Tag: bombing of Dresden

Kurt Vonnegut:
Unstuck In Time

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 22 July 2022
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Unstuck In Time
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Directors – Robert B. Weide, Dan Argott – 2021 – US – Cert. 15 – 127m

*****

A warm and compelling look at the life of writer Kurt Vonnegut, the influence upon him of the bombing of Dresden, and his decades-long friendship with director Weide – out in cinemas and on digital platforms from Friday, July 22nd, BFI Player Rental from Monday, August 22nd

Read my shorter review for Reform magazine.

The documentary Weide eventually made about Vonnegut took him the best part of four decades to complete. Weide opens with a statement about Vonnegut walking in the woods, feeling a tree and seeing the bombing of Dresden before it occurred. There seems no reason to doubt Vonnegut. He was unstuck in time, jumping around the years and decades. Weide first contacted him in 1982, never imagining that it would take him anything like as long to complete the film as it did. He starts looking at interviews of himself (“who wants to see a documentary in which a filmmaker appears as himself?”, he asks) – defined by where they were shot or what shirt Weide was wearing at the time.

Whatever else Vonnegut and his writing are, they are not conventional.… Read the rest

Tags adaptation, advent of television, advent of TV, animation, atrocity, author, Bernard Vonnegut, bestseller, bodies, bombing, bombing of Dresden, can’t finish, cancer, celebrity, collateral damage, community, corpses, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Dan Argott, drawing, Dresden, extended family, family, fan, Germany, husbands and wives, idol, interview, Kurt Vonnegut, Linda Weide, marriage, meat locker, Mother Night, Nick Nolte, novel, obscurity, obsession, passenger train, poverty, POW, prisoner, razed to the ground, rejection letters, Robert B. Weide, ruins, Second World War, short stories, Slaughterhouse-Five, student protest movement, survival, talking head, television, the Depression, time, train crash, tree trunk, TV, Unitarian church, US, Vietnam War, war, war atrocity, World War 2, World War II, World War Two, writing, WW2

Features Live Action Movies

Never Look Away
(Werk Ohne Autor)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 2 July 2019
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(Werk Ohne Autor)

Director – Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck – 2018 – Germany – Cert. 15 – 189m

*****

A German boy wishes to become an artist, but his desire is affected by the events of WW2 and its aftermath, in possibly the best narrative piece you will see this year – twice Oscar-nominated film is now available on VoD

What is art? Why do artists make art? These questions lie behind Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s latest film, like his earlier The Lives Of Others (2006) a German story exploring that country’s history and identity. It clocks in at over three hours, but don’t let that put you off because it needs that time to cover the considerable ground it does. Never Look Away spans the bombing of Dresden by the Allies in WW2, the liquidation of people considered by the Nazis inferior and therefore unfit to live and the very different worlds of post-war art schools in first East and later West Germany. This means it also spans two generations: those who were adults during the war, and those who were children at that time and became adults in post-war Germany… [Read the rest at DMovies.org…]

Never Look Away is out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 5th 2019.… Read the rest

Tags Academy Awards, Academy Awards 2018-19, Academy Awards 2019, ambulance, art, art school, art student, artist, Berlin, Berlin Wall is built, bombing of Dresden, Cai Cohrs, Caleb Deschanel, children and adults, cinematography, couple, defection, degenerate, degenerate art, doctor, Dresden, Dresden art school, Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Kunstakademie, East Berlin, East Germany, fall in love, father, fathers and daughters, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, foreign language, generations, Gerhard Richter, German history, Germany, gynaecologist, history, hospital, hospital system, incarceration, Joseph Beuys, Kunstakademie, love, mental illness, modern art, mural, Nazi doctor, nude, nudity, Oscars, Oscars 2018-19, Oscars 2019, painting, parents and children, partition, patients, Paula Beer, photographs, photography, piano, post-war, post-war Germany, power of life or death, radio communication, razed to the ground, relationship, romance, Saskia Rosenthal, Sebastian Koch, sign painting, six-year-old, Socialist Realism, Stasi, student, the Allies, Third Reich, Tom Schilling, wartime, West Berlin, West Germany, World War 2, World War II, World War Two, WW2

Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Kurt Vonnegut:
Unstuck In Time

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 18 July 2022
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Unstuck In Time
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Transformed by an atrocity

Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck In Time
Directed by Robert B. Weide, Dan Argott
Certificate 15
Released 22 July (cinemas and digital platforms)

Full review published in Reform magazine.

The late Kurt Vonnegut claims that after touching a tree trunk he saw the bombing of Dresden before it actually happened, and it’s easy to believe him. His whole life, he says, has been unstuck in time. Born in Indianapolis in 1922, he fought in the Battle of the Bulge in 1944 and was shipped off as a POW to Dresden, a bustling metropolis unlike anything he’d previously seen. He survived the Allied bombing of that city inside an underground meat locker and emerged to see it razed to the ground. The Germans had him and fellow prisoners search for bodies amongst the ruins.

Back in the States… [Read the rest at Reform magazine]

Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck In Time is out in cinemas and on Altitude Film digital platform in the UK from Friday, July 22nd.

Read my longer review.

Adaptation of Vonnegut’s Mother Night (writer-producer Robert B. Weide, 1996) – review.

Never Look Away (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2018) also covers the bombing of Dresden – review.… Read the rest

Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Lancaster

Directors – David Fairhead, Anthony Palmer – 2022 – UK – Cert. PG – 110m

****

The story of World War Two’s iconic Lancaster bomber aircraft, the missions it flew and the airmen who served as its crews – out in cinemas on Friday, May 27th

The constant drone-like sound, the view looking downwards moving over water, a Lancaster bomber aircraft flying the length of a lake, the camera above it titling down as it passes to reveal it crossing a dam. This sequence, impressive on a big cinema screen equipped with a really good sound system, opens this informative and compelling documentary.

The Lancaster is entrenched in the British psyche from The Dam Busters (Michael Anderson, 1955) and in due course clips from that film and a few others appear here. I can remember seeing it many times on afternoon television as a child in the late 1960s / early 1970s. Present day footage of this amazing aircraft in flight jostles with comments by present day airmen who fly in it, and their enormous affection and respect for the aircraft comes through loud and clear. They are seen touching a plaque by the plane’s entrance doorway commemorating all those who flew her during World War Two as a way of taking the spirits of those people with them on flights today.… Read the rest

Tags A.V.Roe, aerial combat, aero-engines, airmen, Anthony Palmer, Avro, Blitz, bomb sighter, bomber, bombing of Dresden, bombing raids, bombing runs, casualties, Christian, Christianity, cities, crew, damage, dams, David Fairhead, designer, Dresden, empty seats, enemy, engines, factories, fire, firestorm, Germany, gunner, Hurricane, infrastructure, interview, Lancaster, Lancaster bomber, last flight out, Mariupol, miliary history, missions, motor, payload, pilot, production, RAF, raid, railway tunnels, Ray Chadwick, Rolls Royce, Rolls Royce Merlin, Rolls Royce Merlin engines, Ruhr Valley, Russia, Second World War, Spitfire, strategic bombing, target, UK, Ukraine, war casualties, wartime production, weapon of war, weapons production, weather, World War 2, World War II, World War Two, WW2