faetal on 22/8/2012 at 15:45
One obvious mis-step of Israel ever invading the US is that a huge proportion of their social economy is sustained by US foreign aid. If they ever lost that, they could kiss goodbye to their world class research, teaching, health care, transport sectors. This is probably why the US didn't bat an eye when they developed their nuclear arsenal.
heywood on 23/8/2012 at 01:57
A spiritual successor to Red Dawn was already tried a couple years ago called Tomorrow, When the War Began. It wasn't that good, but it was better than Red Dawn. Now you tell me there's an actual Red Dawn remake with North Korean antagonists? Ugh. You have got to be kidding me.
Anyway, I remember the original Red Dawn as a campy teen action movie and a bit of a coming of age story, not something that really tapped into people's fears. Speaking as somebody who grew up in the US while the cold war was still going, the premise of the Soviet Union invading the US seemed almost as far fetched then as it does now. If there was going to be another Soviet invasion, we all thought it was going to start in Germany. The real fear I remember was inadvertent nuclear war, and there were three other films just before Red Dawn that really captured that fear: The Day After, Testament, and War Games. I think I was 12 or 13 when my father rented Testament on video and I remember being pretty affected by it. I also saw Fail Safe and Dr. Strangelove for the first time around then.
icemann on 23/8/2012 at 05:00
I thought "Tomorrow When The War Began" kicked ass. Good to see an aussie movie that doesn't suck. And I'm aussie and freely admit that most of our movies suck ass.
But anyways whilst Tomorrow When The War Began is about a bunch of teens banding together to fight off an invading force the same as Red Dawn, the similarities end there. In a very big way. Tomorrow was based off an excellent 6 part book series that is FAR superior to the movie.
Wikipedia link:
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrow_series)
faetal on 23/8/2012 at 09:54
Films like Hurt Locker could be seen in a similar vein, except they are shown from the attacker's perspective. I'm guessing Red Dawn would have been a whole different film if it was about the difficulty of the Russian forces' job in the face of civilian resistance. Obviously harder for a US audience to sympathise with, but that's why there is The Hurt Locker.
demagogue on 23/8/2012 at 10:22
An English-language movie taking a sympathetic perspective of attacking Soviets would be subversive as hell though. I might be interested in watching it just for the sheer nerve of it trying.
faetal on 23/8/2012 at 10:31
A really interesting film, starring none other than The Thin White Duke, Dame David Bowie, called Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence was set in WWII and can be interpreted completely differently if you speak Japanese, since none of the Japanese dialogue is sub-titled. In essence a non-English-speaking Japanese speaker and a non-Japanese-speaking English speaker would be watching two different films on the same screen, from different perspectives. Didn't get terrible ratings either.
faetal on 23/8/2012 at 10:33
Quote Posted by icemann
..I'm aussie and freely admit that most of our movies suck ass.
The Crocodile Dundee trilogy notwithstanding.
SubJeff on 23/8/2012 at 11:07
Das Boot is pretty sympathetic to the Germans in that it just shows the hardships of submarine life. Also shows them not to be cold hearted killers.
There are quite a few WW2 films that are from this pov, all the more interesting because, as some game journalist said, it is the only conflict of recent times where there is definitely a good and a bad side.
faetal on 23/8/2012 at 11:10
One of the things I found very affecting and bold about Band of Brothers was the various testimonies in the final episodes about how they pondered that if they'd met the men they fought against under different circumstances, they might very well have been friends etc...
heywood on 23/8/2012 at 11:13
Quote Posted by demagogue
An English-language movie taking a sympathetic perspective of attacking Soviets would be subversive as hell though. I might be interested in watching it just for the sheer nerve of it trying.
Did you ever watch Das Boot, Die Brücke, or Stalingrad? These are some of my favorite war movies. I don't think you need to be allied with a particular side to appreciate a good human drama.
What I would find challenging is a movie that glorifies or takes a sympathetic view to torture, rape, genocide, etc.
And I'm genuinely interested in soviet era Russian film & culture, mainly because it remained so closed off from the west from WWII to the breakup of the USSR. But it's hard if you don't speak or read Russian. I've seen some English language docos and some recent subtitled movies about the Soviet era, but it's not really the same.
EDIT: Doh! Beaten to the punch by SubJeff
