Category Archives: History

Another Movie Review: The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

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This past weekend was a two-movie weekend and after seeing Abigail on Friday evening Sunday morning me and my sweetie-wife took in Guy Ritchie’s latest film The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. (Henceforth referred to as The Ministry.)

Lionsgate

The Ministry is a highly fictionalized retelling of Operation Postmaster and early mission by the Special Operations Executive to degrade Nazi U-boat operations in the Atlantic. The supply vessel Duchessa D’Aosta carries vital equipment and provisions for the U-boats and because the ship is in a neutral Spanish harbor off the coast of West Africa a direct military assault could bring Fascist Spain into the war on the Axis side. Instead, a very small team of disreputable agents lead by Gus March-Phillips (Henry Cavill) is sent in to destroy the ship at anchor. Operating out of uniform in in a neutral port if the teams is captured torture and death await them.

From its opening musical score and its poster art The Ministry is like a classic ‘Spaghetti Wester’ melded with a World War II action flick. The heroes all possess fantastic skills and preternatural cool. Plans go awry, the enemy is more skill and numerous that expected, schedules are disrupted and through it all March-Phillips and his team of Nazi killers remain steadfast, committed, and collected.

This is not a movie with deep social commentary or complex questions of morality, it is a romp, a fun couple of hours watching incredible competent men and women handle adversity and challenges in the manor of our fantasies. Aside from the theater’s sound system being way too loud I had a quite enjoyable time with this movie and as long as you do not go in with expectations of reality, I think you will as well.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is currently playing in theaters.

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Masters of the Air Rekindled my Annoyance with The Eternals

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(Minor Spoilers follow)

In the final episode of Masters of the Air Major ‘Rosie’ Rosenthal (Nate Mann) after being rescued by the Soviet Army following the crash of his B-17 sees with his own eyes a death camp that the Nazis had operated. This naturally has a massive impact on the pilot, but the scene also reawakened an irritation I had with the superhero film The Eternals.

The conceit of The Eternals is that a small group of immortal being and the source of many myths and legends have live with humanity from before history shaping and guiding our development. One of these beings is Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry) whose particular gift to humanity is teaching us technology.

Phastos’ faith in humanity is shattered with our use of technology and this is exemplified in the movie by having him break down crying amid the rubble of Hiroshima.

Yes, the nuclear bombs kill hundreds of thousands. Yes, they were the very cutting edge of science and technology at the time. But millions were murdered by the Nazis in Europe, millions. Their murders did not end the war, their murders were the point of the war. Murder on such a scale is impossible with the technology of industrialization. The vast incomprehensible scale of it is only achievable with the industrial revolution.

One can argue the terrible ‘trolley problem’ of ending the war in the Pacific with nuclear weapons. Would it have been more moral to forego the atomic attacks and launch a ground invasion that would have almost certainly cost far more lives? That’s a debate that cannot be resolved because it is a personal value judgement, but the slaughter of the innocent in camps built only for death? That is undebatable. That is a clear and perverse corruption of technology and that is what should have shattered Phastos belief in humanity.

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Series Impressions: Masters of the Air

I am calling this post an impression because I do not feel I and anyone can fairly review any piece when it remains incomplete. I may return after the series finishes its run and give my opinion on its totality.

Apple TV+

Masters of the Air is the third limited series production from Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg about the Second World War. The first series, Band of Brothers followed ‘Easy Company’ an Infantry Regiment during their combat in the European theater while the second, The Pacific followed Marines during their island campaigns against Imperial Japan. This show follows the 100th Bombard Group, the ‘Bloody 100’, flying B-17s into occupied Europe on dangerous and costly missions. The Group earned their nickname after suffering extremely high losses in the first few months of the deployment into action.

The story focuses on a pair of friends Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven (Austin Butler) and John ‘Bucky’ Egan (Callum Turner). Writing advice would tell you not to created characters with similar names but history cares not for your rules of writing.

The first pair of episodes, released together, covers the Group arrival in England, illustrating that now dangers come from active combat missions as faulty navigation and mechanical failures can be as deadly as well, through the first mission pair of combat missions into the continent and the Norwegian coast. Along with Buck and Bucky the audience is introduced to a number of characters, Harry ‘Croz’ Crosby (Anthony Boyle) a navigator that suffers from airsickness, Curtis Biddick (Barry Keoghan) a fellow ‘Fort’ commander, and others.

The characters of the series are in general likeable and differentiated enough as to feel like distinct people. The production values are topflight with perhaps the best depiction of ‘flak’ anti-aircraft fires I have seen. Anti-aircraft artillery is ground based cannons firing shells into the flight path of the aircraft timed to explode at the target’s altitude, throwing up a curtain shrapnel in an attempt to damage or destroy the planes. It’s tell-tale sign are the sudden black clouds that appear in the air when the shells detonate. In previous films and shows the deadly black clouds are nearly always all that you get but with modern visual effects and utilizing On-Set Virtual Production, such as has been employed by The Mandalorian and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, can the terror and helplessness of the bomber crews can truly be recreated.

While I had little interest in following group troops through their horrific ordeals in Europe and the island hoping campaign in the Pacific, I look forward to the remaining seven episodes of Masters of the Air.

Masters of the Air streams on Apple TV+.

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An Unimaginable Future

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I was born in the early 1960s making be part of the tail-end of that massive generation the Baby Boomers. Bright beckoning futures such as Star Trek filled my childhood while the ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation hovered over our heads. For decades the go-to and standby baddies of most fiction was the menacing duplicitous and seemingly everywhere conspiracy of International Communism as exported to ever trouble spot around the globe by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, but we just called it Russia.

The United States led the ‘Free World’ against the spreading, infecting, and corrupting influence, and subversion of freedom by Russia. Our allies, while not always endeared to out ways and over-sized personalities, stood shoulder to shoulder with us in that fight, united in the belief that freedom was a universal good. Even if we, and I mean all of the allies, more often than we’d ever admit, fell short of that lofty ideal. The striving for that goal, for a more perfect realization of freedom for humanity, for the rights of self-determination, is what stood as apart from the vast police states of Russia and her brood of puppet nations.

Throughout the 1980s I had friends across the American Political spectrum and my conservative ones were steadfast in the belief that Russia posed a threat to democracy and freedom. That Russian intelligence services infiltrated and manipulated groups in our open society creating conflict and divisions that weakened the ‘free world.’ They were right. After the fall of the USSR so much came to light about their massive operations attempting to exploit both our divisions and our freedoms against us. My conservative friends crowed in being proved right.

And now I live in a future that would have been unimaginable to all of us in the 1980s. I don’t mean the power computers we carry about in our pockets like so many dimes, nor do I mean the fantastic imagery we created with keystrokes, or that we can now launch and land rockets as we envisioned in the SF movies of the 1950s.

No, I mean that those same conservatives who crowed so loudly about their correct detection of the threats to our freedoms have so willingly, so enthusiastically wedded themselves to the very same threat. That violations of the constitutional order and attempts to steal power from legitimate free and fair elections are swept away as mere distraction of ‘personality.’

Back in the 1980s a common criticism of the left from my conservative friends was that the people on the left were only voting for their own selfish interests, free food, and money from the teat of the government. It is clear now that this charge is quite accurate to the conservatives. All professed dedication to the ideals of democracy and the ‘free world’ are casually overthrown for the party that promises to keep delivering the goodies you want. Maybe those goodies are tax cuts and commerce unrestrained by the public good. Maybe it’s the power to compel people to live by your own hypocritical ethics. Or perhaps it’s the promise to not encumber your choice in firearms. Whatever the ‘goodie’ it is clear that the ideals of Freedom are disposable when weight against that selfish interest.

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Spooky Season — Interrupted: The Pigeon Tunnel

Apple TV+

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A few days ago, the latest episode of KPSA Cinema Junkie podcast appeared on my iPhone naming documentarian Errol Morris and his latest film ‘The Pigeon Tunnel.’ The title meant nothing to me, and I let the episode sit unplayed. Then YouTube offered up to me the trailer for The Pigeon Tunnel which is an extended interview and documentary about bestselling author John le Carre.

John le Carre is the pen name of David Cornwell. Cornwell worked for British intelligence with MI5 and MI6 during some of the most consequential years for the west then went on to under his pen name craft some of the most compelling realistic espionage fiction ever composed. I consider spy stories to exist on a continuum with Flemings’s James Bond at the fantastical end and Le Carre’s George Smiley at the other. The Spy who Came in from the Cold, both the film and the novel, are perfect representations of the Cold War’s cynicism. Well, with all that there was no way I wasn’t going to watch The Pigeon Tunnel.

This documentary/interview, comprised of footage of Cornwell speaking, dramatic recreations of events and fantasies of his life, and brief clips from film and television adaptations of his works mine three rich veins from its subject.

One is the man’s life itself, his abandonment by his mother, his criminal conman father, his alienation at elite British schools, and how betrayal weaves throughout his existence. It’s a fascinating study of how events and environment shapes a person.

Second is his work and like within the UK’s intelligence community, particularly during the period when it was learned that Kim Philby, a man who had reached some of the highest positions of trust in that community, had for the entirety of his career been a Soviet agent.

And finally, there is also discussion of the craft and art of writing with glimpses of how Cornwell sees himself, the process, and the meaning of writing.

This film, which could have been dry and disinterested is instead compelling and as irresistible as its subject. The only reason I did not watch it all in one go is that I started it too late and on a work night I must get those seven hours of slumber. This thing grabs you, not with overly dramatic recreations of escapes and dangers but with the quiet reality of human drama and the pain of merely existing.

Beth Accamando interview is well worth the listen and she follows it up with a talk with two of Cornwell’s surviving sons, giving us a peek into the filmmaker and the family of a man that is forever fascinating.

The Pigeon Tunnel streams on Apple TV+.

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Bits and Bobs

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Not a lot to post this morning as I awoke with a low-grade migraine. Not enough to keep me home but strong enough to require medication and to screw with my focus.

Sunday evening I stayed for the evening in a hotel as San Diego Gas & Electric had a planned outage for our condo complex that may have lasted several hours while I would have been asleep. Without power my CPAP machine will not function, and I would sleep terribly and so would my sweetie-wife due to the return of my snoring.

Also Sunday I discovered a non-fiction book I just had to read, Shot From The Sky: American POWs in Switzerland. Allied aired crew in Switzerland has fascinated me since I learned of the topic in the later 80s. This book had first-hand accounts of life while interned by the ‘neutral’ Swiss.

The Wolves of Wallace Point my Idaho werewolf novel is coming along. I have just passed 63,000 words and should need only another 17 to 25 thousand to complete this draft. This week I should transition into the fifth and final act with still only a vague and hazy sense of how to resolve everything.

That’s all for now.

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Even More Spooky Season: Pickman’s Model

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Pickman’s Model is episode 5 of Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities the anthology horror series produced by and streaming on Netflix.

Netflix Studios

Adapted from the short story of the same title Pickman’s Model is presented from the viewpoint of Will Thurber, (Ben Barnes) after he encounters in is art class Richard Pickman (Crispin Glover) a talented artist but whose paintings and drawing unsettle the viewer with their grotesque imagery. Thurber flees from Pickman after having been granted a viewing of the artists more private work and for the next twenty years seeming builds a normal life, but plague by nightmares induced by Pickman’s ghastly talents. Thurber’s world crashes when Pickman returns to his life with a planned public exhibition of his work.

Screenwriter Lee Patterson and director Keith Thomas while deviating in large measures from the source material have produced the most compelling and interesting adaptation of Lovecraft’s short story. A persistent and failed by most filmmakers challenge is depicting Pickman’s art. Particularly in an age where all manner of gruesome brutality is depicted not only in entertainment but the evening news it is nigh impossible for any film to present paintings as unsettling as what is described in the short story. Thomas avoids this trap by a couple of tricks, first never giving us a full dead-on look at the art. We see the images in shaky flashes and fragments, not in a static whole shot. Second, with clever lighting and small nearly subliminal changes in the art from moment to moment we can never be precisely sure what it is we see and what is some trick of the light. I found the presentation of ‘unnatural art’ as well depicted as in Gilroy’s Velvet Buzzsaw another fantastic piece of art inspired horror.

The performances, carried expertly by Barnes and Glover, are spot on and while depicting well-known character types never descend in tropes. Crispin Glover, donning a regional accent that avoids being overly broad, is perfectly placed as the disturbed artist Pickman.

Pickman’s Model is a perfect addition to this year’s Spooky Season.

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The Current War in the Middle East

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I have not a lot to say about the matter because I am fully aware of just how little I know, how little I understand, and how terribly complex the entire situation is. I have not the arrogance to presume the wisdom to proscribe solutions. I am as Theodoen when in the film he utters ‘What can men do against such reckless hate?’

To my eye there is no doubt that injustice has been perpetrated by all involved parties, and it is equally clear that not all injustices are anywhere close to equal.

Because one side in a conflict is evil or commits evil does not absolve its opponents or elevate them to be ‘good.’ Evil committed remains evil.

It does seem to me that both sides are trapped by the delusion that they can with acts of cruelty, vengeance, and malice ‘break the spirit’ or their enemies. This is such a rare occurrence as to be nearly unheard of. The Blitz did not break the British, nor did indiscriminate bombing break the Germans. Even in the face of Atomic horrors the Japanese people would have continued to fight, their spirit had not been broken, only a rational judgement by some their leaders and their Emperor summoned up the courage to surrender. Atrocities will not break the Israelis and cruelties will not break the Palestinians. We can only hope and work for the day when rational reasoned judgment finally brings a lasting peace because peace is never won by punishing vengeance.

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The Real-World Trolley Problem

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With the release of Oppenheimer, the debate, one that will never be resolved, over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have once again become more active.

Pondering these issues for an uncounted time it struck me that these bombings and the decision to proceed with them are a real-world example of the famous philosophical ‘the Trolley Problem.’

The Trolley Problem posits an out-of-control streetcar hurtling down a track. The car cannot be stopped and without any action taken will strike and kill five pedestrians. However, if a switch is thrown it will go onto a different track where it will kill ‘only’ one person. The unresolvable question is which is more ethical to do nothing and allow five to die or to take an action with intent that will kill one?

World War II in the Pacific is the out-of-control trolley. It will kill people until it is ended. The course of the war prior to August 1945 supports the assumption that an invasion of the home island will result in massive loss of life for both the invading allied armies and the Japanese population. One can argue that a demonstrate display of the atomic bomb might have prompted an unconditional surrender, but a counter-factual cannot be proven and even after two cities had been struck with the terrible weapons the militarist faction wanted to continue the war. One can also argue that the requirement that the surrender be unconditional could have been dropped to end the war, however the United States was not the sole combatant allied against the Empire and it is doubtful that the Chinese would have settled for a conditional surrender. These other histories remain counter-factual.

On the other side it can be argued that the Invasion of the home islands may not have caused such horrific casualties as the level of starvation already striking the populace would have prompted a total collapse. Again, a counter-factual cannot be proved and the actions shown earlier in the war displayed an almost unimaginable resolve by both the armed forces of Japan and its people.

The conclusions debating if the bombings were justified, if they were an evil, if they saved more lives than they cost, all depend on the counter-factuals accepted as given and the ones rejected as unsupported rendering the debate not only unresolved but unresolvable. Not matter where you stand on the issue just be aware that you stand on counter-factual interpretations of the war, and no one has a lock on the ‘truth’ of what would have happened had events proceeded differently.

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A Tragic BroMance: The White House Plumbers

HBO Studios

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The HBO limited series The White House Plumbers focuses not on the Oval office nor the exhaustive work of the reports who uncovered and revealed the Watergate scandal that ended Nixon’s presidency but rather on the low=level operatives that burgled and spied for the Committee to Re-Elect The President, with particular attention to the flowering and then dying friendship between the G. Gordon Liddy (Justin Theroux) and E. Howard Hunt (Woody Harrelson).

Plumbers is more their story, their meeting, their close and powerful bond, and their eventual falling out which resulted in decades of stony cold silence between the men. It is four episodes of fairly accurate historical farce as bungling bumbling incompetence generates farce that could only have happened because fiction requires believability and history only required reality followed by a fifth episode of Greek tragedy where hubris and flaws destroy the men and utterly transforms the nation.

In addition to Theroux and Harrelson, both turning in fantastic performances, the series boasts a number of talented and amazing performers, Kathleen Turned coming out of her medical retirement to steal an entire episode, Lena Heady as the only real brains of the operation as Hunt’s spook spouse Dorothy ‘Dot’ Hunt, and Irish actor Domhnall Gleeson as the ever-slippery John Dean.

Paired with a companion podcast that not only interviews the creatives behind the series but also illuminates what was historical and what was dramatic, The White House Plumbers presents an under seen and covered aspect of the scandal that destroyed Nixon’s administration shattered that last fragment of a nation’s trust in its institutions. Well worth the five-episode commitment the series reveals that history can be shaped not only by the bold and the brave but also by the stupid and the fanatical.

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