What did you watch today? v 32.0

[The Professor]

Welcome to version 32. Version 31 isn't off the MB yet, but it's as low as it's been in a while.

 

The first post in this thread will be # 13,515. 

 

The ghost of Mildred Ella Didrikson Zaharias reminds you to link your films, to excel in everything you do, and remember that NOT everyone is warmly welcomed. 

[Nerves]

Dixiana (1930)

2/5 Stars

This film looks fantastic considering it's age. RKO invested a lot of money in this film and it shows. Everett Marshall, who sang with the Metropolitan Opera, wasn't a great actor but he gets to belt out a few tunes. The score is by Max Steiner who had a long distinguished career as a film composer. I'd never heard of the comedy team of Bert Wheeler & Robert Woolsey before and now I know why though I'm told they are funnier in their other films. Like many musicals from this period the plot is a rather thin excuse for some singing, dancing, and comedy routines.

[Sevorin]

Wheeler and Woolsey never got their hands in my pants. From the first I saw one of their pictures I couldn't stand them.

 

Actually, the first time I saw anything relating to either of them was as a kid, when I watched some stupid fucking Indian show on TV. An already old and fehrkakt Bert Wheeler was among the regular cast.

[Nerves]

fercockt? I had to look that up.

[Phineas T Freakears]

I'm a fan of most comedy teams, but I gotta agree with Sev on Wheeler & Woolsey. Robert Woolsey always reminded me of a poor man's Groucho Marx.

[eviltimes]

Watching Breaking Bad Season 4.  Thanks Pirate Bay!  You all should go to Wikipedia today and email your Congresscritter and Senators, they make it easy.

[macroman]

Come and See (1985. Russia)=a unique and unforgettable Russian antiwar film.  It is told from the eyes of a young Russian boy during the German invasion of WWII.

  The film pulls no punches and is about as realistic and often horrifying as a war film gets.  A long film (about 2 1/2 hours) but it captures and holds your attention throughout.

  4.5-5 stars.  It will probably make my list of best films I've seen in 2012.

Up next:

Fair Game (2010)=a rewatch, this made my list of best films I saw in 2011.  A very well-made political thriller based on fact about how Ambassador Joe Wilson blew the whistle on false claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. 

  And how he and his wife, CIA agent Valerie Pflame, experienced retatiation from the Bush administration for doing so.    Naomi Watts and Sean Penn.

  5 stars.

Cell 211 (Spain)

'

[Sevorin]

Come and See - What horrifies me about the film is its persistent Stalinist propaganda. I hold no brief for the brutality of the German invasion of Russia. Its atrocities are well documented. But depicting the Russians as mere victims, pure and righteous, who only seek vengeance in a civilized pursuit of justice, is not only wrong, it's offensively wrong -- especially when that righteousness is expressed by the same guys who perpetrated the Rape of Berlin. If this movie had been made in the 'fifties, while the wounds were still fresh, I'd be more forgiving. But it came out in 1985 -- a full forty years after V-E day, a couple of generations removed from the war. It's time to let it go. The Nazis were assholes, but acts of savage cruelty were not unique to them. That war brought out the "best" in everybody. If we can be philosophic about our own crimes, why not those of our enemies? One fact stays powerfully in my mind -- a fact that is generally omitted or glossed over when we see accounts of the Nuremberg trials: A specific rule of evidence was created to exclude any material the defendants might offer to show that what they did was in the same moral realm as acts committed by the Allies. Those defendants were guilty, all right. But judge-not-lest-ye-be-judged seemed to have disappeared from our thinking. The only real lessons to be learned from all this is that morality and justice vanish from everybody's plate in wartime, and it's far safer to win than to lose. 

[eviltimes]

Stalinist propaganda.

 

Agree 100% with Sev and have spoken out against this film forever, it seems.  Nobody appears to be listening.

[Mr. Bad]

I've listened.

If you want to be horrified that's your business.

The film focuses a child who joins on the partisans, not the Russian Army.

[Sevorin]

Ah, yes, the Russian partisans.

 

Well known for their rigid adherence to the Geneva Conventions.

 

Why not just admit what this movie scrupulously avoids to mention -- that war is hell because everybody acts like an asshole, and no one, from the Wehrmacht down to the Soviet chapter of the B'nai B'rith Girls, is free of guilt?

 

Like I say, I wouldn't have minded so much if Come and See had been made during the war or not long afterwards. But to keep on finger-pointing after 40 years, when the finger-pointers themselves have exhibited unconscionable brutality, is too much to bear in silence.

 

If you wanna lap up this shit, that's your business.

[Mr. Bad]

OK, I admit what this movie scrupulously avoids to mention -- that war is hell because everybody acts like an asshole, and no one, from the Wehrmacht down to the Soviet chapter of the B'nai B'rith Girls, is free of guilt. Wow, I feel so much better. From now on I'll vet all my opinions with you via personal email before writing them here. And everyone else should too.

[Sevorin]

Wow, I feel so much better 

 

You may not always be lucky enough to have me around.