Posted on 04/28/2020 10:17:25 AM PDT by Captain Peter Blood
This past week I have been re-watching Herman Wouk's masterpieces, "The Winds of War", and "War and Remembrance".
In my opinion two of the finest TV miniseries ever made and timeless.
I have always been fascinated with W.W. II history and consider that era in many ways the High Point of this countries history. An era that will never be again.
A time when all America came together to fight a war that had to be fought. I contrast that time to today when we make politics out of everything including today's Virus Crisis.
For those of you interested you can find both available on YouTube, no commercials.
Episode three of WAR is a Midwau movie all by itself.
For more, read Strauss & Howe's book, "The Fourth Turning." There are even some free PDFs around, but the Kindle version is cheap.
IIRC the US air assault on the Japanese fleet was an uncoordinated and confused affair with at least one flight of planes never even locating the Japanese fleet.
It was pure luck that all of the Zeros were down low shooting at incoming American torpedo planes when the dive bombers arrived overhead with a clear shot at Japan’s carriers.
And the dive bombers caught those carriers in the middle of rearming so their decks were littered with bombs and torpedos and planes refueling. When American bombs hit them they turned into infernos. All of the pieces fell into place for the last wave of American attackers. The Pacific war changed dramatically in about 5 minutes time.
Churchill - last deployment, I read his 6 volume WWII set.. Damn, he was a good writer...(For you dipwaxs who think how can you read 6 volumes? I worked 13+ hours a day , read for an hour/hour and a half before sleeping)..
There’s a series on PBS now called “World on Fire” which came across to me almost as a Brit-centric version of “War and Remembrance”.
But I was put off by the gay sub-plot, although I did like the scenes that were based in Poland.
(And the young actress in it, was in the great Polish movie “Warsaw 44” which is on Amazon Prime Video)
I started to watch and checked the reviews and most were bad so I opted out and did not watch it.
Also "Space"
Very underrated writer.
Yeah, I pretty much checked out of it, too.
Everything has to be PC now, even WWII.
Yes Gunther Maria Halmer was great as Hoess. I think Wouk (who also approved the screenplay) with his painstaking research, captured Hoess perfectly. I also thought Topol was great as Berel Jastrow. I believed Meisner made a much better Hitler than Berkoff. Berkoff played an over the top Hitler and was not believable in most of his scenes.
Same here, 7th grade, there was an exerpt called ‘Herbie’s Ride’, got me interested in reading the book, still one of my favorites.
Yes, I agree Berkoff may have been the worst Hitler I’d ever seen portrayed. Meisner was much better, not quite as good as the late Bruno Ganz in Downfall, but not bad.
And if the very end of War and Remembrance doesn’t make you bawl your eyes out, you aren’t human.
The other good actor was the one who played Blobel, especially when he describes in detail what happened at Babi Yar, and his disgust at the people viewing the executions while eating ice cream.
I found it majectic when I first read it.
But I found that the books were mired in their time and spoke, not like stories of the 40s and war,
but like stories of the forties told through the eyes of the sixties and sixties values.
The books didnt hold up for me.
Yes, great watches ..I adimit I binge watched the enire series.
Oh yes she was much better....I understand the other actors had a really hard time acting with Ali as she wouldn’t remember her lines let alone lacked even basic acting skils.
Ali darn near ruined the movie in general....were it not for the other actors picking up the slack. I guess they all were pretty disgusted with her throughout.
Ali darn near ruined the movie in general....were it not for the other actors picking up the slack. I guess they all were pretty disgusted with her throughout.
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