Well, I just ran across something from one of my favorite nations that came out in 2007. Finland, my Finland. Too bad I cannot find in in DVD in North American format.
Check out the description,
Best thing about watching Tali-Ihantala is that you get to watch a different type of war movie after a while. The old school movie mandatorily adds women and children to plotwise useless roles to create the so called drama, but in Tali-Ihantala you get no Rambos, no cheese, no political ubercorrectness and nothing else but just war as it realistically should be, within production limitations of course..... and the trailer.
The barrenness of no prolonged drama sequences and no main characters may strike some people as cinematographically unwise, but Tali-Ihantala is not the first war movie to use such a feature. Similar approach was used in "Thin Red Line" where there was no main characters either, but Tali-Ihantala tries not to be artsy and go too far. It comes close to a documentary but, in fact, it still is far from being a documentary.
Another film Tali-Ihantala is very close to is the "Longest Day", although the Soviet Union side is only shown as the enemy and only Finns will have any dialogue. The strenghts of the movie include fact that every main character has a historical counterpart, and a lot of authentic equipment was used in the making. The weaknesses are the limited production resources but every actor seem to do his best regardless of how amateur he is.
Some numbers on the battle,
Finnish sources estimate that Soviet army lost about 300 tanks in the Tali-Ihantala, mainly to air attacks and close defence weapons. 120-280 Soviet aircraft were shot down.Need more - here you go.
The Finnish army reported that 8,561 men were wounded, missing and/or killed in action. Based on the daily and 10-day summary casualty reports of the Soviet 21st Army, the Soviets reported their losses as about 18,000-22,000 killed or wounded. The uncertainty about casualties rises from the fact that 25% of the forces of the 21st Army didn't participate in the battle.
14 comments:
I went to Finland and hung out w/ the curator of the Finish War Museum in Helsinki. Good guy, and I learned a lot. That was a great trip. They had a movie out about the Russians fighting the Fins. Good stuff.
You can use products like DVDSmith movie backup to make a backup of the original
DVD WITHOUT the region code.
I was very close to moving to Helsinki about 10 years ago. I was given an offer that was very hard to turn down. The only worry I had was learning Suomi, their language. It's different from anything else in Europe, very close to what the original indo-European languages must have been. They have 27 tenses, enough to drive anyone nuts. :)
The One thing they also have, besides GORGEOUS women, is Salmiakki. It's a salty licoroce that's wonderful. The Finns not only eat it plain, but take some of the hard version and place it into a bag, then break it up with a hammer. After that, they pour it into a bottle of vodka and let it sit in the freezer for a couple weeks to fully dissolve. You drink it straight. It's wonderful. Easy to make at home, too.
Salmiakki here:
http://aw1tim.vox.com/library/post/unmanned-frigates-for-asw-what-could-possibly-go-wrong.html
Yeah, looks pretty good! It's not on Netflix either (which I'm sure you already checked). Please let us know if you find it!
Talvisota was a very good movie also. That one was about the Winter War 1939-1940, where the Russians were bled white.
Amazon.com is advertising it in non-USA Format [PAL] with English, Swedish and German subtitles.
http://www.amazon.com/Tali-Ihantala-1944-NON-USA-FORMAT-Reg-2/dp/B0020ZQYDU
BZ to Finns for staying independent despite being so close to Leningrad... Though they had to keep very quiet during cold war. Still better than having communism imposed totally.
Anyway I found one de-motivator regarding winter War of 1939-40... well, here it goes: http://media.photobucket.com/image/finland/guyinsbs/1231735002018.jpg?o=71
Ok, so The Beast (AKA The Beast of War) wasn't an "American military film." What about Defiance?
...And sometimes CGI is the only way to portray things that happened thirty, forty, or sixty years ago. Unless there's a stockyard somewhere filled with P-40s, P-38Ls, Spitfires Mark IX or lower, and/or B-17Fs. Not to mention WW2-era destroyers, destroyer escorts, carrier escorts, and Yorktown or Essex class carriers.
Those few films made about the Tuskeegee Airmen all feature P-51D Mustangs, although said model arrived relatively late in various units history. Not many flying Warhawks left nowadays.
I don't mind well done CGI. You can't resurrect some pieces of metal easily.
But CGI should be done with some thought, not like "Pearl Harbor" where Zero's swooped down over Burkes for the ROFLMAO effect in most history-minded audience...
This is true; I lost count of those who either threw fits or laughed themselves stilly over that scene.
Not to mention how Ben Affleck managed to join Eagle Squadron, get shot down over the Channel, then shoot down Zeroes over Pearl (if he can't handle the Luftwaffe, why can he handle IJN aviators?), then join the Doolittle Raid. Wow.
Yep! It makes absolutely no sense: fighter pilot transferring to bomber unit - and a very elite one!
I remember watching the History Channel about this conflict. It was noting that in wintertime, the Soviet advance was very slow. It showed these Soviet soldiers trudging on foot through the knee high snow, and then contrasted it with film of these Finns whipping through the woods on skis with rifles in hand. Pictures that said a thousand words!
Note that Russians learned quickly and turned out some good ski troops just in time for 1941 Moscow counteroffensive...
My wife is Japanese so we have a lot of Japanese DVDs in addition to our US DVDs. We have a Sampo region-free DVD player we bought online. It came with a CD that had some software fix from the manufactuer that lets us play DVDs from any region. The manufactuers don't care about regions, it's the movie studios that came up with the system.
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