Well, that was rather fortuitous that Christopher Nolan released a movie about the evacuation at Dunkirk almost a year after I had visited the place, which basically gives me an excuse to actually write about my experience at the museum. Mind you, there actually isn’t all that much in Dunkirk, and don’t expect a place swarming with tourists or anything, it really isn’t that sort of town. Sure, it does have a beach, but that is basically about it. In fact, when I was sitting in the hotel lobby with a beer and my laptop, at least two couples approached the concierge and asked them if there was anything to actually do (at least at night). Mind you, the hotel that I stayed at was pretty shocking, and they also double-charged me for my room, so not surprisingly I gave it a pretty low score on Yelp.
Category: War
Ajax in Iraq
While I have been to a few shows at the Adelaide Fringe Festival, in my mind it is more of a two-week party than a showcase of theatrical performances that are generally not picked up by the mainstream theatre (or are simply so amateurish that the mainstream won’t touch them). From what I recall of my time in Adelaide the Fringe basically consisted of an opening parade, the Garden of Unearthly Delights which was little more than a number of bars, a Ferris wheel, and tents where you will encounter the weird and wonderful. Mind you, as the Fringe has grown in popularity, so have the number of areas that are attempting to mimic the Garden of Unearthly Delights.
JoJo Rabbit – Undoing the Propoganda
Imagine being a little boy who has grown up knowing only one world, and one thing, and then suddenly discovering that this whole world is actually a lie. In fact, imagine being a little boy of about the age of 10 who has grown up being told that a certain people are horrid demonic monsters, only to discover that, once again, this is all a lie. Well, not even that, but actually meeting somebody who completely dispels this whole concept that has been fed to you all of your life.
Marathon – A Persian Victory
Once again on my explorations of Youtube I came across a video produced by the Alternate History Hub (and I must admit that they produce some really interesting videos that inspire me to explore much deeper) speculating what would have happened if Persia had managed to invade Greece. The problem that I find with a lot of their productions is that their conclusions tend to be ‘this was so long ago it is impossible to know what would have happened’. Well, there is a whole field of counter-factual history where historians explore the ‘what might have been’ with regards to these particular historical events.
Pink Floyd’s The Wall – The Alienation of Success
I find it really bizarre that a film that the producers really didn’t like, and was described by one of the writers as ‘too depressing’ and by the director as ‘the longest student film ever made’ has become a cult classic, won 2 BAFTA Awards, and has received a combined user rating of 8 on IMDB. However, I probably shouldn’t consider it all that surprising since the film that we as kids voted as ‘the worst film ever made’ was Plan 9 From Outer Space (though that only receives a combined user rating of 4 on IMDB, and I personally have yet to even watch it – still, it is considered a cult classic, particularly since it has a combined user rating on Rotten Tomatoes of 66% with the premise that it is so bad it is actually really good). Anyway, I have already written a review (of Pink Floyd The Wall, not Plan 9 from Outer Space), though IMDB does not give me huge amounts of room to be able to really explore this film, so I will do it here.
Live, Die, Repeat – Edge of Tomorrow
This film actually has two names, and I’m not sure why they changed its name to Live, Die, Repeat so late in the piece (namely when the Blue-Ray was released) especially since I didn’t actually have a problem with the original name (though there are probably reasons that I am not aware of that prompted the change). Okay, it is a Tom Cruise movie, and while I would generally say that I basically tolerate him, he still seems to find himself in some really cool movies, such as this one.
The Western Front – Democracy’s Challenge pt 1 – Somme
I’m sure we are all familiar with the background to World War I, namely how a guy in Sarajevo stopped to buy a sandwich, saw the Archduke Ferdinand go past in his carriage, grabbed his gun, ran outside, and shot him, thus triggering a series of events that would shape the 20th Century (though that story is a somewhat a myth – apparently he planned to meet the Arch-Duke there, it still sounds good). In fact, one can go even further back to when the French ambassador ran into the Prussian king, had an informal chat which was twisted by the German Chancellor to start a war against the French, which in turn laid the groundwork for what was to become World War I.
Art & Literature with the Sarkologist 