War Horse The Film

[Ignatieff]

I suddenly have the visions of 'The Muppets Take the Hindenburg Line' or the battle of the Somme as a Punch and Judy Show flashing before me.

Carlos my boy, I think we have ourselves a musical!

Bealostock & Bluhm.

[Conquistador]

Nice movie.  Even i got some emotions showing.

Historical?  Not completely.  Would you want to watch a Private Ryan experience for WW1?  Would you SO (significant other) want to go see it and be down in the dumps emotionally in most cases afterward?  Yeah, that's a great date...

Take the kids to a "completely realistic" WW1 movie?  Not really...

It's called themed entertainment, not a documentary.

I liked it well enough.  Would I pay full price?  Nope.  Would I pay matinee prices for a second viewing?  Probably not.  Would I rent it?  Nope, I think it would lose the effect on the small screen.

Gracias,

Glenn

[Wirelizard]

it is a little known bit of history but back in the seventeenth century the Horse in the Iron Mask broke out of the Bastille. True!

Though it was obliged to allow a famous french philospher to go first.

It was a case of putting Descartes before the horse.

OK, that was terrible.

I laughed myself horse.

[carlos marighela]

Anyway, that should silence the neigh sayers. Puppets, trenches and fine equine flesh. Bit of a whinny-whinny situation really.

[Ignatieff]

You crazy foals!

This just in from that superior gentlemans monthly, 'Viz'....

[Ignatieff]

As long as you enjoy Warhorse - that's the mane thing!

I'll get your coat.....

[carlos marighela]

Look at the bright side, it must really fuck with negotiations for A-List Hollywood salaries.

Clooney: 'I want 15 mil to make it.'
Agent: 'No chance, last guy that worked for him got a bag of sugarcubes and a rubdown.'

[Ignatieff]

Look at the bright side, it must really fuck with negotiations for A-List Hollywood salaries.

Clooney: 'I want 15 mil to make it.'
Agent: 'No chance, last guy that worked for him got a bag of sugarcubes and a rubdown.'

Brilliant

[The Breaker]

Someone said that they couldn't bring the horses home. It was the same situation with the Australian Light Horse. The army sold them to the locals, many soldiers shot their horses rather than leave them to that fate. The descendants of some of those horses are pulling carts in the middle east right now. Of course for the English it was just a short hop over the channel not a many thousand kilometre trip back to Aussie but either way it's a shitty thing to do to a man who in some cases owes his life to that horse.

[Ignatieff]

The army sold them to the locals, many soldiers shot their horses rather than leave them to that fate.

The Belgians and French swear by them.  With chips.

[carlos marighela]

The Belgians and French swear by them.  With chips.

 

Ignatieff for the win! ( or perhaps in this case.... whinny)

[Volleyfire!]

This ia a photo of my Grandfather, Harry.N.Skinner, Norman to his friends, on his horse Ragtime, taken at Summer Camp in Revesby Park, Lincs. He was a member of Spilsby section of the Lincs Yeomanry. He was posted out to France, I'm not sure why as the rest seem to have either stayed at home or gone to Palestine according to the Regt records. In France he was given a mule to look after since he was a cavalryman.Ragtime didn't go with him I believe since he told me they went foxhunting after the war, until the day he was propelled through a hawthorn hedge into a dry ditch full of nettles, at which point he said he decided to hang up his spurs.
He was attached to the light section MGC and the mule carried the machine gun and his and the loader and gunner's kit.
The only time he ever talked about the war he told me he fought at Paschendaele. He was walking the mule along a road one day, silhouetted against the skyline, and the Huns started using them for artillery target practice. The mule promptly dug its toes in and wouldn't budge, and after tugging at the lead rope he gave up and took cover in a ditch at the roadside. The shells got nearer until one dropped right behind the mule.He heard a clattering of hooves and peered out the ditch to see the mule going full tilt straight towards the German lines, with all his kit, and the other 2 crewmen's, and the machine gun aboard too. The mule vanished never to be seen again. How he explained this away I don't know, he didn't say.
He was gassed and invalided back to a London hospital, and then back to Spilsby Town Hall where Red Cross nurses tended the wounded and sick. It was there we believe he met my Grandmother as she was a nurse there. Her birthday was Christmas Eve, his on Christmas Day, and they married on Boxing Day. He lived into his 80's.

[Ray Rivers]

"Norman" sits his horse well and "Ragtime" is a real beauty! 

[Hammers]

While I find the film as a whole a bit soppy and melodramatic (as per Spielbergs general style) I think parts of it brilliant. The attitudes displayed by the early war cavalry officers seem just so. And thus funny and a bit sad. Benedict Cumberbatch is particularly good in this respect but there are several other brilliant actors at work in this.

[Supercollider]

I haven't seen the film, but listened to a radio version on BBC Radio 4 Extra today.  Pretty good.  Timothy Spall is the voice of the horse, not sure who plays the back end.

Available here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00vy70n/Michael_Morpurgo_War_Horse/