User Panel
Posted: 3/5/2010 6:41:30 PM EDT
Anyone heard any pre-reviews or scuttlebut? All I've heard is "it's better than Band of Brothers". |
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I've heard the scope of it dwarfs Band of Brothers and Private Ryan, paints a broader picture of the war. The battle sequences are supposed to be mind blowingly epic.
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I wish I could watch it. Hell, I'd even pay to watch it online.
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Quoted: I wish I could watch it. Hell, I'd even pay to watch it online. I'm sure it will be available online before you know it. |
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Can't wait, but will not pay for HBO. Will buy the DVD's when they come out. Yes I know, HBO may get some kick back.
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i am excited for the premiere on the 14th, i already had HBO turned back on last week - they are having a free one month.
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check out this link from last night: http://www.ak47.net/forums/topic.html?b=1&f=5&t=1007640
Also, just do a search on youtube for "The Pacific", alot of nice trailers, stories about the three main characters, about the war, ect. really neat |
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I'll bite so I can tape it and share it with my brother and Marine co-worker.
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I wish my dad had lived long enough to see this. He never felt those stories were told well. He was at Iwo Jima, and although he doesn't like to go into details, it's clear it had a great impact on his life.
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I just caught the making of The Pacific special on HBO last night, and it looks like it's going to be pretty awesome. They're basing The Pacific on the real lives of three separate Marines, so they had a lot of subject matter to work with.
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I know that I could get them online for free but I want to see them in 1080 so I'll be getting a couple months of HBO.
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Having read "a helmet for my pillow" and "with the old breed" it is likely to be fantastic.
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Interesting that they already lay out the episodes in advance: http://www.hbo.com/the-pacific/index.html#/the-pacific/episodes/index.html
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Better than BOB? That's a bold statement. A friend of mine's roommate's brother recently interviewed with a certain television network I won't mention and was given the entire miniseries on dvd by the guy who interviewed him. I watched the first 3 and a half parts on sunday with them. I can say it looks fantastic and they do a good job of bringing out the human element, ie its not mindless action and you get an idea of how much it would suck to be there. im not sure if its better than BoB, but i havent seen much of it yet. and for those who call bullshit, im not full of it. the third part has zero action with the exception of a brief barfight, for example. |
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If its as good as BOB I will be quite happy myself...better? I'm not sure thats possible.
Anyone heard any pre-reviews or scuttlebut? All I've heard is "it's better than Band of Brothers". |
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I did this as well...gotta love ole Comcast...19.99 per month plus 1.99 activation fee...ridiculous.
I know that I could get them online for free but I want to see them in 1080 so I'll be getting a couple months of HBO. |
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I have a friend who was an island hopping Marine. Some of his stories are real treasures. I'll have to remind him of the series.
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I did this as well...gotta love ole Comcast...19.99 per month plus 1.99 activation fee...ridiculous.
I know that I could get them online for free but I want to see them in 1080 so I'll be getting a couple months of HBO. I have Comcast too.....20 bucks a month for 1 show? Online isn't looking so bad now.... |
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Quoted: Is it free for Dish Network customers? As long as you have HBO. |
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Having read "a helmet for my pillow" and "with the old breed" it is likely to be fantastic. Has anyone read the companion book, by Hugh Ambrose? I won't be able to restart my satellite service anytime soon, so will the book tide me over until the DVDs are released? Or can I just stick with A Helmet for my Pillow and With the Old Breed? |
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Having read "a helmet for my pillow" and "with the old breed" it is likely to be fantastic. Has anyone read the companion book, by Hugh Ambrose? http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4015/4421734176_bdfa190b4d.jpg I won't be able to restart my satellite service anytime soon, so will the book tide me over until the DVDs are released? Or can I just stick with A Helmet for my Pillow and With the Old Breed? "The Pacific" should be arriving today. I read the others a while ago, and they should be a good backdrop. "With the Old Breed" is the best book I have ever read about war. It actually bothered me for a spell. The description of Okinawa will humble anyone who reads it. |
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I was invited to the screening by a good friend. I hope I can make it
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Not to piss in anyone's cheerios, but I read a semi-negative review of it. Something to the effect of post-9/11 mindset. Over the top music scores. More moony acting less gritty scenes like in the "Breaking Point" episode of BOB.
Don't get me wrong, I hope it's great. If it's anywhere close to "With the Old Breed" then I'll be happy. |
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<cite class="vcard"> By LYNN ELBER, AP Television Writer Lynn Elber, Ap Television Writer </cite> – <abbr class="recenttimedate" title="2010-03-10T03:35:24-0800">2 hrs 22 mins ago</abbr> LOS ANGELES – Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg swapped other people's war stories to groundbreaking, heartbreaking effect in "Saving Private Ryan" and "Band of Brothers." The unsparing and visceral depiction of battle in their World War II collaborations is revisited by "The Pacific," a 10-part, $195 million miniseries debuting Sunday at 9 p.m. EST on HBO. Also intact is their celebration of the American veteran. But "The Pacific" carves its own path across a lesser-known theater of war with parallels to current conflicts. It also breaks the "Band of Brothers" mold by following its battered Marines home with a coda reminiscent of the classic World War II film, "The Best Years of Our Lives." The challenge "was to take human beings and put them through hell and wonder how in the world they would approach the world when they came back," Hanks said. "Part 10 is the first time we went for it," he said. The new HBO miniseries was born of its predecessor, 2001's acclaimed, Emmy-winning "Band of Brothers," which dramatized the true story of a company of paratroopers fighting in Europe. "We only told a partial story in `Band,'" Spielberg said. "My own relatives were saying to me, `We all fought in the Pacific. That's a different story. It was jungle warfare.'" The filmmaker's father, Arnold, battled the Japanese in Burma and an uncle flew B-29s over Japan. Other Pacific theater veterans wrote to Spielberg, "wanting me to tell their story." The challenge for executive producers Hanks, Spielberg and Gary Goetzman was that the U.S.-Japanese conflict sprawled across a series of remote islands and lacked the European landmarks that gave "Band of Brothers" an instant familiarity. The men of "The Pacific" fought for dirt on Guadalcanal, New Britain, Pavuvu, Peleliu and Iwo Jima. The miniseries opens shortly after the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, follows the path of three young Marines and ends on the home front in 1946 after Japan's surrender. "You get to see who these men were before they come into the war, where they came from, why they wanted to get into it. ... You get to see how they came out of it, if they did at all," said cast member Joe Mazzello. "You get the full scope of what it's like to be an American Marine in that time." Mazzello, like his co-stars, plays a real member of the First Marine Division. The miniseries focuses on Eugene B. Sledge (Mazzello) and Robert Leckie (James Badge Dale), both privates and authors of memoirs used in developing the miniseries, as well as Sgt. John Basilone (Jon Seda), awarded the Medal of Honor. "The hardest part was portraying these men and trying to tell their stories truthfully," said Dale, a sentiment echoed by Mazzello and Seda during a joint interview. Even as the producers vowed to go deep into the truth of the Pacific fight and whether U.S. troops emerged as heroic or not, producer Goetzman said he eventually realized, "You just can't help but have such an unabiding respect for these vets." According to Hanks, the Pacific theater they faced was far different from the European one. "The war in the Pacific was more like the wars we've seen ever since, a war of racism and terror, a war of absolute horrors, both on the battlefield and in the regular living conditions," he said. Besides the suffering faced by soldiers, there are scenes in the miniseries depicting Japan's forced use of civilian islanders as unwilling suicide bombers. In one scene, a woman is blown up by a body bomb; her infant is in her hands. "We want the viewing public to be prepared that there is a level of savagery in `The Pacific' that is more intense than in `Band of Brothers,'" Spielberg said. "Anything less than the graphic nature of that war, or for that matter any war, would have been met by scorn by the veterans who fought in it," he said. "It would have just been one more Hollywoodized portrayal of an event that rends your body ... and often doesn't create even a memory of your existence. That's war, that's what happens." Co-executive producer Bruce McKenna, a writer who started research for "The Pacific" shortly after working on "Band of Brothers," said the violence is historically accurate. Okinawa was the site of the "most horrible battle that Americans fought in World War II," he said. "There were 8 million artillery rounds fired, one every second." The estimated death toll, according to several historical accounts, included more than 100,000 Japanese troops, at least 75,000 Okinawans and more than 12,000 U.S. troops. Australia stood in for most of the miniseries' locations, including the war zones and U.S. scenes, during more than a year of filming from August 2007 to May 2008. More than 90 sets were built, with 62,000 tons of earth excavated at a quarry outside of Melbourne to build Iwo Jima and Okinawa battlefields. There were six writers and six directors on the project, with retired Marine Capt. Dale Dye serving as military adviser as he did on "Band of Brothers." The actors acknowledge that conditions fell short of actual war but were hellish nonetheless. "You were not comfortable on that set for one day," said Mazzello, with 110-degree weather that made clothes burn against skin and with an unending supply of flies "trying to get in your nose and eyes." "They actually CGI'ed out flies because there were too many on our faces," Seda said, using shorthand for computer-generated imagery. Spielberg and Hanks are intent on honoring both history and those who lived it with their World War II films, helping to narrow what Spielberg calls "the generation gap" between his father's generation and the ones that followed. There are other ambitions for their latest project. Asked if they expect "The Pacific" to resonate with viewers when it comes to the conflicts America faces today, Hanks responded quickly. "We want it to resonate completely," he said. "The war in the Pacific was a war of terror and racism, of suicide attacks. Both sides viewed the other side as being subhuman dogs, from a civilization that didn't recognize the advancement of human kind. "Sound familiar? Sound like something that might be going on?" he asked, referring to the U.S.-Middle Eastern conflict. He noted that Americans who once bitterly dismissed the Japanese as barbaric now accept them as friends and equals. "Right now we're facing a different part of the world where they view us and we view them as an aberration of humanity," Hanks said. "There's a possibility that somewhere down the line, 60 years from now, we can look at the people that are trying to kill us and we are killing now as we do the Japanese today." The two Hollywood A-listers acknowledge that their earliest collaboration, a slight 1986 film comedy in which Hanks starred and that Spielberg produced, gave no hint of their future roles as respected war chroniclers. "When we first worked together, on `The Money Pit,' if somebody had come to me and said, `You two guys are gonna get a job telling historical stories ... more specifically, World War II history,' I would have said, `You're nuts,'" Hank said, smiling broadly. |
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Quoted: Quoted: I did this as well...gotta love ole Comcast...19.99 per month plus 1.99 activation fee...ridiculous.I know that I could get them online for free but I want to see them in 1080 so I'll be getting a couple months of HBO. Say what? I called them last week and they have a promo going on now where HBO and Cinemax are $5 a month a piece. I just got HBO so it was only $5/month for 12 months. I would call them bastards. |
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<snip> According to Hanks, the Pacific theater they faced was far different from the European one. "The war in the Pacific was more like the wars we've seen ever since, a war of racism and terror, a war of absolute horrors, both on the battlefield and in the regular living conditions," he said. Anyone else go "WTF" at this quote? |
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<snip> According to Hanks, the Pacific theater they faced was far different from the European one. "The war in the Pacific was more like the wars we've seen ever since, a war of racism and terror, a war of absolute horrors, both on the battlefield and in the regular living conditions," he said. Anyone else go "WTF" at this quote? Talk to the men of the US Army that fought in the Hurtgen Forest about horror and terror. I don't know so much about racism but it was hell. |
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<snip> According to Hanks, the Pacific theater they faced was far different from the European one. "The war in the Pacific was more like the wars we've seen ever since, a war of racism and terror, a war of absolute horrors, both on the battlefield and in the regular living conditions," he said. Anyone else go "WTF" at this quote? Talk to the men of the US Army that fought in the Hurtgen Forest about horror and terror. I don't know so much about racism but it was hell. The parts I highlighted in red are what I'm talking about. It is a very hard argument to make that conditions in U.S. warfare are similar now to the pacific theater then. Just made my neck crinkle, that's all. |
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The United States Naval Institute has set up a companion page to "The Pacific."
Some great stuff here. USNI - Naval History's Guide to "The Pacific." "We want it to resonate completely," he said. "The war in the Pacific was a war of terror and racism, of suicide attacks. Both sides viewed the other side as being subhuman dogs, from a civilization that didn't recognize the advancement of human kind. "Sound familiar? Sound like something that might be going on?" he asked, referring to the U.S.-Middle Eastern conflict. - I have a real problem with Hanks' "moral equivalency" allusion here. Maybe he should ask the Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos, and the others who were conquered by the Japanese, and either lived under their brutality in occupation or POW camps. We didn't fight the Japanese because of their race, we fought them because they launched a sneak attack this nation in the hopes that we would cower and forfeit any influence in the Pacific while they ran wild (which they did for almost six months after Pearl Harbor). Perhaps Hanks should compare the United States treatment of Japan under occupation compared to how Japan treated those they defeated. Our understanding of the Japanese during the war is just as clear of our understanding of those who continue to spill blood in the name of militant Islam all over the globe. Our will to confront them is not the result of misunderstanding or racism, but the result of understanding them all too well. Japan is among our closest allies, not because we came to understand and accommodate the way and will of Imperial Japan, but because we fought them to the point that we crushed their will to follow in that evil path any further. |
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