Quotulatiousness

February 8, 2020

300 | Based on a True Story

Filed under: Europe, Greece, History, Media, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

The Cynical Historian
Published 29 Jul 2015

Here is another episode of “Based on a True Story”. This time it is 300 and how it is based on the battle of Thermopylae. It is a great film with a great many historically innacurate plot points.
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references:
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.p…

http://www.historyvshollywood.com/ree…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/300_(fi…
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LET’S CONNECT: https://twitter.com/Cynical_History
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Wiki:
300 is a 2006 American epic fantasy war film based on the 1998 comic series of the same name by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley. Both are fictionalized retellings of the Battle of Thermopylae within the Persian Wars. The film was directed by Zack Snyder, while Miller served as executive producer and consultant. It was filmed mostly with a super-imposition chroma key technique, to help replicate the imagery of the original comic book.

The plot revolves around King Leonidas (Gerard Butler), who leads 300 Spartans into battle against the Persian “god-King” Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) and his invading army of more than 300,000 soldiers. As the battle rages, Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) attempts to rally support in Sparta for her husband. The story is framed by a voice-over narrative by the Spartan soldier Dilios (David Wenham). Through this narrative technique, various fantastical creatures are introduced, placing 300 within the genre of historical fantasy. The events are revealed to be a story told by Delios, the only one of the 300 Spartans to survive the battle.

300 was released in both conventional and IMAX theaters in the United States on March 9, 2007, and on DVD, Blu-ray Disc, and HD DVD on July 31, 2007. The film received mixed reviews, receiving acclaim for its original visuals and style, but criticism for favoring visuals over characterization and its depiction of the ancient Persians in Iran, a characterization which some had deemed racist; however, the film was a box office success, grossing over $450 million, with the film’s opening being the 24th largest in box office history at the time. A sequel, entitled Rise of an Empire, which is based on Miller’s unpublished graphic novel prequel Xerxes, was released on March 7, 2014.
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Hashtags: #history #300 #Thermopylae #review #BasedOnATrueStory #Sparta #ThisIsSparta

January 29, 2020

Patton | Based on a True Story

Filed under: History, Media, Military, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

The Cynical Historian
Published 30 Aug 2018

It’s finally time to review Patton! I have a lot to say about it, as you can tell by the time stamp. Way back when I started the Based on a True Story series, the second episode was a bit about what I considered to be the best ones — and this movie was at the top. I love this film, but for more reasons than most of you could know — so this is going to be a deep dive into the film and its subject matter. It’s ambiguous, narrowed in subject, and just a perfect examination of the man. As the New Yorker said during the movie’s release, “[Patton] appears to be deliberately planned as a Rorschach test.”
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references:
Brian Sobel and George S. Patton IV, The Fighting Pattons (Westport: Praeger Publishing, 1997). https://amzn.to/2u2WI57

MacMillan Compendium, America at War (New York: Macmillan Library Reference, 1994), 726-727. https://amzn.to/2m6o4mx

John Keegan and Andrew Wheatcroft, Who’s Who in Military History: from 1453 to the Present Day, (London: Routledge, 1996), 231-232. https://amzn.to/2KWv53M

Paul Fussell, “Patton”, in Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies, ed. Mark Carnes (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1996). https://amzn.to/2J5iGc7

Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen, Based on a True Story: Fact and Fantasy in 100 Favorite Movies, (Chicago: A Cappella Books, 2005), 269-272. https://amzn.to/2m2sSZQ

Frank Sanello, Reel v. Real: How Hollywood Turns Fact into Fiction (Lanham: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2003), 177-181. https://amzn.to/2N072BB

http://www.historynet.com/patton-film…

https://dailyhistory.org/How_accurate…

http://jbell2ja.umwblogs.org/history-…

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008…

https://www.moviemistakes.com/film960

Special thanks to my mom, dad, and uncle for making sure this was accurate and providing media for the end bit, especially my father (Mark Hall-Patton), who proofread the script as well.
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Wiki:
Patton is a 1970 American epic biographical DeLuxe Color war film about U.S. General George S. Patton during World War II. It stars George C. Scott, Karl Malden, Michael Bates and Karl Michael Vogler. It was directed by Franklin J. Schaffner from a script by Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H. North, who based their screenplay on the biography Patton: Ordeal and Triumph by Ladislas Farago and Omar Bradley’s memoir A Soldier’s Story. The film was shot in 65 mm Dimension 150 by cinematographer Fred J. Koenekamp and has a music score by Jerry Goldsmith.

Patton won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. Scott won Best Actor for his portrayal of General Patton, but declined to accept the award. The opening monologue, delivered by George C. Scott as General Patton with an enormous American flag behind him, remains an iconic and often quoted image in film. The film was successful, and in 2003, Patton was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant”. The Academy Film Archive preserved Patton in 2003.
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#History #Patton #Review #Accuracy #GeneralPatton

January 26, 2020

You, your new DeLorean, and the LVMVMA

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Business, Government, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Many people — not all of them rabid fans of the Back to the Future movies — would like to own a DeLorean and it is going to be possible … eventually:

Photo of a DeLorean by grayesun is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Basically, the legislation [the Low Volume Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Act of 2015], which was signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2015, would allow companies to produce limited-run replica vehicles without being bound by certain safety and emissions standards. But after that administration ended, the law stalled because the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration didn’t follow through with implementation.

“One problem, Espey explains, was that NHTSA hasn’t had a permanent administrator since the previous presidential election, and the acting administrator would not sign off on the regulations,” writes Hagerty. Thankfully, the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) took matters into their own hands and filed a lawsuit, and now it looks like the law could take effect soon.

That means DMC is once again gearing up to sell new turnkey DeLoreans, and this time around they’ll have modern conveniences like power steering and cruise control (imagine that!) and potentially features like heated seats and smartphone integration (the future!).

While they’re not available to order just yet, interested buyers can fill out a non-binding pre-order form. Just don’t expect to hit 88 miles per hour in 2020; as Espey said, “There will be no cars produced under this legislation for at least a year, and that’s presuming the feds do their job this time and don’t drag it out for four more years.”

H/T to Colby Cosh for the link.

January 15, 2020

History Buffs: Amadeus

Filed under: Europe, History, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

History Buffs
Published 3 Dec 2015

In this episode we look at the original Rock n Roll bad boy, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart! And who says this show isn’t classy and sophisticated 🙂

● Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HistoryBuffs_

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Amadeus is a 1984 American period drama film directed by Miloš Forman, written by Peter Shaffer, and adapted from Shaffer’s stage play Amadeus (1979). The story is set in Vienna, Austria, during the latter half of the 18th century.

The film was nominated for 53 awards and received 40, including eight Academy Awards (including Best Picture), four BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globes, and a Directors Guild of America (DGA) award. In 1998, the American Film Institute ranked Amadeus 53rd on its 100 Years… 100 Movies list.

The story begins in 1823 as the elderly Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham) attempts suicide by slitting his throat while loudly begging forgiveness for having killed Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Tom Hulce) in 1791. Placed in a lunatic asylum for the act, Salieri is visited by Father Vogler (Richard Frank), a young priest who seeks to hear his confession. Salieri is sullen and uninterested but eventually warms to the priest and launches into a long “confession” about his relationship with Mozart.

January 5, 2020

Based On vs Inspired By

Filed under: History, Media — Tags: — Nicholas @ 02:00

History Buffs
Published 20 Oct 2017

SUPPORT HISTORY BUFFS ON PATREON
https://www.patreon.com/HistoryBuffs

December 28, 2019

Star Wars and the First Xmas Film – December 27th – TimeGhost of Christmas DAY 4

Filed under: History, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

TimeGhost History
Published 27 Dec 2019

Did you go to the cinema this holiday? Or binge a bit of streaming? D’you feel modern about it? You’d be wrong… Holiday movies is a tradition that goes back almost 125 years!

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Spartacus Olsson
Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Spartacus Olsson
Edited by: Mikołaj Cackowski
Sound design: Marek Kamiński

Sources:
Mark Doliner https://flic.kr/p/oV46FY
Portrait of the Actress Carrie Fisher member of the jury in the 70 Edition of Venice International Film Festival 2013 by Riccardo Ghilardi

Soundtracks from Epidemic Sound:
Howard Harper-Barnes – “A Sleigh Ride Into Town”
Howard Harper-Barnes – “My Only Wish Is Love”
Mike Franklyn – “Christmas Bliss”
The Snowy Hill Singers – “It Was On A Christmas Night” (Instrumental Version)

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

December 26, 2019

Top 12 Fictional Pseudo-Christmases

Filed under: Books, Gaming, Media — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 24 Dec 2019

Happy holidays, one and all – even those of us from fictional universes where Christmas isn’t celebrated! Let’s celebrate by comparing twelve fictional Definitely Not Christmases and ranking them from lamest to best!

Our content is intended for teenage audiences and up.

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December 19, 2019

Modern Classics Summarized: A Christmas Carol

Filed under: Books, Britain, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 21 Dec 2018

Have a holly, jolly christmas! Spend time with your family, eat tons of good food, and don’t forget to ponder the looming specter of your mortality and the worth of how you’ve spent your fleeting existence!

PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4664797

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November 18, 2019

Fungus rock – the great placebo treasure (and the Mujahideen)

Filed under: Europe, Health, History — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Lindybeige
Published 5 Jun 2015

Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Lindybeige

The things that people valued and fought over in the past were not as they are now. You might not guess the tremendous significance of one tiny island off the coast of Gozo.

NEWS FLASH (March 8th 2017): the Azure Window, featured in this video, has collapsed into the sea.

More videos from Malta to follow.

Lindybeige: a channel of archaeology, ancient and medieval warfare, rants, swing dance, travelogues, evolution, and whatever else occurs to me to make.

▼ Follow me…

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Lindybeige I may have some drivel to contribute to the Twittersphere, plus you get notice of uploads.

website: http://www.LloydianAspects.co.uk

Fungus rock – the great placebo treasure

November 17, 2019

Mark Steyn on the post-Basil-Fawlty John Cleese

Filed under: Britain, Humour, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

He’s trying fairly hard not to turn into one or another of the stock characters he’s played over the years:

John Cleese at the Byline Festival, 2017.
Photo by Raphael Moran via Wikimedia Commons.

“John was a boy that kept to himself,” recalled Mrs Hicks, Reg and Muriel Cleese’s next-door neighbor in Totnes in Devon, deploying the formulation traditionally reserved for the landladies of suburban serial killers. “I suppose he was all right with his Cambridge people, but us being country folk he wouldn’t say very much. At one time I looked after John for a couple of days and did his bedroom when his parents were away. He was writing something on his desk at the time. Course I didn’t look at it, but it was sarcastic sort of stuff about Churchill. I do often wonder what happened to him.”

Listening to Mrs Hicks, you appreciate the particular challenge of comedy writing – for who could ever improve on that? Nonetheless, she’s not the only one to wonder what’s happened to John Cleese. He turned eighty a couple of weeks back, and the jubilations were more muted than one might once have expected. My local PBS station still shows Fawlty Towers as part of its Britcom lineup, but Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, bemoans that Cleese has now turned into Basil Fawlty lui-même. Younger “comics” regret that the a great comedic talent is now the pub bore he played in his youth.

And why would that be? Well, after supporting Brexit, he moved to Nevis in the British West Indies and announced that the imperial metropolis was “not really an English city anymore”. Mayor Khan replied that “Londoners know that our diversity is our greatest strength” – although, strong as it is, it doesn’t seem much use during a knife attack. During the ensuing Twitterstorm, an opposing Tweeter declared that “I can’t stand Englishness”, and Cleese wistfully responded:

    I suspect I should apologise for my affection for the Englishness of my upbringing. But in some ways I found it calmer, more polite, more humorous, less tabloid, and less money-oriented than the one that is replacing it.

The Two-Minutes Tweet-Hate rampaged on, and Cleese retreated to the charms of his post-colonial backwater:

    Nevis has excellent race relations, a very well educated population, no sign of political correctness… conscientious lawyers, a relaxed and humorous life style, a deep love of cricket, and a complete lack of knife crime …and the icing on the cake is that Nevis is not the world centre for Russian dirty money laundering…

    I think it’s legitimate to prefer one culture to another. For example, I prefer cultures that do not tolerate female genital mutilation. Will this be considered racist by all those who hover, eagerly hoping that someone will offend them?

Is this the room for an argument? Not anymore. There are just things you’re not meant to bring up, lest the hoverers pounce.

As it happens, I agree with almost all of the above. But then I always have. It’s odder to hear it from Cleese. In essence, he misses the England of Mrs Hicks, of couples called Reg and Muriel, of saloon-bar majors, bowler-hatted civil servants, Church of England vicars, socially insecure lower-middle-class hoteliers and all the other stock types of a now vanished Albion he mocked at the height of his celebrity. The counterculture triumphed so totally that there is no longer a culture to counter, and the void of “diversity” makes London feel, even overlooking the stabbings and clitoridectomies, just like a large version of every other cookie-cutter multiculti western city.

“I know they were very disappointed with John,” Mrs Hicks told Cleese’s biographer Jonathan Margolis. “Muriel was so excited when she came in here and said John had passed his exams at Cambridge. They thought he was going to be a solicitor, and then he fell in with David Frost and that was it.”

November 8, 2019

Shakespeare Summarized: Macbeth

Filed under: Britain, Humour, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 12 April 2014

Here it is! The Scottish Play. The bloodiest of the bloody. An epic tale of magic, madness and stabbing. It’s so gory, even Tarantino thinks it’s over the top.

Making it funny was pretty tough. 😀

November 2, 2019

When entertainment morphs into propaganda

Filed under: History, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

One of the key elements aiding Hitler and the NSDAP to take power and stay in power in Germany in the 1930s was the constant, ongoing propaganda campaign orchestrated by Joseph Goebbels. Hitler and the Nazi party were lauded as the perfect Germanic solution to every problem and Jews, socialists, homosexuals, and other undesireable elements were belittled and used as targets of hate. A big part of Goebbels’ propaganda revolved around one idea, the “Big Lie”:

Hitler, Göring, Goebbels and Hess.
Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.

By suppressing competing voices and having all the methods of reaching the people repeating the same story, the Nazis solidified their control on power in Germany that lasted until 1945, and was only demolished by massive military effort by the United States, the Soviet Union, and the British Commonwealth. Propaganda is a very powerful tool that works distressingly well to implant and nurture evil ideas in a subject population.

Modern propagandists in the west generally don’t have the power of the state aiding them, but if they get enough of the channels of communication — especially the entertainment channels — to co-ordinate the message, the effects can be very strong:

… I perfectly understand the legitimacy of feminist concerns regarding the portrayal of women in the media as consistently demure, retiring, and subservient to men. I grant that, in most of the action/adventure movies that I saw growing up, women would typically twist an ankle or get captured and then require rescuing by the swashbuckling male hero — and I realize how galling this must have been to generations of women. And therefore, a certain correction was undoubtedly in order. But what is problematic now is the Nietzschean quality of the reaction, by which I mean, the insistence that female power has to be asserted over and against males, that there is an either/or, zero-sum conflict between men and women. It is not enough, in a word, to show women as intelligent, savvy, and good; you have to portray men as stupid, witless, and irresponsible. That this savage contrast is having an effect especially on younger men is becoming increasingly apparent.

In the midst of a “you-go-girl” feminist culture, many boys and young men feel adrift, afraid that any expression of their own good qualities will be construed as aggressive or insensitive. If you want concrete proof of this, take a look at the statistics contrasting female and male success at the university level. And you can see the phenomenon in films such as Fight Club and The Intern. In the former, the Brad Pitt character turns to his friend and laments, “we’re thirty year old boys;” and in the latter, Robert De Niro’s classic male type tries to whip into shape a number of twenty-something male colleagues who are rumpled, unsure of themselves, without ambition — and of course under the dominance of an all conquering female.

It might be the case that, in regard to money, power, and honor, a zero-sum dynamic obtains, but it decidedly does not obtain in regard to real virtue. The truly courageous person is not threatened by another person’s courage; the truly temperate man is not intimidated by the temperance of someone else; the truly just person is not put off by the justice of a countryman; and authentic love positively rejoices in the love shown by another. And therefore, it should be altogether possible to hold up the virtue of a woman without denying virtue to a man. In point of fact, if we consult the “all conquering female” characters in films and TV, we see that they often exemplify the very worst of the traditional male qualities: aggression, suspicion, hyper-sensitivity, cruelty, etc. This is what happens when a Nietzschean framework has replaced a classical one.

My point is that it is altogether possible — and eminently desirable — to say “you go boy” with as much vigor as “you go girl.” And both the boys and the girls will be better for it.

October 30, 2019

Shakespeare Summarized: Julius Caesar

Filed under: History, Humour, Media — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 1 Dec 2013

Here we go again! It’s only taken me several months…

Sarcastified Shakespeare returns, this time with a look at that historical tragedy we all love to write essays about, Julius Caesar!

I think the real main character here was Brutus’s crippling self-esteem issues…

October 22, 2019

Shakespeare Summarized: Hamlet

Filed under: Humour, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 13 April 2013

Well, this one is longer than the last one, but in fairness it’s 2000% shorter than the actual movie.

Continuing the trend, this video summarizes THE TRAGEDIE OF HAMLET PRINCE OF DENMARK, commonly known as Hamlet.

Goodness, he really is a whiner, isn’t he? And he’s supposed to be the sympathetic character!

Note: This is the second version of Hamlet Summarized, because I made the mistake of using a copyrighted song in the last one. Oops.

October 2, 2019

That Downfall Scene Explained – What Is Hitler Freaking Out About? I 16 Days In Berlin

Filed under: Germany, History, Media, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

The Great War
Published on 1 Oct 2019

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