Welcome to City-Data.com forum! Make sure to register - it's free and very quick! You have to register before you can post and participate in our discussions with 700,000 other registered members. User profiles and some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your free account you will be able to customize many options, you will have the full access to over 15,000 posts/day about local topics and you will see fewer ads.
Guess it was not your cup of tea. I found it somewhat lacking the first time. But the second time I was in the perfect mood for something like it and found it much better.
Since it was something of a surrealistic movie, more accurate to say it wasn't my cup of fur.
I've seen Midway an uncountable number of times and despite this, and despite owning a copy of the film, I still find myself watching it again when it is being broadcast and I come across it.
It's actually better on tv than it was in the "Sensaround" theatrical release when it was first made. On the big screen, the difference between new footage and the documentary footage used is manifest. You go from a sharp, clear picture to a grainy, washed out one, and back..and it was disconcerting. On tv that switching isn't all that apparent.
I'm not sure what the fascination is, I have every word memorized..."Commander Leslie! I got a hit! Right down the middle! Powder River!" .... "Beautiful Helen Three Dead center." The fictional element, the Charleston Heston/Edweard Albert subplot is boring and irrelevant to the story being told, I tend to fast forward through those parts.
In the film, they accurately depict a flight of American bombers deciding to follow the direction being taken by a Japanese destroyer that they spot, assuming that it is hurrying to rejoin the fleet. That guess turned out to be correct and was critical to the American success. It would have been too complicated to have explained that further, but there is more to the story. The reason that the Japanese destroyer was by itself, detached from the main body of the fleet, was that it had been off hunting an American submarine which had made some long range, but futile attacks on the Imperial fleet. Had that submarine been content to observe and report rather than exposing itself by launching torpedoes, there would have been no pursuit by the Japanese destroyer, and it would not have been out there to be spotted by the American planes, and would not have pointed the direction to the main body.
It's been many years since I have seen it, but the 1939 version of Jesse James starring Tyrone Power was a typically inaccurate portrayal done at that time. James is shown in a mostly positive light while in real life he was little more than thug with a gun, even if some of things shown in the movie, like some attacks on his family had some truth to them.
Sorry for the second post but I just thought of some more movies!While it is one of my favorite WWII movies, I have come to learn, sadly, that The Great Escape has many many inaccuracies in it. No American POW did in fact elude the Germans in an exciting motorcycle race though the German countryside, like Steve McQueen in the movie. In fact, the Americans were minor characters in the actual escape from what I have learned. Oh well, it's still a fun movie.
I have read the book Black Hawk Down and found the movie did a pretty good job of adhering facts laid out in the book. Another movie which didn't try to tack on a happy ending but portrayed the actual demise of Col. Gordon in the Sudan was the movie Khartoum.
I see on AMC today that ''The longest Day'' comes on at 4.00 p.m. EST and again tomorrow at 7.00 a.m. EST for all of us WW2 buffs and Midway to follow it also.
The fictional element, the Charleston Heston/Edweard Albert subplot is boring and irrelevant to the story being told, I tend to fast forward through those parts.
Indeed. And I have read that Japanese-Americans in Hawaii were actually not interned as it would have wiped out the labor force. Is that true?
Quote:
No American POW did in fact elude the Germans in an exciting motorcycle race though the German countryside, like Steve McQueen in the movie. In fact, the Americans were minor characters in the actual escape from what I have learned. Oh well, it's still a fun movie.
The motorcycle parts were part of McQueen's price for starring in the film. The Americans were indeed minor as the camp was mostly British. Even the film depicits the American POW population as only 3. Still, a great film. The book is a great read as well.
K19 "The Widowmaker", was the best submarine movie I've had the pleasure to see. Oddly, I saw it on AMC within a year or two of it's release, and haven't seen it on TV again. Plays well on the hazzards of the soviet nuclear sub program in the cold war days. Sub-safe was not in their design plans, for sure. Harrison Ford was good in this film, as he also was in Force 10 From Navarone.
Seriously though, a movie I take serious issue with is "Glory". Certainly not the most inaccurate film ever made, but some of the inaccuracies are pretty major.... Most notably the fact that Colonel Shaw was NOT an abolitionist as the film depicts..... Now I understand the point they are trying to get across with this picture, but I don't think that it was necessary to depict Shaw as something he wasn't to further that point.....
In fact, I think it might have been MORE effective to accurately portray him as indifferent toward blacks and developing a healthy respect for them as the movie progresses (which actually happens in the film, but it doesn't seem like he had to come very far ideologically to get there.).
There are other things that bother me about it, but this is the most major problem I have.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Welcome to City-Data.com forum! Make sure to register - it's free and very quick! You have to register before you can post and participate in our discussions with 700,000 other registered members. User profiles and some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your free account you will be able to customize many options, you will have the full access to over 15,000 posts/day about local topics and you will see fewer ads. 
. 
Linear Mode
