Month: August 2024

Rank Stupidity

Entertainment

Via the Daily Express, I see that IMDB has just ranked its Top 10 British WWII movies, and to say I disagree with some of their choices would be putting it mildly.

The definition of a “British” war movie is that it needs to involve principally Britain and Britons, in and around Britain or in a British-only environment.  This would exclude movies like The Longest Day, Where Eagles Dare (a junk movie anyway), and even A Bridge Too Far (which is not junk). Also, movies about war are not really the some as war movies (which feature soldiers, battles and killing and stuff) although there can be some killing on the Home Front, so to speak.  So I’ve divided them into two lists, and here they are:

Kim’s Top 10 Actual British War Movies:

  1. Bridge Over The River Kwai
  2. Battle of Britain
  3. 633 Squadron
  4. The Hill
  5. The Long Day’s Dying
  6. In Which We Serve
  7. The Cruel Sea
  8. The Dam Busters
  9. Ice Cold in Alex
  10. Dunkirk*

*Included because of its subject matter, and was so good a production that not even director Christopher Nolan could screw it up.  I haven’t seen the 1959 movie of the same name, but I’m going to.

Then we have the movies which were set in 1940s Britain, but contained no actual battlefield combat.

Kim’s Top 10 British Movies about WWII:

  1. Hope & Glory
  2. The Imitation Game
  3. Darkest Hour
  4. Mrs. Miniver
  5. A Matter of Life and Death
  6. Eye Of The Needle
  7. The Gentle Sex
  8. Went The Day Well? / The Eagle Has Landed*
  9. Island At War (TV series)
  10. Foyle’s War (TV series)
  11. (Honorable Mention:  Yanks )

*Essentially the same story;  German paratroopers land in an isolated English village and take it over.  But Went The Day  is the more realistic.

Printed Matter

Literature

A parallel thought occurred to me as I was putting together the above post (Rank Stupidity):  what about some decent books about WWII Britain?

Of course, there are thousands upon thousands of them, but what follows are two (unranked) lists of the ones I’ve read.  I’ve mostly ignored the general history books (Churchill’s The Second World War, etc.) to concentrate on novels and biographies.

Let me start with the ones that spawned various of the WWII movies mentioned above. (F) denotes fiction, otherwise historical.

  • Enemy Coast Ahead (The Dam Busters) — Guy Gibson V.C.
  • The Eagle Has Landed — Jack Higgins (F)
  • Eye Of The Needle — Jack Higgins (F)
  • The Hill — Leonard B. Scott (F)
  • The Cruel Sea — Nicholas Monsarrat (F) might be the best naval story ever told.

Then there are others that mostly haven’t been made into movies (yet):

  • Bomber — Len Deighton (F)
  • The entire RAF series (e.g. Piece of Cake, Damn Good Show, etc.) — Derek Robinson (F)
  • The Colditz Story — P.R. Reid (the movie wasn’t that good, hence its exclusion from the top 10 movie list)
  • HMS Ulysses — Alistair Maclean (F)
  • Reach For The Sky — Paul Brickhill (Douglas Bader biography)
  • Cheshire V.C. — Paul Brickhill (about the man who succeeded Gibson at 617 Squadron)
  • The Tunnel — Eric Williams
  • The Sword Of Honour trilogy — Evelyn Waugh (F)
  • Citizens Of London — Lynn Olson

That’s a partial list, of course.  But it says something of all of them — some of which I haven’t read in over thirty years — that I remember them to this day.

Proof Of Association

Elections, Politics

After wading through all sorts of stuff explaining the concept of “the power of association”, Scott Pinsker says the following:

By joining the MAGA train, RFK Jr. is helping Trump craft a narrative where The Donald is open-minded and forgiving of his former rivals. It shows he’s capable of attracting independents, moderates, liberals, practically anyone — hell, even a Kennedy joined Trump!

Yeah.  I’ll believe that about Trump when he offers Ron DeSantis a Cabinet position — and I mean a serious post like State or Commerce.

The biggest mistake Trump made — in both election campaigns — was his dismissive attitude towards the best state governor in the United States.  Regardless of his personal feelings, though, there’s no denying that in his own state, DeSantis has achieved more MAGA-type reform than anyone else.  Perhaps more even than Trump himself at the national level.

And by leaving DeSantis out of his future Administration plans, Trump will be doing the country, and himself, a grave disservice.

Trump is good for only four more years;  DeSantis will be good for more than a decade after that, if not longer.

When Simple Becomes A Fetish

Good Stuff

I stumbled on these two little doodads while scraping the bottom of Teh Intarwebz.

Frozen Ball  and High Pressure espresso.

Just to make a small (okay, tiny) cup of overpriced coffee that’s too strong to actually drink and in the case of the first, lukewarm to boot.

Marketing at its finest.

In similar news, the other day I saw a new Corvette getting smoked from light to light (over a long block, too) by a Honda Civic R.  True story.  $85k Murkin V8 smoked by some $45k Jap rice rocket.

Also, my $400 Tissot manual wind watch keeps time as well as a $5,800 Grand Seiko over 24 hours.

Oh yeah, and the other day at the range I saw a $650 Springfield Operator shoot more accurately than a $3,000 HK Mod 23 — and I mean a LOT more accurately.  Same shooter (not me), different gun, same .45 ACP ammo.

There’s a lot of overpriced marketing-driven bullshit out there, folks.  Feel free to add your examples in Comments.

Class, Explained

Mocking Furriners

Some pleb has a go at the British class system — a system regarded with bemusement by most Murkins — and while we have few parallels with the Brits, the one we do regrettably share is the propensity of the well-to-do middle class to be involved in stupid shit like the Green movement and (lately) the Free Palestine demonstrations.

It’s a fairly lengthy viewing, but funny as hell — and from what I’ve seen of the system, fairly accurate.

Most telling, though, is the description of the rigidity of the thing:  the “bucket of crabs” analogy is very appropriate.

And we have shared the dolorous effects of the “outsourcing” of manufacturing and the jobs therein to foreign countries;  the only difference being that our corporations did it without any help from government.

Same Again

Bad News, Freaks & Loonies, Morons & Idiots

I’ve spoken before of the spectacle that is London’s Notting Hill Carnival (read it first), and apparently this year it’s not too different:

Police have arrested at least 330 people in connection with incidents at the Notting Hill Carnival, the Met said tonight – with three people including a 32-year-old mother left fighting for their lives.

Five people were stabbed today, taking the total across the two days to eight [last year it was nine — K], while three people sustained slash wounds and one incident was said to have involved a corrosive substance.

Nothing says “I Haz My Culture” like tossing acid in someone’s face.  As for the rest, same ol’, same ol’.  As the rozzers say:

‘We are tired of saying the same words every year’.

Pass.