Last night saw a really bad beach massacre scene in Jamaica InnComprehensible. Tonight I've just watched the first 30 minutes of Saving Private Ryan. Equally hard to hear any dialogue but my God what a difference. Omaha Beach 1944. Incredible.

Don't say "money" - it wasn't that at all; just way better editing, effects, ideas, pace, angles, acting.

And of course Direction. Some bloke called Spielberg.

The opening of Saving private Ryan is absolutely superb and shows war as it is..hideous, brutal..

Brush with fame #101 :
I sat with Vin Diesel and chatted with him for half an hour in a Sydney nightclub at a party for Jean Claude Van Damme's birthday/

No-one knew he was of course she wasn't famous then and Private Ryan was his first real acting role. He is charming and very nice and there to try and drum up publicity but was ignored by the media.

In the next booth Van Damme was getting a blow job ( I can describe his cock accurately)..later he tried to fight everyone as he seemed to have taken some sort of magic powder that makes people excitable...pointed at me and said "yes you come on come on"

He was led away by security

I thought the film was very good indeed, if a little one dimensional (I've recently got this thing about one dimension in films, books, music, TV).
The violence throughout was incredibly graphic and effective.
I've never seen so many missing limbs.
One scene even had a soldier carrying his own amputated arm.
Quite extraordinary direction and effects - loved the change from young to old Ryan at the end.

Quote, on "Saving Private Ryan" by veteran Brit actor, Richard Todd who fought in the multi-national D-Day landings, "Overdone rubbish".

Others, who know, claim that, like so much UK history brazenly stolen by profiteering Hollywood, Spielberg and his drama-queens should try to reveal the truth about the 'gut-wrenching stench' of war, and of U.S. shame and guilt.

Quote, honest U.S. dramatist Arthur Miller: "The thought that the (U.S.) state is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied."

johnpilger.com/articles/in-the-gulf-war-...-story-is-being-told

I adored Todd in his career. But this opens the "it must be accurate" argument. I love A Man For All Seasons though all Mantel's novels show Sir Thomas More in a totally different light. Doesn't make either film/novel any worse or any better.

Entertainment is very different from history and never the twain shall meet.

The problem is mistaking one for the other.

Brush with fame #102

met Todd once in Sydney- he was here to open an Ar Deco Fair- he was a huge fan of Deco.

Tiny little person..must have been about 5'4" but devilishly handsome even in his late 70s.

JK2006 wrote:


Entertainment is very different from history and never the twain shall meet.



If you don't care about historical facts you can watch "Generation War", starting on BBC 2 tonight at 9.30:

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b042tpmx

The battle scenes etc. are "state of the art", but the ideology behind the (conventional) story is unbearable (for me).

Quote JK: "Entertainment is very different from history and never the twain shall meet. The problem is mistaking one for the other."

Surely, the problem IS that propgandising HollyWeird arm of the heirachy, DELIBERATELY mistakes one for the other?

JK2006 wrote:
I adored Todd in his career. But this opens the "it must be accurate" argument. I love A Man For All Seasons though all Mantel's novels show Sir Thomas More in a totally different light. Doesn't make either film/novel any worse or any better.

Entertainment is very different from history and never the twain shall meet.

The problem is mistaking one for the other.

shurley shome mishtake ?

I saw a movie called Vile Pervert that accurately reflects the truth

It was predominantly intended as entertainment, Hedda. If it also conveyed my view of the reality accurately, I regard that as a bonus (great acting though).