Thursday Musical Intervention

Normandy Invasion edition, brought to you by the West Point Glee Club:

Battle Extraordinaire: D-Day editon

What's your favorite combat sequence in The Longest Day?

Post in comments.

D-Day 75, Almost Impossible to Beleive

This week, the 75th Anniversary of the Normandy Invasion, the most complex event in human history.

Think about it, the United States, Britain and Canada exerted unprecedent herculean effort to move a couple of hundred thousand men seventy five miles in twelve hours.

It took the combined resources of two great empires to do it. 

And they pulled it off, too.

Here's the best clip from The Longest Day, Rod Steiger captures the moment.

It give me goose pimples just to think about it.

Da-da-da-daaaaaa

Tuesday Tally

Yes, we're bringing the tally back too.

Here's our list of greatest war movies.

By greatest we don't mean our favorite war movies, or most popular war movies. We mean pure Churchillian greatness.

Battleground: Following a squad of the 101st Airborne at Bastogne, this was the 50's  Platoon, filled with WWII realism, the ins and out of daily life as a soldier on the line.
The Longest Day: We've criticized this film in the past, but in scope and sweep the (four) directors achieved something, and they captured something great and ethereal. As Rod Steiger says, 'This will be a moment people talk about long after we are dead and gone....gives me chills just to be a part of it.'
Apocalypse Now: A beautiful looking film about death and killing, a movie about an American who understands how to win and goes native to do it. Kurtz represents an America that wants to win.
A Bridge Too Far: Another movie we've talked about in the past. ABTF may be the greatest war film ever made. An allstar cast that holds up over time, that unlike TLD, doesn't feel like the year it was made. 
Dos Boot: Men in war under the sea. Das Boot is long and grueling, just like submarine warfare. You can feel the boredom, taste the bad food and smell the sweat.
Red Dawn: This was originally thought to be an 80's action film, but is now a classic about children, anarchy and war. The most compelling character is the Cuban officer who becomes what he fought in so many other places and finds his humanity letting the two brothers go.
Glory: Men fighting for themselves, each other, their nation, their people, themselves, and their very manhood. An excellent battle scene at the end.
*Saving Private Ryan is not a great film. When people say they like SPR, they mean they like the blockbuster opening, which is indeed great. However the rest of the film is a cinematic and ideological nightmare a WWII movie about the WWII movies that Steven Spielberg saw as a kid. Too many tropes to mention.
**We haven't seen any of the modern war movies, American Sniper, Lone Survivor, etc.