What have you watched recently?

[Rocketboy]

1408 & The Shawshank Redemption - both the story and movie are pretty faithful adaptions from what I remember. 1408 was just ok and Shawshank was great.
Never read The Mist, but I really liked the movie. Which reminds me that I still need to watch the black & white version.

I watched Terminator: Salvation last night and I also watched both Family Guy Star Wars episodes. Salvation was quite good and really made up for how sucky T3 was. I loved the Family Guy episodes.

I really like Terminator Salvation also. T3 felt really generic to me. like to much of a quick cash grab.

I just finished (500) Days of Summer. Really good movie about relationships that doesn't fall into the typical pitfalls. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is quickly becoming of my favorite actors.

[Mr. JabbaJohnL]

Interesting that I know someone here posted a video using that song as well, and YouTube took it down for copyright infringement. Does someone have to report infringement? Not that I'm going to do so; just curious how YouTube decides which videos using a particular piece of music to take down.

I think it varies from case to case, but whenever I've had an issue with it, the music was taken down (the whole soundtrack is muted, actually) immediately after I posted the video (during the "processing," uh, process). I thought it was due to me mentioning the song in the video info, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Oddly, when I posted the bloopers for the Vince thing, I put in Solsbury Hill and it was fine. It might have something to do with how much background noise there is, to cover up and/or muddle the music so it doesn't get recognized right away. Also, with my most recent film, the music was again muted due to a WMG copyright claim; I uploaded five or six different videos with the normal sounds and then just one song per video, in the normal place it was in the original video, and none of them were taken down even after several days (I've since deleted them myself). I wanted to figure out which song was causing the trouble, but now I have no idea. Maybe it varies from time to time. Weird stuff all around.

Anyway, I watched Observe and Report today and liked it. It was definitely similar to Taxi Driver, but obviously more of a comedy - albeit a strange, fairly dark comedy.

[Tycho]

I watched Battle of the Bulge. This is a great and true WWII story and a 2 hour and 50 minute movie. That being said, there's a lot of action and a great story. Be prepared for nearly the first HOUR to be kind of slow and boring though. But if you're paying attention during this time, the movie pays off big time! Gather intelligence so you are ready for the big strike!

This is rapid tank warfare under heavy fog and snow, when the Allies couldn't fly recon sorties because the skies were too cloudy to see anything.

Anyway, I really like and recommend this one.

[jonthejedi]

Another one I have to see at some point(isn't Robert Shaw a German tank cdmr?) I'm going to watch The Caine Mutiny this week on HDNet.

[Tycho]

Another one I have to see at some point(isn't Robert Shaw a German tank cdmr?)

Yes. He plays Colonel Hessler in Battle of the Bulge. ( I don't think he was a general -but possibly).

Hessler might be a ficticious character for the movie (not sure) but he serves under Rommel who was not present for this battle.

Excellent movie! Like I said, almost the first hour is slow - but pay attention to the details and it really pays off when the action starts!

In the special features, I learned that the real German tank commander (who may have been acquitted or released after time-served for war crimes) was the special military advisor for this movie, helping to recreate the Battle of Bastogne exactly the way it happened - and it was filmed on location.

[Ji'dai]

When astronauts of the first lunar landing discover the British flag and a parchment claiming the satellite for Queen Victoria on the surface, the government and the press track down one of the names on the paper - leading them to an old man who explains how he, his fiancee, and a scientist went to the moon and ran afoul of the sentient race there in the 1964 science fiction film First Men in the Moon. This movie was based on the H.G. Wells story and features special effects by Ray Harryhausen, who served as associate producer.

A brilliant surgeon working to perfect transplantation techniques saves his fiancee’s head from a burning car crash and must find another woman with a hot body to attach it to in the tawdry 1959 horror movie The Brain That Wouldn’t Die.

[jonthejedi]

I love anything by Harryhausen...got to meet him some years back in Philly at an exhibit. Also a George Pal fan...my wife got me 7 Faces of Dr. Lao DVD for X-mas, to add to my growing collection which includes Time Machine(my fav), War of the Worlds(we just lost Gene Barry), When Worlds Collide & Destination Moon. Need The Power & Atlantis The Lost Continent(not on DVD in this region). Not too keen on Pal's handling of Doc Savage The Man of Bronze.

[OC47150]

The Eagle Has Landed is an enjoyable film. Donald Sutherland steals the show as an Irish expatriate with no love for the British who aids the Germans in their plot of kidnap Churchill. I can watch The Dirty Dozen again and again. A Bridge Too Far is fine once in a blue moon.

I'm not a big fan of Clint Eastwood's Kelly's Heroes. I just watched Where Eagles Dare, which is a much better film with Eastwood, although it's really a vehicle for Richard Burton. I know I've seen Where Eagles Dare before, but have forgotten it over the years. It was like watching it again for the first time.

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When it comes to WWII movies, I typically enjoy stories about the main combatants or "our" troops but I sometimes like to see things from another perspective, so I watched this French film yesterday afternoon. I think it was on Independent Film Channel (IFC) -

Africans from French colonies and elsewhere are recruited by the Free French government-in-exile under Charles de Gaulle to help liberate the mother country from German occupation but face constant discrimination from their French comrades and endure unfair treatment from their superiors and government (even decades later) in the watchable 2006 French war movie Days of Glory.

In the late 1950s, due to so many former French colonies being in open rebellion fighting for independence, the French government cut the pensions of WWII veterans from those former colonies. They were reinstated in the early 2000s, but payments were put off again. Since that generation is becoming fewer in number anyway, it's doubtful there will be any veterans left to claim their pension anyway.

I like Kelly's Heroes. I remember the first time I saw KH; it was New Year's Eve 1983. After all the NYE programs were off, the movie came on. Sutherland steals that movie, too. But Carroll O'Conner is good at the general. I read an interview with Clint Eastwood once that stated the movie that was shot and what the studio released were two different pieces. The studio version was more comedic.

You should give Guns of Navarone a watch, Ji'dai. It's one of my and mom's favorites. We just watched it last night.

Mom and I have our guy movies: Navarone, Where Eagles Dare and the Great Escape. Can't get any better than that.

Days of Glory is good. One of those little known chapters in WWII history.

And Robert Shaw was Colonel Hessler in BotB, Tycho.

[jonthejedi]

The Great Escape is a classic, no question. For a slightly different take on the usual WWII squad story...try to get your hands on A Midnight Clear & the extended version of Big Red One(still Mark Hamill's best performance & a fantastic Lee Marvin as The Sergeant...this is director Sam Fuller's recollection).

[Tycho]

I watched George C. Scott as Patton!

This is an awesome movie. The man is larger than life. The movie is his true story.

No, I don't like his arrogance and his presumptiveness - that he knows better than all his superiors, every time. And he took action on no one's authority but is own. I think he barely respected General Isenhauer by the thinnest margins, and he stopped liking General Bradley as a friend when Bradley was promoted over Patton.

Now the only reason the Army didn't cash him out, is because the Germans really feared Patton and General Rommel respected Patton the most amongst American officers. (Of course Patton's insubordination would never have been tolerated in the German Army - Rommel seemed to follow Hitler's commands quite obediently.)

But I love the story of the General who stood out in the middle of the street during a German fighter's strafing run and fired at it with a handgun.

No, Patton was a piece of work.

This is a great movie that follows his few years of service during World War II.