Is on the History channel. I could watch this series over 1000 times and still feel inadequate in anything I do in life. What a generation of heroes !! DD
yes very good show indeed got the DVD collection. isn't speilberg working on another series but focusing on the pacific theater instead?
IMO, it's far better than even critically acclaimed war movies like Saving Private Ryan. Truly amazing work. I've seen it through twice myself.
I have never seen anything confirmed about that, I hope he is doing it, as Band of Brothers is one of the best human drama series ever created. DD
One thing that disapointed me when I read the Stephan Ambrose book is that a number of very critical things in the film series have simply been completely made up. It is not as true to the history as it seems to try to portray itself. As entertainment, however, it's great.
Otto, I think they added bits and pieces from the other men's stories too. What makes this so great is not the stories or the footage, but that they talk to the actual men at the beginning and end, those guys weeping and speaking about their buddies gets me every time. DD
It's good. kind of long, but I think that's part of the point to try to capture the realism, that these guy's gave part of their lives even if they didn't die.
I have owned Band of Brothers on DVD for about 3 years now and never got around to watching it. Ironincally, I was considering starting tonight and then I see this thread!
I loaned my DVD set to my father, a WWII vet, about 2 years ago and he still has not watched it. I've wondered whether he's concerned about how realistic it is.
My grandfather was an army ranger during WWII and he had no interest in seeing Saving Private Ryan. His words why he didn't want to see it were, "I've seen enough of that stuff in my lifetime." He passed away before Band of Brothers came out. Maybe your father has the same thoughts.
My grandfather was on Omaha beach on D-day, I had one chance to talk to him about the war, and we spoke for about 4 hours that night, he died 3 or 4 months later. It was him and me at the table, and the rest of the family on the edges listening in......he had never spoken about it to anyone, and it was riveting....he laughed and cried and I didn't realize how special that moment in my life would turn out to be. His final quote about it was " It was a million dollar experience that I wouldn't give a plug nickel to do again". His picture is on the cabinets behind me, and as I watched some of the guys on Band of Brothers talk today, I got teary eyed and went over and touched his picture. Those guys who fought are hereos !! Davo - do yourself a favor watch the series, it is amazing, and you find out that Davis Schwimmer can act. DD
My girlfriend made me watch these during finals and I'd recommend them definitely. Saving Private Ryan was good but it's like watching The Count of Monte Cristo compared to reading the book. The book was awesome and would've been better utilized as a 10 hour NBC miniseries. As for conversations with WW2 vets (who doesn't have a grandpa??, muchless who fought in the war??) mine was the only survivor in his group (not sure of the actual terminolgy, regimine?) fighting in Italy. He was shot twice and the only other guy was a preachers son and mortally wounded and said bible verses until he died in his arms. The other guy went crazy and thought he could just outrun everything and jumped up over the wall and was shot immediately. He played dead for 2 days while enemy troops passed over him. I tried to make that as not cheesy as possible. I'm going to Boston again to visit him again before he dies as I do every year and I love hearing his war stories although I'm positive I'm not the only person he's ever told about that whole major defining period in his life. It's comforting to me as an aetheist to talk to him about his belief that there isn't a God because of the whole saying "there are no aetheits in foxholes". He says if there is an afterlife, that he'll "haunt the **** out of" me. Bring it on old man.
Those who experienced combat like that, who saw friends die, and were close enough to the enemy to see the expressions on the faces of those they killed and wounded, rarely speak of it. I was in my late twenties when I found out that my Dad had been in that kind of combat. He spoke about it to me, alone, when he thought he didn't have a lot of time left. Turned out that he was right. We all owe a lot to our fathers and grandfathers, who fought in WW II, and sacrificed their youth, and so much more, so we can sit around today typing on an internet BBS, secure in the knowledge that they kept us free from the terror of Hitler and the Empire of Japan. If there is a god and a heaven, we know they dwell there at peace. For so many, peace was hard to adapt to. On the outside, they may have appeared like the Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, but on the inside, the nightmares never truly left them.
It also features Michael Kamen's best score, composed just two years before he died. This mini-series is one of those flukes where great acting, writing, production, scoring, casting etc. all fell together. It's not perfect (I agree with others who said it ran a little long), but it's damn close. Compelling stuff.
I think so. He didn't open up to me until I was around sixteen ... maybe eighteen. And then the stories can periodically over years. I had no idea that he had fired a 50 caliber from the back of a halftrack, was fighting under Patton most of the time, was the only guy remaining in his squad at one point, and so on. Some of his stories would have made good additions to the series. Deckard...good words.
