Strange, socialblade is showing 37 million views in April. But kedoo shows 21.

That is an odd discrepancy. I wonder how they estimate this data.

ah I see, thanks. For some reason I thought the later movies would be more like self-contained stories like the first.

Kurtz's ideas for RotJ sound better than what we got :/

Watched the Soviet film 'Come and See'. It's ostensibly about the Dirlewanger Brigade 'anti-partisan' activities in Belarus in 1943. It's a strange film at times, but for those who know what those words mean, you already know it's a film which will punch you in the gut. Extremely haunting and unforgettable. Everything about it is the antithesis of American hero WWII films.

Everyone who larps Nazi stuff in games or otherwise thinks Nazis are "cool" should be strapped to a chair like A Clockwork Orange and forced to watch that film. I can't say I recommend it, because nothing about it is fun to see.

Also, for those unaware, Mosfilm uploaded pretty much all Soviet films, professionally restored, to Youtube. Helps of course if you can read a little Russian.

If you can watch some of the best WWII films made for free, why not? Seems like a great deal to me.

Han never died, ok? Not in Ep 6, not in Ep 7. Never.

What the **** is an Ep 7

Exactly

Remember how nerds argued Han Solo exhibited "character growth" because he kind of acted like a father for one scene then died?

Of course not, that never happened.

The more I've had time to process it, the more I think Come and See is the utter antithesis of Hollywood WWII films, in a way that's necessary. Saving Private Ryan epitomizes the American memory of WWII: it's an action flick. You see all sorts of Hollywood special effects, blood pops out and dozens of soldiers are mowed down by the gunfire. Despite this, it's exciting when the Nazis die. The American soldiers are remembered in their death. People take time to remember their mothers. When they die, they die honorably. They have time to rationalize their role in the war and make sense of what's happening. Come and See, in stark contrast, is a horror flick. There is no time for remembrance. Death is not even portrayed directly once in the film, it's 100% off screen, but it couldn't make you feel more sick. There is nothing remotely exciting about it. Almost nobody has a name anymore. There is no room for rationalizing what's happening or remembering the dead for the lead character, there is only the actions he must take to survive. It represents how Slavic people remember WWII: senseless brutality, exercised far too quickly for there to be any kind of logic. All that remains is a feeling of pure outrage and hatred for what's been done.

I'd possibly recommend a watch to anyone, but be ready for a strange and very heavy experience. It won't be pleasant but it will stick with you.

This film, The Ascent in English (hearkening the ascent of Christ), is also a fantastic film and I suggest if you have the time to watch it. It's emotionally heavy but not nearly so direct horrifying as Come and See. It's also about Slavic partisans during WWII.

Watched Paths of Glory. Very good war film, loosely based on real circumstances. Not alot special technically, just a good story.

Watched Stalingrad, the 1993 version. Was okay. Some parts worked on a movie level and most of the effects were up to par with Hollywood stuff, but it attempts far too hard to paint the standard Wehrmacht soldier as clean relative to the few dirty party members. The combat is pretty unrealistic and the different scenes feel only loosely connected. All in all, in that position I'd want to scrub the past of mein Opa too, but you're not really fooling people as to how your soldiers really acted. Russian war films are generally better, Das Boot is really the only flawless German WWII film I can think of.

I plan to watch the Soviet version of War and Peace soon, but that's gonna take like 8 hours so ehh.

I liked The Thin Red Line.

I think a lot of movies (even before SPR) have been made that treat war as something that one merely survives (if one does at all), where individuals are subjected to capricious forces over which they have no control and which are indifferent to human life, rather than a context that creates an opportunity for war.

Paths of Glory is amazing. I saw it a year or two ago and remember recommending it to RJ. I think of it more as an existentialist movie that happens to have war in it than a war movie.

If you’re on a war movie bender, you could try this Israeli movie called Lebanon. I’ve heard that it’s somewhat derivative (Das Boot in a tank is what I’ve heard, although I’ve yet to see Das Boot), but it’s still very evocative. Visceral... captures all of the textures and sensations of war very vividly.

Seems good. I plan on watching The Human Condition, partly to get myself into watching older Japanese films. It's always interesting to see films about opposing sides in the war.



Yeah, it does seem to have some existentialist themes to it. Now that I think of it, many of the plot elements are similar to The Stranger. Though in some sense it's less about war and more about the politics of an army.



Added to the list, and yes I am on such a bender.

Eversor: If you thought Paths of Glory was a good testament to the horrors of war, wait till you see They Shall Not Grow Old.

Oh, I did see it! It was really good. I liked at the end when they showed the Brits holding those German prisoners of war, and they’ve got two Brits carrying a wounded German on a stretcher as the war is ending, and another British soldier passes him and says, “we’ll get ya next time, Jerry.” Loved the gallows humor, and also the friendliness and civility, in the midst of all that war.

I think it’s got a lot of elements of 1950s existentialism (I also have in mind Yehuda Amichai’s poetry, which is from that period and definitely has a lot of thematic similarity to Sartre and the French existentialists, probably because it was directly influenced by them). Yeah I mean I think it’s fundamentally about individuals coming to terms with the finality of their own deaths as their deaths are imminent, and how the finality of death makes all distinctions of national difference or class or whatever else dissolve, as do too all the affectations of civilization.

Yeah... that was certainly touching. My bigger takeaway was probably closer to the reaction people had to the Holocaust (i.e., the futility and senselessness of the slaughter). I'm not Jewish, so I guess I never got that message growing up. Although one interesting difference here pointed out by the movie was the bit at the end, where the soldiers went back to civilian life and people treated them like nothing had even happened.

What I meant by this: until I saw this movie, I was never really exposed to images of rotting corpses of teenagers from World War I.

Just FYI, the audio in that film is all ADR'd, none of it is original because that doesn't exist.

I figured it was inferred from lip reading and therefore only so accurate

I liked how much they focused on the British experience of the war. It was an exploration of the country's national character; all of the understatement, the irony, stiff upper lip and all that.

I watched Hot Fuzz yesterday, for the first time ever. It was incredibly good. The plot gets comically ridiculous, which it's meant to, but I was taken aback by how deftly and intelligently it was written despite all the hilariously preposterous turns. It's a prime example of employing the Chekhov's gun principle: every element laid out is used at some point in the plot. And that's not done forcedly, but organically and satisfyingly. Honestly one of the best comedy movies I've ever seen.

Agreed on all counts. Hot Fuzz is really a masterpiece. My favorite of the Cornetto trilogy for sure.

Watching The Human Condition. In this, the lead character is kind of a left-wing pro labor guy, sent to Manchuria to manage labor camps where he strongly protests the treatment of Chinese workers.

Seeing this, along with Stalingrad, made me kind of realize something. Films made by the axis powers seem more likely to feature these kinds of hypersaint characters. They seem to function more as "societal foils". Typically you have the new guy who needs things to be explained as a way to leak exposition to the audience. These films have a morally uncorrupt man to leak the relative moral depravity to the audience. So they actually make sense narratively.

Agreed. That said, I wonder if the chief police inspector at the beginning of the movie (in London) knew about the whole situation with the town since he knew how to "make people disappear." But most likely it was just a humorous choice of words.

I saw a YouTube video of an Orson Welles appearance on the Dick Cavett Show in the 1970s. He talked about having met some historical figures including Hitler, it was pretty interesting.

That popped up for me as well. Haven't looked at it yet though. Also, the below video has some content that reminded me of what Jon was saying his wife thought about the fight scene in TLJ as it's discussed from a stunt perspective. Now, I've learned not to take many fight scenes serious in TV or film because virtually all of them are crap from a real world perspective but it is interesting to see what a veteran stuntman thinks about the scene.

Some people seem to really like that scene, I have no idea why.

I know what you mean. I thought it was garish at first and although I wasn't watching it with a critical eye I knew it felt really bad but the scene was quick paced enough that I couldn't have mentioned all of the reasons that I now know exactly why it's so bad. That scene to me is like pretty much all of TPM. It just get's worse each time I see it.

At least the timing of the choreography in TPM works, they move very fluidly. It's just what they're choreographing is kind of silly.

I'll give TLJ credit because, when I first watched that scene I was excited that maybe Star Wars would be interesting once they join sides. Then they subverted my expectations that there'd be an interesting plot point. At least it's not TFA tier bad, though. Anyway yeah the choreography is bad and you can tell they're trying hard to cover up the mistakes of the more amateur Daisy and Adam.

Apparently this "Sith Trooper" will be in Rise of Skywalker.

What do we think of that?!?

Looks like a Spartan.

Looks pretty cool to me, actually. For some reason I'm actually kind of optimistic about the next film. Cautiously optimistic but optimistic none the less.

Looks like Disney hired Crytek to reimagine a 1963 corvette.

say it with me

*clap clap*

MO

*clap clap*

IRE

what's that name?

MOIRE

*cheers*

Corvette Summer was a great film.