Clip from Eastwood's FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS!

then it will be a great film. If its like Ryan in any other way, it will be stinky like poop.

Oh, I hope this is good. It looks pretty neat as a war movie but it could turn into an assisted suicide for vegetables story ;-)

thx

Another Oscar contender, I'll bet. Eastwood is that rare director who just keeps getting better.

You know, I've read this site since the dawn of time (well, at least from Harry's perspective) and I've seen thousands upon thousands of 'First!' postings. Many of them not actually first, which is funny in itself. I've never been first nor desire to. In fact, I don't get the compulsion at all. For those who do and strive for this "honor" I can only surmise it's the same thing you yell in bed which, trust me, is NOT a good thing. Of course, that may explain many other posters and postings here.

That's the Eastwood film I'm looking forward to.

How dare they? Tell Al Sharpton to get his warm up suit! It should have been a black woman, a gay asian and an indian in that shot- artificially diverse, just like all the 9/11 pictures. Maybe they can fix it in post with CGI.

I mean, it just kinda shouts flag-waving America-is-bestism, and I thought these two movies weren't about that, but about showing two different perspectives on the struggle.

Why is everyone so ashamed to admit it? God bless our soldiers.

This is a great book by James Bradley. His dad was one of the marines raising the flag. The book was not so much about the invasion, but more about the unwanted celebrity the returning marines received. War Bond tours, public speaking, that kind of thing.

search your feelings, you know it to be true.

Band of Borthers was fantastic...Saving Private Ryan (after they get off the beach) was shit. Tried to do too much in a half-assed way. I hope Flags of our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima will be great...I cannot wait to see both movies back to back....

...ima gonna be shootin' some people right quick. Honestly, Clint Eastwood said he wanted to cast people under the age of 25 for the main characters, because that's how old they were, and he still cast the 32-year-old guy who's greatest claim to fame is as Reese Witherspoon's man-wife. Don't make him Two-Face in "The Dark Knight"!

I just re-watched Unforgiven last weekend, what a movie. Can't wait to see these two WWII flicks. And to the guy who said you hope it's more like Band Of Brothers. Same here.

I've had a first. Was on the first Fantastic Fest news item. So that is a first on a first, beat that! Thought the clip looked good, only problem was it looked a little forced, and maybe a bit TV Movie like in the acting. Hopefully it's a case of taking a clip out of context and the whole movie will be better. Anyway, forgive the lack of knowledge about American history - but who is the president meant to be?

about all these feel good war movies of late. It's the Zionist Hollywood's way of recruiting more US soldiers for the war against Islam. Apparently Oliver Stone was going to make another anti-war Viet Nam movie but the Mossad kidnapped his family so we got 'World Trade Center'. Mel's a smart guy. Can't hold his liquor though.

i thought the clip was good and brycemonkey's comment was super funny. heheee

Ever see Way of the Gun? Plus I'd expect a curveball for Dent, or Guy Pearce. It would be nice if maybe this site dug something up. Guess they're busy posting street signs from I AM OMEGA MAN

couldn't direct his way out of a paper bag if the script were titled, "Scissors". but the oscars love the sentimental favorite...I know Unforgiven was cool, but it was because of some great lines and starpower, not direction (hello oscar for direction). and mystic river was overacted trash (hello oscar for actors), and million dollar baby was horrendously overdone and simplistic (hello oscars for everything) god help me, if Kaufman doesn't win an oscar soon, I'm going to strangle someone...clint eastwood, jesus fucking christ...innovation should win over boring sentimentality every time, but instead the opposite is true...

America is the best at what? I went on a 5000-mile road trip through the US this summer, visiting 18 states, and got a far, far better understanding of the American psyche for it, and respect your country more than I did before. By no means is it "the best", if you wish to put such a term on it. Have you travelled anywhere outside of North America (yes, that includes Mexico), or are you one of the 95% of Americans who have never held a passport? I recognise the merits and faults of my own little country, which although finally outgrowing it's Empire complex retains delusions of grandeur, but I would never dream of calling the UK the best at anything. I have not seen most other countries, and believe making such a statement as "The UK is the best" would be supremely arrogant, and liable to get me laughed at down the pub. Grow a brain. Grow some culture. Grow up.

It's CGI hell! Looks way too fake/pretty in the battlescenes for my taste. Damn you George Lucas for leading the way in your over CGI use and setting a bad example.

While not disrespecting the US in any way, I would strongly urge our cousins over the pond, to try and curtail the level of jingoism about the merits of your country, which is prevalent in your media and politicians. While it is good and right to be proud of the place of your birth as are most people on the planet, to decry other cultures and countries by saying that your way is best, causes great offence, is seen as arrogant and causes distrust of your motives. Same thing happened to Great Britain and we lost an Empire as a result. Learn from history, ignore it at your peril.

america and its deficiencies aside (although there are more than I care to count, since it's sad as hell), we are forgetting the bigger picture: clint eastwood is not a good director. I'm going to bed now to dream about Michael Gondry's Oscar acceptance speech...

I smell Oscars!

They're the first ones to use CGI for everyday settings or for creatures they want to make realistic. It's not Lucas' fault.

Love your description of MDB as both "overdone" and "simplistic" at the same time. Imagine that! <p> "Unforgiven" was better than "cool," it was one of the best westerns ever made, and it wasn't because of starpower, it was because of the incredible mood that Eastwood created, lending gravity and spirituality to a very tired story. <p> Eastwood's gift seems to be breathing new life into cookie-cutter scripts and making little masterpieces out of them, and that's a pretty remarkable talent. <p> Finally, Kaufman's films are awesome, but you're deceiving yourself if you think his stories aren't brimming with sentimentality.

Militarily and economically. Personally I think we make the best films too, but that's a bit more subjective.

QUOTE:"Saving Private Ryan (after they get off the beach) was shit."END QUOTE<p>You are a twat with zero movie taste. SPR was incredible. Go dig a foxhole and choke yourself.

SPR was fantastic up until the last ten minutes, when Spielberg gave into his weakness for maudlin, overworked endings.

gotta love the posts that start, "so and so, you're a fool" you know there's gonna be some good arguing to come. anyway,I stick by overdone and simplistic. overdone as in overacted, overdirected, etc. and simplistic in terms of how sadly they boiled down human emotion to fit into the palette of what mainstream audiences could accept. and unforgiven, seriously, it's not the direction, watch it again. you get a bunch of great actors together and have them be brooding and thoughtful, and yeah, it's fun to watch (we all got it coming, kid...good stuff), but anyone could have directed that, people consistently talk about how clint doesn't really force good performances out of his actorsd, he just let's them be. which is admirable I suppose, but it doesn't mean he should get an oscar! all things being equal, mystic river should have caused his directorial license to be revoked forever. let's throw sexual abuse, murder, domestic violence, organized crime, revenge, mute children, film noir plot twists etc.etc. all on the table, and see what we get. it was just overacted gobbledygook. only hollywood would reward that. that and roger ebert who slobbered over clint's withering erection after both films...and when you refer to Kaufman's sentimentality, do you mean romanticism? or emotion? that I'll buy. but I meant sentimentality in the overdone, maudlin type of way, which is certainly not Kaufman. and at the very least it's not boring. and now I'm bored.

He's made some great movies and yes I think Mystic River is a great and very sad film. He's a low-key director sure, but I guess that's something that can be easily glossed over here. I'm I really the only here that respects Clint as a director and loves Mystic River.

i think eastwood is a fine director especially in unforgiven but this movie looks like propoganda to me. there hasnt been a really great war movie since that ww1 movie that came out last week with that guy running on the exploding blimp. it probably starred paul walker.

1) The trailer indicates that the movie is at least in part about the men in the photo being used for propaganda and it's effect on them. 2) The time was a time of unbridled patriotism. These people knew what they were fighting for, and belived in it unlike the wars of the past 60 years. 3)Please note that Eastwood also made "Letters from Iwo Jima" telling the story from the Japanese point of view, written by Iris Yamashita. It comes out next year.

Take some pride my friend, the UK is a great country with a rich culture that has (to me) done great things for the world. I like to think of the US as ancient Rome today and the UK as ancient Greece. The USA may be strong and powerful and has a huge influence (mostly positive at least before Bush) throughout the world, but most of our great ideas and culture comes from the more sophisticated UK. I kind of also like to see my country (US) as an ambitious teenager that cometimes gets into trouble, while the UK is the wise old "father" that tries to steer the good intentioned "teenager" on the right path; but sometimes screws up as welll with the whole Iraq situation. Forgive some of my fellow countrymen who make be drunk on pride and arrogance, there's 300 million of us so naturally we a lot more jingoists than the UK. Oh, and I'm not in that 95%, I've been to the UK several times and love it.

Forgive my grammar errors, I wish we could edit this.

can go fuck themselves. The movie single-handedly revitalized public interest in America's involvement in WWII. In fact, Schindler's List, the 9th greatest film ever made, revitalized public interest in the holocaust. Every time people think about WWII, they picture a scene from SPR or they imagine something else, but in the same lighting, dynamic camera moves, realistic feel, etc. The climactic battle was the balls. A bunch of grunts making sticky bombs and setting up a bottleneck for the incoming Nazis to protects the last remaining bridge in the area. THE BALLS. If you're intelligent, then you would've been surprized at the end when you realize that the old man at the beginning is Matt Damon's character, not Tom Hanks' character. That was fucking cool. Not only is it one of the greatest war films in history, it was involving, emotional, and included an ending twist. That's great filmmaking. Plus, it had an awesome all-star cast (Hanks, Damon, Sizemore, Diesel, Pepper, Danson, Dye, Giamatti, Burns, and a shitload more) and won best picture and best director Oscars for Spielberg. If you deny Ryan, then you're a tasteless moron. RYAN IS THE WWII BALLS.

No WWII first-person shooter would exist without Saving Private Ryan. After the movie was released in '97, Spielberg decided to team up with Electronic Arts to make a WWII-based FPS called MEDAL OF HONOR. This was the beginning of the popularity of the WWII shooters. Next was Medal of Honor Underground, based on the French underground resistance, and then Medal of Honor Frontline. Ever since, most of us (probably 90% or more) have enjoyed at least one WWII fps game. Give your thanks to Spielberg and Saving Private Ryan.

All the German soldiers in Ryan are skinheads....Lame and historically inaccurate. German soldiers actually had very thick hair shaved up to where the M41 cap rested (so it looked short with a hat or helmet on). A lot of the younger soldiers actually had "skater" length bangs as well that were flipped up inside the helmet. The skinhead shit is what some idiot who didn't do his research (and watched American History X) assumed 1940's Nazis looked like. WRONG. Other than that, the stereotypical characters and a couple small bits of dialogue, Private Ryan is one of the greatest films ever made. Hands down.

Spielberg's obsession with the evil of the Nazis has led him to become a Nazi himself, an Saving Private Ryan was a Nazi film, just as MUNICH was. The point of both films (better disguised in SPR) was that in order to fight evil, one must make a necessary sacrifice of one's humanity. It was the same message Hitler was sending to his soldiers in Poland, when the mass firing squad operations were causing the soldiers given firing-squad duty to have nervous breakdowns. Hitler tried to tell them that, yes, their "softer" side was being traumatized by all this murder, but it was necessary for them to become "hard". Spielberg sends the same message. He promotes "hardness" in the name of protecting the Norman Rockwell family at home in the U.S., or the Jewish wife and kid in MUNICH, and presents any anguish or guilt experienced as a necessary suffering one has to go through for doing the right thing (doing the right thing being a heartless murderer, like Hitler's death squads in Poland were). Fuck Spielberg. He's a Nazi propagandist, trying to tell all the soft-hearted people of the world that it's really sweet of them to care, but we have to go be Nazi bastards to save Civilization. Just the same thing Hitler told the Germans.

Any movie that depicts one side as being with GOD and the other as alien and inhuman is a Propaganda movie. RYAN accomplishes this by turning the whole movie into a cycle of "Oh No! Carnage inflicted on our boys by the Germans!" and then "Yeah! Now we get to kick ass in revenge!" He used every sentimental trick to make the Germans seem inhuman, as when that little-girl-loving American soldier gets a sniper-bullet while he's carrying a little girl (simultaneously proving that it's necessary to squelch one's humanity if one is to fight evil). And then the enemy sniper is killed by a GOD worshiping American, who prays while he searches for his target. The whole "Ryan is the last of a large family" part of the story was turned into a Holocaust allegory, suggesting that God was using the cynical, grumpy American soldiers to save the last of the "good people" beloved of God, represented by Ryan. Which is hitorically inaccurate, since there was no motivation so "save the Jews" in the U.S. justification for entering the war ... their propaganda mainly centered on other atrocities, raping and killing in invaded territories, the same sort of accusation the Germans leveled at the U.S. Spielberg's insistence that the U.S. people/Ryan/The Jews are specially loved by God and special sacrifices and "hard actions" are justified in their name is RACIST and BIGOTED, and no better than Hitler's promotion of the German People as the best thing on the planet, needing "hard" war to protect.