Archive for October, 2005 (cont'd)

The Hindenburg (1975)

Monday, October 3rd, 2005

Goebbels: There is no resistance movement, Colonel!

Ritter: That’s reassuring, coming from the Minister of Propoganda.

Day eight of my own little Robert Wise Film Festival

Think of The Hindenburg as kind of like Titanic, except without the romance or an interesting story. Both films deal with fictional portrayals of real life disasters involving famous vessels, one at sea, one in the air, but for Titanic to be as bad as The Hindenburg, Captain Smith would have been shown deliberately steering the ship into the iceberg for reasons that would not be adequately explored.

The Hindenburg

(more…)

Director:  | Released:  | 125 min. | Rated:  | Genres: 

The Sand Pebbles (1966)

Saturday, October 1st, 2005

Pray for an early spring… or permission to open fire.

Day seven of my own little Robert Wise Film Festival

In 1966, the Vietnam war was just beginning in earnest and Robert Wise made The Sand Pebbles, an epic about another American intervention in Asia forty years earlier. After watching the film, it’s hard to judge whether the film was anti-Vietnam or just about an American gunboat in China in 1926, which is to its credit. Had Wise chosen to stack the deck politically, it would have weakened what was already a powerful story.

The Sand Pebbles

(more…)

Director:  | Released:  | 182 min. | Rated:  | Genres: