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Affilliation
Letters From Iwo Jima
“Letters from Iwo Jima” is the other side of “Flags of Our Fathers“, both movies by Clint Eastwood. “Flags of Our Fathers” is based on a book regarding the battle at Iwo Jima from the point of view of the Iwo Jima flag raisers. “Letters from Iwo Jima” depicts the same battle, but this time from the Japanese point of view. It is also based on letters (turned into a book?) by General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, the Japanese commander in charge of defending Iwo Jima.
I liked both films, but the tone of the two films are quite different, and that is not just because they depict different sides of the same battle. “Letters from Iwo Jima” has a bit more subtlety, less in your face battles and gigantic explosions, and focuses on less people. That doesn’t mean it’s not very gory, however. The screenplay was written by a Japanese-American screenwriter, which probably also had a hand in the different tone.
It’s difficult to say which movie is “better”, the tone of both movies gives them different characters which makes them seem incomparable. Regardless, to me, it is a good film,a nd was nominated and won several awards too. Regardless if you watched “Flags of Our Fathers” (even more so if you did and liked it!), go see “Letters from Iwo Jima“.
No tags for this post.SketchFighter 4000 alpha
Too bad this game is only available for the Mac. “SketchFighter 4000 alpha” (whatta name :P) is a ship battle presented in a paper doodle theme. If you ever drew space-ships duking it out to pass the time while the teacher droned on and on about this gibberish or that, this game appears to make those doodles come to life!
More screen shots are available here, while you can find movie clips of the game in action in the main page.
I hope that someday this will be ported tot he PC, until then, I gotta find someone with a Mac to see this baby in action!
Tags: has downloads, picsThe Last King of Scotland
“The Last King of Scotland” is based on a book, the book being a mix of fact and fiction. The story revolves around a Scottish doctor who manages to become close to Idi Amin, the new president of Uganda. Idi Amin was a real person, and I’m assuming that the Scottish doctor was the work of fiction. Since I haven’t read the book, I can’t tell how close the movie was to the book.
The movie won several awards, which I think it deserves. Given that I’m not familiar with Ugandan culture, I can’t say how accurately they depicted things, some someone did mention to me that there were some complaint’s about choosing Forest Whitaker for the role of Idi Amin (which is ironic since he was nominated for and won some “best male actor” awards for this role).
Setting this aside, though, the movie was very engaging. It’s also actually quite creepy in a “realistic” sense. I could feel the fear when Idi Amin gets angry, and it’s just nerve wracking whenever you can’t tell if he’ll have someone killed.
It’s historical fiction, and it’s not for everyone. To me, it was very good, and I guess the awards show that perhaps I’m not alone in this opinion. If don’t mind semi-historical/political flicks, you shouldn’t miss this one.
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