Film Flim Flam

I Warned You!
For today we focus much on - fillums.  Oh boy.  I just love typing that idiosyncratic pronunciation into Blogger and watching the South Canadian spell-checker struggle with it.  Which is probably as much insight into my thought processes as is safe to divulge.
     Okay, on with the Intro.  Actually we cast our minds back to Thursday, when Conrad was - "kibitzing" is the term I think that the old folks use - at lunchtime with Tom.  Your humble author, who is a curmudgeon of rare renown, actually deigned to kibitz with Tom, instead of concentrating solely on his Cryptic Crossword.

What Conrad was doing today.
And no, it doesn't have anything to do with the Intro.  I just like to keep you informed.

     Quiet Tom (for your modest artisan knows 3x Toms) given a crossword clue, was quite euphoric about solving it: "Roundabout".  He can't take any credit, it's all my influence.  Mention was then made of my review of "Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows", Tom venturing the opinion that I didn't like the film.
     "Not so!" objected the curmudgeon of rare renown.  "It's just that I'm a bit of a stickler for historical accuracy."

The face of a stickler.  Also known to break mirrors.

     Tom, who has the vice of the cat*, then wanted to know the worst offender in this regard.
     On reflection, your humble scribe would probably say the 1969 vintage "Battle of the Bulge".  Somewhere I have a review of many thousand words that I posted back on "The Agony Booth" many years ago, in which I go into excruciating detail.
     But fear not!  For we have a word count here.

"Battle of the Bulge":  Goofs
O where to start.  At the end, actually!  The film's climax takes place upon an arid barren treeless brown plain, which is supposed to represent the heavily-forested, snowy, mountainous Ardennes.  You can, in fact, count the number of times where there is snow  on the ground one one finger.  One knuckle, even**.

The mountainous flat forested barren snow - oh I give up.

     What else?  Oh yes the anachronisms.  More than the collected run of "The Time Tunnel"***.  The "German" tanks are post-war American ones, painted grey with a Maltese cross added.  The "German" half-tracks are American too, see "German tanks".  The "American" artillery is French stuff from the First Unpleasantness.  There are no Sherman tanks present, which is odd as these were the most numerous American tank in Europe by a long way.  The "American" self-propelled artillery is all from the Fifties -

Herr Blech, one of the stars.  Yes, really.

     In mitigation, in one scene the Americans display a captured German Sturmgewehr 44, which was an early form of assault rifle.  Conrad suspects the crew knew they were going to be lambasted about inaccuracy and bought this prop at vast expense to deflect criticism.
     I could go on but I see your brain is beginning to glaze over ...

"Castle Keep" - a FAR superior film

The Haul
Sorry, still more about films.  After having it on video, then not having it, and then seeing it in a <cougcough>ate version, Conrad finally got round to buying "Doctor Strangelove".  Art?

     There you are.  Despite it being about - it's from 1963 so don't expect any SPOILER warnings, matey - the end of the world, please observe it's still a "PG" rating.  
     Okay, if the good Doctor is art, of the most saturnine humour imaginable, "Hardcore Henry" is nothing but an adrenaline-fuelled romp from start to stop.  I'm sure there must be great big plot holes in it, but since it never lets up from 150 m.p.h.^ insanity, you don't notice.
     And DJ Tiesto because I couldn't find any Paul Van Dyk or Simian Mobile Disco.

A Rather Short Film Review: "Blair Witch"
"The Blair Witch Project" can be variously lauded or lambasted^^ for creating the "found footage" genre, which enabled any fool with a digital rig and the rudiments of scriptwriting to bother the world.  Now some studio suits have decided that there's life in the old dog yet, so we get this.  "It will make your body ache with fear" is the tagline on the posters.
     Oh will it?  Will it indeed?  Exactly HOW is it going to manage that?  "Ooooh, ooooh, it was so scary I":
     a)  Threw myself down the stairs
     b)  Impaled my foot with a corkscrew
     c)  Drank a pint of formaldehyde
     d)  All of the above
     Ache?  Ache?  Bah!  If it's bad enough it might make your eyes bleed, if you're lucky.

Which is Blair?
Close enough.

*  Curiosity, I hasten to add, not killing sparrows and leaving their decapitated remains on your bed, in a rickle of blood and feathers.
** Russell, if you are reading this - NEVER let Scott see this film!
*** But not "Doctor Who", because that's not fiction.
^  Only ever Imperial metrics on BOOJUM!
^^  I realise I'm using this word a lot, well it's an excellent word and I like it.  Once again, whose blog is it?