Okay, hear me out... The HATM Awards (The Hatties? Still workshopping that...) should be nominated by the experts; but then the HATM equivalent of the "Academy" should get to vote. That, of course, would be #HATM watch party participants. 🤓
The ballots could go out via link posted during a Sunday night watch party. The awards could be announced during the Oscars watch party with various celebrity [people who have been on the pod(?)] announcers.
It would be history-nerd AWESOME!!! Think about it. 😜
The Best Years of Our Lives is *amazing*, but I'll fight you because the Fighting Sullivans is *better*. If you haven't seen Fighting Sullivans, it's free on Tubi right now!
I took an entire film history class on WW2 (Thank you, Hutchinson Community College!!) and what I learned is Casablanca is not a movie I enjoyed (in fact I think it's highly overrated and boring) and there were so many movies that I didn't realize existed that made me open my eyes.
My oldest *personal* favorite WW2 movie (made a decade after the fact) is Battle Cry, which is a novel by Leon Uris, but is a movie that needs to be remade today with the panoply of amazing actors. It had it's own amazing cast as well (Including Aldo Ray and Van Heflin in some of the best acting I've seen after the time)
Probably my *favorite* though, is Swing Kids. Christian Bale, Robert Sean Leonard, Frank Whaley, Noah Wylie, Barbara Hershey. As a 13 year old teenage female in 1993, I rest my case.
Just kidding, though the eye candy was a lot of it. The story itself tied into research I had done in 7th grade about the resistance, being able to interview survivors, and how music really tied a lot of them together and gave them something to hope for when everything was bleak.
I have been obsessed with Swing Kids since I was 15. In 1993. Swing Kids, Dead Poets Society, the Branagh Much Ado, followed by seeing him on stage in Tom Stoppard's Arcadia in 1995, is a recitation of my multi-decade crush on (Westwood, NJ's own) Robert Sean Leonard.
WW2 on Film is so complicated - do we go with documentaries, newsreels, and propaganda pieces from both the Allies and the Nazis (these are both bombastic and epic in their own ways, and powerful tools in discussing media literacy)? I mean, say what you like about both John Ford and Frank Capra, but their work for the Armed Services Film Unit is a weird time capsule of "yes, this happened" and "recruitment film." The Netflix docuseries Five Came Back (a companion to the book of the same name) is a great intro to that work!
You mentioned Best Years as a hands-down best "WW2 on film" film, but it's less about the WAR than it is about transition - how do you go from war to homefront? Each of the characters has to manage his own transition from active duty, and the responsibilities of active duty. Wrestling with the aftermath of disabling injury, like Homer; experiencing PTSD like Fred; struggling with a family and a job that have rolled along without him, like Al - all of these facets of life are relatable, both for families at home and for soldiers returning from war today. (The HBO Documentary "Alive Day" made me think of Homer, for example, while reading about PTSD and struggles to adjust to civilian life continue to illuminate the ways Fred and Al are depicted. It's a fantastic film.)
I love the film, but I disagree about it being the best war-on-film film; for me, that's Tora! Tora! Tora! in the Classic Films space. I haven't seen Private Ryan (I know, blasphemy) but I have seen Band of Brothers (and I read the Stephen A Ambrose book; both are heartbreaking for different reasons and both are reminders of why interviews & oral history projects are so important) and I live not far from one of the parachute training sites (no, really: https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=166096 ) which makes the history more immediate.
Okay, hear me out... The HATM Awards (The Hatties? Still workshopping that...) should be nominated by the experts; but then the HATM equivalent of the "Academy" should get to vote. That, of course, would be #HATM watch party participants. 🤓
The ballots could go out via link posted during a Sunday night watch party. The awards could be announced during the Oscars watch party with various celebrity [people who have been on the pod(?)] announcers.
It would be history-nerd AWESOME!!! Think about it. 😜
The Best Years of Our Lives is *amazing*, but I'll fight you because the Fighting Sullivans is *better*. If you haven't seen Fighting Sullivans, it's free on Tubi right now!
I took an entire film history class on WW2 (Thank you, Hutchinson Community College!!) and what I learned is Casablanca is not a movie I enjoyed (in fact I think it's highly overrated and boring) and there were so many movies that I didn't realize existed that made me open my eyes.
My oldest *personal* favorite WW2 movie (made a decade after the fact) is Battle Cry, which is a novel by Leon Uris, but is a movie that needs to be remade today with the panoply of amazing actors. It had it's own amazing cast as well (Including Aldo Ray and Van Heflin in some of the best acting I've seen after the time)
Probably my *favorite* though, is Swing Kids. Christian Bale, Robert Sean Leonard, Frank Whaley, Noah Wylie, Barbara Hershey. As a 13 year old teenage female in 1993, I rest my case.
Just kidding, though the eye candy was a lot of it. The story itself tied into research I had done in 7th grade about the resistance, being able to interview survivors, and how music really tied a lot of them together and gave them something to hope for when everything was bleak.
I think about that a lot today.
I have been obsessed with Swing Kids since I was 15. In 1993. Swing Kids, Dead Poets Society, the Branagh Much Ado, followed by seeing him on stage in Tom Stoppard's Arcadia in 1995, is a recitation of my multi-decade crush on (Westwood, NJ's own) Robert Sean Leonard.
WW2 on Film is so complicated - do we go with documentaries, newsreels, and propaganda pieces from both the Allies and the Nazis (these are both bombastic and epic in their own ways, and powerful tools in discussing media literacy)? I mean, say what you like about both John Ford and Frank Capra, but their work for the Armed Services Film Unit is a weird time capsule of "yes, this happened" and "recruitment film." The Netflix docuseries Five Came Back (a companion to the book of the same name) is a great intro to that work!
You mentioned Best Years as a hands-down best "WW2 on film" film, but it's less about the WAR than it is about transition - how do you go from war to homefront? Each of the characters has to manage his own transition from active duty, and the responsibilities of active duty. Wrestling with the aftermath of disabling injury, like Homer; experiencing PTSD like Fred; struggling with a family and a job that have rolled along without him, like Al - all of these facets of life are relatable, both for families at home and for soldiers returning from war today. (The HBO Documentary "Alive Day" made me think of Homer, for example, while reading about PTSD and struggles to adjust to civilian life continue to illuminate the ways Fred and Al are depicted. It's a fantastic film.)
I love the film, but I disagree about it being the best war-on-film film; for me, that's Tora! Tora! Tora! in the Classic Films space. I haven't seen Private Ryan (I know, blasphemy) but I have seen Band of Brothers (and I read the Stephen A Ambrose book; both are heartbreaking for different reasons and both are reminders of why interviews & oral history projects are so important) and I live not far from one of the parachute training sites (no, really: https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=166096 ) which makes the history more immediate.