I want to get this film

[UK_Widowmaker 571]

*WARNING* Bad language and extreme Violence

 

 

 

 

Edited January 23, 2011 by UK_Widowmaker

[NS13Jarhead 6]

I had just read the review of it at The Wargamer and I, also, want to get this movie. I'm surprised that I hadn't heard of it before. Apparently, the battle scenes are spectacular, but it does have those annoying "Pearl Harbor", "Flyboys", "The Red Baron" love interest/chickie parts in it. But that's what Fast Forward is for.

[carrick58 23]

Fast forward pass Ursula Andress ?

[carrick58 23]

I want this film

[Javito1986 14]

Good show Carrick. Ursula Andress was stunning in that movie.

[Hasse Wind 46]

I thought her name was spelled Ursula Undress.

 

Haven't seen Passchendaele yet.

[Slartibartfast 153]

Must admit I have this in my stash of Movies... hmmm Movie for the Afternoon... extremely violent battle scenes and as has been said FF for the Chick light bits...

Edited January 23, 2011 by Slartibartfast

[Flyby PC 23]

Passchendaele is a Canadian film if I remember correctly, with a Canadian perspective. Gritty realism, and oh that rain, - but I don't get the love story bit either. The 'crucificion' is a bit dodgy too, - but in fairness, genuine stories of crucified soldiers did start somewhere. It's a good film. I liked it. Need to watch it again to remember what was painted on the house...

 

Haven't seen Crossing the Line. Never even heard of it. Have to dig it out.....

 

Another decent WW1 film with an American perspective is The Lost Battalion, based on a true story of an American battalion from New York holding out for 5 or 6 days while the French and US support on their flanks collapsed leaving them cut off and surrounded by the Germans. They held, but lost 2/3rds of their number, in part due to their own artillery. I quite liked the film too, not least because the stereotype bad general gets a subtle twist. No love interest anywhere I'm happy to report, and have to say the whole film seemed to pass very quickly. Good sign in my book, - with minimal injury to carrier pigeons.

[Olham 164]

When I see that mud & blood & bajonett stuff, I must say, that the aviators probably had the better choice.

Of course theirs wasn't easy at all.

They often froze to ice cubes up in the cold air at 15.000 - 24.000 feet, and when they came down again,

the warming up went too fast and put their feet in agony. They had no parachutes (until late in the war,

when some units got them), and when the craft was burning, they only had the choice to burn or to fall to

their deaths.

But when you see, how the men in the mud had to fight that war - day after day, for months, for years -

I would have hoped to get accepted as an aviator.

Edited January 23, 2011 by Olham

[UK_Widowmaker 571]

I have to agree with you Olham..

[Rugbyfan1972 1]

UKW,

 

If it is the film starring Paul Gross, then I saw it in my local tesco for under £5.00 on friday.

 

Thanks

Rugbyfan1972

[Hasse Wind 46]

No matter how much they suffered, it must be said that the pilots and observers of the Great War had it much easier than the poor bloody infantry. Even if there was hard fighting during the day, at least they could get back to base for the night and sleep in a real bed, they didn't have to fear snipers or sudden artillery strikes, no gas attacks, no nerve-wracking guard duty at night in a muddy trench, no work duty in the same filthy trench - the list goes on and on. Early flying was really dangerous and particularly so under war-time conditions, but you had a better chance to live through the war in some flying squadron than in a rifle company.

[Wodin 0]

I heard mixed reviews about the film...I did watch a new Aussie movie Under Hill 60 I think it was called...rather dire with bad acting...I didn't like The Lost Battalion either....I believe peter Jackson is going to make a WW1 film after The Hobbit...he is a WW1 obsessive and started up Wing Nuts models...so we would get authenticity from him...The crossing the Line vid he did wasn't a film he was just doing a short as he loves WW1 planes...in prep for a proper film I believe.

 

Favourtie WW1 film if Fields of Glory...the battle scenes where years ahead of anything at the time...in fact the D Day landings in Private Ryan where inspired by that movie...

Edited January 23, 2011 by Wodin

[Hasse Wind 46]

I heard mixed reviews about the film...I did watch a new Aussie movie Under Hill 60 I think it was called...rather dire with bad acting...I didn't like The Lost Battalion either....I believ peter Jackson is going to make a WW1 film after The Hobbit...he is a WW1 obsessive and started up Wing Nuts models...so we would get authenticity from him...

 

That would be great. And hopefully he's now independent enough (read: rich enough) to ignore any 'brilliant' ideas Hollywood likes to promote in war films in the hopes of getting more viewers. He did take some liberties with LotR that I thought were unnecessary changes from the books, but overall they were great movies. I hope The Hobbit and the second Tolkien film they are making will be equally good.

 

A movie about the first air war would be nice. Now they have the computers to make realistic effects and stuff. Combine that with a good script and a realistic depiction of events, and we have a winner.

[carrick58 23]

I will not Fast forward pass Ursula

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL_1RBxOYNA

[Olham 164]

I hope The Hobbit and the second Tolkien film they are making will be equally good.

Did you know, that Sir Ronald Reuel Tolkien has seen the trenches of the Great War?

See here under 1916:

http://www.the-rangers.net/joomla/index.php/library/jrr-tolkien/biography

 

A movie about the first air war would be nice. Now they have the computers to make realistic effects and stuff.

Combine that with a good script and a realistic depiction of events, and we have a winner.

Jackson would not only have the right experience in creating big mass scenes with computers.

He also has most of the necessary aircraft for the close-ups in New Zealand.

He has his own S.E.5a, and among all those other "wing-nuts", it would make me wonder,

if they were not already collecting piles of stuff, to make a movie from.

His interest would surely be, to tell the story historically correct - down to the right individual markings.

Yeah, I bet he will do it - and I am surely looking forward to that movie!

[Flyby PC 23]

Did you know, that Sir Ronald Reuel Tolkien has seen the trenches of the Great War?

See here under 1916:

http://www.the-range...lkien/biography

 

 

Jackson would not only have the right experience in creating big mass scenes with computers.

He also has most of the necessary aircraft for the close-ups in New Zealand.

He has his own S.E.5a, and among all those other "wing-nuts", it would make me wonder,

if they were not already collecting piles of stuff, to make a movie from.

His interest would surely be, to tell the story historically correct - down to the right individual markings.

Yeah, I bet he will do it - and I am surely looking forward to that movie!

 

Tolkein was in the trenches, and so was C. S. Lewis who wrote the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, and I think also, Lewis Carol who wrote Alice in Wonderland. I'm not really up to speed on their relationships, but they were friends in Oxford after the war and fed each other's imaginations.

 

Read this Olham, you might find some of it interesting.

 

http://www.literarytraveler.com/literary_articles/tolkien_lewis_oxford.aspx

 

Tolkein swore the Lord of the Rings Trilogy was not about the war, but I don't know. Parts like the Dead Marshes and the flying fell beasts are certainly close parallels.

[Davy TASB 0]

Hoo, Widow

I got Blu Ray Passchendaele film from Tescos for £6 last week.

 

[Wodin 0]

You can see where he got some of his inspiration from when in the trench....thats when he started formulating the book...also has catholic undertones aswell.

[UK_Widowmaker 571]

Good lads...thanks for the headsup

 

Off to Tesco's

[Hasse Wind 46]

Did you know, that Sir Ronald Reuel Tolkien has seen the trenches of the Great War?

 

Yes. I'm something of a Tolkien fan, so I've read a lot about the man and his works. I think it's pretty obvious that what he saw in the trenches had an impact on his writing. No normal person, least of all somebody as intelligent and romantic as Tolkien, could live through such a horrible war and not be influenced by it.

[Javito1986 14]

Last month I read the book "Tolkien and the Great War". It followed him and his three close friends exactingly through approximately 1912 to 1918. Startling insight into the early development of his philosophy and literary interests & style, and he did indeed begin the very earliest writings of the Middle-earth mythology right there in France while serving with the Lancashire Fusiliers on the Somme.

 

Two things in the book left quite an emotional impact. One was the description of how he was pressured to go to war. It hit him as a complete surprise, he felt as if his whole world was collapsing, and he tried to put off enlistment. But at that time in 1914/15 before conscription was introduced people would jeer any able bodied man walking around the streets as a civilian, they wouldn't serve you at say a pub, you'd be called a coward for not going, etc. His friends had family members pressuring them to go "do their duties". There was no choice for them really, and saying they "volunteered" is rather naive as it was rather a form of societal impressment. He later felt his generation of youth were betrayed by the older generation who should have known better but clearly didn't.

 

The second is the Somme itself. His closest friend Gilson was an officer who went over the top on the First Day. Beforehand he was writing letters to Tolkien with a very distinct, pronounced sense of fatalism, extolling him to survive the war and publish as he would have wanted to if given the chance, as if he knew for certain he was about to be killed. Which indeed he was, since the last anyone saw of him he was pushing forward toward the German entrenchments on July 1 through a hell of machine gun and artillery fire. His other friend, Smith, died a few months later while he was walking around at the rear, and a completely random shell landed nearby and put some shrapnel in his leg. He was certain it was no big deal, but within days the wound infected and he passed away.

 

His only friend who lived was Christopher Wiseman, who joined the Navy and apart from Jutland didn't see much fighting. It got so bad for the Professor in '16 that some of his writings during that time even start almost denouncing anything German, even Germanic myths, which if you know Tolkien was nearly inconceivable considering his love before and after the war of everything Germanic. But I imagine it has to be hard to keep yourself free of resentment under such circumstances, and it's a testament to his character that that was a very brief phase (undoubtedly brought on by Gilson's death).

 

It's absolutely impossible that it didn't affect his writing. How could it not? He was writing the very earliest drafts of the Fall of Gondolin while watching the first tanks roll across the Somme, and specifically wrote that it marked the end of war as "man vs man" and the beginning of war as "man vs machine".

Edited January 24, 2011 by Javito1986

[Flyby PC 23]

I forget which book it comes from, but I read one story which typifies the pressure put on people to enlist. A veteran from the front was home on leave, and if I remember correctly, he was so louse ridden when he got home that his mother took his uniform away for cleaning. He therefore went out and about in civilian cloths. On the bus however, a woman completely unknown to him, seeing a young man in civilian clothes walked up to him, handed him a white feather and sat down to glare at him, - gesture of course being an accusation of cowardice.

 

The veteran, despite his civilian clothes was furious, but thinking quickly, he took out his pipe and proceeded to clean thoroughly it using the white feather. Once it was fully black and rancid, he handed the now disgusting feather back to the woman, thanking her kindly. It was so very hard to get hold of decent pipe cleaners in the trenches of the Somme. The woman was quite embarrassed and obliged to take the feather back, and got off the bus next stop.

 

The story comes from the mouth of a veteran, so I assume it to be true. These young lads at home were put under tremendous pressue, and many did harbour resentment how clueless people at home were about the true nature of business at the front. I take it most of you will know the poem 'Dulce et Decorum Est' by Wilfred Owen. Well worth reading.

Edited January 25, 2011 by Flyby PC

[Wodin 0]

Thats in a fair few books...women eh?

[Flyby PC 23]

Quite so... In early editions, Wlfred Owens poem was dedicated to Jessie Pope - a woman who wrote childrens books and poetry extolling patriotism and the virtues of military duty.

 

 

"Who’s for the game, the biggest that’s played,

The red crashing game of a fight?

Who’ll grip and tackle the job unafraid?

And who thinks he’d rather sit tight?"

 

Jessie Pope.

Edited January 25, 2011 by Flyby PC