From reader JS (used with permission):

As a carrier buff with particular interest in the USS Enterprise and Solomon campaigns, I was excited with the news of The History Channel’s Battle360 project and awaiting this expensive and multipart series with much anticipation. Indeed, Big E, a gallant ship and crew, served in every major campaign in the Pacific Theater. What an opportunity to at last properly portray The Carrier War as told via the most decorated ship in naval history. However, within minutes of the first episode I sadly realized that Battle360 was merely a lackluster “hack” production of poor graphics, distorted film techniques, and a sorely badly written and inaccurate history. What a missed opportunity. Indeed, during the first segment I fielded no less than a dozen calls from associates and friends complaining of the atrocious production style, thus confirming my own observations. As the series progressed every one of these callers - to a man - aborted the mission entirely, most having done so by the middle of episode two.

Admittedly, much of my criticism is based exclusively on my own production taste. The actual stock footage of the Pacific War, carrier war, and USS Enterprise (shot in 4×5 format), which included a substantial amount of footage filmed in beautiful Technicolor, was distorted to fit a wide screen format. While this technique is now standard, and perhaps considered unavoidable, it is hard to accept nonetheless when viewing actual film history of any given event as it distorts the historical record. This could have been corrected simply by using a Japanese flag representation (the fried egg) to one side of the screen with a Stars and Bars representation on the opposite. (Or perhaps any ship silhouette, i.e. Enterprise.) Ultimately, it would have been better to zoom on the existing frame to reduce the “fish eye” affect, even to suffer a loss percentage of the overall frame, than to have the film ruined in its entirety.

However, the time and effort to reduce the wide screen “fish eye” affect is a mute point regardless, especially when considering that most of the stock footage used was worthless because of style usage. Almost all (if not all) of the actual film footage used – the best record of the events themselves – was utterly obscured by what appears to be a rotating and hindering grid, or floating map of the world. Lord knows what it is actually. At this stage, this single “bells and whistles” affect has become the predominant view through the series. As near as I can determine this was done for the sake of eye candy only. In addition, it appears much of the actual film stock was intentionally altered with scratches and “wear lines” to provide a rustic or worn appearance. (This may be due to the distractions from the floating map in the background, I’m not certain.) Nonetheless as a historian I feel such techniques that deliberately alter the film record borders on sacrilege.

Moreover, the visual story of the Big E in Battle360 is loosely based upon substandard computer graphics (now standard for THC) in-lieu of actual film footage; a huge disappointment when one considers actual film footage is sometimes available for specific events. Poor computer graphics is not history. A film record of a bomb striking the flight deck of Enterprise during The Battle of the Eastern Solomons – is.

Perhaps worst of all is the production’s high degree of “music video” imagery, – i.e. fast action computer graphics coupled with altered stock footage, spliced together as millisecond film clips that leaves the viewer disconnected from the action, disoriented from the subject, and distracted from the storyline. It is nauseating and overwhelming to the synapses. Coincidently, this is the biggest complaint I’ve heard about the series as a whole. It made me reach for the Dramamine three minutes into the first segment. The result is utter pandemonium. I long for the days of spectacular documentaries such as Britain’s World at War.

The interviews with the Enterprise veterans, though, are nicely done. Yet they are limited to single and mostly insignificant sound bites owing to the producer’s focus on useless computer graphics more than actual eyewitness accounts. And while Parshall, K. Martin and other historians are informative and accurate (especially Martin), others come up way short. Instead of modern veterans explaining the attributes of a SBD bomber, carrier operations, or the history of World War II air combat and campaigns, other Enterprise or Pacific War historians on the caliber of Richard Franks and Barrett Tillman should have been used.

Lastly, the overall script as written is occasionally inaccurate with weak adjectives. At times it is just downright embarrassing.

I feel for the veterans of Enterprise and the thousands of our old heroes from the Pacific who had long waited for this series. To them they are owed our best. And Enterprise/Battle360 ain’t it. This series should set the standard on how documentaries should not be done.

Not WW2 related, I know, but it’s been an interesting ride seeing all the different views aboard the USS Nimitz. Check the Carrier web site on PBS for details.

The text in this post is from this wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleground_(film).

Battleground was originally an RKO property, which was called “Prelude to Love” to hide its subject matter,[3] but was shelved when production head Dore Schary resigned, despite $100,000 having been put into the property to that point. When Schary went to MGM, he purchased the rights to the script from RKO, over the objections of Louis B. Mayer, who believed that the public was tired of war films. At MGM, Robert Taylor and Keenan Wynn were reported to be penciled in for the film, along with Van Johnson and John Hodiak, and the project was budgeted at $2 million.[4]

Robert Pirosh had based the script on his own experiences during the Battle of the Bulge, although he did not serve with the 101st Airborne. Many of the incidents in the film were based on actual events. Twenty veterans of the 101st were hired to train the actors and were used in the film as extras.[5]

The film was in production from 5 April to 3 June 1949,[6] with location shooting in northern California, Oregon and Washington state. Fort Lewis, Washington was used for the tank sequence showing the relief of the 101st Airborne by Patton’s Third Army. Shooting took 20 days less than was scheduled, due in part to innovations instituted by Schary such as processing film as itwas shot, and dubbing and cutting it so that scenes could be previewed with two days of being shot.[4] The film came in almost $100,000 under budget.[3]

Battleground received a number of premieres before its general release. A private showing for President Harry S. Truman was arranged[3] even before the premiere in Washington D.C. on 9 November 1949, which was attended[4] by Brigadier General Anthony Clement McAuliffe, who commanded the 101st during the siege of Bastogne.[7] Two days later, on 11 November, the film premiered in New York City, and then on 1 December in Los Angeles. The film’s general American release was on 20 January 1950.[8]

Loved it, loved, it, loved it with a capital L!  

If SPR is about duty meant to instill pride about the “greatest generation” (not my favorite term) Battleground is about irony and dissatisfaction in the soldier’s life.  So there is complaining, comradeship, and a “let’s take of business but have a little fun along the way” attitude.  BG just made my Top 5.  Sure it’s a little cheesy in parts, but the “NUTS!” scene near the end is worth the price of admission.

There are 12 parts associated with this vid (the whole thing, I believe).  Enjoy.

So I turn on the tube this morning, and I see Lee Marvin on some island with another guy who happens to speak Japanese (that would be Toshirō Mifune–he can act a little).  ”Hmmm,” I thought.  ”What the hell is this?”

More knowledgeable readers no doubt guessed Hell in the Pacific, a Cast Away-like flick that involves  lots of beach combing, some bamboo boat building, and some time on the open sea. 

My 6 YO daughter happened to come downstairs for breakfast and sat down next to me on the floor.  She asked, “why are they shouting at each other?”  Good question.  There is much to understand in this movie, and as one web page suggests, that’s how it should be if there were two languages and vast cultural differences separating the speakers.  

So I kept watching, endured the shouting, and ended up a little surprised the two ended up…working together for a common cause: their survival.  And so we came to the end, with the two men on another island in matching new clothes, getting drunk, and then shouting again.  Just as their argument reaches that fever pitch, they…they…

THEY ARE BLOWN UP!!!!  

WTF?  So I watched all that and they get killed by some random shell?  What a let down.  My daughter left the room with an exclamation blast of her own: “good.  Now fix me some breakfast.”

So tonite, I turn on tube and see The Good German listed via On Demand.  So I give it a go and I lasted about 15 minutes only because the remote ended up on the other side of the couch.  You know the feeling, right?  You’re too tired to move a muscle to get the darn thing.  So needless to say, I didn’t like the first 15 and I ended up watching some reruns on the History Channel.  

Just another day in paradise.  

Oh yeah…this is my 100th post.  Yeah me!

Okay, okay!  

So I finally broke down and saw this classic (from 1953), set in Hawaii just prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  And I just loved it.  Everybody is smoking like crazy, drunk at every free moment (and it’s always a little adorable or cutsey…no mean drunks allowed), and folks are falling in love after about 30 seconds.  Amazing.

A few months ago, when I told my journalism class that Deborah  Kerr died, and that the newspapers were making a big deal about it, they had no idea who she was.  I played this clip from the movie, and most said they’d seen  parodies of the clip, but never the actual clip.  My point to the class was this: if you want to work in news, being “well-versed” in popular culture is never a bad thing, as it give us a chance to reach back a little make some connections in history.  What I love about the clip is that not 30 seconds after the kiss (and not pictured here), the SGT basically calls his girl a whore, and then backpeddles after the fact.  Awesome.  

Oh yeah, there’s Montgomery Clift  (scroll down for the FH2E PIX), Donna Reed, and Frank Sinatra.  And lest we forget: 13 Oscars nominations, and 8 winners, including this pair (Reed and Sinatra).

I’ve been a little slack in keeping up with the filming of the Pacific War series.  Checking in at Dale Dye’s web site, he states that the production is in its 35th week, with a entry called “Surviving the surviving on Peleliu.”  So check that here.

Poking around IMDB this afternoon, I’d forgotten about some casting choices.  Eugene Sledge is played by the kid from Jurassic Park, Joseph Mozello.  Many of the other faces, I’ve seen them around on the tube and in movies, but it’s a low key and really young looking cast.  And that seems like a big deal, given what we know about the age of the men, boys really, who were out in the field dishing the dirt. 

When I first read on the HC that a series would follow the USS Enterprise in WW2, I thought: “good idea.  Folks will watch.”  Watching an episode, however, is another matter entirely.  The production has one thing down: the interviews and overall look of show (the CGI).  All are top notch.   But GOODNESS!  Are they series with all the add-on seizure inducing manipulation to graphics?  

An example: now this is going way, way back to the 1990s.  Once upon a time there was a crap movie called Reality Bites, about young 20-somethings trying to find their way in the world.  One of the characters is a filmmaker who attracts the interest of an MTV-like network.  Her documentary, which was a comment on AIDS and family life, was turned into something cartoonish and silly.  That’s exactly what the producers of Battle 360 have done.  All the graphic manipulation that is meant to “put us there” distracts from other narrative elements and CGI in the show.  

Watch if you must, but keep those with vertigo or epilepsy in the other room. 

I saw this gem the other day on AMC (here in the US), and later watched the full version on DVD. I liked it for a few reasons, mainly because I’m a Bogart fan.

But there is another reason, and it had to do with a scene at the bottom of a nearly dried up well. And I didn’t even think about it until I read a poem by Thomas Sayers Ellis (from the Maverick Room) that listed another writer at the top. One of those “for so and so” references. So I googled the name (Thomas Cripps) and found that he wrote a book called Making Movies Black: The Hollywood Message Movie from World War II to the Civil Rights Era. He argues that movies like Sahara helped to define “a new African-American presence both in film and in American society at large.”

It’s an interesting premise thinking about the scene with at the bottom of the well. There are two men, one African and one white American-type, sharing stories of home and hearth in a most friendly and in a “brothers in arms” kind of way. Another scene shows the Bogart character yelling at a German/Nazi type who had reservations about being guarded by the African soldier. This is a paraphrase of the quote: “his color won’t rub off on you.” Or something like this.

Thinking of these two scenes, and in context with Cripps’ premise, Sahara is a movie worth reviewing.