Actually, Dogface, Gibson’s The Patriot was fairly historically accurate, having been based upon the exploits of one Francis Marion, aka “The Swamp Fox.” Cornwallis’ forces, aided and abetted by Loyalists, so mistreated the southern colonists that, in the words of one loyalist, “…the lower sorts of people, who were in many parts originally attached to the British government, have suffered so severely…the Great Britain has now a hundred enemies, where it had one before.”
Nation of Nations, 4ed. Ch. 6, pp187.
I woudn’t mind seeing a good movie about the Thity Year War, focusing upon Gustav II Adolf of Sweden and the battle at Breitenfeld.
Alan Parker’s 1990 movie ‘Come see the paradise’ concerned the internment of Japanese citiziens. I’m a Parker fan but this wasn’t one of his good ones.
Frank Schaffner’s 1971 movie ‘Nicholas and Alexandra’ is, IMHO, an excellent and under-rated movie about the last days of the Nicholas II, and includes Tom Baker’s finest ever performance as Rasputin.
Back to the OP, I think it’s a shame that stories from the world of science and scientists so rarely get dramatised, either because movie people are by definition not very science-oriented or because they reckon the masses won’t be interested in science stuff. Isaac Newton’s life could make a pretty good movie if handled well. A few years ago the BBC made a good half-dramatised documentary about the race to discover the structure of DNA. It was exceptionally well done, and made me think there might even be a decent movie in there somewhere.
For historical subjects, I’m not aware if there’s ever been a decent movie made about Cromwell and the English civil war, but it’s a darned good yarn.
Not sure if anyone posted this, but I would love to see a really good modern movie about the Jacobite Uprising…the '45, culminating in the final stand of the Scots on the moors of Culloden.
Another movie I’d love to see would be about Wales and its struggle with England to keep its independance…and about the last Welsh Prince.
A movie about Madison and the 1812 war would be cool. I think Americans would like it fine if done right…the burning of DC especially would hit certain notes I think. I wouldn’t go so far as to say we ‘lost’ though…after all, there is still an America. And the final battle at New Orleans would be VERY cool to film I would think.
I’d love to see a film about Nikola Tesla and how he was cheated out of his inventions by JP Morgan. Also, an inspirational bio of THOMAS CRAPPER would be welcom…we could see him as he began mass-production of flush toilets…and had his name immortalized! Was he knighted?
Wade aminnitt. Jelly babies? Multicolored scarves? That Tom Baker? If so, I simply must see this film.
There are some films focussing on the scientists at the Manhattan Project or various Apollo missions.
HBO made a film about the early days of AIDS (no, I’m not thinking of Angels In America. This film was made years ago and I think it had Alan Alda) which had large segments both on researchers struggling to find the cause(before they find HIV), isolate the virus, understand how the virus works, and how some of them are more concerned with getting credit for a discovery than anything else.
Yep, DocCathode, that Tom Baker. It was before he played the Doctor. He’d already played an evil wizard in a Sinbad movie, and said he was having trouble getting work, as he was typecast as “A blue-eyed maniac”.
ianzin, there was a mini-series in 1983 about the English Civil War, titled “By the Sword Divided” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092712/
After watching one does get the distinct impression that those who wrote it were Royalist sympatizers.
Not really. Consider, first Stalin was an ALLY of Hitler until Hitler double-crossed him.
Second, Stalin was an even bigger butcher than Hitler and the only reason the Soviet people incurred such horrific losses was the “tactics” forced upon them by the comissars.
Now, it’s true that we would not have won the war as quickly without the Soviets, but no, I don’t have to give them some sort of “credit” for it. Their government was run by evil butchers no better than the Nazis they were fighting. Many of their people fought with incredible bravery and self-sacrifice, but many more others fought to the death because there was a secret police guard ready to shoot them anyway if they tried to retreat.
I would love to see a biopic of Akhenaton and Nefertiti, or even of the young and unimportant Tut, or pretty much anything set in Egypt during one of its golden eras that didn’t involve Brendan Fraser or CGI monsters.
I’d also love to see an accurate biopic of Cleopatra would also be good (although I have to admit that I don’t think there’ll ever be a better Julius Cæsar than Sexy Rexy Harrison) in which she isn’t absolutely gorgeous (the real one wasn’t), her family isn’t reduced to ciphers, her many lovers besides Caesar and Antonius are mentioned, and her younger children make an appearance. She was far more interesting for her intelligence than for her ability to spread her legs for Romans, and of course Rome in 28 BCE looked nothing like the GLADIATOR age it’s usually portrayed as.
The three Defenestrations of Prague (1419, 1618, and 1948), linked together thematically and in a stylized way by a director like Todd Haynes. It’d be neat to recycle the same actors in very different roles, in the three installments. The real star of the show would be the city itself. (Karel Reisz and Krzysztof Kieslowski would’ve been good choices for this kind of thing, but they’re both dead.)
A biopic of Anton Van Leeuwenhoek, the 17th-C. Dutch inventor/popularizer of a crude single-lens microscope. Aside from the obvious scientific import of the story, the scandalous stir the invention made in high social circles at dinner parties and the like (with public hysteria resulting from seeing the critters that live in their drinking water, in their mouths, in food… also, he was the first to view spermatozoa) makes for obvious comedic fodder. Someone get Milos Forman’s number…
The failed Japanese campaign to subdue Korea, 1592-98, led by the shogun who united Japan (and whose ultimate aim was to conquer all of China). An initial incursion was repulsed, but the samurai returned to Korea in 1597 and committed acts of the most savage butchery – a burial mound in Kyoto comprised 30,000 Korean and Chinese trophy noses. Other story elements: a great Korean naval commander leading state-of-the-art ironclad warship(s), rough terrain, rough weather, Chinese reinforcements, the attrition of the samurai, and the death of the shogun.
A biopic of either France’s Montgolfier brothers, who invented ballooning in 1783, or the Englishman Charles Green, a technological pioneer in his own right, piloting a balloon in a historic flight from London to Germany in 1836, and took thousands of passengers on rides, without an accident, beginning in the 1830’s.
There is another good one, albiet told from a German point of view… Stalingrad
RikWriter… for the most part you are right about what you say about the Soviets, but the fact remains that IMHO it would have been pretty unlikely that the Western Allies would have been able to defeat the Germans without the slaughter that was going on on the Eastern front. As to who was objectively worse, the Nazis or the Stalinists… that’s a topic for Great Debates.
Haven’t seen the film, so I’m not one to judge, really. But issues of racial relations aside ( one of the big complaints I’ve heard, which I’m obviously not competent to address ), I’ve heard that they did play a little loose with a date or two ( i.e. Charleston falling to the British in 1778, rather than 1780 ).
But I’d agree that is relatively minor ( especially compared to several egeregious errors in Braveheart, which I did see ).
Better make it a mini-series ;). The Thirty Years War would be pretty hard to do justice to with any accuracy in one ( even very long ) film and excerpting just the early Swedish phase would probably confuse the hell out of the non-cognoscenti. It’s one thing to do a film on a touchstone battle like Waterloo or Thermopylae or Marathon. Breitenfeld is pretty obscure by comparison.
Besides, wouldn’t Lutzen be more dramatic :)?
Actually I think a movie on the Great Northern War would be a better story for the screen. Charles XII and Peter the Great make fascinating antagonists.
I have read the first book of Riverworld, and enjoyed the depictions of Burton and Twain, but was surprised at how dull the book turned out to be, given the concept.
The battle of Breitenfeld got a good treatment in a book(not movie, alas) currently out. It’s in the book 1632 by Eric Flint. It’s the story of what happens when an entire town in West Virginia gets plunked down, by a cosmic accident, in Thuringia, the Germanies, in the middle of the 30 Years War. Gustav Adolf becomes an important character, and as Breitenfeld occurs before he encounters the Americans, the description of the battle is true to history as we know it.
Breitenfeld was also historically signifigant for it’s strategic value, establishing the regular army of the Swede’s as a force to be reckoned with, and for being one of the eariler examples where a combination of newer tactical doctrines were utilized together successfully.
1632 got me interested in the Thirty Years War, as well as the genius and charisma of Gustav II Adolf. I love alt-history genre. S. M. Stirling’s Draka series is still my favorite for it, but Eric Flint is a very strong second.
The Patriot, like most quasi-historical pieces, certainly took some license with historical fact. But it was not the wholly fabricated thing certain people seem to think it was.
And the final battle at New Orleans would be VERY cool to film I would think.