Band of Brothers comes back

The History Channel is rerunning this 10-part film. If you missed it, you can catch it - starting next week, and mostly on Mondays, as follows:

4/26 Currahee
5/3 Day of Days
5/10 Carentan
5/17 Replacements
5/24 Crossworads
6/1 [TUESDAY] Bastogne
6/7 The Breaking Point
6/14 The Last Patrol
6/21 Why We Fight
6/28 Points

I took the trouble to do this, figuring there might be one person left, here at SDMB who hasn’t yet seen this film, and would want to. (Maybe some others would like to see it again.)

Band of Brothers (in my very humble opinion) is the finest damned war movie I have ever had the honor of seeing.

And if I may be so bold, I’d also suggest you get the book. It is superb. But then it should be. It was written by Stephen Ambrose.

And if you go to…

http://www.historychannel.com/bandofbrothers/

…you can get more info on the film. including background info on the characters, etc.

Is the History Channel editing the mini-series at all? I caught two episodes in the last run, and it sounded in a few places like they’d dubbed over some swear words. Which also makes me wonder if they’ve edited it for violence or other content, as well. Usually, this doesn’t bother me much, but the two episodes I saw were so good, I want to make sure I’m not seeing an abridged version.

I caught a few minutes of one episode last week, when it was airing on either A & E or Biography.

I would think they would edit out the swear words, and there’s one T & A scene in thesecond-to-last episode that I’d assume will be deleted/cropped/pixilated. But otherwise they’ve left everything in, that I’ve seen.

(Understand that I’m a huge fan, I PVRd all 10 episodes when they first aired on HBO and got the DVD set once it was released, so I haven’t made an effort to sit down and watch it this time around.)

However, they have dropped in commercials this time around, which I feel kind of ‘eh’ about.

And with regard to Stephen Ambrose and the actual history depicted, here’s one historian’s opinion on his book and the series. Some of the details are nitpicky, and most aren’t Ambrose’s fault. One huge error the series made is the final message in Episode 3, Carentan, about Albert Blithe (seen shot in the neck in the episode). The coda states that he died of his wounds in 1948; actually, he recovered, fought in Korea, and died of a perforated hernia while on active duty with the Army in 1967. Here’s an angry post from his son, and how the mixup occurred.

Some other errors from that first link:

–The hand signals the soldiers used during assaults on Brecourt, etc, were totally made up, probably by Dale Dye.

–In Bastogne, E Company actually had it pretty easy, with the lowest casualty rate in the 506th PIR (which had it easier than the 501st) in the first two weeks.

–Nixon and Compton didn’t like each other, probably out of competition for Winters’s friendship.

–Speirs wasn’t a looter, the way the book and series make him out to be (although the book excuses this behavior).
If you haven’t seen this miniseries, it’s hugely recommended.

I guess that means I can stop trying to find someone or some web site that would tell me what those signals meant, then. I tried asking my dad (who was still in boot camp on VJ day (I think)), but he said he was in the Signal Corp and wasn’t taught any hand signals.

Is there a web site or a book that diagrams and explains military hand signals?

I saw it on the History Channel all last week. I don’t think violence was edited (I recall an execution scene where two guy’s brains were blown out).

I think f-words and nipples were out, however “shit” and butt nudity is ok on most of basic cable these days.

Or as they would say in Denmark, “it’s now 1971!”.

The commercials are pretty short, compared with the History Channel’s usual method when they show a movie. Movies in Time anyone?

They’ve even given an hour and fifteen minutes for each episode, so that they are allowed to run their full time. As far as swear words go, they change “fuck” to “freak”, “frickin”, “flipping”, etc.

I was hoping this thread would be about the South Pacific version of Band of Brothers that I’ve heard rumors is forthcoming.

Does anyone know if/when it’s going to happen?