Posted on 05/28/2023 2:36:44 PM PDT by Rummyfan
It's fun and easy to make fun of Hollywood's creative bankruptcy these days, and its reliance on remakes and reboots and retellings of stories it's told many times before. There are, however, some stories worth remaking; Roland Emmerich's recent Midway (2019) was as strident and bombastic as anything made by Michael Bay, but at least it put the 1976 film of the same name, a star-studded but tedious Sensurround epic, deep in the shadows where it belongs.
Like sci-fi, war films are the major beneficiaries of the digital effects revolution. Some taste and restraint are needed, of course, though they're often in short supply; Russia in particular has recently produced dozens of war films (White Tiger, T-34, Tankers, Stalingrad, The Pilot), usually with scripts of a much lower priority to the filmmakers than increasingly outlandish and improbable visual effects – tank shells in Russian pictures travel in slow motion, the camera trailing and spinning around them as they create outsized damage with impossible accuracy.
But when I see the quality and technical sophistication of films like Dunkirk (2017) and 1917 (2019), I can't help but hope that someday someone will take another shot at the story of the Bismarck, the leviathan German battleship that was the most feared ship on the ocean during the early days of World War 2, albeit only for the eight days of her first and only voyage. There is, of course, a perfectly serviceable film about the Bismarck available on streaming services and disc, but to modern eyes it looks like a relic from the days of model boats filmed in swimming pools.
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
The Iowa class are worth saving as our last and longest serving battleships, but their WWII service was short.
Missouri provided carrier escort and shore bombardment. Her main claim to fame is she was chosen for the end of war document signing.
She had an interesting post WWII history, including what may have been the first combat anti-ship missile shootdown. Missouri was the target of an Iraqi Silkworm missile that was shot down by HMS Gloucester, during Desert Storm.
“Pride goeth before a fall”
And on that note I am looking forward to the eventual movie about how the war in Ukraine put a final end to the last vestiges of the Soviet Union.
We visited the USS North Carolina in Wilmington a couple of weeks ago. IIRC, that was the only one of the “modern” battleships that was torpedoed in WWII.
USS North Carolina (BB55)
Torpedo Damage
Solomon Islands
15 September 1942
Damaged on my 10th birthday. .
….
I have a question about Das Boot, I noticed that when they showed the Flags in the movies, you never see the Swastika, I wonder if that was because German Law forbade it.
Great print of that movie. Bernard Lee (M) was in it.
North Carolina was on the receiving end of the most effective torpedo spread in history. The aircraft carrier Wasp and a destroyer were sunk. North Carolina was damaged, and put out of the war during the period Washington and South Dakota saw the most action.
I must have seen that movie close to a dozen times, but I never noticed that! I’ll keep an eye on that next time.
Pretty sure though, that there are “legitimate use” exceptions for film or theater productions. It’s just the general public that is strictly forbidden from displaying such symbols and insignia...sounds like something Nazis would legislate, eh?
I’ve read a good bit about the Solomons Campaign. For several months, it wasn’t a sure thing that the US and allies would prevail.
So many ships were sunk in waters between Savo and Gualdalcanal Islands that the area was named Ironbottom Sound.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironbottom_Sound
Took a quick look at the legal situation...prohibited when used in any form to “promote or trivialize” Nazi ideology...allowed in contemporary films, computer games, and the like, as well as in reserarch, journalism, etc. where needed to present factual circumstances (e.g., hard to present the Reichsparteitag without a few Swastika flags around).
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