[BallyBill]

Maybe they can have alternate endings for different foreign markets. In Germany we can have the Nazis take Iwo Jima and the victorious Japanese can save Berlin. It can star John Belushi.

[Prost1]

All those face lifts seemed to haved squeezed the common sense out of his head.

[GretchenM]

This is interesting, from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0498380/

"Red Sun, Black Sand" (2006)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Language: Japanese

[fightu4it]

Sensitiveeeeee

[HereInTheHeartland]

"e suffering of both sides during 36 days of fighting"

I really don't care about the suffering on the other side.
As I have said before, I wish we would have had nukes to incinerate them in their bunkers to save our guys from all they went through.
Nan king and Bataan tells all we need to know of the other side.

Please tell that Clint isn't going soft.

[gunnyg]

http://carol_fus.tripod.com/marines_hero_ray_jacobs.html

The Straight Scoop--ask someone who was there!

ray1jacobs@msn.com

[F.J. Mitchell]

Eastwood has turned into a taller slimmer but not a damn bit brighter, Michael Moore.

[epow]

A very close friend who I worked with for years spent almost the entire war in Japanese POW camps. He was captured on Bataan before the Coregidor surrender so he missed the death march. He was a strapping 6-footer when he was captured, but he weighed 85 lbs and was almost dead when he was liberated in 1945. His back was a mass of scar tissue where Japanese guards had ground out cigarette butts on his bare back while he worked the coal mines on Hokkaido(sp?) Island. If a POW made a noise or looked up when he was burned he got a rifle butt in his face and usually a broken jaw which many men died from. They were fed two golf-ball size rice balls twice a day splashed with a watery fish sauce and a weak cup of unsweetened tea, and they had to work 12-16 hours 7 days a week in the mines on that food. Winters on that northern island were brutally cold and snowy, and the men slept on rough boards laid on dirt in open air sheds with very little or no bedding or blankets. A large but unknown number of American and British POWs died of exposure and cold in those coal mine camps durng the course of that awful war, unknown because the camps didn't keep records of what they died from.

I could go on for pages retelling the horror stories he told me about his time in those camps, but suffice it to say that he was one of 18 survivors out of a group of almost 300 American soldiers who were captured at the same place and time he was. He never forgave the Japanese for their inhuman treatment of him and his buddies, most of whom didn't make it to liberation. He would not ride in a Japanese car, buy or use any Japanese-made product, or eat rice in any form. Not long after he returned home and recuperated somewhat, he had to be forcibly restrained by his companions in a San Francisco restaurant when a Japanese-American sat down at a nearby table. He was trying to get to the man with a steak knife when they stopped him.

I can't imagine the suffering that men like my friend experienced in those camps. He died in the late 1960s much younger than he should have, I believe due at least in part to the physical abuse, diseases, and severe malnutrition his body absorbed in those camps. As a born again Christian I have to believe that I could forgive that kind of abuse for Christ's sake, but unfortunately for him he couldn't. But I will say one thing that may not be as Christ-like as I should be. I am not particularly interested in hearing or seeing an American film actor who never faced a brutal, depraved, inhuman enemy like the WWII Japanese sympathize with the hardships of Japanese military personnel on Iwo Jima or anywhere else. They made their bed when they attacked an unsuspecting nation by surprise and murdered helpless POWs in wholesale lots, let them lie on it.

[bannie]

Screw 'em. You attack us, and we fight back. We hope that, when we do, you will die instead of us.

You start it: We hope to finish it.

Shut up, and take what you started.

[DocRock]

" it focuses on the six US soldiers captured in AP photographer Joe Rosenthal's iconic and controversial photograph, as they raised the Stars and Stripes at the summit of Mt Suribachi."

Click the Pic

[virgil]

The Japanese got exactly what they asked for. We should have no regrets. It was them or us.

[PzLdr]

Respect the Japanese Army? American POWs in NAZI hands had a 4% mortality rate. The rate for POWs of the Japanese was TEN times as high.

The Japanese raped and murdered women in China and the Phillipe's. The used U.S, Chinese and other prisoners for vivisection and medical experiments. They deliberately released plague infested fleas, and other biological pathogens in China and Manchuria.

The Japanese Army beheaded civilians and prisoners of war. They murdered prisoners of war and captured Allied servicemen, on the battlefield.

If Eastwood wants to idealize the animal courage and stupidity of a Banzai charge, that's his business, but spare me the "good guy" crap.

And, oh yeah, if the Japanese can catch a bye because"it's rooted in their culture, history, etc [bushido, shinto, emperor worship], why can't the Germans [obedience to orders, draconian discipline, militarism, Fuhrer worship]?

[DesScorp]

Once again, Hollywood proves to be a cesspool.

[kabar]

On a recent trip to Japan, Eastwood said his time on Iwo Jima had forced him to re-evaluate the one-dimensional portrayal of America's former enemy in so many war films. 'There were good guys on one side. Life isn't like that,' he said.

He describes Red Sun, shot in Japanese and with a largely Japanese cast, as his attempt to understand the country's soldiers. 'I think those soldiers deserve a certain amount of respect,' he said. 'I feel terrible for both sides in that war and in all wars. A lot of innocent people get sacrificed. It's not about winning or losing, but mostly about the interrupted lives of young people. These men deserve to be seen, and heard from.'

That's why it is called show business. Everyone is a victim. No right or wrong. No guilty--just innocents sacrificed needlessly. I wonder if Clint will make a similar film about the Nazis.

[danmar]

The 75-year-old director has promised Flags Of Our Fathers and Red Sun, Black Sand will attempt to show for the first time the suffering of both sides during 36 days of fighting in early 1945 that turned the island into a flattened wasteland.

Why don't we wait for the movie, when it comes out!
Then we can judge if the movie lived up to the hype and pass judgments when due!

[sushiman]

Eastwood was just over here in Japan promoting the film . I saw him on TV . He's not out to be historically accurate ; he is out to make millions . If the film were to portray the Japanese to be evil the Japanese wouldn't go see it and HE would lost his arse over here . Heck - even the flick Pearl Harbor was butchered so that Japanese wouldn't be too offended . It pisses me off , but Hollywood doesn't give a rat's arse about anything but moola and PC .

[navyblue]

Justin needs to give credit where it's due!

It was not six soldiers that raised the flag on Iwo Jima. It was five Marines and one Sailor!

[DTogo]

While Eastwood promises to avoid the jingoism of John Wayne's 1949 film Sands of Iwo Jima, the first of his two films, Flags Of Our Fathers, promises to be more palatable to American audiences.

What a load of crap! Jingoism? Gee, it was only made 4 years after the war ended for crying out loud.

Just as it was for Watanabe. 'As we went through this film, we realised that until now we haven't really looked at Japan's past. We kind of looked away from it,' he said. 'But we have to look at it and accept the fact that this is what our fathers and grandfathers have done. Accepting the reality is the first step.'

Ken seems to get it, maybe.

Japan * ping * (kono risuto ni hairitai ka detai wo shirasete kudasai : let me know if you want on or off this list)

[LibWhacker]

Another Hollywood campaign to present even the most inhumane of America's enemies as just a bunch of sympathetic "good guys," just regular Joes caught up in a bad situation that was totally beyond their control. Why, they wouldn't have hurt a fly left to their own devices. Of course, these regular Joes chopped babies in half in Nanking and at times it seemed they raped, murdered and tortured nearly everyone they could lay their hands on in Asia and the South Pacific.

*Sigh*... All Eastwood's movie is going to accomplish is to somehow rekindle Japan's pride in its military past and lend support to its already strong sense of victimization. But that's intentional and always the plan in good old Hollywood: Give aid and comfort to our past and present enemies and tear down America as much as possible.

[Caipirabob]

Ol' Clint's gone "Brokeback" on us. "Sensitive" WWII story? What a fairy...