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Peter Jackson's Dambusters and HBO's The mighty eight...


Andre B

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16 hours ago, stevej60 said:

.... still at least Mel Gibson won't have any input and airbrush the British out of the story altogether!

 

If he had, they would have been British dams.

37 minutes ago, old thumper said:

 Do you think that hot dogs have dogs in them?

 

Well, I suspect the ones at airshows might.

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Dogs names, not enough Lancasters, whatever, minor considerations in comparison to the problem of replacing all British & Commonwealth aircrew & inventors with good ol' US boys.

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23 hours ago, colin said:

If the word is so offensive to people, why do the people offended by it use it so much, especially the so called comedians.

Study this. And this. Efforts to reclaim the word by its victims still do not mean that you and I get to say it.

 

9 hours ago, e8n2 said:

Sorry, the Nazis were extreme LEFT Wing looneys.  It is right in the name of their party, the National SOCIALIST Party of Germany.  The Germans have had socialist tendencies dating back to at least Bismarck when the government started providing health care.  

Later,

Dave

Sorry, try again.

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2 hours ago, Jessica said:

Study this. And this. Efforts to reclaim the word by its victims still do not mean that you and I get to say it.

 

Sorry, try again.

So only the victim of a crime should be allowed to use the word that discribes that crime or the action of that crime

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So then......

 

the remake. Does anyone think it will happen in the next (say) five years?

 

My take is that it'll be done as a retrospective by a survivor.

 

Also, where will the replica Lancasters go afterwards as I can imagine any number of museums wanting one.

 

Trevor

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20 hours ago, Bullbasket said:

If you're going to quote me, quote all of it. That way you'd see that I'd started another sentence which included the words "St.George" and "Union Jack" and was referring to the BNP without actually mentioning them. I think that you'll find that they are right wing.

 

John.

It's been several decades since I was last in the UK, but I never knew the BNP to be using swastikas.  You apparently were lumping them in with the Nazis who definitely were not right wing.  Is the BNP a far right bunch of looneys?  Without knowing their economic leanings, I was always under the impression that they were a bunch of neo-nazis.  If they are more like the KKK and are of a capitalist bent, then they are far right looneys just like the John Birch Society that used to be bigger in the 50s than they are now, if they even still exist, who saw commies around every corner.   Please, enough with the politics and back to the subject at hand.

Later,

Dave

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9 hours ago, Max Headroom said:

My take is that it'll be done as a retrospective by a survivor

 

Now that would be the way forward, hearing the real life experience of one who was there with historical clips or mini episodes within the film, it would give a new slant to an iconic film, and while the original was reasonably accurate there was no survivor  giving his story.

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or just as the viewpoint story of one of the survivors involved rather than the huge overall picture of 617 squadron

# not explaining that very well amst I?

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I always think of the families of those who lost their lives during the war, for example what about the poor mums who's boys never came home. I have read letters from servicemen to their parents begging them not to worry, sad thoughts of the upset their deaths would have caused their parents was always with them.

After last nights cruel and heartless murders in Manchester I am thinking particularly of the poor mums and dads who's children went out and never came home.

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On Monday, May 22, 2017 at 6:29 AM, e8n2 said:

Sorry, the Nazis were extreme LEFT Wing looneys.  It is right in the name of their party, the National SOCIALIST Party of Germany.  The Germans have had socialist tendencies dating back to at least Bismarck when the government started providing health care.  

Later,

Dave

You are all wrong they were nationalist party full of jingolistic BS .

Meanwhile.....judging from the responses on here over some mutts name i very much doubt the film will ever get made.

 

 

Up the reds /blues/pinks/ purples....whatever.:lalala:

Cruel sea remake anyone?

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I've noticed that when the original Dambusters has been shown on television recently, they have not adjusted the name.

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View on economics have nothing to do with being part of a parliamentary right or left, even less so with being extreme right or left.

As the link posted by Jessica well explained, German National Socialism was a right wing movement, deeply rooted in the nationalistic environment in which many other right wing movements found their birth.

That some in the NSDAP may have had relatively socialist views has little importance. These socialist views were in any case limited to certain aspects of the control of production assets and to putting production above finance. Even the most "leftists" of Hitler's friends like the Strasserists never had anything like Soviet Russia in mind and in any case any vestige of revolutionary ideas in the NSDAP was extirpated during the so called Night of the Long Knives through the murder of anyone in the party with such views (together with many others). The NSDAP was also heavily funded by the owners of some of the most important private enterprises in Germany, something that I'm pretty sure wouldn't have happened had the Party showed real communist views...

That the far right and the far left sometime show more than one point of contact is another story, and actually a very interesting one, but I feel that I've already digressed too much..

 

So, speaking of the movie, I personally feel that we're making a big fuss out of very little here... fair enough, today in the US the name given in those days to the dog is a pejorative word that is better not used. I can understand the feelings of those who feel offended by the word, if sticking to the historical accuracy of a small detail is going to offend others let's change a name. If the name of the dog is changed, is this going to be a big deal ? Don't think so, in the end a movie on this raid has a lot more to show, the Dambusters epic is about the courage of the aviators, the ingenuity of the persons behind the idea, the perseverance of those who worked to make these missions possible. Accuracy is in correctly showing these aspects, a name of a dog, even if it was a code word for the mission, is just a detail. It's like trashing a model because there's a small difference in the font of a code.

As for transmitting History to the new generations... well, we're talking about a movie here ! A movie, no matter how accurate it is, is meant to entertain first, any educational value is down in the list of important aspects. If we want education, that's what documentaries are for. Want the kids to learn History ? Take them to a museum, buy them books and show them documentaries. If this movie is finally produced and ends up having a different name for the dog, take the kid to the cinema first, then to the RAF museum and mention the dog name if you want. And if you want them to know more of History, talk to them about slavery too, they would understand why many find the N word offending.

The past has witnessed much worse alterations of historical facts and the world has survived. A lot of what people think they know about Roman emperors is the result of negative propaganda from their successors and names of pharaos were deliberately cancelled from monuments they had built. We read works like the Iliad often forgetting that they are works of art and we celebrate even today achievements of people we call great men while in other parts of the world they are known as butchers.. yet historians manage to find the facts and make them available for everyone in books.

Actually even amongst people like us, who consider ourselves enthusiasts, I'm pretty sure that most have plenty of inaccurate views about historical facts, even facts related to something like WW2 or even more recent events. Only a few months ago there was a thread on the Vietnam war where almost everybody mentioned Australia as the largest contributor to the war after the US... how many did know that South Korea contributed 5 times more men than Australia ? And there are many other examples... Does that make us lesser men or women ? No, just shows that nobody knows everything and that each of us considers the knowledge of some facts more important than the knowledge of other facts. Fortunately however all facts are constantly researched and made available for us to find, maybe by accident, even if the first time we heard of a certain battle was in a movie that geve the dog the wrong name...

 

Ok, sorry for the long rant, I'm going back to modelling related stuff now !

Edited by Giorgio N
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3 hours ago, spaddad said:

 

Does anyone think we have any actors capable of doing a remake of this (or any other classic) justice?

 

Capable, maybe.  Whether they, or their directors, or their financial backers, could be a.., bothered is quite another thing.  As someone else has said, those immediate post-war movies were immeasurably strengthened by the participation of actors who had experienced at least military life and sometimes the reality of combat and could draw on those experiences.  In so many period dramas nowadays (eg SS-GB) the actors are just modern people with modern attitudes in fancy dress.  Very few can capture the speech of the period, even how people stood (too much slouching and mumbling).  Two exceptions who are able to carry it off convincingly, at least in my book, are Honeysuckle Weeks (Foyle's War) and Belinda Lang.  Unfortunately, openings for either of them in remakes of The Dambusters or The Cruel Sea would appear to be limited.  Unless, of course, we go in for "radical reimaginings" of the stories.  You heard it here first. 

Edited by Seahawk
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10 minutes ago, Seahawk said:

 

Capable, maybe.  Whether they, or their directors, or their financial backers, could be a.., bothered is quite another thing.  As someone else has said, those immediate post-war movies were immeasurably strengthened by the participation of actors who had experienced at least military life and sometimes the reality of combat and could draw on those experiences.  In so many period dramas nowadays (eg SS-GB) the actors are just modern people with modern attitudes in fancy dress.  Very few can capture the speech of the period, even how people stood (too much slouching and mumbling).  Two exceptions who are able to carry it off convincingly, at least in my book, are Honeysuckle Weeks (Foyle's War) and Belinda Lang.  Unfortunately, openings for either of them in remakes of The Dambusters or The Cruel Sea would appear to be limited.  Unless, of course, we go in for "radical reimaginings" of the stories.  You heard it here first. 

Reckon you have a soft spot :ner:

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Giorgio

 

super post and thanks for writing it.

 

One thing I thought really weird about the Nazis was their desire to take large swathes of land in Eastern Europe, remove the population and repopulate with Germans thereby turning Germany into substantially an agrarian economy/country.  They had some really off the wall ideas.

 

In so far as rewriting history perhaps our most famous example from history is in many of Shakespeares plays written to an Elizabethan Audience.  eg - Richard III  was he good guy as some proclaim or the evil King?  After all the propaganda meant for Elizabeth I who really can tell now?

 

Even Winston Churchill (perhaps especially WC?) famously remarked in the House of Commons during an exchange with Stanley Baldwin the then Prime Minister in the 1930s that he was confident history would find Baldwin wrong "because I shall write that history". He said the same to Stalin during the war, and he meant it.

 

On the vexed matter of the "N" word it is perhaps worth remembering that it was in fairly common useage in the UK around my grandparents generation but mostly in a different way to its useage across the Atlantic - at least most of the time.    I recall that it was used descriptively rather than pejoratively.  However while that might have passed muster back then it simply won't today and we are dealing with things as they are today.  Given that the word causes extreme offence when used in the latter modern context I would prefer it dropped and substituted in the movie.  To leave it in without a complex explanation a modern audience would get the impression that the RAF was highly racist and segregated.  Undoubtedly there was a different attitude prevailing back in the 1940's than today but leaving the word in would I think do an injustice to the persons the film portrays.  I should perhaps also mention that words do change meaning over time.  When I was a lad someone who was "gay" was happy in a carefree sense.  Time and language move on.  So should we when to adopt an old useage will cause offence when its the last thing we would want to do intentionally.

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33 minutes ago, JohnT said:

One thing I thought really weird about the Nazis was their desire to take large swathes of land in Eastern Europe, remove the population and repopulate with Germans thereby turning Germany into substantially an agrarian economy/country.  They had some really off the wall ideas.

 

Hitler's logic went something like this...during the First World War, Germany was strangled by the Allied blockade which prevented the import of vitally-needed food and materials.  The principle objective for the Third Reich, therefore, was to make Germany entirely self-sufficient - to achieve autarky - to prevent a repeat of the sufferings inflicted on the previous generation.  This goal was impossible to achieve from within Germany's existing borders and so there was a need to expand those borders to take in much-needed farmland and other vital resources.  The concept was to provide lebensraum or "living space" for the German people.  Hitler saw the eastern European peoples as part of the untermensch who didn't deserve to have any land or resources, and so he resolved to take what Germany needed from them.

 

It may be off-the-wall but at it's core is a nationalistic desire for self-sufficiency that has echoes in protectionist policies even down to the present day. 

Edited by mhaselden
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Yes - I knew about the lebensraum thing but it was a comment made about effectively seeing Germany future as a largely agrarian society and not as an industrial one that I thought a tad bonkers.  They seemingly wanted everyone farming and out of the factories.  They had odd ideas about the role of women as well though they are not alone on that score.  Very strange times to have lived through I imagine

 

Anyway starying off topic and guilty M'Lud.  Pity the Dambusters remake is on the back burner.  If they need a home to store a replica Lancaster then my front garden is going free

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It was a combination of agrarian and industrial.  The industrial might highlighted the strength of the Aryan mind while the agrarian demonstrated the efforts of the nation to feed her people.  Both were needed...the minor flaw being that Germany lacks oil resources which were also vital, hence the move to take the Romanian oilfields and the push to secure Iraq as an ally by supporting Rashid Ali's coup attempt. 

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21 minutes ago, mhaselden said:

 

Hitler's logic went something like this...during the First World War, Germany was strangled by the Allied blockade which prevented the import of vitally-needed food and materials.  The principle objective for the Third Reich, therefore, was to make Germany entirely self-sufficient - to achieve autarky - to prevent a repeat of the sufferings inflicted on the previous generation.  This goal was impossible to achieve from within Germany's existing borders and so there was a need to expand those borders to take in much-needed farmland and other vital resources.  The concept was to provide lebensraum or "living space" for the German people.  Hitler saw the eastern European peoples as part of the untermensch who didn't deserve to have any land or resources, and so he resolved to take what Germany needed from them.

 

It may be off-the-wall but at it's core is a nationalistic desire for self-sufficiency that has echoes in protectionist policies even down to the present day. 

Off the wall is one way of putting it....great if you are germanic not so good if you are slavic,jewish etc etc seems to me thatva few people on here choose to forget that . 

Reckon this thread is done

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Not me...I was simply articulating the Nazi "rationale" for the actions they took (guess who took a course on "Origins of WW2" a few years ago).  By its nature, nationalism pits "us" against "them" and, inevitably, we want "them" to lose so "we" can win.  We saw that in the Balkans in the 1990s and a resurgence of such thinking in many countries today.  The issue is the suffering caused to "them" and the long-term problems it generates.  Hitler and his cronies were simply the arch proponents of such policies...with horrific results for countless people.

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