shadokitty

Just finished Season 2 of Ancient Aliens. Haven't decided what I want to watch next.

JOE29

Hmm. I bought Letters from Iwo Jima years ago but never got around to watching it. Might have to make room for this before the month is over.
I'm in the middle of watching Patton now. I have to break up these longer movies into sections to watch because i just don't have the time to do multiple viewings or a long movie.

Giles

just for fun and since I can't be tied to my TV consistently - I'm doing an adjunct list of music listings that I feel constitute as cultural or of a specific 'time' in history and/or actual 'live' recordings. - they are not part of the initial list as they are not a visual medium, but it's something I can enjoy if I'm on mass transit, in the car going from here to there, or just need to chill and can rest my eyes.

shadokitty

For my first nature documentary of the Challenge, I decided to rewatch Wild China, since I enjoyed it last month.

mrcellophane

Had a pretty good weekend. I had Friday off and was able to watch two great films: The Bridge on the River Kwai and Fiddler on the Roof. I'd never seen Bridge before and was absolutely captivated by it. Alec Guinness and William Holden were fantastic. At first, I was trying to figure out what all the fuss was about, but then Guinness's character started acting... oddly. His ethics and drive become more and more ambiguous. The lines between good and bad, necessary and unnecessary become blurred. I was also a big fan of Holden's character, this American who gets caught up in the situation. David Lean makes epics that feel sweeping and important, and this film is no exception.

While watching Fiddler, a wave of familiar feelings hit me. This is a film that was on my rotating list of rentals when I was a teenager. Even before I saw the film, I recorded many of the songs off of NPR. Now, I realize just how affected I was by the story; it taught me to be aware of other communities and how I respond to them. This was huge for a Christian kid growing up in a conservative Oklahoma.

Saturday, my family celebrated my sister's birthday which included a trip to the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History. It's a very good museum with lots of dinosaur fossils and Native American artifacts. They also had great exhibits on dinners around the world and the Native American skateboarding community. I got in late and had time to watch Good Times, Wonderful Times, anti-war documentary that juxtaposed a fictional party with documentary footage to show just how out-of-touch people can be. It's a pretty alarming film.

davidh777

"Salvation" double feature for me: Saving Private Ryan followed by Saving Mr. Banks. My third viewing of Banks, my umpteenth of Ryan.

Ash Ketchum

The very first Blu-ray I acquired (a Christmas gift that came with the Blu-ray player from my nephews) was BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI. Still haven't watched it. And I'm itching to do so after recently seeing THE RAILWAY MAN in a theater. Colin Firth stars in it as a veteran who was a POW and worked on the rail line going over that bridge. In 1980, when the film is set, the tormented ex-POW finally encounters the Japanese officer who tortured him (played by Hiroyuki Sanada), with unexpected results. Now I want to read the book--it's a true story. One can make a case for it as an unofficial sequel to KWAI. The last time I saw KWAI was years ago after first reading the book, which is quite an eye-opener, with way more background on Guinness' character and more of a context for his behavior.

Some interesting info on the Wiki page for this film:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bri...the_River_Kwai

Other films about prisoners of the Japanese during the war:
THREE CAME HOME (1950) starring Claudette Colbert as an American woman put into a camp in Singapore for American and European women after the Japanese overrun Singapore. She and the women put up with horrible treatment, despite the fact that the camp commandant likes her. Sessue Hayakawa plays the camp commandant just like he does in KWAI. Surprisingly harrowing movie for five years after the war when we were still occupying Japan.

KING RAT (1965) with George Segal and James Fox. Based on James Clavell's account of his own experience as a POW under the Japanese. I haven't seen this in years, but it's on my watch pile for this challenge. Clavell later wrote "Shogun."

EMPIRE OF THE SUN (1987) based on J.G. Ballard's novel about his own experiences as a boy in Shanghai who is moved to a prison camp after the Japanese take over. The book was a harrowing account of bare-bones survival and the negotiations people had to constantly make to get enough to eat and take care of their families. Spielberg's movie kind of glosses over and romanticizes it somewhat. It's still an impressive film, chiefly for its production design and Christian Bale's performance as the young Ballard, but you should read the book to understand what it was really like.

There are a couple of others I've never seen, so I won't write about them.

Doc Moonlight

Caught up with a couple of old favorites; Watched RANCHO DELUXE for my neo-Western and revisited Joe Dante's MATINEE. I had forgotten what a great movie that was! I was the age of the protagonists at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and I think Dante got the period down perfectly, and for my money, it's got John Goodman's best performance.

Found MILIUS on NetFlix and recommend it highly. It's a documentary about writer/director/legend John Milius with great interviews and stories from his friends and colleagues including Spielberg, Lucas, Scorsese and many others.

Had high hopes for STALINGRAD, Russian WWII 3D epic. But I found it meandering and confusing. It starts with the recent tsunami in Japan and I was wondering if I had the right movie.

I have another suggestion for an historical comedy, although it would fall into the dreaded "Zeitgeist No Man's Land": Billy Wilder's ONE, TWO, THREE. It is definitely a film of its time. To watch it you would have to know that in 1961, Berlin was a divided city, surrounded by Communist territory and that territory did not allow things from Western countries. Today, there are American fast food restaurants in virtually all foreign countries, but back in 1961, Coca-Cola was forbidden fruit. Watch it (or if you must, track it down for the Comedy Challenge in November) it is fast-paced and hilarious!

shadokitty

Just finished Disc 1 of Wild China. Nature documentaries look stunning in BD.

Also, for those who are interested in following my college progress, I sent an email to the University of North Texas, which has a very good, accredited MA in Applied Anthropology, asking if the reference requirements could be waived since I would be a non traditional student who has been out of school, and the work force for many years. I'll keep you all up to date this month on my progress.

ntnon

Good luck.

shadokitty

Thanks.

BobO'Link

After a documentary break I've been watching a 10 film War Movie collection from Universal. One is To Hell and Back, the story of Audie Murphy in WWII. After a somewhat slowish start it got pretty good. That's an amazing story and all done by the time he turned 20! I've seen many of his westerns but never this. How have I missed this one all these years?

shadokitty

Just finished Wild China, which was not only my first nature doc, but also my first BBC doc of the challenge.

Giles

the movie Belle impressed me immensely

shadokitty

Just finished Season 1 of Big Cat Diary on Netflix. Always enjoyed that show, but never saw many episodes, as I'm either usually in bed, or watching the morning news when it is on TV.

Ash Ketchum

What bothers me about TO HELL AND BACK is that it shows Murphy and his army buddies having a great time in combat, always smiling and joking. It really glosses over the reality of war. Wanda Hendrix, Murphy's first Hollywood wife, revealed in an interview long after he died that Murphy was able to kill so many Germans because he would visualize his hated father's face over every German he sighted and that would make him mad enough to kill. Of course, you'd never read that in Life Magazine. Murphy perfected his shooting skills as a boy when he had to shoot squirrels and pigeons in the hard-scrabble Texas terrain in order to feed himself and his younger siblings.

BobO'Link

I noticed that too but kind of let it roll off. After several more realistic portrayals of war I was ready for something "lighter" even though his story deals with some of the more fierce fighting of WWII. At times I felt as if I were watching a more modern superhero film with the somewhat effortless way he was killing dozens of German soldiers at a time. There was one segment where he pulled a machine gun out of a fox hole and proceeded to take down a couple of dozen enemies *and* another machine gun emplacement. He had his hand on the barrel for aiming but *didn't get burnt*! It had a cooling ring on the barrel but those still get hot. It made me recall the incident in The Pacific where John Basilone picked up a machine gun in a similar manner and received 3rd degree burns for his heroics.
That's very interesting.
I believe some of that was in the first 15 minutes or so of the film. I didn't really start paying attention until he attempted to enlist the first time. I should really go back and watch the introduction again.

shadokitty

It hasn't worked, as I still want to get my Masters in Anthropology, but I just spent all afternoon chatting with a friend who has been doing nothing but discouraging me. He doesn't want me to do any field studies.

Ash Ketchum

I watched DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY (1993) this morning for the first time. I guess I've been dreading it for the last 21 years, but I finally did it. It's watchable, but it's basically a TV movie with a simple-minded comic-book approach to Lee's life. The leads, Jason Scott Lee and Lauren Holly, try very hard to inject some life into the proceedings and they do deserve credit, but they're undermined by a weak script and thoughtless direction. They can simply never be Bruce and Linda, they're just Hollywood character types stuck in a cliché-ridden formula. There's way too much stuff that's simply made-up, plus a timeline that's completely distorted. Plus numerous anachronisms, like when a student walks into Bruce's new school in 1964 and declares that he's watched some "chopsocky flicks" and wants to learn. "Chopsocky" was coined in 1973 to describe Bruce's films and a genre that was completely unknown in the U.S. in 1964.

The one good thing I can say about it is that it's got Nancy Kwan in it in a supporting role. Always good to see her. She actually once worked with Bruce Lee. He was action choreographer on a film in which she played the villain, the fourth Matt Helm film, THE WRECKING CREW (1968), in which she gets beaten in a lame fight by none other than Sharon Tate!

Also, there's a good bit where Linda takes Bruce on a date to see BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S and he's appalled at Mickey Rooney's impersonation of a Japanese. She laughs at it until she sees the look on Bruce's face and then she gets embarrassed.

But overall, the film reduces a very complicated man to a set of clichés.

BobO'Link

I'm working my way through that 10 movie War Collection. So far the best ones have been The Eagle and the Hawk - a anti-war WWI story about pilots with Cary Grant and Frederic March, Wake Island - a film based on the true story of the Marines on that island following the attack on Pearl Harbor, and To Hell and Back - the Audey Murphey WWII story.

Last night I watched a fairly odd John Wayne film, Jet Pilot, which also featured Janet Leigh as a Soviet MIG pilot who may or may not be defecting. It suffers from some bad voice over work by both Wayne and especially Leigh during many of the flying shots. BUT it's fairly funny (which I'm sure is unintentional) with some impressive arial photography.

This evening I watched In Enemy Country with Anthony Franciosa. It played like a TV movie from that era (late 60s) but filmed in WS. It reminded me of a Hogan's Heroes plot without the humor but not as good.

Up next is Raid on Rommel starring Richard Burton. I hope it's better than the last few but it has a IMDB rating of 5.6, the same rating as Jet Pilot so...

ororama

I finished Spartacus: Blood and Sand, the first season of Spartacus tonight. It was rather weak at the start, but became more interesting as the plots became more complex. I found Batiatus, the owner of the ludus, the most interesting and sympathetic character. We are supposed to be appalled at his treachery, but he betrays Spartacus because he rightly concludes that Spartacus is about to betray him. The fact that John Hannah is the strongest actor in the first season is, of course, a major factor in my sympathies.

Last Saturday was Edison Day in West Orange, a yearly celebration of the birthday of Thomas Edison, with free admission to the Thomas Edison National Historical Park. They were showing Edison shorts (from the Kino DVD set) in the replica of the Black Maria. I'll probably rewatch a few of the western shorts later in this challenge.

I've given up on watching The Romance of Three Kingdoms during this challenge because if I did, it would be just about the only thing that I'd be able to watch for the rest of the challenge. I'll probably try to work on it next January during the TV challenge. I want to try to focus on more movies and less TV for the rest of the challenge, although I would like to finish the first season of Gunsmoke, and Murdoch Mysteries (about a police detective in 1890s Toronto) is my younger son's favorite right now.

JOE29

I was off from work yesterday so I managed a good day of 3 films. Fort Apache, High Noon and Broken Arrow. All older greats.

shadokitty

Since I'm getting excited about my vacation to the Oshkosh airshow this July, I decided to start intermixing my Nature documentaries with aviation documentaries as well. I started with a documentary about the Oshkosh the Best of the 80s.

As for the college progress. I received an email back, and they can't waive the reference requirements, but they are flexible as to who they come from, and colleagaeus(sp) can be one of the groups, so I would think that would be friends. I plan to call her office today to get more info about the program.

Cardsfan111

Most of my content this month has been first time viewings. Just watched The Caine Mutiny. This might be one of my favorites so far. All of the performances were top notch.

mrcellophane

It's such a bizarre film. I watched it earlier this year and was flummoxed. I'm not sure exactly what the point of the film was; it's such an odd mixture of themes and tones. I was trying to explain it to a friend and the best I could come up with was "It's like Ninotchka but devoid of charm and sense but with planes." Still, I'll watch either John Wayne or Janet Leigh in almost anything! Also, I'm a sucker for plane footage.

Huzzah! Good luck!