I would like to recommend a DVD to you

[RobertWood]

I was wandering around Walmart this morning while they were changing my oil.
There was a huge bin in the aisle with $3 DVD's and this one caught my eye.
Had no idea what to expect.

I've just finished watching the first half and I had to take an intermission.

This is one of the most engrossing and riveting things I've ever watched.
I cannot recommend it strongly enough.

http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-11/1114498/HIRO50.JPG

[FredProgGH]

I was about to raise hell with you for posting a pic of a full-screen DVD but since it was a TV miniseries I guess you're off the hook! :D

Thanks for the heads-up, sounds interesting. When was it made?

[RobertWood]

I wish I could tell you more about it other than it exists, Fred, but I have no knowledge of the history of this thing. All I have to go on is the blurb you see on the DVD cover that it was a "two-part miniseries". And that the DVD was released in 2004.
But I give you my solemn promise that it is superb on every level. I have no way to vouch for the accuracy and authenticity of everything in it, but my instinct tells me that truth was a priority for whoever is responsible for it.

[FredProgGH]

Well, that's why IMdB is our friend:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113309/

Looks like a lot of people agree with you on this one- it has an 8.8 rating.

[RobertWood]

Just finished it, Fred. I give it a 9.6.

And here's the good news. How it was being sold makes me think it may be in most Walmarts (Supercenter variety). Look for a large bin in the aisle at the electronics department. Must have had 50 copies each of about a dozen titles in it and this was one of them. Best three bucks you'll ever spend on a DVD.

[gps]

Is it only available in a full screen version?

[RobertWood]

I imagine it is, gps. It was made apparently for one of the premium cable movie channels in 1995. So I wouldn't think widescreen would be available.

[DigitalOBX]

Thanks, I got to pick this one up...... :)

[irishsammy]

Interesting. My "most engrossing" award for video goes to The Civil War series by Ken Burns. I just borrowed my dad's DVD set (which is *extremely* expensive as far as DVD's go...or I would have purchased it myself) and I swear it's the most hypnotic thing I've ever seen. Educational, emotional, powerful...it's a beautiful series. And the media quality is pretty good, too.

[Scott1094]

I have seen this several times on both premium cable and the History Channel. The production is quite skillful in inserting actual footage from the period along with the acted parts. Some very frightening insight on the Japanese mind set. Well worth seeing.

Scott

[Shaded Dogfood]

My "most engrossing" award for video goes to The Civil War series by Ken Burns.

If you liked that you should also enjoy the equally excellent (and equally expensive) Burns series Jazz. Also fine is The World at War.

[spyder696969]

Is it only available in a full screen version?

Bob says yes, but I wonder why they put "Full Screen" so bold at the top. Typically, that sort of marketing ploy is only used if there are other versions available.

EDIT: I did a quick search on eBay to see what's up. The ones I found were listed as Full Screen, buuuuuut...the stock photo didn't have the full screen lettering at the top, so.....maybe?

[JohnR_IN_LA]

Bob does "Hiroshima" have that diblitating mini-series disease where the producers need to cheaply fill some minutes of airtime, so they introduce soap opera elements?

My favorite example of this, is in "Band Of Brothers" where allied soldiers start jumping up and down and screaming at eachother, while a German machinegunner rakes them :D.

Nearly every mini-series gets this affliction, they dont have the budget to shoot more than a few big-budget scenes, so they introduce filler... and what would have been a nice 90 minute, made-for TV movie gets turned into a dragged-out 200 minute mini-series.

[RobertWood]

Bob does "Hiroshima" have that diblitating mini-series disease where the producers need to cheaply fill some minutes of airtime, so they introduce soap opera elements?

My favorite example of this, is in "Band Of Brothers" where allied soldiers start jumping up and down and screaming at eachother, while a German machinegunner rakes them :D.

Nearly every mini-series gets this affliction, they dont have the budget to shoot more than a few big-budget scenes, so they introduce filler... and what would have been a nice 90 minute, made-for TV movie gets turned into a dragged-out 200 minute mini-series.

Excellent question because I know exactly what you mean and I hate that as much as you do.
It actually hadn't occurred to me until you asked, John, but the answer is there is not even ten seconds of that in this film.

[jcmccorm]

Hey thanks Bob. I'll look for this at my local Wally World and pick it up.

Cary

[RobertWood]

It was my pleasure, jcm. Hope you can find it.

[FredProgGH]

Couldn't find it at mine tonight, unfortunately.

[oink]

Some very frightening insight on the Japanese mind set. Well worth seeing.



Truman had some very good reasons for dropping the Bomb.
If he hadn't, many of our forum members may not have had a Daddy to bring them into the world.

According to Defense Dept. estimates at the time, a conventional invasion of Japan would have cost a minimum 1 million American dead. :eek:

Will try to find at Wal-Mart tomorrow.

[ChrisWiggles]

Sounds great, I'll have to rent this one, my local video store has it.

[JohnR_IN_LA]

Well Imperial Japan was utterly defeated, on an island, and with no boats left. Can you say "up a creek without a paddle?" We could have starved them of oil and fishing, and accomplished the same thing.

Attacking a 1000 toddlers is never really justifiable, even though its done all the time in warfare.

[ChrisWiggles]

According to Defense Dept. estimates at the time, a conventional invasion of Japan would have cost a minimum 1 million American dead.

But you know what they say about "Military Intelligence" ;)

It's a debate that will rage forever.

This has always been one of my favorite writings on the topic(one of my favorites ever):

The Garden Shukkei-en
(Carolyn Forche)

By way of a vanished bridge we cross this river
As a cloud of lifted snow would ascend a mountain.

She has always been afraid to come here.

It is the river she most
Remembers, the living
And the dead both crying for help

A world that allowed neither tears nor lamentation

The matsu trees brush her hair as she passes
Beneath them, as do the shining strands of barbed wire

Where this lake is, there was a lake,
Where these black pine grow, there grew black pine.

Where there is no teahouse I see a wooden teahouse
and the corpses of those who slept in it.

On the opposite bank of the Ota, a weeping willow
Etches its memory of their faces into the water

Where light touches the face, the character for heart is written.

She strokes a burnt trunk wrapped in straw:
I was weak and my skin hung from my fingertips like cloth

Do you think for a moment we were human beings to them?

She comes to the stone angel holding paper cranes
Not an angel, but a woman where she once had been

Who walks through the garden Shukkei-en
Calling the carp to the surface by clapping her hands

Do Americans think of us?

So she began as we squatted over the toilets
If you want, I'll tell you, but nothing I say will be enough

We tried to dress our burns with vegetable oil

Her hair is the white froth of rice rising up kettlesides, her mind also
In the post-war years she thought deeply about how to live

The common greeting dozo-hiroskhu is please take care of me
All hibakusha still alive were children then

A cemetery seen from the air is a child's city

I don't like this particular red flower because
It reminds me of a woman's brain crushed under a roof

Perhaps my language is too precise, and therefore difficult to understand?

We have not, all these years, felt what you call happiness
But at times, with good fortune, we experience something close

As our life resembles life, and this garden the garden
And in the silence surrounding what happened to us

It is the bell to awaken God that we've heard ringing.

[RobertWood]

This film engenders all those feelings you've expressed.
Both the madness of using this unimaginably inhuman weapon of mass destruction and the potentially inhuman madness of not using it and letting the war continue.
It not only explores the out of control turmoil in Japan with the civilians in the government wanting to end the war and the military leaders refusing to let that happen, but it reveals the conflict between the hawks and the doves in the nation which invented the bomb struggling with the decision of if and how to use it.
And finally it brings Carolyn Forche's words above to life (or rather death) in pictures.

It puts a human face on all aspects of it. And in watching it do so one cannot help but be thinking about the world we are living in today.

[JimSD]

Bob does "Hiroshima" have that diblitating mini-series disease where the producers need to cheaply fill some minutes of airtime, so they introduce soap opera elements?

My favorite example of this, is in "Band Of Brothers" where allied soldiers start jumping up and down and screaming at eachother, while a German machinegunner rakes them :D. I seem to recall you writing this previously about the scene where they're entering Carentan in episode 3. In my opinion it's a complete mischaracterization of what happens in the scene. If that's not the scene you're referring to, which one is it because I don't recall anything like that and have seen it half a dozen times. What the scene does show is troops panicking and coming to a standstill with Winters in the open imploring them to keep moving so that they all don't get killed. What is shown does seem unbelievable, but is mentioned as happening that way in several books that refer to the incident including 'Band of Brothers' and a biography of Dick Winters.

[spyder696969]

The Garden Shukkei-en
(Carolyn Forche)

By way of a vanished bridge we cross this river
As a cloud of lifted snow would ascend a mountain.

She has always been afraid to come here.

It is the river she most
Remembers, the living
And the dead both crying for help

A world that allowed neither tears nor lamentation

The matsu trees brush her hair as she passes
Beneath them, as do the shining strands of barbed wire

Where this lake is, there was a lake,
Where these black pine grow, there grew black pine.

Where there is no teahouse I see a wooden teahouse
and the corpses of those who slept in it.

On the opposite bank of the Ota, a weeping willow
Etches its memory of their faces into the water

Where light touches the face, the character for heart is written.

She strokes a burnt trunk wrapped in straw:
I was weak and my skin hung from my fingertips like cloth

Do you think for a moment we were human beings to them?

She comes to the stone angel holding paper cranes
Not an angel, but a woman where she once had been

Who walks through the garden Shukkei-en
Calling the carp to the surface by clapping her hands

Do Americans think of us?

So she began as we squatted over the toilets
If you want, I'll tell you, but nothing I say will be enough

We tried to dress our burns with vegetable oil

Her hair is the white froth of rice rising up kettlesides, her mind also
In the post-war years she thought deeply about how to live

The common greeting dozo-hiroskhu is please take care of me
All hibakusha still alive were children then

A cemetery seen from the air is a child's city

I don't like this particular red flower because
It reminds me of a woman's brain crushed under a roof

Perhaps my language is too precise, and therefore difficult to understand?

We have not, all these years, felt what you call happiness
But at times, with good fortune, we experience something close

As our life resembles life, and this garden the garden
And in the silence surrounding what happened to us

It is the bell to awaken God that we've heard ringing.

Thank you for posting that, Chris. I don't normally quote entire posts as long as this, condensing if possible, but such beautiful and true words that put a human face on the cost of war are worth repeating.

If every kill-happy person that hoots and hollers when they hear Toby Keith scream out insanity such as, "We'll put a boot in yer ass, it's the American way" could take a moment to read things such as this, the world would be a far, far, better place to live in.

[logain2000]

Ask China about how Japan conducted themselves during WW2. I have no moral objection about the use of the bomb on Japan.

Yes there probably could have been a better way to go about it (ie a Demonstration) but I think the leaders made a discission that I believe wasn't morally wrong in the context of WW2.

Besides if it were me having to invade Japan..well I would vote to drop the bomb.


Anyways I will have to check out the movie..

[Josh Z]

Bob, would you consider this the finest motion picture you've ever seen? :)

[RobertWood]

Absolutely, Josh. :D

The truth is there is no "Best Picture" nor is there a #1 or a #4 or a #anything.
Win, Place and Show are suitable descriptives for horseraces. Not art.

[Phil Smith]

This DVD was great as far as history goes. Lots of interesting stuff about the events that led up to the dropping of the bomb that I wasn't aware of, but I found it to be gawd awful movie. I was interested in the history aspect and fought hard to keep awake. Eventually I lost the battle and the movie dropped a snooze bomb on me. :)

It would make a great read. I would have much rather read a book on the subject.