Posted on 12/24/2017 5:49:44 AM PST by DIRTYSECRET
Unlike "Dunkirk" it was ALL acting. Coming off the Trump victory the timing of it's release is interesting. Too many not-so-subtile similarities. He's gruff, his own party abandons him, his family keeps him going and he has to deal with a bunch of wusses who are too cowardly to see what's going on. He's alone and he get's his inspiration from the common people he meets on the subway. Theater was pretty much filled-matinee. Upon leaving I observed that most everyone was older.
BTW FDR was useless. Chamberlain still thought they could negotiate for peace.
What are Gary Oldman’s political views, or does that matter?
He dumped Henry Wallace from his vp slot…
I forget who it was, but a Texas politician - maybe a senator - wanted it put on his headstone that he prevented the renomination of Henry Wallace for VP in 1944.To me the tragic figure of the era was Herbert Hoover, who turned a Recession into the Depression with high tax rates. FDR loudly condemned Hoover, for the rest of FDR’s life - but the reason the Great Depression was “great” was just that FDR did exactly the same sort of foolish economic policies that Herbert Hoover did. Hoover was anti-communist, but his policies led directly to the FDR pro-Soviet administration.
It is not too much to say to claim that FDR was pro-Soviet; his first foreign policy inititative was to recognize the USSR, which America had never done. And FDR’s closest advisor, Harry Hopkins, was every bit the socialist that Wallace was. And FDR’s naval strategy in the Atlantic prior to US entry into WWII got really aggressive towards the U-boats precisely when Hitler invaded the USSR in late June of 1941.
The reality of WWII was that the Germans would not have been defeated - at least not until the A-bomb - if not for the opposition of the USSR, their ally before that invasion.
As for the comparison with Churchill, don’t think Churchill didn’t make his mistakes as well, and with a far greater global impact and human toll. When Churchill formulated the plan force the Dardanelles at Gallipoli, they incurred over 300,000+ casualties. It was a major blunder and extremely poorly conceived and executed by ANY standard, even those of that time.
Don’t get me wrong. I view Churchill as one of the greatest leaders of the 20th Century, if not the greatest, and he remains for me right behind or just ahead of Ronald Reagan. Doesn’t mean he wasn’t flawed. Same with leaders such as Halsey, Patton, and MacArthur. (I see MacArthur as flawed, even more so)
While I don’t see GHWB as a great leader in that respect, I also give him credit for managing to hammer together a coalition to do the right thing in the Middle East (And yes, because we had at that time an even greater dependency on Middle Eastern oil than we do today, it was the right thing and in our own self-interest) and it was indeed executed brilliantly by any metric. We shouldn’t disparage the fact he was able to execute Gulf War I without having it spill over and spread.
That doesn’t happen by accident, even if the best thing President Bush did was to give the military a high degree of latitude.
I was a defender of both the Bush presidencies, because at each time, I thought the actions in the Middle East were correct. I find great fault with both of them domestically, and I carry no water for either of them now in light of their support of Hillary Clinton in the last election, which I find a gross abomination which renders both undeserving of any consideration.
But, IMO, facts are facts, and I appreciate the leadership both Bushes showed when they had to put it on the line, even as I am disgusted by both today, and particularly since the alternatives would have been “leaders” like Dukakis and Gore.
That is a great way to put it, I will go to the theater to see this one!
I saw it on Friday. Sadly, the theater was nearly empty. Maybe 20 people there for a prime time (7:30 PM) showing.
Oldman was outstanding as Churchill, but I thought the movie could have been better. It seemed to drag in spots, as is typical for a Biopic. Won’t be popular because lots of talking but not a lot of action. Other than Hitler, the villain was Lord Halifax, who was a British surrender monkey.
Oldman is a great actor and deserves the Oscar for this but won’t get it. Why? Because he portrayed Churchill.
“The elites are immoral or amoral, and have no intention of preserving Britain’s “Britishness” from the foreign hordes that they are still permitting to swarm their borders.”
So very, very true.
The current narrative that FDR was universally idolized is due to the leftist penchant for shaping history to suit their needs and views via the media and higher education, both of which are controlled, run, and populated by their acolytes.
There were many who despised and detested him, and for good reason as we recognize.
But I have to also admit he largely did a good job for getting the groundwork laid for getting this country on a war footing (from both an industrial perspective, and a political perspective) at a time when the majority of Americans were indeed isolationist.
And I also give him credit as a wartime leader, but not without recognizing mistakes which were made. It happens. We don’t want to fall into the liberal trap of throwing out the baby with the bathwater in that respect.
I am no fan of Roosevelt in any domestic area (even if I like some of the large projects like the Hoover Dam, etc...but for different reasons) but I give him his due as a wartime leader.
I like to define socialism, not as “government ownership of the means of production,” but more generally as cynicism towards society, and concomitant faith in, and naiveté towards, government. This is in contradistintion to the socialist’s cynical equating of society and government:SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.Cynicism towards society and naiveté towards government lead directly to the policies of communists, fascists, and socialists of any other stripe.Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one . . . - Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)
“There were plenty of funny moments so he musta been a character.”
He was.
He was born with a lisp and hated it. Every day he would stand in front of a mirror and recite poetry and parts of books. He would watch his lips in the mirror as he concentrated on precisely pronouncing each word.
It worked.
During his wartime trip to the US he was dictating a letter as he took his bath, his secretary was male.
Getting agitated he stood up in the tub.
As he was standing the door opened and FDR was wheeled into the room.
Completely naked and wet he didn’t miss a beat, “see Mr President, I have nothing to hide from you.”
Quick witted he was.
When he addressed congress he related how Hitler had said Germany would defeat England like “a man wringing a chickens neck.” His remark to congress was “some chicken! Some neck!”
He privately shared many of General Pattons views on Montgomery but put up with him because Monty was the only British general to have defeated an axis army.
When told that Monty forced a surrendered German General to have dinner with him Winston replied that he felt sorry for the German, “I too have had to endure a Montgomery dinner.”
An English writer once said it was impossible to write a bad book about Churchill because there was just too much material to work with.
Churchill is one of the few people in history to have had two official biographers.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
https://hollowverse.com/gary-oldman/
Oldman politics
Again, Oldman is very private. Probably, as a result, quite a bit of rumor surrounds Oldman’s political leanings–and all of it seems to say he’s a conservative Republican. Perhaps his views are in-line with conservative Republican ideology, but he can’t be a Republican. He’s British. He said:
I’m still a member of the Empire! Although I sometimes feel like an American with a British accent – you get contaminated after so long.
There’s a pretty good reason people think Oldman leans to the right. After the final cut of his film, The Contender, was released, Oldman objected because he felt it was edited to favor some sort of Democrat, liberal agenda. And his manager, Douglas Urbanski, called the final cut a “Goebbels-like piece of propaganda.”
But that’s about it. Oldman hasn’t come out to endorse any candidate or lent his opinion on any particular issues.
Highly recommended for everyone to see even though it has left the theaters and is not as impressive on the small screen. Christopher Nolan is one of the finest directors working today. I've thoroughly enjoyed all of his movies except for Interstellar which was a bit too SJW and preposterous as far as the science goes.
Churchill delivered several notable ‘zingers’ to Lady Astor during their decades long repartee. “... we’re just haggling over the price...” was the sharpest.
Thank you for that info.
“The man went from the disaster of Gallipoli directly to trenches of Europe in WW1 to atone...”
That was one of the things that truly impressed me.
Being sacked after Gallipoli he could have fallen back on his family name and wealth and been little the worse for it.
Instead he enlisted in the army and went to the front.
Between that and fighting in the Boer war Winston Churchill was definitely a man of action.
My parents — God rest their souls —had no good things to say about FDR.
Chamberlain was a left wing moron... his “Peace In our Time” announcement of his treaty with Germany just days before they invaded Poland should have ended left wing lunacy for anyone with half a brain.
But England tossed Chamberlain aside once he won the war.
The decline of the British Empire soon followed.
The Soviets and their admirers like to say just that, often to say they shed the blood we didn't have to.
True as far as it goes, but in quality and quantity of blood shed, two things should be kept in mind:
FIrst, the Soviet Union fought the war far differently than we would have. We in the USA would never have fought it as they did, because we view the value of life differently than they do, and would not have made our troops fight it at the points our own guns, as they did. Their sacrifice of so many men was often done brutally and callously.
Secondly, they were fighting for very existence of their own country. We never were, at any time, ever, even if at the time, it seemed that way to many. We did not have our necks and native soil on the chopping block as they did.
When I hear the Soviets and Russians making this point about how they made all the human sacrifice to winning the war, it reminds me somewhat of the person who murders his parents and then asks the judge for leniency because he is an orphan.
History has it’s own criteria for legacies, deciding who was great, who was so so and who was just terrible. Being so and so does not invite a comparison to somebody that was great, somebody truly tested.
Just dwell a bit on these quotes from these American Presidents that come to my mind when I first think of them.
Kennedy: “Ask not what .... “
Nixon: “I am not a crook” (despite it being a bit inexact).
Reagan: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall”.
George H Bush: “Read my lips, no new taxes”
Bill Clinton: “I did not have sex with that women, Ms Lewinski”
George HW Bush: “Strategery” and less comic “No nation building”.
Obama: “You didn’t build that”
Donald Trump: — his best is yet to come.
Is there any bad language? Mrs. JohnnyP can’t take it, especially G.D., J.C, etc.
Churchill was not involved in the execution of the plans at the Dardanelles. The British drew short straws in the on the spot leadership in both the Naval and Military departments. De Robeck and Ian Hamilton were both remarkably good at missing opportunities.
And there is the matter of extreme bad luck, which haunted the Naval assault especially.
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