Posted on 02/08/2006 7:32:44 PM PST by Bender2
Channel 4 brings you the results of the 100 Greatest War Films of all time, as voted for you.
1. Saving Private Ryan, 1998 The first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan is a visual assault, acclaimed as one of cinema's most accurate realisations of warfare. Capt John Miller (Tom Hanks) is among the US troops storming Omaha Beach on D-Day. Thereafter, you follow this everyman soldier on a humanitarian military mission to rescue the surviving brother of three soldiers killed in the same week. Spielberg crafts a shocking and moving illustration of the Second World War.
2. Apocalypse Now, 1979 Francis Ford Coppola's epic hallucination of the Vietnam War, in which Martin Sheen journeys through Vietnam and Cambodia to terminate a flipped-out renegade US colonel played by Marlon Brando. The shoot was notoriously troubled, but the result is a war movie unlike any other: a spectacular opera, a straightforward plot blown up by rampant imagination, and a deft comment on America's Vietnam folly.
(Excerpt) Read more at channel4.com ...
Yeah, but the scene when they get out of boot camp and one asks the other, "What's an 0300?"
I almost hurled a chunky river in the theater where I was watching the film...
LOL, and thanks. I scrolled down, saw how many responses you had gotten long before I piled on - and I cringed. Great reply!
Why you little maggot, I got your name, I got your number. You will not laugh, you will not cry, will learn by the numbers, I will teach you...
I find your candor refreshing, sir. I salute you! 
Ez! You little wuss, you've gone and got yourself a rabbi! I'd squash you like a bug... but... Noooooo! You've gone all brown nose on Old Blood & Guts! But just you wait, my pretty! I'll have the last 'Hooooo Awwwww' laugh!
R Lee? Ez? Give it rest! You two are horning in on my cotton candy and beer drinking time...
Well... I suggest you commit each and every post to memory... Cause there will be a test after PT! Now, drop and give me fifty, you piddly faced clown! I love it when #2 is in the can. I control the world while he's feeding the bottom feeders!
Midnight Clear was a good movie!
Did a little searching for you and found 17 used & new copies of Willi Heinrich "Crack of Doom" available from $0.89 at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0553149253/ref=sr_11_1/002-3824454-5944048?%5Fencoding=UTF8
They have a pic of the Cover and it rings a bell. Maybe I did read this years ago, but I cannot recall anything about it...
Hey, your post about Davey Crockett got me to thinking about Fess Parker. He was in several great war films: Davy Crockett at the Alamo (1954), Battle Cry (1955), The Great Locomotive Chase (1956) & Hell Is for Heroes (1962) and one of my all time Sci-Fi favorites, Them! (1954)...
Hey, Them! should be listed as a war film cause fighting those giant ants was sure heavy combat! Just ask James Whitmore...
Where's 'Gods & Generals'?
Also I recommend a Finnish film called 'Winter War'
Its in Finnish with English subtitles. It's a superbly acted grimly realistic film on the 'Russo-Fininsh War'.
A liked Troy but mainly because their was a lot of attention to historical detail in the costuming, settings, and the battle scenes were believable. However it irritated me that writer's were arrogant enough to think they could tell a better story then Homer. Also what is the Iliad without the Gods mucking about. I actually found (Am I really saying this !) Brad Pitt to be an acceptable Achilles.
Forgot all about the Great Locomotive Chase. The Little General and the other one.
I would like to see a thread about great war books. They never made a movie about one of my favorite books, "Thunderbolt" by Robert Johnson. About the P47 in WWII. Robert Johnson, a great American hero, died on my bithday, December 27, a few years ago.
Has anyone mentioned "The Guns of Navorone" yet?
SOOOOOOOOO odd you picked "Zulu"......one of my all time favorites (Michael Caine's very first film role, by the way). Incredible movie, incredible story.
i drop everything i am doing or am asigned to do by you know who, whenever it comes on. and fortunatly it comes on quite frequently. i really need to add it to my film library.
agree 100% with your about page.
spent time as air force medic in 3 diff bases in texas.
lackland of course
shepard and finally deyess (spelling is wrong but hey 35 years later and more bottles of cheap a** rot gut has dulled my motor and memory skills.
deyess being a SAC base it was way too cool to watch the big ones take off and land. them thar c5a galaxies took up the sky.
That was powerful, and a classic. Andrei Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood (Ivanovo detstvo, 1962) was another good one with a similar theme.
The popular classics were The Longest Day and The Battle of the Bulge. For a lot of kids growing up thirty years ago nothing else came close. Maybe Saving Private Ryan will be in the same category. Band of Brothers surely is.
Just noticed your name...
Say, did you ever marry Cyborg?
Here's a little about one of Johnson's most harrowing experiences from the web.
Before long, he nearly lost his life by obeying the order not to break formation. His plane blasted by the 20 mm cannon of a ME-109, he was blinded by hydraulic fluid and burned by a cockpit fire. The canopy on his spinning plane wouldn't budge. Miraculously, the fire went out while he desperately tried to smash through the canopy frame. As he decended lower, the increase in oxygen began to clear his head. He realized the plane was somehow still flying. Overcoming his panic, he steered for home.
Near the English Channel, another German fighter attacked him three times. Machine gun bullets pelted his armored seat and stitched the rugged P-47 that continued to fly. His ammunition exhausted, the German pilot gave Johnson a salute and turned for home convinced the big fighter would never make it back to Britain. But, the Thunderbolt never faltered.
After landing, mechanics and doctors inventoried the damage.
Pilot: burns, bullet-nicked nose, cannon shell fragments in both hands, and two machine gun wounds in the right thigh.
Verdict: return to flight duty soon.
Plane: 21 cannon shell holes, more than 100 machine gun holes, five holes in the propeller, three cannon shells burst behind armor plate less than an inch from Johnson's head. The lower half of the rudder is shot away.
Verdict: junk it; will never fly again.
From an interview with Rober Johnson:
MH: Pilots generally swear by their aircraft. Günther Rall and Erich Hartmann praised the Messerschmitt Bf-109, Erich Rudorffer and Johannes Steinhoff the Me-262, and Buddy Haydon the P-51 Mustang. I have to say after seeing all of the old photos of the various Thunderbolts and others that were shot up, I can't imagine any other plane absorbing that much damage and still flying. What is your opinion of your aircraft?
Johnson: This is very similar to the German debate. As far as the 109, all of the German pilots loved that plane, but the FW-190 was harder to shoot down. Just like the controversy over the P-51 and P-47. The P-47 was faster; it just did not have the climb and range the Mustang did. But it had speed, roll, dive and the necessary ruggedness that allowed it to do such a great job in the Ninth Air Force. As far as aerial kills go, we met and beat the best the Luftwaffe had when we first got there. It was the P-47 groups that pushed them back, as I said before. The P-51s had the advantage of longer range, and they were able to hit even the training schools, hitting boys just learning to fly. As the war dragged on, many of the old German veterans had been killed--so much of the experience was gone. As far as the 109 versus 190 argument, the 109 had the liquid-cooled engine whereas the 190 had an air-cooled radial engine, much like ours. One hit in the cooling system of a Messerschmitt and he was going down. Also, none of the German fighters were as rugged as a P-47. When I was badly shot up on June 26, 1943, I had twenty-one 20mm cannon shells in that airplane, and more than 200 7.92mm machine-gun bullets. One nicked my nose and another entered my right leg, where the bullet split in half. I still have those two little pieces, by the way; they went in just under the skin. I had been hurt worse playing football and boxing. However, I had never been that scared, I'll tell you that. I was always scared--that was what made me move quick. "Hub" Zemke liked the P-51 because it had great range, but he put one in a dive and when he pulled out he ripped the wings off that airplane--that was how he became a POW. Adolf Galland, who was a very good friend of mine and who I had known since 1949, flew the Me-262 and loved it, but he still swore by the 109, although it was still easier to shoot down.
June 11, 4pm
Thanks!
My favorite, "Screaming Eagles"
At least I haven't seen it listed yet.
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