Foreign Movie Review: A WAR (2015) AAA

Danish; subtitles

A powerful and painful movie about the REAL war that soldiers have to face when stationed in places such as Afghanistan.  This movie is NOT for the faint of heart. Moreover the cinematography, acting and direction are first class . . . plus.  This was Denmark's nomination for an Academy Award.

A Danish Company commander Claus M. Pedersen and his men are stationed in an Afghan province. Meanwhile back in Denmark Claus' wife is frightened and trying to hold everyday life together with a husband at war and three children missing their father. During a routine mission, the soldiers are caught in heavy crossfire and in order to save his men, Claus makes a decision that has grave consequences for him - and his family back home.

Other Reviews:

A War is a realistic drama about a Danish commander in Afghanistan, his unit, and his family back home, focusing on several key decisions that the commander must make, both in Afghanistan and back home in Denmark. Using naturalistic lighting, unobtrusive straight cuts, and a mix of stationary camera and hand-held, A War examines the moral complexities of asymmetric warfare and military justice. There are no easy answers, but there are spectacular natural performances from all of its cast. The sum total of these parts is an engrossing and seamless minimalistic movie, and another success from Tobias Lindholm. The Oscar nomination for A War is well-merited.

This is a very intense film that captures the utter fear of war and the awful situations that modern warfare can land people up in. It shows this from all sides. The acting is just superb and the direction from Tobias Lindholm ('The Hunt') is very accomplished.  This is a film that had me on the edge of my seat, the time flew by and as such I can agree with all the plaudits and easily recommend this as a great one to see.

NEPTUNE'S INFERNO The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal By James Hornfischer AA

Book Review: NEPTUNE'S INFERNO: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal By James Hornfischer  AA

If you are a reader of history books about WWII . . . THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU.  I listened to the CD version which was available from my local library.

It opened my eyes to an understanding of the war in the Pacific.  Up until the time I read this book I believed that The Battle of Midway Island was the turning point in the Pacific War against Japan.  The actual "end of the beginning" was at Guadalcanal . . . and in and around "Iron Bottom Sound".

These most extensive sea battles between Japan and the US were fought during the fall and early winter of 1942 in the waters next to the Island.  Essentially the results of the battle was a draw, but it stopped the advance of the Japanese in the southwest Pacific.  These naval battles and the Marines holding on to Guadalcanal were the "Stalingrad" of the Pacific War . . . and took place at the same time the Russians were stopping Hitler and The British were stopping the advance of Rommel in Egypt.

From The Wall Street Journal:

Near a Small Island, a Gigantic Naval Clash

By

RONALD SPECTOR

Updated Jan. 22, 2011 12:01 a.m. ET

The Guadalcanal campaign was the first Allied offensive of the Pacific War, following closely on the U.S. naval victory at Midway in June 1942. The American seizure, in August, of this small outpost in the Solomon Islands of the southwest Pacific developed into a bloody and protracted campaign that only ended with the Japanese withdrawal of their sick and starving soldiers from the island six months later. It was a defeat from which Japan never really recovered and one routinely celebrated by American popular culture.

Yet to many of those who viewed, say, HBO's recent series the "Pacific," it may come as a surprise that the campaign for Guadalcanal involved the U.S. Navy as well as the Marines. (It also involved two divisions of the U.S. Army and air forces from Australia and New Zealand.) Guadalcanal was in fact a gigantic naval campaign, involving not just the land battles for control of the island but seven major naval actions and numerous raids, skirmishes, bombardments and landings fought by fleets that were roughly equal in size and striking power.

James Hornfischer's "Neptune's Inferno" contributes a great deal toward balancing the picture. The Japanese and American troops on the island could only be re-supplied, reinforced or evacuated by sea, and the peculiar geography of the southern Solomons ensured that the opposing naval forces met early and often. While the fighting ashore was intense, the U.S. Navy lost three sailors for every Marine or soldier killed on Guadalcanal. The Japanese and Americans each lost two dozen major warships and more than 400 planes.

Enlarge Image

The USS Wasp after being struck by torpedoes off Guadalcanal.

Neptune's Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal

By James Hornfischer

Bantam, 516 pages, $30

Though there have been no shortage of books about this campaign, "Neptune's Inferno" is the first since Samuel Eliot Morison's "The Struggle for Guadalcanal" (1949) to attempt a complete account of the naval operations during the protracted contest for the island. Mr. Hornfischer is the author of two earlier books on the war in the Pacific—including a deservedly praised account of the Battle off Samar during the 1944 Leyte campaign, "Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors" (2004). "Nepturne's Inferno" is a far more ambitious effort yet remains extremely readable, comprehensive and thoroughly researched in all available English language sources, including some firsthand accounts and oral histories that have not been used before.

Though an American victory, the Guadalcanal campaign began and ended with blunders and recriminations. Only two days after the initial landings, Adm. Frank Jack Fletcher, who commanded the aircraft carriers covering the operation, withdrew his ships from the area, leaving the amphibious task force and the Marines without air cover. The next night a Japanese cruiser force under Rear Adm. Mikawa Gunichi surprised the Allied cruisers and destroyers guarding the transports and sank three U.S. cruisers and one Australian. It was in some respects a worse defeat than Pearl Harbor, since the Hawaiian naval station had been attacked unexpectedly during peacetime whereas the American fleet at Guadalcanal was in the midst of a combat operation and anticipating a Japanese reaction.

Then, on Nov. 30, 1942, near the conclusion of the campaign, an American task force of five cruisers and six destroyers, caught a greatly inferior force of Japanese destroyers attempting to deliver supplies off Tassafaronga. The Japanese recovered quickly, sinking one American cruiser and badly damaging three others. Japanese losses were one destroyer. All in all, the Japanese—who had long trained for night fighting and possessed a powerful torpedo with great range—more often than not had the upper hand in the naval battles around Guadalcanal. In every encounter Americans had the considerable advantage of radar but failed to use it properly. Without tactical superiority, what ensured American success in the campaign was the tenacity and luck with which the U.S. military thwarted all Japanese attempts, by sea and land, to capture Guadalcanal's only airfield.

Mr. Hornfischer's focus in "Neptune's Inferno" is the interplay of character and personality with technology and military doctrine. The result is both analytical and entertaining, showing how some men thrive and some fail in the strain of war and how the U.S. Navy "navigated a steeply canted learning curve" in mastering surface warfare. Occasionally the descriptive language goes a bit over the top—as when the author explains that certain types of true warriors had "brains in circuit with the matrix in space where vectors flew toward other vectors and the results of battle followed from the nature of their interactions."

Regardless of whether their brains were in circuit with the matrix, Mr. Hornfischer's approach to the leaders and warriors at Guadalcanal is insightful and judicious. In his discussion of Adm. Fletcher's decision to withdraw his carriers, he shows how an unnecessary and disastrous move in retrospect could be seen at the time as a prudent step. Fletcher commanded the only three U.S. carriers in the Pacific. No new ones would be available for a year. He knew that he would have to fight at least one more Midway-type carrier battle with the Japanese over Guadalcanal. The Marines might have a hard fight, but if the carriers were lost, the war would be lost. In the end what one takes away from Mr. Hornfischer's vivid and engaging account is a feeling for the uncertainty, complexity and extreme physical and psychological demands of war at sea in 1942.

—Mr. Spector is a professor of history and international relations at George Washington University. His most recent book is "In the Ruins of Empire: The Japanese Surrender and the Battle for Postwar Asia" (Random House).

The Great Courses*: MR. LINCOLN: THE LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN (AA)

by Professor Allen C. Guelzo

This DVD set is a super- sensational review of the life and trials of Abraham Lincoln.  The  teacher is great and the content fast moving.  If you are interested it is course No. 8561

COURSE DESCRIPTION

John Locke Scripps, who had convinced Lincoln to write his first campaign autobiography, asserted that the 16th president had become "the Great American Man—the grand central figure in American (perhaps the World's) History." Historians still find it hard to 

quibble with this opinion of Lincoln's place in the story of America. Lincoln was the central figure in the nation's greatest crisis, the Civil War. His achievements in office make as good a case as any that he was the greatest president in U.S. history.

What made Lincoln great? What was it about him that struck those who knew him? This course explores those questions with the help of an authority who, in his own words, has "spent many years trying to get to know this man from afar," and in doing so has become one of the country's most distinguished Lincoln scholars and an award-winning author for his books about Lincoln.

Professor Allen C. Guelzo will lead you on "a great adventure," a tour of Lincoln's life, from his forebears' arrival in America through an evaluation of how his legacy lives on for us today. You will come to know Lincoln through the eyes of those who knew, lived with, and worked with him.

For Lincoln buffs and those simply wishing to know him much better, this course opens a compelling view into his thinking and career.

In addition to asking what it was like to know Lincoln, Professor Guelzo explores three themes:

• What ideas were at the core of his understanding of American politics?
• Why did he oppose slavery, and what propelled him, in the 1850s, into the open opposition to slavery that led to his election to the presidency in 1860?
• What particular gifts equipped Lincoln to lead the nation through the "fiery trial" of the Civil War?

Lincoln as Man and President

"Just think of such a sucker as me as President."

—Abraham Lincoln, commenting to a newspaper editor on his presidential chances

With Professor Guelzo, you will explore Lincoln's pre-presidential life for clues to his most significant personality traits. You will find a man who possessed perhaps the most complex inner life of any American public figure. You will meet a Lincoln who:

• Was an unusual combination of both introvert and extrovert.
• Never joined a church, professed no formal religion, and was even known to have been critical of Christianity before he entered politics. Yet he may have been more moral, ethical, and "Christian" than any other U.S. president.
• Held a profoundly fatalistic view of life, rooted in the Calvinist teaching of his youth, that human will was essentially nothing, and everything was predestined by an immensely powerful God.

However, Lincoln was anything but passive in life. Largely self-taught, he was a quietly confident man who, regardless of the task—learning to be a surveyor, a lawyer, or President of the United States—"went at it with good earnest."

This aspect of the course will enable you to connect Lincoln the man with Lincoln the president. How was it that someone with limited prior political experience and no administrative background, who was considered homely, unsophisticated, and self-deprecating, could have achieved such monumental success as the nation's chief executive?

In fact, as you will see, "folksy" Abraham Lincoln was about nothing if not ambition: his own personal burning ambition ("a little engine that knew no rest," his law partner described it) and his firm conviction that the unfettered opportunity to fulfill one's ambitions—"that every man can make himself"—was what made America great.

A House Divided

"A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free... It will become all one thing, or all the other."

—acceptance speech as 1858 Republican nominee for U.S. Senate from Illinois

Professor Guelzo does a remarkable job of shedding light on Lincoln's relationship to the issue that defined his presidency and place in history: slavery.

You will trace the circumstances that spurred Lincoln, in the 1850s, to join the Republican Party and take the stand on slavery that won him prominence as a national politician. These events include the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision, and Lincoln's famous debates with Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas.

As part of this discussion, Professor Guelzo covers an aspect of Lincoln's opposition to slavery that is not always emphasized: his pro-business, free-market philosophy. As a Whig Party member of the Illinois legislature, Lincoln had favored projects—the creation of a state bank, sale of public lands, transportation improvements—that promoted business and economic development.

In the 1850s, political and economic trends made it clear that slavery, far from slowly dying out as the Founding Fathers had anticipated, was poised to expand to new U.S. states and territories. This alarmed Lincoln, who viewed an expanding supply of inexpensive slave labor as a dire threat to the survival of the free market.

"The Work We Are In"

"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan."

—Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address

Lincoln transformed himself from an insecure manager into a confident and competent chief executive. "The old man sits here and wields like a backwoods Jupiter the bolts of war and the machinery of government with a hand equally steady and firm," marveled Lincoln's young secretary, John Hay.

You will consider Lincoln's skill in directing not only the war against the Confederacy, but in dealing with difficult members of his own federal government, including General George McClellan, Secretary of State William Seward, and Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase—each of whom thought he could run the government better than Lincoln—and Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney, who tried to issue legal decisions to cripple Lincoln's war effort.

Among the most memorable parts of this course are those in which Professor Guelzo examines Lincoln's nearly unrivaled powers as a writer and communicator. Only Thomas Jefferson spoke and wrote as eloquently and persuasively about American democracy as Lincoln.

The "Great American Man"

"We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

—Conclusion to the Gettysburg Address

This course is an absorbing opportunity to increase your knowledge of a man whose words and life embodied the nature of democracy.

Abraham Lincoln understood and envisioned the U.S. as a nation of self-governing equals who were wise enough to be guided not just by self-interest or popular enthusiasm, but by an abiding sense of right and wrong. Ultimately, he gave that nation, in his words, "a new birth of freedom."

* The Great Courses are available at http://www.thegreatcourses.com/

ANDERSONVILLE (1996) B

The civil war was gory and brutal. Medical care almost nonexistent, disease, such as malaria and dysentery rampant in the field. The best guess today is that almost 750,00 men lost their lives. Just imagine how many others were traumatized for life.

To top off all of this civil war horror, this film depicts a compound in Andersonville, Georgia where Union troops were held prisoner. No clean water. no sanitation, no protection from the weather, no medical care, little food and little chance of escape. HORROR AND HELL ON EARTH. Commanded by a confederate officer by the name of Wirz . . . who had the capability to make it better for all. This movie is not for everyone because it shows hell . . . and shows it . . . and shows it. 

 A very important movie/miniseries but has no redeeming value except showing what man can do to other men and showing the compassion a disciple some men showed under there unbelievable hardship. Essentially Adersonville prison was a Nazi concentration camp without the ovens and without barracks. In 1864–5, more than 45,000 Union soldiers were imprisoned in Andersonville. 12,912 died there. When the War ended, Captain Henry Wirz, the prison’s commandant, was arrested and charged with conspiring with high Confederate officials to “impair and injure the health and destroy the lives . . .of Federal prisoners” and “murder in violation of the laws of war.”

 Such a conspiracy never previously existed, but public anger and indignation throughout the North over the conditions at Andersonville demanded action. Tried and found guilty by a military tribunal, Wirz was hanged in Washington, D.C., on November 10, 1865. Wirz was the only person executed for war crimes during the Civil War. 

 A prisoner described his entry into the prison camp: "As we entered the place, a spectacle met our eyes that almost froze our blood with horror, and made our hearts fail within us. Before us were forms that had once been active and erect;—stalwart men, now nothing but mere walking skeletons, covered with filth and vermin. Many of our men, in the heat and intensity of their feeling, exclaimed with earnestness. "Can this be hell?" "God protect us!" and all thought that He alone could bring them out alive from so terrible a place. 
In the center of the whole was a swamp, occupying about three or four acres of the narrowed limits, and a part of this marshy place had been used by the prisoners as a sink, and excrement covered the ground, the scent arising from which was suffocating. The ground allotted to our ninety was near the edge of this plague-spot, and how we were to live through the warm summer weather in the midst of such fearful surroundings, was more than we cared to think of just then."

WAR OF THE CENTURY (1999) AAA (For educational purposes)

THIS IS A VERY DIFFICULT DOCUMENTARY TO WATCH!!
THIS IS NOT ENTERTAINMENT

This series of disks, produced by the BBC, describes the worst side . . . the ugliest, the most hideous side of human behavior. After viewing this material it is very, very easy to believe that the human race is destined in the not too distant future, to destroy a good portion of people who live on this planet.

(From NETLIX)
More than 30 million people were killed in the conflict in Eastern Europe during World War II; the battle between Nazism and Stalinism is examined in this four-part series filmed in Germany, Hungary, Poland, Russia, the Ukraine and Belorussia. Leading historians, eyewitness accounts and rare film archives help chronicle the battle for Moscow, from Hitler's early plans to the Red Army's 1942 victory and the final, brutal days of the conflict.

This superb documentary focuses exclusively on the German-Soviet theatre of World War II, and amply supports its thesis that this "eastern front" deserves consideration not only a war in and of itself, but the most momentous war of the 20th century.

The documentary is separated into four hour-long episodes. "High Hopes" tells the story of the German invasion of Russia in 1941, and how shows how the Blitzkrieg was just as effective over Russia's vast open spaces as it had been in the West - the Wehrmacht covered 600 miles and captured 3 million enemy troops.

"Spiral of Terror" tells the story of what happened in 1941-42 as the German advance slowed - how across Germany's new occupied territories, a brutal guerrilla war personally fueled by both Hitler and Stalin led to near-anarchy and endless civilian suffering.

"Learning to Win" focuses on the Battle of Stalingrad and how the Russians adopted Germany's blitz tactics to encircle and destroy the German 6th Army, thus turning the tide of the war. Finally,

"Vengeance" tells the story of what happened across Eastern Europe as the Nazis were pushed back: the Germans' scorched-earth withdrawals and Stalin's purges led to ethnic cleansing on a scale never before seen.

Book Review: TO END ALL WARS: A STORY OF LOYALTY AND REBELLION,1914 -1918 (2011) (AA)

by Adam Hochschild

This is a very special (MUST READ) book that talks about just some of the lunacy that went into the fighting of the World War I.  ( I heard it from the CD's that I borrowed from the local library). It takes place during the end of the monarchy era in Europe.  In fact, it helped end that era.  It aso discusses, in detail, the social upheaval that was taking place in England at that time.  Downton Abby just gives you the light side of that struggle.

From Other Reviewers:  

WWI was supposed to be the “war to end all wars.” Over four long years, nations around the globe were sucked into the tempest, and millions of men died on the battlefields. To this day, the war stands as one of history’s most senseless spasms of carnage, defying rational explanation.

To End All Wars focuses on the long-ignored moral drama of the war’s critics, alongside its generals and heroes. Many of these dissenters were thrown in jail for their opposition to the war, from a future Nobel Prize winner to an editor behind bars who distributed a clandestine newspaper on toilet paper. These critics were sometimes intimately connected to their enemy hawks: one of Britain’s most prominent women pacifist campaigners had a brother who was commander in chief on the Western Front. Two well-known sisters split so bitterly over the war that they ended up publishing newspapers that attacked each other.

As Adam Hochschild brings the Great War to life as never before, he forces us to confront the big questions: Why did so many nations get so swept up in the violence? Why couldn’t cooler heads prevail? And can we ever avoid repeating history?

"This is the kind of investigatory history Hochschild pulls off like no one else . . . Hochschild is a master at chronicling how prevailing cultural opinion is formed and, less frequently, how it's challenged." — Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air

"Hochschild brings fresh drama to the story and explores it in provocative ways . . . Exemplary in all respects." — Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post

"Superb . . . Brilliantly written and reads like a novel . . . [Hochschild] gives us yet another absorbing chronicle of the redeeming power of protest." — Minneapolis Star Tribune

Docudrama: PATH TO WAR (2002) AA+

Super excellent HBO Special of how President Johnson wandered into the Vietnam War and the pain that he went through during his decision making processes. If you are interested in History, DO NOT miss this movie!!

It clearly showed the flawed and conflicting advice he received from his advisers, (which changed over time).  What it doesn't included is how our entry into that debacle changed the history and the path of United States foreign and domestic policy.  The story unfolds as almost a Shakespearean tragedy, with Johnson as a modern-day Macbeth, Richard III, and King Lear rolled into one. 

We entered this unwinable war against a people who had been successfully fighting foes since Genghis Khan invaded in the 12th century . . . just at the same time Johnson was creating and passing "The Great Society" bills through Congress . . . which included Medicare and Medicaid.

Others' Comments: John Frankenheimer's searing and insightful film tells the inside story of how "the best and the brightest" advisors in the Lyndon Johnson  administration counseled him in the decisions that led to America's deeper engagement in Vietnam. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara is portrayed by Alec Baldwin and Golden Globe-winning Donald Sutherland plays special advisor Clark Clifford. Inspired by author Robert A. Caro's massive biography of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, the made-for-cable Path To War retraces the world-shaking events occurring between LBJ's jubilant inaugural in 1965 and his tired, dispirited decision not to seek another presidential term in 1968. At the crux of these tumultuous three years is the war in Vietnam, which forces Johnson  to shunt his proposed "Great Society" to the back burner. Though famous in political circles as a wrangler and compromiser, LBJ cannot seem to do anything right in pursuing the war; nor are his chief advisors, the hawkish Robert McNamara and the dove-ish Clark Clifford, able to forge a permanent policy agreement. As Clifford warns Johnson that "escalation will ruin you, and all the great good you want to do," McNamara presses for a continuation of the war lest America lose face and Vietnam fall to the Communists. 

HURT LOCKER (2009) B

This is an excellent movie about soldiers in the Iraq War. Very graphic . . . as war movies should be. Only reinforces my belief that all of the "political warriors" should be forced to fight on the front lines. Be sure, we would have never gotten into that situation . . . if our born again alcoholic Georgie Bush and his merry men, including Chaney, Rumsfeld, Thomas Friedman (yes, he supported the war to bring modernity to the middle east) . . . and my favorite PhD's, Paul Wolfowitz and Condoleezza Rice . . . had to eat shrapnel and bullets in 105 degree heat.

Saddam and his nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. Let's not allow the hawks in Israel get us into another police action in IRAN.

Unfortunately, the movie was more of a documentary than a fictional drama. That's why the B+ instead of an A.

From Netflix: In the summer of 2004, Sergeant J.T. Sanborn and Specialist Owen Eldridge of Bravo Company are at the volatile center of the war;  part of a small counterforce specifically trained to handle the homemade bombs, or Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), that account for more than half of American hostile deaths and have killed thousands of Iraqis. 

A high-pressure, high-stakes assignment, the job leaves no room for mistakes, as they learn when they lose their team leader on a mission. When Staff Sergeant William James takes over the team, Sanborn and Eldridge are shocked by what seems like his reckless disregard for military protocol and basic safety measures. 

And yet, in the fog of war, appearances are never reliable for long. Is James really a swaggering cowboy who lives for peak experiences and the moments when the margin of error is zero - or is he a consummate professional who has honed his esoteric craft to high-wire precision? As the fiery chaos of Baghdad swirls around them, the men struggle to understand and contain their new leader long enough for them to make it home. They have only 38 days left in their tour of Iraq, but with each new mission comes another deadly encounter.

Foreign Movie Review: TWO LIVES (2012) A

Another movie about the effects of WWII on the innocents.  Definitely watchable but not memorable.

From Netflix: 

It's Europe 1990, the Berlin wall has just crumbled: Katrine, raised in East Germany, but now living in Norway for the last 20 years, is a "war child"; the result of a love relationship between a Norwegian woman and a German occupation soldier during World War II and the horror of her deportation to Germany (by the Germans) as an infant.

She enjoys a happy family life with her mother, her husband, daughter and granddaughter. But when a lawyer asks her and her mother to become a witness in a trial against the Norwegian state on behalf of the war children, she resists. Gradually, a web of concealment's and secrets are unveiled.

TV Series: THE AMERICANS: Season 1 (2012) AAA

This first series (season) of "The Americans" follows Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, two KGB spies who pose as an American married couple living in 1980s Washington, D.C. One of the best spy stories I have ever seen.  Great character development, fast moving and interesting and complex plots.

From Wikipedia:

The Americans was created by Joe Weisberg, a former CIA officer. Despite its spy setting, Weisberg sought out to tell the story about a marriage."The Americans is at its core a marriage story. International relations is just an allegory for the human relations. Sometimes, when you’re struggling in your marriage or with your kid, it feels like life or death. For Philip and Elizabeth, it often is." Executive producer Joel Fields described the series as working different levels of reality: the fictional world of the marriage between Philip and Elizabeth, and the real world involving the characters' experiences during the Cold War.

"The most interesting thing I observed during my time at the CIA was the family life of agents who served abroad with kids and spouses. The reality is that mostly they’re just people going about their lives. The job is one element, and trying to depict the issues they face just seemed like something that, if we could bring it to television in a realistic way, would be new."

—Joe Weisberg, creator and showrunner of The Americans

Working at the CIA, which Weisberg later described as a mistake, has helped him develop several storylines in the series, basing some plot lines on real-life stories, and integrating several things he learned in his training, such as dead drops and communication protocols. Weisberg was fascinated by stories he had heard from agents who served abroad as spies, while raising their families. He was interested in bringing that concept to television, with the idea of a family of spies, rather than just one person. Weisberg also said how the CIA inadvertently gave him the idea for creating a series around spies, explaining, "While I was taking the polygraph exam to get in, they asked the question, 'Are you joining the CIA in order to gain experience about the intelligence community so that you can write about it later -- which had never occurred to me. I was totally joining the CIA because I wanted to be a spy. But the second they asked that question…then I thought, 'Now I'm going to fail the test.'

Weisberg was partially influenced by the events of the Illegals Program to write a pilot script for the series. His research material included notes on the KGB's Cold War left by Vasili Mitrokhin and conversations with some of his former colleagues at the CIA. He stated that, unlike the circumstances involving the 2010 Russian spy ring, he had opted to set the story in the early 1980s because "a modern day [setting] didn't seem like a good idea", adding, "People were both shocked and simultaneously shrugged at the [2010] scandal because it didn't seem like we were really enemies with Russia anymore. An obvious way to remedy that for television was to stick it back in the Cold War. At first, the '70s appealed to me just because I loved the hair and the music. But can you think of a better time than the '80s with Ronald Reagan yelling about the evil empire?"

CASABLANCA (1942) A

I am not a fan of (classic) movies because of my early experiences in the children's section of movie theaters. Many of the "classic" dramas I watched at that time were unbelievably and painfully boring. Watching Casablanca may change me.

Back to 1942, when I was nine years old, the comedies and action adventure movies were not boring. Abbot and Costello, Frankenstein and all the rest (except Bob Hope) were wonderful. However, one drama did stand out because of the profound effect it had on my thinking. " I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932)". was a gritty, uncompromising, critical look at the unjust and barbaric treatment of criminals in southern state's prison system following World War I. The harsh and grim film was one of the first of Warner Bros.' films of social conscience, reform and protest during the early 30s (at the height of the Depression-era). 

 But again, a couple of years ago I was turned away from the "classics" after viewing a snippet of the Chain Gang movie on TV. I found the story still good but the acting, direction, cinematography and music, horrid.

But Casablanca is different. The acting, especially by Claude Rains, was great. It moved fast and the story (considering the time it was written) wonderful. However, It was a little heavy handed and predictable, especially after 65 years. The camera shots of Ingrid Bergman, Humphrey Bogart being "bogey', good guys vs bad guys, lovers separated by war . . . a tear jerking selling point in 1942. I'm crying even as I write this review. Even the music was somewhat integrated with the plot . . . "you must remember this, a kiss is still a kiss". *(see below)

Casablanca won the Oscar for the best movie but was not popular immediately after release. The director of the movie was Michael Curtiz. Curtiz was a Hungarian Jewish emigre; he had come to the U.S. in the 1920s, but some of his family were refugees from Nazi Europe. Other movies by Curtiz include:

Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) with James Cagney and Walter Huston
Mildred Pierce (1945) with Joan Crawford and Ann Blyth
Night and Day (1946) with Cary Grant as Cole Porter
The Breaking Point (1950) with John Garfield and Patricia Neal
I'll See You in My Dreams (1951), a biopic of composer and lyricist Gus Kahn, with Doris Day and Danny Thomas
White Christmas (1954) with Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney
The Egyptian (1954) with Jean Simmons, Victor Mature and Gene Tierney
We're No Angels (1955) with Humphrey Bogart and Peter Ustinov
King Creole (1958) with Elvis Presley and Walter Matthau
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1960) with Eddie Hodges, Tony Randall and Patty McCormick
The Comancheros (1961) with John Wayne and Stuart Whitman



* "As Time Goes By" is a song written by Herman Hupfeld for the 1931 Broadway musical, Everybody's Welcome. In the original show it was sung by Frances Williams. It was recorded that year by several artists, including Rudy Vallee.
The song was re-introduced in 1942 in the film Casablanca, sung by Dooley Wilson. Wilson never released a single of the song because of a musicians' strike at the time of the film's release — but a re-issue of Rudy Vallee's 1931 recording became a major seller in 1942.

Movie Review: CHURCHILL (2017) B

I view this movie as a totally unrealistic depiction of Winston Churchill in the days leading up to D-Day . . . June 6, 1944, when allied forces stormed the beaches in Normandy, France during WWII.  It is well known that Churchill wanted to continue to attack on more sites on the Mediterranean but was overruled by the United States who felt the attack through France was the quickest way to get to Germany and end the war.

Churchill was fully in charge of allied military operations prior to the United States entering the war in December 1941.  He was obviously frustrated because he had lost the power to dictate military operations. But the movie shows that this loss totally devastated him.

The movie shows Churchill almost catatonic because he felt that our attack was the wrong strategy . . . even though British forces were fully involved. The movie attempts to show that he was also was fearful of repeating his deadly mistakes during World War I, in the Battle of Gallipoli, he was exhausted by years of war, plagued by depression and obsessed with his historical destiny.

From Other Reviews:  In the annals of historical biopics, Jonathan Teplitzsky’s “Churchill” stands out as a uniquely awful and tedious caricature of a fascinating subject. The film, which imagines British prime minister Winston S. Churchill as wracked with misgivings and opposing the Allied Forces’ D-Day invasion until the very last minute, strikes this reviewer as a load of utter rubbish from first frame to last. Certainly, movies have the right to varying degrees of creative license and to interpret the characters and actions of historical figures. But the screenwriter of “Churchill,” Alex von Tunzelmann, a historian herself, has taken liberties that completely misrepresent the historical record.
“Churchill” is mostly a monotonous succession of scenes in which Churchill raves, waves his arms and shouts at anyone in his vicinity that D-Day mustn’t go forward. He has other ideas for an invasion. The Aegean! Norway! Eventually Montgomery gets fed up and blasts him for his “doubts, dithering and … treachery.” The latter word would be justified, if any of this were actually true.Andrew Roberts, a prominent Churchill historian, wrote, “The only problem with the movie … is that it gets absolutely everything wrong. Never in the course of movie-making have so many specious errors been made in so long a movie by so few writers.”
It really is that bad.