Don't get me wrong, I love that movie too, but I could fill a thread all by myself with a list of things that are wrong with it.
Seriously, who recreates the battle of Stirling Bridge without the bloody bridge??
Historical stories not covered enough by Hollywood
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Don't get me wrong, I love that movie too, but I could fill a thread all by myself with a list of things that are wrong with it.
Seriously, who recreates the battle of Stirling Bridge without the bloody bridge??
Well, yes, but saying "accidentally assassinate" instead of "accidentally kill" just grabs your attention that much more. Don't you think? Do we really need to get hung up on such subtleties of grammar?
But did it face forward?It was a metaphorical bridge.
"Accidentally assassinated" is like saying "accidentally drove the car".
Much as I love 'RAT Patrol', the series had as much accuracy as Braveheart (though on second thought, Braveheart would be an historical documentary by comparison), a movie about the inspiration for the show, the Long Range Desert Group, would be fantastic.
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But there's Bra--
Hm. Yes. Carry on.
Spike Milligan's war memoirs are one of the funniest things I've ever read, and he used the regimental diary as a point of reference and accuracy. A movie was made of ther first one, Adolf Hitler - My Par In His Downfall, but it wasn't up to much. I'd liek to see more, especially his drift into entertainment, playing to the troops with the Bill Hall Trio. Good stuff. And WW2 from a very different perspective.
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So, maybe the Scots were just being polite when they collapsed it... with half of the English vangaurd on it at the time...
There was talk, before the author died, of doing the Flashman Papers, by the same team that did the Sharpe series. They would be colossal, becuase we'd get the following from a very different perspective of history:
--The First Afghan War
--The Schliesweig-Holstein and the Revolutions of 1848
--Taking slaves into America, and the Underground Railroad
--The Crimean War, especially the Thin Red Line, the Charge of the Heavy Brigade and the Charge of the Light Brigade (with an excursion into Tsarist Russia and the beginnings of the Great Game).
--The Indian Mutiny (especially the Cawnpore Siege, and probably the best book in the series)
--Borneo pirates, White Rajah James Brook of Sarawak, and mad Queen Ranavalona of Madagascar
--Heading West with the Forty Niners, Apaches, Bent's Fort
--Taking part in the Allison Commission at the behest of Pres Grant, the culmination of which was the Battle of Little Bighorn.
--The Taiping Rebellion and the Peking Expedition, resulting in the burning of The Summer Palace
--The First Anglo-Sikh War, culminating in the Battle of Sobraon
--The Harper's Ferry Raid
--The British invasion of Abyssinia to rescue hostages.
And a couple of others bits & pieces. All built around a central character who's a coward, bully and scoundrel of the highest order, but lot of fun to watch as he runs screaming from the battlefield, or hurtling out a window, trousers in hand, ahead of an outraged husband.
--The First Afghan War
--The Schliesweig-Holstein and the Revolutions of 1848
--Taking slaves into America, and the Underground Railroad
--The Crimean War, especially the Thin Red Line, the Charge of the Heavy Brigade and the Charge of the Light Brigade (with an excursion into Tsarist Russia and the beginnings of the Great Game).
--The Indian Mutiny (especially the Cawnpore Siege, and probably the best book in the series)
--Borneo pirates, White Rajah James Brook of Sarawak, and mad Queen Ranavalona of Madagascar
--Heading West with the Forty Niners, Apaches, Bent's Fort
--Taking part in the Allison Commission at the behest of Pres Grant, the culmination of which was the Battle of Little Bighorn.
--The Taiping Rebellion and the Peking Expedition, resulting in the burning of The Summer Palace
--The First Anglo-Sikh War, culminating in the Battle of Sobraon
--The Harper's Ferry Raid
--The British invasion of Abyssinia to rescue hostages.
And a couple of others bits & pieces. All built around a central character who's a coward, bully and scoundrel of the highest order, but lot of fun to watch as he runs screaming from the battlefield, or hurtling out a window, trousers in hand, ahead of an outraged husband.
I don't know where you got that from. The bridge was tiny so there could only be a few horsemen on it at a time.
The eventful and destructive career of Mithradates VI of Pontus would make for a great movie or mini-series: a highly ambitious and ruthless monarch who survived court intrigue in his teen years and brutally struck back at his mother, seized power in the Kingdom of Pontus (the northeastern part of modern Turkey), plotting and building up his power in Turkey for many years, he then waged open war against the Roman Republic in 89 BC, and then for decades afterwards until his suicide in 63 BC he assembled huge armies and fleets in his endless battles against a succession of brilliant Roman commanders (Sulla, Lucullus, and Pompey).
A Greco-Persian monarch who spoke multiple languages, carved out a surprisingly large empire around the Black Sea, emulated the Roman military system, dabbled in deadly chemistry, marched a small army over the Caucasus mountains, and developed an immunity to poisons by ingesting arsenic: why has this intriguing historical figure sank into such obscurity?
A Greco-Persian monarch who spoke multiple languages, carved out a surprisingly large empire around the Black Sea, emulated the Roman military system, dabbled in deadly chemistry, marched a small army over the Caucasus mountains, and developed an immunity to poisons by ingesting arsenic: why has this intriguing historical figure sank into such obscurity?
Historical stories will never be covered "enough" by Hollywood because most people don't believe in history. They choose not to accept that social forces rooted in the past are first, part of our very identities and second, limit the meaningful choices we confront. Hollywood is committed to the ideologically motivated proposition that human nature, unlike a person's character, is immutable.
The past is therefore irrelevant, save for fodder for personal stories. And those are usually falsified, to make them more engaging. The John Adams miniseries was in many respects quite admirable, but it grossly inflated Adams' importance, even to the point of sharply denigrating other characters, Hamilton and Rush notably.
Further, it is nearly impossible for the conservative producers in Hollywood (plus all other commercial filmmakers) to honestly confront political issues. The remarks on Goodbye, Lenin above follow that movie's lead and forget that the overthrow of the DDR led to free, democratic Germany's policy today, notably in places like Greece. Enemy at the Gate or Attack on Leningrad had to be made so that it equated the Nazis and the Soviets, allowing audiences to blame the suffering on Communisms, ignoring the Nazi aggression, or even to enjoy the Nazis beating up on the Commies. Reds had to throw in a grotesquely falsified love story to be acceptable.
There is only a very narrow range of acceptable political opinions and commercial media will not ever allow any significant number of differing viewpoints. Historical flicks limited by the political correctness of reactionaries just aren't very interesting.
The past is therefore irrelevant, save for fodder for personal stories. And those are usually falsified, to make them more engaging. The John Adams miniseries was in many respects quite admirable, but it grossly inflated Adams' importance, even to the point of sharply denigrating other characters, Hamilton and Rush notably.
Further, it is nearly impossible for the conservative producers in Hollywood (plus all other commercial filmmakers) to honestly confront political issues. The remarks on Goodbye, Lenin above follow that movie's lead and forget that the overthrow of the DDR led to free, democratic Germany's policy today, notably in places like Greece. Enemy at the Gate or Attack on Leningrad had to be made so that it equated the Nazis and the Soviets, allowing audiences to blame the suffering on Communisms, ignoring the Nazi aggression, or even to enjoy the Nazis beating up on the Commies. Reds had to throw in a grotesquely falsified love story to be acceptable.
There is only a very narrow range of acceptable political opinions and commercial media will not ever allow any significant number of differing viewpoints. Historical flicks limited by the political correctness of reactionaries just aren't very interesting.
Enemy at the Gates kinda pissed on the Nazi Germans when it made Ed Harris' Axis sniper kill that kid kinda outta nowhere.
That would have been awesome.
And because it's comic in nature, you could get away with a lot of politically-incorrect stuff that you couldn't as a serious drama. Plus, get Flashman breaking the fourth wall occasionally to let the viewer understand his motives and share a joke or two (akin to the way FU does in House of Cards to bring the viewer into his evil web).
Sorry, I simply misspoke. Half of the vanguard had crossed the bridge when the Scots attacked. The collapse itself comes from Blind Harry's narative.
Plus, it was a joke.
Then you also know Blind Harry was paid to embellish some of the account and probably paid separately to change who Wallace's father and children were, so that a wealthy family could claim lineage.
^I hadn't heard that, actually. That's sad to hear since, I know a lot of modern accounts of Wallace's life are based upon Blind Harry's version of events.
Most of my information on the Scottish wars comes from most recent works found at my local bookstore/library and most of those reference Blind Harry's work rather heavily in regards to Wallace's life.
I tend not to personally buy too much into Harry's work myself when it comes to Wallace as if Harry was to believed, Wallace single-handedly inspired the popular uprising of Scotland in the late 13th century, and Sir Andrew Murray's contributions to the war effort are largely ingored.
I'm more of a Robert the Bruce guy, it helps that gaining information on him is a fair sight easier.
Most of my information on the Scottish wars comes from most recent works found at my local bookstore/library and most of those reference Blind Harry's work rather heavily in regards to Wallace's life.
I tend not to personally buy too much into Harry's work myself when it comes to Wallace as if Harry was to believed, Wallace single-handedly inspired the popular uprising of Scotland in the late 13th century, and Sir Andrew Murray's contributions to the war effort are largely ingored.
I'm more of a Robert the Bruce guy, it helps that gaining information on him is a fair sight easier.
Found this site today, and thought I'd share it -- this seemed the perfect thread for it.
www.hmshood.com
IIRC, there's been a few movies on the entire Bismarck chase/battle, but still -- a new, more factual version could be done pretty well, if handled correctly. Or just the Battle of the Denmark Strait, where the HMS Hood was lost...
Cheers,
-CM-
www.hmshood.com
IIRC, there's been a few movies on the entire Bismarck chase/battle, but still -- a new, more factual version could be done pretty well, if handled correctly. Or just the Battle of the Denmark Strait, where the HMS Hood was lost...
Cheers,
-CM-
