Posted on 05/17/2018 8:36:19 AM PDT by Oldpuppymax
Talkin' 'bout their generation...
Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan got a lot of good press when it came out, for its tribute to those who fought and died to save our western civilization from the German Nazis. It also garnered praise for its powerful and graphic depiction of what it was probably like (Hollywood influences notwithstanding) to have made that deadly but vital beach landing on June 6, 1944.
This is the perfect time of year, approaching America's annual Memorial Day celebration and the anniversary of the Normandy invasion, for Paramount to reissue a 20th Anniversary edition of Spielberg's film with an absolutely spectacular conversion to 4K disc with HDR – a UHD treatment that's a very pleasant surprise, indeed.
It's a pretty good movie, too, though it would have been better if they'd forgotten the "saving mission" aspect of it and just continued to document Tom Hanks' group as they fought inland after establishing their beach hold. That opening (actually the second sequence after a bit of a narrative hook) is probably the best look at the horrors – and heroes – of war that I've seen, an unforgettable bit of movie making that puts those men's sacrifices into perspective for those who've never had to endure what my father's generation did in order to make the world safe for us.
On the other hand, documenting the fighting from the beach and inland was done already in Darryl F. Zanuck's "The Longest Day," the 1962 masterpiece that looks at the big (as in "really huge!") picture surrounding Operation Overlord, the invasion of the European mainland. That black-and-white movie starts the night before Spielberg's film and portrays the beach landing in context – as one vital part of a multifaceted operation.
As a baby boomer whose father's Halifax bomber crew...
(Excerpt) Read more at thecoachsteam.com ...
About six month’s elapsed time from June 6, 1944 to 16 December 1944. Ten day quibble???
Agreed. It did a great service by introducing the Greatest Generation to a lot of kids who had very little knowledge of what happened then.
I remember speaking to my 10 year old nephew who saw it, and he said “Those things never happened” when talking about the beach scenes. I reminded him that not only did they happen (or things similar) far worse happened that would never find their way onto a movie screen.
When they gave the Oscar for best movie to “Shakespeare In Love” that was the last Oscar ceremony I ever watched.
The movie had it’s faults, but I don’t think the casting of Tom Hanks was one of them. And Hanks did give us “Band of Brothers” which was very well done, IMO.
There is a lot to fault Tom Hanks for, but he gets a pass on those from me. (That said, I don’t watch his new movies any more)
China Marines era from 1925, up until 1941. Marines posted in Nicaragua in the 1930’s. The military of the 1940’s expanded greatly; but, formed around a core of career oriented men in military service during the lull 1918-1941.
I didn’t explain that well. The way I interpreted what he said was, the enlisted he was with were not required to fight at the battle of the bulge, he was. But I have read at least some did.
I have an uncle who was there at Omaha beach, first wave and if you can get him to talk about it, it’s powerful. He talks about going by the battleship USS Texas in pretty close dueling with Nazi shore batteries and her firing a broadside as his landing craft was passing by astern. As a kid I was looking at a US Navy History book and he saw it and it was on the picture of the Texas and he said let me see that, I know that ship, I went by her on June 6th.
He will start talking and get to a point and then tell of a mortar or artillery shell hitting. He said he watched several guys who were there one second, then boom and nothing, they were just gone. He gets broken up at these points and has to regain his composer.
He was at the Huertgen Forrest and was shipped to the Ardennes to recover from a bad case of trench foot only to have to deal with the Battle of the Bulge.
Another uncle was in third army and a anti-aircraft gunner. He was also one who talked little about the war until up in the 1980’s. He said he carried an M1 Carbine and never fired it in anger, but said haltingly, I can’t say that about the AA gun. He told me one day an ME-109 was diving on his column and he engaged it and was hammering away and it started smoking and about that time two P-38’s roared through the clouds and cut loose on the 109 taking his kill. His transport was torpedoed in training exercise before D-Day and he managed to survive and eventually get placed in third army. He liberated a concentration camp and told me don’t ever let any leftist tell you those camps were not real and that the Jews were not slaughtered, I saw it, it happened.
Good God. Talk about a tough draw of a hand. DDay...Huertgen Forest (underappreciated for the meat grinder that it was) and The Battle of The Bulge.
You would think that one would be enough, but that wasn’t the way things happened.
I was reading about the Chosin Reservoir in Korea where the Marines were fighting in temperatures around -40 below zero. There were a good number of those same Marines who had been fighting five years before on Peleliu where the temperatures had been between 110 and 120 degrees.
Just wow...I am sure they were asking “What the Hell did I do to deserve this?”
If your regular viewing is through component video, I'm not really sure your TV / display supports 4k (3840x2160). Just sayin-
No it doesn’t. 1080p max.
The difference between component and 1080p is barely noticeable. Then again my monitor 9 feet away.
Of the main characters I think that Captain Miller was the least important.My favorites were Pvt Jackson and Sgt Horvath...but I really liked Carparzo,Riben,Mellish and Doc as well.Wasn't crazy about Upham.
There are lots of films I'd like to see in 4K...Private Ryan being one of them.
my point is that there was a whole lot of fighting in many battles in between d-day and battle of the bulge ... making it seem quite unlikely that anybody went straight from one to the next
“A deal deal!”
Three Shermans can give you quite an edge.
Used to chat with him at air shows. Very amiable. (plane nerd: one P-51 pilot laughed and told me I knew more about the Mustang than he did.)
Battleground.
Especially if one of ‘em is a Firefly (Brit 6 Pounder). But those three were the 76.2. Still an improvement on the 75 though.
How was he going to get away with having a Tiger I at the end?
Maybe he’s a Republican.
You're a classic FR nutbag......Hanks is no more a transvestite than you are...........Since I'm certain about Hanks, that leaves you up for question.........Sheesh!
Put a piece of pipe and the krauts will think it’s a 90mm.
The Tiger is one thing. How about those German trucks loaded with gold?
Even if the idiot captain could be conned for months while guys disappeared for enough time in cycles to hide and process the gold for distribution, that’s a lot of labor.
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