A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Operation Crossbow (1965) In the spring of 1943, Allied intelligence analysts noticed that the Germans were building what appeared to be launching ramps and rocket launch pads in various locations scattered around Nazi-occupied Europe, mainly in northeast France, Belgium and the Netherlands.  Though some thought they were “dummy” sites to lure American and British bombers and force them to waste bombs that would otherwise have been dropped on German cities and industrial targets, other analysts figured out that these German facilities were intended to launch what Adolf Hitler called  Vergeltungswaffen  (which means  vengeance,   revenge  or  retaliation  weapons in German) at strategic targets in Great Britain. There were even intelligence officers who, once they believed that the V-weapons sites were no ruse, feared the Germans might use the V-1 pilotless planes and the V-2 guided missiles to deliver chemical or biological warheads again...

Pros:  None Cons:  Awful screenplay, historical inaccuracies abound, laughable performances, tepid directing. On December 16, 1944, elements of three German armies -- 14 infantry and five panzer divisions in all -- attacked part of the American First Army along an 80-mile front along Germany's border with Belgium and Luxembourg. The sudden and unexpected counteroffensive hit the Americans in an area the Allies thought would be a nice, quiet sector for combat-weary divisions to rest and refit while green divisions fresh from the States could be acclimated to life on the line: the dark and deep forests of the Ardennes. Planned and ordered by Adolf Hitler himself, this massive onslaught was launched with one objective in mind: penetrate the American lines, pass through the "impassable" Ardennes Forest, cross the Meuse River, and capture the vital port of Antwerp. At the very least, the Allied supply situation would deteriorate enough to slow the Anglo-American ...

Pros: Good, if sometimes flawed, visuals; nice mix of sound and image; not kid stuff Cons: Slow-paced; no stereotypical space battles; no easily-interpreted ending It's hard to believe that 50 years have passed since Metro Goldwyn Mayer released director Stanley Kubrick's enigmatic-yet-somehow-captivating science fiction classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey, a serious (if not very prophetic) look at a future that could have been but wasn't. Conceived by Kubrick and the renowned science fiction author (and inventor) Arthur C. Clarke as the "proverbial good science fiction movie" in 1964 and involving a long production process that lasted nearly three years, 2001 tackles several Big Topics, including the notion that human evolution may have been given a boost by extraterrestrial intelligence, the dangers of mixing national security interests with scientific exploration, and the strange double-edged sword of humanity's dependence on technology (a them...

Pros:  Everything. Cons:  None. Ramsey: Colonel Von Luger, it is the sworn duty of all officers to try to escape. If they cannot escape, then it is their sworn duty to cause the enemy to use an inordinate number of troops to guard them, and their sworn duty to harass the enemy to the best of their ability.  After more than a decade of trying to get a studio to film a movie based on Paul Brickhill's book  The Great Escape,  John Sturges finally got backing from the Mirisch Company to recreate the true-life story of Allied officers escaping from a German POW camp in 1944. While the screenplay by W. Burnett and James ( Shogun ) Clavell fictionalizes the characters and compresses events to fit a feature film's running time, the details of the escape attempt are true-to-life. Even better, the film was actually shot in Germany (even the thickest wooded areas in California don't come close to resembling the Black Fore...

In June of 1963, five months before the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Warner Bros. released director Leslie Martinson’s  PT-109 , an adaptation of Robert J. Donovan’s non-fiction book  PT-109: John F. Kennedy in World War II.   Starring Cliff Robertson ( Charly, Spider-Man ) as Navy Lieutenant (junior grade) John F. Kennedy and co-starring Ty Hardin, James Gregory, Robert Culp, Robert Blake, Norman Fell and even an uncredited George Takei (Hikaru Sulu of  Star Trek: The Original Series ), the film is a fairly accurate depiction of JFK’s naval service in the South Pacific as the commander of a motor torpedo boat given the Navy pennant number PT-109 (the PT standing for the Navy ship designator “Patrol Torpedo”).  Although Hollywood had made movies in which former Presidents (either living or dead) were depicted, producer Bryan Foy, under the direct guidance of Warner Bros.' head of production Jack Warner (who, in turn, was influenced ...

(C) 2008 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment The Longest Day (AKA: Darryl F. Zanuck's The Longest Day) Directed by: Ken Annakin (British Exterior Episodes), Andrew Marton (American Exterior Episodes), Bernhard Wicki (German Episodes) Written by: Cornelius Ryan (with additional material by James Jones, Romain Gary, David Pursall, and Jack Seddon)   Studio: 20th Century Fox and Darryl F. Zanuck Productions Genre: War/Historical Epic Year of Release: 1962 The Longest Day is a vivid recreation of the June 6, 1944 Allied invasion of France, which marked the beginning of the end of Nazi domination in Europe. Featuring a stellar international cast, and told from the perspective of both sides, this fascinating look at one of history's biggest battles ranks as one of Hollywood's truly great war films.   - From the Blu-ray package blurb, The Longest Day (2008 edition) Today, June 6, 2017, is the 73rd anniversary of D-Day, the first day of the Allied invasion ...