The movie Arrival

[PZ]

  Thats a lot of DVDs

[fragger]

Pick a movie, any movie, and Art will have it

Well, maybe not. I bet he doesn't have "Santa Claus Conquers The Martians"



(Yes, that is a real movie...)

[Art Blade]

I only buy films that I'm interested in, not just because they're on sale But indeed, especially Sci-Fi, I've got likely more than 150 films and a couple of entire series like Babylon 5 on top. What you can count on one hand are horror movies, I'm not particularly fond of them but there are very few exceptions. Like, The Fog or Shaun of the Dead, 28 Days, and Ghost Ship.

[fragger]

I'm not a horror fan either. I think I like historical things best, as long as they're authentic-looking and historically accurate (as much as anybody can know). I think there's an art to believably recreating the look of any given period, whether it's the 1558 of Elizabeth or the 1970 of Apollo 13. But I don't like movies that completely mangle history, like Braveheart (and the less said about that animated Pocahontas movie the better - bloody hell), or when they gloss over the history in favour of telling some soppy love story like Titanic (1958's b/w A Night To Remember is, in my opinion, a far superior Titanic movie, with surprisingly believable effects for its day).

[Art Blade]

indeed, I like films about times past.. I do have quite a few history-based films. Agree, Braveheart is so far off the actual history that it lacks words to describe it. Heh, Pocahontas..

You'd probably enjoy watching a film called Master and Commander which is roughly based on, yet not trying to reinvent, Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald, nicknamed The Sea Wolf by Napoleon. I've always liked the film for many reasons but after watching an episode of History Buffs dedicated to that film, I appreciate it even more.

[fragger]

I've seen that movie a couple of times actually, I love the look and feel of it. It's superb in its recreation of life aboard the ships of the time. I don't know why I don't own it myself. I also read the first few of Patrick O'Brians "Aubrey-Maturin" books, many years ago, which were inspired by Cochrane's exploits, and which in turn inspired the movie. There came to be 20 books in all, starting with "Master and Commander". The movie borrows from that first novel and from the tenth one, "The Far Side Of The World", but apparently only some of the characters and events, not those books' actual plots (I only ever read the first three).

Thanks for the link to that video, I really enjoyed that I like how it was pointed out that many midshipmen of that time were of extremely young age, some only 12 or 13 years old, as is seen in the movie. That is 100% accurate. During the war of 1812, a 12-year-old American seaman was made "Prize Master" (would assume the command of a captured enemy ship). That boy was David Farragut, who would go on to become the US' first Rear Admiral and commander of the US Navy during the American Civil War. He was essentially a ship's captain at age 12 (he had been a midshipman at age 9).

[Art Blade]