World War I & II topic

terrell39 said:
Ben Kingsley who, at times, is sickening good (as always).
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Not your point, and not meaning to say anything against the film, but no. Kingsley is one of the most overrated actors ever. He built his reputation on two truly magnificent performances (Gandhi and Schindler's List), but otherwise, he's been in quite a few stinkers that he helped drag down. I've seen him in films where he was so pathetically bad that I had to laugh. I'm happy for him that he's remembered for his high-profile roles and not his paycheck films, though.
 
The thing for Kingsley is that when he wants to be amazing, he is. And when he doesn't think a film will enhance his legacy, he phones it in as hard as possible.
 
I really want to see this


Peter Jackson brings First World War to life with restored coloured footage in new documentary
www.itv.com/news/2018-10-09/peter-jackson-brings-first-world-war-to-life-with-restored-coloured-footage-in-new-documentary/

Lord of the Rings' director Peter Jackson has brought the First World War to life in a documentary using rare original footage that has been colourised and transformed with modern production techniques.

Mr Jackson restored a 100-hours of footage from the Imperial War Museum's archive for They Shall Not Grow Old, bringing, in the director's own words, "the human experience of the war" to the big screen in vivid colour.

Old and damaged film was immaculately restored and slowed down to a normal speed bringing clarity to the war only previously seen by the infantrymen who saw it first hand.

The extraordinary results were as much a surprise to Mr Jackson as anyone. His team in New Zealand were initially given just four minutes of black and white footage from the IWM to see what they could achieve with the latest technology and know-how.

The director went on ask the IWM for more footage from their archives having been "blown away" by the results.

"It took me hugely by surprise," he said. "I had no way of knowing."

To recreate the realistic colours in the restored images, Mr Jackson told ITV News his team studied pictures of crowds on the internet and used his big collection of First World War uniforms as reference.

He also travelled alone through Flanders and France taking thousands photos of the former battlefields to bring the landscape the men fought in realistically to life.

The footage is accompanied with original voice overs from veterans recorded decades ago, also provided by the IWM. Some of their commentary is surprising considering the war's popular image of muddy trenches and body-strewn battlefields.

One veteran describes the experience as "really rather fun... sort of an out-of-door holiday camping with the boys with a slight spice of danger."

Mr Jackson's said his interest in WWI began as a child when his dad would tell him stories of his grandfather, who fought in the war.

He said he wanted to put a human face on the war that was meant to end all wars.

The director told ITV News: "Part of my fascination with the First World War is that it was a pointless war in that sense. Because it was a pointless war, it is all about the people who were in it. How did these people actually cope with this thing?

"Not one soldier on the Western Front, I guarantee you, not one soldier could sit down and really explain in political terms what was important about fighting the war, what was important about beating the Germans."

The documentary will be shown in schools across the country and screened in cinemas.

The project was a labour of love for Mr Jackson who worked for free on the project, restoring not only material for the 90-minute film, but 100 hours of archive footage from the Imperial War Museum's vaults.

Mr Jackson said he hoped the modernised footage would help keep the memory of the millions who lost their lives in this bloodiest of conflicts alive.

"The First World War, for good or for worse, is defined in people's imaginations by the film that is always used in all the documentaries and it looks bloody awful, for obvious reasons.

"There were technical limitations and also a hundred years of age - of shrinkage and duplication and starches.

"I think it's the best gift I can give at the moment, as well as this movie, to restore footage."
 
Jackson about this project, earlier this year:
Forostar said:
Peter Jackson, best known for directing The Lord of the Rings trilogy, is developing a new film using original footage from Imperial War Museums’ extensive archive, much of it previously unseen, alongside BBC interviews with servicemen who fought in the conflict.
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I expected more of these so called latest techniques when looking at the faces. That same crappy all the same fake looking pink that you always see in colourised faces. The rest looks good!
 
A full century since the guns finally stopped in Europe. One hundred years since the inaptly nicknamed "War to end all wars" ended. Alas that the ending of it did not end war.

Think about where you might have been, if you lived a hundred years ago. I would certainly have been in for three long years of mud, fighting in Belgium. The Nova Scotia Highlanders, the regiment I would have been involved with, was present at some of the greatest battles of the war - but as a reserve battalion. I likely would have been activated after the bloodletting of the Somme, and ended up in the front ranks of one of the four Canadian Divisions. I would have gone over the top at Vimy Ridge and Passchendaele, and been in the final attacks of the Hundred Days, ending the war in Mons - assuming, of course, I survived.

Some of us would have been in similar situations. Some of us would have been on the other side. Imagine the far-flung places people like Flash might have gone. Or Zare, who would have been drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army. What about poor Saap, who's war was yet to come? Wogmidget, I'm afraid, may very well have ended up at Gallipoli. That probably would have ended poorly. Think of our Americans, who would have crossed the pond in 1917 to fight in far away places.

My god, I am so glad I live in the now rather than the then, and to have all you people as friends, rather than comrades in arms - or enemies.
 
A guy from my town went to Vienna to kill Franz Ferdinand in 1913. On route, in Zagreb, he told a couple of buddies what he's about to do, and they promptly informed the cops and the guy was caught. He spent a few months imprisoned in ZG because the authorities wanted him to sign that Serbs recruited and/or influenced him. He refused to sign day after day, with a consistent and true explanation, this guy profoundly hated the Habsburgs without extra influences. This refusal to sign a lie also gave him precious time, he was from a wealthy family that could put top attorneys on the case, who argued that he isn't a Croatian but Dalmatian citizen (the north and south of this country used to be different kingdoms back then) who is treated unfairly in the prison and should be transferred to his home jurisdiction. Apparently this was fully legit in AusHun legal system so he was transferred to some prison here, then promptly smuggled out of it and put on boat to South America.

I'm sure this case isn't unique but the year is very interesting. Would there be any difference if Ferdinand was shot a year earlier?
 
If I'd been around back then and lucky enough to have survived, I would have returned to a country in turmoil. There would have been street battles and people coming in from all directions claiming to have easy answers to all the problems I'm facing. The country and society I knew and grew up in and, probably, thought I was fighting to defend, basically ceased to exist. Through no fault of my own, I would have probably lost everything I held dear, or would have lost within the following five years, and faced an uncertain future. There would have been plenty of people trying to win me for their cause. Some would have claimed I had been seduced to fighting for the elites who feasted on the fruits reaped by the doomed soldiers sent into the fire, and that I was to overthrow the bourgeoisie and create worker's paradise. Others would have claimed that the Bolsheviks and the Jews sacrificed the victory I had fought for to come to power themselves. Still others would have asked me to see the potential of the freedom and peace that was certain to come if only I was willing to give a new and untried democratic system a chance.

If I'd not died in the following years in a street battle or of starvation or some disease for which I couldn't afford to be cured, I would have found a fragile security for a few years, during which some of the more radical voices were muted, but some people tried to experiment with their newly found freedoms while others claimed the end of our civilisation was happening. Eventually, the crisis returned and I might have found myself on the street again, out of work and with nothing in my pockets. Again, both the Communists and the Nazis would have tried to make me join their cause to overthrow the system that made it all happen, and after some more years of turmoil, street battles and poverty, Hitler would have risen to power by tricking the system exactly in the way he announced he would. He would have prepared my country for war, exactly in the way he announced he would, and he would put the blame on all the enduring misery, which he would put little effort in removing, on the Jews, exactly as he announced he would. The Nazis would put on a splendid show of power while threatening me with prison, labour camp or death if I questioned whatever it was they were doing. I would have witnessed mobs running through the streets of my city, smashing windows of Jewish stores, torching Jewish buildings and dragging Jews out of their homes in public, for everyone to see, to deport them to places everyone knew existed.

Then, the Nazis would have started a new war, claiming they were doing it for me and all the injustice I had endured. Soon, bombers would have reduced my hometown to ashes, and if somehow I survived that, and the battle that was to come in the streets, and the occupation of soldiers trained to hate me, and more years of poverty, starvation and disease within the rubble, at some point, I might have finally known what peace, freedom and prosperity are, although, in the face of the Cold War and the permanent threat of nuclear annihilation, I probably would have still thought they, whoever they are, were out to get me. All the while, people would have dreamed of the good old days, and claiming they knew about none of the things that were actually happening previously. And if somehow, by miracle, I would have lived to the present day, which was humanly impossible, I would now see so many things that look so awfully familiar.

I don't know how many of the lies I'd been told throughout all this time I would have believed. Probably more than I'd like to admit. I don't know whom I would have supported when, but again, if there was an answer to this question, I might not like it.
 
LooseCannon said:
Think about where you might have been, if you lived a hundred years ago.
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1. Sent to Eastern Front
2. Captured because AusHun is an epitome of incompetence
3. Involved in the Russian Revolution without actually having a choice

My god, I am so glad I live in the now rather than the then, and to have all you people as friends
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This is so true. You know Balkans are a profoundly fucked up place because of all the wars and all the sides - it got so deep that whenever it's war is not unusual to hear that one family split over opposing sides.
 
Perun said:
I don't know how many of the lies I'd been told throughout all this time I would have believed. Probably more than I'd like to admit
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No shame in telling the truth. We would all have.
 
Zare said:
No shame in telling the truth. We would all have.
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Fact is, I don't know. The person I am right now is the result of experiences and opportunities that did not exist had I been born a hundred years earlier. I cannot know what kind of person I would have developed to be. Anyone saying they would have been in the resistance in the Third Reich or they would have been the one outspoken hero defending a Jew from a mob or whatever is deceiving themselves into thinking the person they are now would have been possible to exist then.
 
You're right about that. Our set of beliefs would be different. I certainly think we would be way more susceptible to propaganda because our internal bullshit meter is trained to work with current levels of information. And everything would be way worse. Everything.
 
This story may interest the aviation and war nerds among you.

_104457790_plane.jpg


That is a picture of the remains of a Spitfire which was used to photograph the Tirpitz. The plane was shot down and the pilot captured.
 
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From:
WW2 Colourised Photos

A serial of Douglas C-47 Skytrains of the 315th Troop Carrier Group, dropping 41 sticks of the 1st Polish Airborne Brigade into DZ "O" near Grave, southwest of Nijmegen in Holland, on September 23, 1944, D+6 of Operation Market Garden.
Sticks averaged 18 paratroopers. The CG-4A Waco gliders on the ground were released 37 minutes earlier by the 313th TCG and 61st TCG (92 gliders between 1603 and 1610 hours).
Minutes following this drop, more serials of the 313th TCG and the 316th TCG released another 97 gliders.

On September 23, 42 aircraft of the 315th finally got off the ground from Spanhoe with 560 more paratroopers of the 1st Polish Brigade, and dropped on DZ "O". By then, however, Operation Market Garden had stalled and although a tactical gain was not to be made, the Brigade did manage to send some of their numbers across the river to reinforce the British paratroopers trapped in Oosterbeek, and secure a corridor for their eventual evacuation. Polish Brigade casualties were for the operation were a devastating 25 percent.

This photo was taken by an official US Army Combat Photographer on-scene during the drop.

Grave, The Netherlands area - "Dropping Polish paratroopers amidst U.S. WACO gliders already landed. (From the Liberation Museum 1944 Guide, Groesbeek, The Netherlands)

Colourised today by Piece of Jake
https://www.facebook.com/jakoblagerweij
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From: PIECE of JAKE
1944 Operation Market Garden. Fieldgrave of an unknown US Paratrooper in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Dutch Citizens pay their respect. — in Nijmegen.
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From: PIECE of JAKE
25 september 1944. Wreckage of a Spitfire IX of the 441e R.C.A.F. squadron in the Dorpssteeg (nowadays Groesbeekseweg) near Malden. The Pilot, Officer O. McMillan was killed. He's burried on the Allied Cemetery in Mook. (Serialno. Spitfire NH-151) — in Malden, Gelderland, Netherlands.
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From: PIECE of JAKE
Deportation of Jewish family's.
Amsterdam, June 20th, 1943
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