War Movies (well not entirely all war movies)

    Most of what I love to watch falls under the category of dusty old war movies. I like the old black n white variety. At one time you could expect to see acting, acting and acting in a war movie. Now though, you are forced to endure pointless foul language (which is often not even accurate for the time period). Special effects which are only special in how they insult you. Anyone that knows what real military munitions look like, knows they do NOT look like the ones used in Hollywood. And unnecessary sex (hey its a war movie damn it). If I want sex, I'll watch a porno so I get the whole effect.

   Its not surprising then, that my collection doesn’t have much of anything made in the last 30 years.

   My 3 most loved movies have to be A Bridge Too Far, The Longest Day, and surprisingly enough because it's a recent film, the more recent Saving Private Ryan. Of course there are a great many other films in my collection, but you can only have so many favourites. In some cases, some films are not quite war movies. Lawrence of Arabia is a great film, so isn’t Doctor Zhivago and the Sound Of Music They were based on periods of time that saw military upheaval though.. I was quite impressed with Gladiator and I really love films of this era in general. Films seem to improve when the director isn’t able to include 20^th century technology.

   I really love documentaries. Actually I have more military documentaries than movies. Some are quite good, some are horrendous examples of wartime propaganda (the film is worth viewing from a visual reference perspective, but the narration can be quite excruciating to listen to). I don’t have to much in the way of non military documentaries, its just not as easy to find good stuff (stuff worth going the effort to collect that is). I don’t go for the quasi science or pseudo science garbage. Just because a famous personality hosts a program doesn’t make the material of any value automatically.

   I would like to ramble about science fiction, but I am much to fussy. I prefer films like 2001, but there just aren’t enough films of this calibre to mention. When I refer to science fiction its films like that which I am talking about.  Star Wars as good as it may be, is an action film in my opinion. Dune might have been a great movie but the director dropped the ball and blew it. All to often good science fiction just doesn't go from the printed page to the film screen intact.

   And of course I like watching the Disney cartoon feature films. Good thing too. If you have children you better be prepared to watch them over and over and over and over (you get the message). The newer ones have better music but that is no big shock. The older films are still ever bit as fun to watch though. My sons collection is rapidly overwhelming my ability to store them.