BobO'Link

I started the challenge with a Band of Brothers marathon viewing. Halfway through I ordered the BR ($15 from Amazon) to upgrade and get better packaging (I hope - it looks to be in standard BD packaging). My DVD set is in the tin with the horrible digipak pullout/accordion affair. I almost rip it out of the case every time I watch the series as I forget it's glued in! I plan to watch it again when it comes in and am looking forward to watching it with the PIP feature which has the veterans showcased in the series talking about what's happening on screen while scenes are played. It sounds interesting. A couple of days ago I recommended it to a coworker who participates in some of our challenges. She's not a fan of "war" films/series so I used the "If you're a American you *should* watch it!" approach. We'll see...

I feel the same as you about The Pacific. I ordered a BR upgrade of it as well but won't watch the DVD set first. I'll wait for the BR to arrive and watch that instead.

BobO'Link

Yep, that's the set. I'd purchased the single release of Gilda from Big Lots earlier but never opened it so it got exchanged when I picked up that set. I wish someone would release a good, comprehensive, box set of her films. The films that *are* available seem to be so scattershot and random. She's one of those stars for whom I'll watch films outside my normal/favorite genres just because of their presence.

I'm not much on musicals but the two films she did with Fred Astaire are among my favorite song and dance films. But then I could watch just about anything with Astaire in it as well so the pairing is pretty much perfect in my book. I think they're as good as, if not slightly better than, the Astaire/Rogers pairing.

TheBigDave

I'm doing an historic sports triple feature today:

Eddie the Eagle about the British ski jumper in the 1988 Olympics.
McFarland, USA about a 1987 high school cross country team.
Moneyball about the 2002 Oakland A's recruiting a new team.

All of them are first time views for me. I watched the first two earlier, and they both follow the usual underdog/feel-good sports movie storyline. Enjoyable and worth watching, but completely predictable. Moneyball is next. I've been looking forward to it.

BobO'Link

I watched the Starz original mini-series The Pillars of the Earth over the past few days. I must be missing something as I don't think it nearly as good as the IMDB rating (8.1) indicates. It felt, played, and looked like a typical low budget made-for-tv adaptation. No, I've not read the book, but it *has* to be better than the production. Don't get me wrong... it's not totally "bad" but just not all that good either. Ian McShane is gleefully over-the-top as a priest climbing his way to the top of the heap but everyone else feels rather amateurish in approach and/or dialog and even *his* dialog frequently suffers. Stuff just happens for no apparent reason - until several scenes, if not episodes, later. I was 4 episodes in before I'd decided who the "hero" of the story is only to find later I was totally mistaken. Even then, I truly didn't much care about most of the characters or what happened to them over the course of the series.

Ash Ketchum

I watched a movie on Encore Western today about conflict between the English and the French and Indians in the lead-up to the French-and-Indian War. It's WHEN THE REDSKINS RODE (1951) and it stars Jon Hall as Prince Hannoc of the Delaware tribe, which is trying to stay neutral despite English pleas for help. James Seay plays Colonel George Washington. Low-budget, but fast-paced and very entertaining. It uses footage from an earlier, bigger-budgeted production about another part of the war, NORTHWEST PASSAGE (1940), a Technicolor epic about Rogers' Rangers, which starred Spencer Tracy.

As I watched it, I got to wondering how many presidents were portrayed on film in their pre-presidential lives, like Washington in this one. Certainly YOUNG MR. LINCOLN and other films with Lincoln as a character in his lawyering days (ROCK ISLAND TRAIL is another one). WILSON (1944) is a biopic about Woodrow Wilson and starts well before he was president. Eisenhower is seen as a General planning D-Day in THE LONGEST DAY and is played by a remarkable lookalike, and John F. Kennedy is shown in his WWII service in PT 109. Interestingly, both of these films were made while these presidents were still alive.

Which brings up another question: how many other films portrayed living presidents as characters? Offhand, I can only think of one: THE PRIVATE FILES OF J. EDGAR HOOVER (1977), which had Nixon as a character. I'm not talking about news footage of the current president spliced into something, as has been done with Clinton, Bush and Obama. Nor do I mean cameo appearances by someone impersonating the current president, like the opening scene where George M. Cohan visits FDR in YANKEE DOODLE DANDY (1942), although that would make an interesting list, too. (Pat Buttram impersonates LBJ in a very quick and funny gag scene in SERGEANT DEADHEAD, 1965). But films where the president is an actual character, either before, during or after his term in office. Just curious.

Trevor

Speaking of Redskins, I think I'm going concentrate on sports this month. My Twins being so woeful this year has me watching my 1987 and 1991 World Series memories.

TheBigDave

Are you talking about movies like Oliver Stone's "W."?

Ash Ketchum

Yes. I had completely forgotten about that one. Thanks.

mrcellophane

The miniseries John Adams has pre-Presidential John Adams, John Quincey Adams, and Thomas Jefferson.

There's a new movie about young Barack and Michelle meeting called Southside with You. Also, Nixon nearly makes the list but it came out the year after Nixon died. They had to be in preproduction while he was alive. That's a movie I remember enjoying quite a bit. I may need to revisit it before the month is done. Bill Clinton is portrayed in The Special Relationship, a good made-for-TV movie about him and Tony Blair.

TheBigDave

What's the ruling on costume dramas? I was thinking of watching some period mysteries like Agatha Christie's Marple and Poirot that take place in the 1930's & 1940's.

HyperWeather

I pretty much hate all war movies, and I not only like but LOVE Band of Brothers and The Pacific and obsessively marathoned them.

Julian Fellows has a new show on amazon, Doctor Thorne, for anyone into Victorian England. Only four episodes, but the first two have been great so far.

Ash Ketchum

I watched a "Bonanza" episode from 1962 in which the Cartwrights help a small rancher dig a well for a new source of water. The rancher's wife is played by Majel Barrett. Another rancher afflicted by drought comes along and he's played by James Doohan. Four years later, these two would be co-starring on "Star Trek," with Barrett as Nurse Chapel and Doohan as Scotty. I love spotting casting connections like this.

The interesting thing about this Bonanza episode is the attention paid to the mechanics of digging a well and then devising a pump to bring the water up and the special equipment needed to make it happen. It turns out that the writer of this episode, Borden Chase, who wrote some of the great westerns of the 1940s and '50s (RED RIVER, WINCHESTER '73, BEND OF THE RIVER, THE FAR COUNTRY, VERA CRUZ, etc.), had a background as a "sandhog," i.e. workers who dug underground tunnels for subways and the like. So he used that specialized knowledge to craft this episode.

Trevor

I think those have always been fine, but I'm not fully awake.

Doc Moonlight

I thought of a few more:
1776 features John Adams and Thomas Jefferson
THE ROUGH RIDERS, Teddy Roosevelt
THE BUCCANEER (both versions) and THE IRON LADY, Andrew Jackson
SUNRISE AT CAMPOBELLO, FDR

Ash Ketchum

Good ones, thanks!

shadokitty

The series TURN: Washington's Spies has General Washington.

mrcellophane

I went to see Weiner with some friends, and we all heartily agree with you. It is fascinating! One of my friends interned with the EPA and another has volunteered for several political campaigns. Both said the film really captured the various types politics attracts.

JOE29

Looking forward to Friday when I have off of work. Planning on getting in a couple of long movies as this might be the only time that I have to do those longer movies. Looking to get in Kingdom of heaven and possibly The Good The Bad & the Ugly at least. That's what i'm working on for Friday.

shadokitty

I've been watching Victory at Sea the past couple days. I'm enjoying the show, and hope to get quite a few episodes done of the series before the month is over.

BobO'Link

My BR upgrade of Band of Brothers arrived today. With today being the 72nd anniversary of D-Day, I can't decide whether to start it or watch The Longest Day.

I've been making my way through a "War Movies 10-Pack" (The Battle of Britain / Bridge at Remagen / Beach Red / Force 10 from Navarone / The McKenzie Break / Paths of Glory / Secret Invasion '64 / Submarine X-1 / Attack! / Mission of The Shark: The Saga of the U.S.S. Indianapolis) I picked up almost 2 years ago. I purchased that set to get Paths of Glory and Submarine X-1 cheaper than purchasing the titles individually and thinking the others would be good "bonus" films (I paid just over $9 for the set). So far I've watched Bridge at Remagen, Beach Red, Force 10 from Navarone, and The McKenzie Break.

I've seen Bridge at Remagen and Force 10 from Navarone in the past and like both. I especially enjoy the scenes in Navarone after the charge has been set off inside the dam and Miller tells Weaver to "Just wait" after Weaver exclaims "Nothing happened! It didn't work!"

I was rather unimpressed with Beach Red, mainly due to the way the flashbacks were presented.

The McKenzie Break was interesting in that it's about *German* POWs who attempt a escape from a British POW camp in Scotland. While the Germans were "The Bad Guy" in WWII it makes you consider the other viewpoint even though the story is told mostly from the Allied viewpoint. As the German commander told Capt. Connor about one prisoner who was attempting to escape while the English were attempting to quell a riot of the prisoners "It's a prisoner's job to try and escape." The same thing that's beat into everyone's head in almost every film about Allied prisoners.

The absolute worst part about that set is the first 3 films have been flat WS transfers. Only The McKenzie Break has been a anamorphic transfer so far. That doesn't bode well for the rest of the films. I do know The Battle of Britain is anamorphic but I already own the remastered version of that one so it doesn't matter. At least the films *are* WS for those originally released that way but, even though I got it at a bargain price, it's somewhat a disappointment that they're not all anamorphic.

Doc Moonlight

[QUOTE=Doc Moonlight;12819298]I thought of a few more:

THE BUCCANEER (both versions) and THE IRON LADY, Andrew Jackson [QUOTE]

I meant THE PRESIDENT'S LADY (not THE IRON LADY). Sorry.

shadokitty

I just finished an interesting episode of Celebrity Legacies on Reelz. It was about Kurt Cobain, both his career, and the legal issues with his estate after his suicide.

BobO'Link

I opted for the first 3 episodes of Band of Brothers on BR yesterday.

Before considering replacing a DVD with the BR edition I usually break out the DVD for a quick viewing. Often I feel the DVD looks OK (if not excellent) and don't bother. To date I've not purchased (or at least gotten around to viewing) a BR upgrade that I felt was significantly better than the DVD. Band of Brothers changes that. I'd always thought the "graininess" of the DVD was intentional to make it look more like a documentary film of that era. Watching those first 3 episodes proves that to not be the case. It's the first BR I've seen that's a obvious visual upgrade over the DVD. It's simply spectacular.

pacaway

Hey, would something like Treme qualify? Fictional series about people coping in New Orleans in the wake of Katrina?

Trevor

Let's say no. That'd start a slippery slope....