All Quiet on the Western Front

His link is a 'current time' URL with 14 seconds in (that's what the 14s indicates at the end of the link). Drop the =14s and it will pop up with the insert feature on here.
 
NorBro said:
His link is a 'current time' URL with 14 seconds in (that's what the 14s indicates at the end of the link). Drop the =14s and it will pop up with the insert feature on here.
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I didn't see the link to a video. Saw one for photo but that's it.

Then "I added a "link"
 
You posted a link in the first post, that's the one I'm talking about. Drop the =14s or post it above in a slightly different format and it will pop up. Basically the forum's feature doesn't process thumbnails for links to start at exact times which are common in news articles where the writers like to cue their readers, sometimes multiple times with accompanied text.

The 14s is for 14 seconds in.
 
looks pretty. too pretty?

my 2-year old watching over my shoulder comments, "The bad guys die that's scary"
 
I think he's more familiar with the concept of bad guys. Toddlers are conflict-averse. I was watching the animated series Star Trek Lower Decks last week and when the battle was thought to be over, it turned out that the villains had transported to another ship and were coming in for another attack. "The bad guys are still alive," he said plainly. Toddlers are threat-sensitive.

In other words,, maybe he considers all combatants to be bad guys, I dunno
 
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ahalpert said:
I think he's more familiar with the concept of bad guys. Toddlers are conflict-averse. I was watching the animated series Star Trek Lower Decks last week and when the battle was thought to be over, it turned out that the villains had transported to another ship and were coming in for another attack. "The bad guys are still alive," he said plainly. Toddlers are threat-sensitive.
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The German steel helmets served as a basis for the Star Wars storm troopers image and body armor. And for a typical image of a typical enemy due to Germany being one during both World Wars. It's just that Remarque himself was on the enemy side of the battle lines, with the film portraying that fairly faithfully or as faithfully as a film can portray a novel.

Side note - back around 2004, I talked mom into going to see the touring company of the Producers. (I loved the film, ended up hating the musical) That famous "Springtime for Hitler" scene with the marching/goosestepping Nazis was done pretty similarly to the original film's. And I was shuddering from it. Something just didn't sit right with me. They looked too real. And I am no toddler.
 
I have no intention of seeing this movie, because I do not like gore. Nevertheless, here are some unrelated tidbits:
  • "All's quiet on the western front" is a catchphrase I myself have used from time to time, because it sounds so cool, even though I've never read the novel or seen a movie adaptation. (Thank you for your time in reading this excerpt from my as-yet-unpublished autobiography.)
  • The novel is in German, with the title, Im Westen nichts Neues, translated literally, "In the West Nothing New". When it comes to translation, I'm an arch-literalist, believing that literal translations are always, in the end, superior, regardless of awkwardness. However in this case, I have to give credit where credit is due. The more "poetical" translation of the title by Arthur Wesley Wheen, "All Quiet on the Western Front", is quite beautiful and doth cause me to doubt all my presuppositions (but not yet repudiate them).
  • The novel was written by a German soldier named Erich Maria Remarque, who served in World War I --- even on the western front!
  • Remarkably, the writer's last name was originally spelled Remark, not Remarque, but he later changed the spelling, to show solidarity with his French ancestors --- or maybe because his first novel was a flop and it was all about marketing (paraphrased from Wikipedia).
  • His original middle name was Paul, not Maria, but after WWI he changed it to match his mother's middle name
  • Nazis accused Remark, I mean Remarque, of actually being Jewish, because, after all, Remark spelled backwards is Kramer, which, as we all know, is Jewish! (FACT CHECK: The author was not Jewish. This was Nazi propaganda, because they did not like his novel.)
  • The Nazis did not like Remarque's novel, because it was anti-war (which I thought totally wasn't a thing until the 1960s, but apparently it was a thing even as far back as the '20s). The Nazis interpret anti-war as, of course, unpatriotic --- quite logically of course if you interpret "nation" as "a land whose boundaries exist purely as a consequence of what it could take, and could not take, by force".
  • As no surprise to anyone at this point, in the 1930s the author fled Germany, eventually settling in the United States.
Finally, a story so traumatizing that I will simply quote it at length from Wikipedia without comment:

In 1943, the Nazis arrested his youngest sister, Elfriede Scholz, who had stayed behind in Germany with her husband and two children. After a trial at the notorious Volksgerichtshof (Hitler's extra-constitutional "People's Court"), she was found guilty of "undermining morale" for stating that she considered the war lost. Court President Roland Freisler declared, "Ihr Bruder ist uns leider entwischt—Sie aber werden uns nicht entwischen" ("Your brother is unfortunately beyond our reach – you, however, will not escape us.") Scholz was beheaded on 16 December 1943.
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Roland Freisler was a grotesquely nefarious Nazi, even by the Nazi standards, which were not high to begin with.

BTW, in the Soviet Union, Remarque's most popular novel was Drei Kameraden (Three Friends or Three Comrades) and not AQWF. The Western Front was too far from the Motherland.
 
DLD said:
At the moment --- 94% Tomatometer, 92% audience score.

All Quiet on the Western Front - Rotten Tomatoes
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Impressive audience score. Scrolling through the reviews, it looks like people either loved it or hated it, with most in the former camp. Common descriptions include that it was slow, yet packed with action. It is pretty, and doesn't explain every scene overtly. It seems like people who measured the story for its faithfulness to the book were disappointed, and they often compare it to two other film adaptations. But the people who just wanted to see an (anti-)war movie totally loved it
 
I began to watch it in Russian about 20 minutes ago. An absolutely amazing, albeit gruesome, film. Easily one of the greats of the genre.

And shot on ARRI, as all German films should be. I wasn't terribly impressed with the teal grading, however.
 
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