretch, but trust me. The commonalities are that it's a very tight nit crew and the sub service is very different from the rest of the Navy or military in how the crew interact. Much less formal. Anytime we weren't underwater, we were completely drunk and out-of-hand. Everyone counted on everyone else to do their jobs, and to trust the boat. I don't know.. it just captured the sub service, and every submariner will agree - no matter when he served.

I'm sure the Navy has advisers that contribute to sub movies, but damn.. Hunt for Red October (which is an awesome movie btw) had so many things in it that there's no way some adviser would have signed off on it.

Why was Jonesy the only sonarman on watch? I think there was 5 or 6 on watch at all times. "Make your depth 1200feet, rig for red.". Huh? Why would you rig for red when diving? In fact, we only rigged for red like once - but that's for periscope depth. We'd always just rig for "low level light" and turn the lights off at night with the scope up, because rigging for red screwed with your senses. "Sonar Con Crazy Ivan!". WTF? What is a Crazy Ivan again, Mr. Clancy? Noone ever heard that uttered on a sub before. Oh.. so they can tell exactly where the enemy sub is and what direction it's going, with great accuracy and instantly.. total BS. Sonar systems are nothing at all like what you read about, and I'll leave it at that.

Anways.. I still love that movie.

[Bigduke6]

I watched the trailer. The Russian movie by Bondarchuk will be awful. Trust me on this. The Russian market - at least as far as the Russian government is concerned - wants bang-up movies showing Soviet heroes holding out against great odds and technical superiority, for the sake of the Russian nation.

There is a whole genre of Russian movies where, through the magic of celluloid, troops deployed by the superpower Soviet Union to Afghanistan, and by Russia to the dinky province Chechnya, manage repeatedly to be outnumbered and outgunned by locals. Who in RL are, for the most part, guys with AKs lacking air cover, communications, artillery, camoflage or regular deliveries of beans and bullets. Bondarchuk's 9th Company is an example of this genre.

John, as to this comment:

Slavs tend toward rounded or beefy faces. One of the guys I worked with at Rockwell had a face and body type like a big Botticelli cherub, and when in Russia during the Cold War as a visiting student, was almost not let back into his tourist hotel in Moscow because the guard thought he was a Russian trying to enjoy the high life. Also many of the Asiatic troops have round faces, as in the dreaded Mongolian troops that stopped the German drive on Moscow.

I would have to say I disagree, at least in this sense. It is sort of a matter of honor and policy in the Russian/Soviet army that the guys at the front edge of the fight are skinny and semi-starved; this the leadership believes makes them better fighters. The idea is a man is more aggressive and inclined to violence, on an empty stomach. As an aside, I think they're probably right.

Anyway, the upshot of that is that Soviet/Russian combat troops by definition are skinny scarecrow types, and the Russians/Soviets have very little compunction about keeping to uniform standards in the field, so it's stick figures in baggy clothes. They're not concentration-camp emaciated but, as a group, these are guys carrying next to no body fat. This has been pretty much the rule for the last century at least.

A generic truisim in the Russian army has always been, the staff and rear area guys, and especially the generals, are always better fed and heavier than the guys on the front edge. The guys on the front edge know that this is unfair, but since it's the Russian army they pretty much accept there's nothing they can do about it.

Not surprisingly, Russian soldiers these days see NATO soldiers as overfed, bulky, and possibly on steriods. Sometimes I've even been asked what's the point of doing all those exercises and lifting all those weights like you see from time to time in NATO combat units. To the Russian way of thinking, that creates a soldier who is vulnerable to even a reduction of supply, break of routine, or loss of creature comforts. Russian soldiers, the argument goes, live tough lives day in and day out, so war for them is just more of the same, but with better looting opportunities.