Showing posts with label war movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label war movies. Show all posts

June 14, 2010

Dr. Strangelove - 1964

Dr. Strangelove


Dr. Strangelove Framed Art Print
13 in. x 19 in.
Buy at AllPosters.com


Dr. Strangelove (1964) is the leading producer / director Stanley Kubrick's brilliant, Doomsday satirical, provocative black comedy / fantasy regarding policy and the Cold War that has an accident, inadvertently, preemptive nuclear attack. The undated film history - the first commercial success, political satire on nuclear war, has inevitably been compared to another thriller similar published at the same time - well over-serious and melodramatic Fail-Safe (1964). However, it was a cynical objective response, Monty Python-esque, humorous, biting the apocalyptic fears of the 1950s.

The scenario of mind, co-written by the director (with Terry Southern), was based on the novel by Peter George's Red Alert (the U.S. title). work [George's, under his pseudonym Peter Bryant, was published in England with the title of two hours for Doom. Early versions of the script were titled Edge of Doom and the delicate balance of terror.] The novel's main concern was the threat of accidental nuclear war. Dr. Strangelove himself does not appear in the novel, however - it was added by Kubrick and co-writer of the South.

nightmarish mid-1960s the film, its apocalyptic theme of how technology had gone haywire and had dominated humanity. fears of anti-war film actually became a plausible scenario, shortly after the assassination of President Kennedy's Bay of Pigs and the intensification heated up the Cold War and nuclear arms race. [Release of satirical film was delayed for 12 December 1963 to late January 1964, because of the assassination of Kennedy in late November.]

June 12, 2010

The Bridge on the River Kwai - 1957

The Bridge on the River Kwai


The Bridge on the River Kwai Photo
30 in. x 24 in.
Buy at AllPosters.com
Framed   Mounted



The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), the memorable, epic World War II adventure/action, anti-war drama, was the first of director David Lean's major multi-million dollar, wide-screen super-spectaculars (his later epics included Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Doctor Zhivago (1965)).

The screenplay was based upon French author Pierre Boulle's 1954 novel of the same name. [Boulle was better known for his screenplay for Planet of the Apes (1963).] Although he received sole screenplay credit, other deliberately uncredited, blacklisted co-scripting authors (exiled Carl Foreman - who scripted High Noon (1952) - and Michael Wilson) had collaborated with him, but were denied elibigility. They were post-humously credited years later, in late 1984, in a special Academy ceremony.

[The film's story was loosely based on a true World War II incident, and the real-life character of Lieutenant Colonel Philip Toosey. One of a number of Allied POW's, Toosey was in charge of his men from late 1942 through May 1943 when they were ordered to build two Kwai River bridges in Burma (one of steel, one of wood), to help move Japanese supplies and troops from Bangkok to Rangoon. In reality, the actual bridge took 8 months to build (rather than two months), and they were actually used for two years, and were only destroyed two years after their construction - in late June 1945. The memoirs of the 'real' Colonel Nicholson were compiled into a 1991 book by Peter Davies entitled The Man Behind the Bridge.]