A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

(C) 2009 Warner Home Video In 2009, Warner Home Video released The Battle of Iwo Jima Collection, a box set comprised of director Clint Eastwood’s Iwo Jima Duology – Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima. Co-produced by Eastwood’s production company Malpaso and Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment, these two movies examine one of World War II’s fiercest battles through the experiences of the American and Japanese troops that fought it. Legendary filmmaker Clint Eastwood cuts open the heart of war and reveals the souls of men on both sides in a landmark dual film project hailed as his masterpiece. Shot back to back to be viewed in sequence, Flags of Our Fathers is a riveting chronicle of U.S. heroes on the front lines and in the headlines at home, while Letters from Iwo Jima reveals the untold stories of the ill-equipped but fierce Japanese fighters who rallied against awesome American forces in a brutal 40-day campaign. Together, they create a triumphant, stirrin...

On February 23, 1945, D+4 of the battle for Iwo Jima (code-named Operation Detachment), five Marines and a Navy corpsman clambered up to the summit of Mt. Suribachi, a dormant volcano on the southern tip of the 7.5-square mile island; with an altitude of 166 m (546 ft), Suribachi dominates the unusually flat terrain of Iwo Jima and, as such, was an important military objective – whoever held the high ground could direct artillery and mortar fire at any point on the small island located nearly 700 miles southeast of Tokyo. The five Marines - Franklin Sousley, Harlon Block, Michael Strank, Rene Gagnon, and Ira Hayes, along with their Navy medic, John “Doc” Bradley – were just a small fraction of the 110,000 members of the Fleet Marine Force that were involved in Operation Detachment, but as a result of what at the time they considered a routine – almost mundane – assignment, they became immortalized when Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal took one of the most famous pictur...

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 cast.  Nice special effects. Nifty (if derivative) action tale. Cons:  Not the American "Das Boot."  Some weakly-written scenes. Clichés. A long time ago, back in the 1970s and when Mom was a loyal subscriber to  Reader's Digest Condensed Books,  I read the abridged version of British novelist Douglas Reeman's  His Majesty's U-Boat,  the American edition's title of  Go In and Sink! Because we gave away most of our Condensed Books volumes before our last move and also due to the passage of time, I only have very dim memories of Reeman's novel, which focused on a German U-boat which is captured intact by the Royal Navy and then used against the Axis in the Battle of the Atlantic. Though purely fictional, Reeman's 1975 novel seems to have been based on several real-life incidents involving British personnel and German submarines, some of which resulted in major intelligence coups for the Allied war effort in t...

(C) 1979 Universal Pictures 1941 (1979) Directed by Steven Spielberg Written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, based on a story by Robert Zemeckis, Bob Gale, and John Milius Starring: Dan Ackroyd, John Belushi, Ned Beatty, Nancy Allen, Lorraine Gary, Wendie Jo Sperber, Dianne Kay, Murray Hamilton, Toshiro Mifune, Christopher Lee, Slim Pickens [ reporting over the radio on a riot at the USO ] Raoul Lipschitz : Ladies and gentlemen, every where I look... soldiers are fighting sailors, sailors are fighting Marines! Directly in front of me, I see a flying blond floozy! Everywhere I look... everywhere, pure pandemonium... pandemonium! Steven Spielberg is doubtlessly  one of the most popular and influential filmmakers in the history of the movie industry. As a member of the New Hollywood group of directors and producers that emerged in the 1970s, Spielberg has helmed such successful films as Jaws (1975), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), E.T.  the Extra...

( C)  2008 MGM/20th Century Fox Home Entertainment “Battle of Britain” (1969) Directed by Guy Hamilton Written by James Kennaway and Wilfred Greatorex, based on the book The Narrow Margin by Derek Wood and Derek Dempster Starring: Michael Caine, Laurence Olivier, Ian McShane, Christopher Plummer, Susannah York, Edward Fox, Curd Jurgens Director Guy Hamilton’s “Battle of Britain” is an all-star docudrama that attempts to recreate Nazi Germany’s ill-fated attempt to batter Great Britain into submission by aerial bombardment during the summer and autumn of 1940. As in 20th Century Fox’s 1962 D-Day epic “The Longest Day,” “Battle of Britain” features an international cast of actors from Germany, Canada, France, and, of course, Great Britain. Also like  “The Longest Day” producer Darryl F. Zanuck, producers Harry Saltzman and S. Benjamin Fisz invested time (nearly four years) and money !$14 million in 1965 dollars) to hire a cast and acquire real milita...