Marie Claire writer tears up during the “No Man’s Land” scene in a fictional Wonder Woman cause womyn power.
Sacrifice, real, honest to goodness sacrifice, well….
.@dunkirkmovie feels like an excuse for men to celebrate maleness–and don't they get to do that enough already?https://t.co/YVm52e8NY1
— Marie Claire (@marieclaire) July 28, 2017
Don’t click the link, it ain’t worth it.
Meanwhile normal people are remembering the centenary of the Battle of Passchendaele.
I never thought sacrifice and courage were unique to men, but i can understand why the staff at that mag might think so. They’re just considering their own value system.
And “basic” is supposed to be an insult?
Marie Claire is a women’s fashion-and-lifestyle magazine, about as trite a publication as you can find anywhere.
Glossy images, lovely models and expensive bibelots.
However, the essentially bourgeois female opinions expressed within its lustrous pages are of no great concern or consequence.
Kate, be careful…it’s a dog eat dog world out there
Wealth adviser bought illegal stun guns to protect himself from jealous dog show rivals, court hears
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/07/30/wealth-adviser-bought-illegal-stun-guns-protect-jealous-dog/
Another significant battle, Hill 70, which gets a passing mention in the Passchendaele link, has its centenary in August:
http://www.hill70.ca/
A great feat of arms and a showcase of Currie’s talent.
To sum up Dunkirk in one word ‘disappointment’. Focused mostly on the negative with a very few positives. Couldn’t figure out the purpose of some of the characters. The young boy dying on the private boat crossing the channel. Never saw any German soldiers. A few German airplanes. The best scenes were the sinking of the British destroyers, destroyer escorts. Boy were those German bombers accurate (in the movie anyway), never missed a boat.
Why must everything these days be viewed through the lens of political correctness? In addition to the feminist critique on this one, the same mag dumps on Beguiled because it is “racist” (all white cast — do we not know about slavery unless it is depicted in each and every film about the South?). We are told it is an enjoyable movie to watch, but make sure you feel guilty afterwards. This is a wonderful way to turn people into unthinking automatons. Unfortunately, that is exactly what is happening in a lot of cases.
Mark Steyn’s thought provoking review of Dunkirk:
https://www.steynonline.com/8001/dunkirk
I thought Dunkirk was the by far the best film I’ve seen in some time. And Steyn was spot-on:
“In that sense, as important as the Spitfire is, so too are the great urns of tea and bread and jam that greet the Tommies whenever they find refuge. God knows what the French made of them: perhaps it was the moment when the bleak reality of exile was finally made plain. The jolly ladies proffering ‘a nice cup of tea’ to the wounded die as easily as soldiers and sailors do, but, like Mr Dawson, they are doing their duty, uncomplainingly. I have no idea of Christopher Nolan’s politics, and in Hollywood one is obliged to be circumspect about even the mildest deviation from the conventional pieties. Nevertheless, whether by intent or not, he has made a film that celebrates the character of a people, and the virtues that enabled them to snatch a mad, improvised victory in the midst of what seemed their darkest hour. After all, even after Dunkirk, the possibility of invasion and conquest was very real. Nobody had to explain what was at stake: That’s why they cast off from their sleepy fishing coves; that’s why they put the tea on.”
i believe the civilian boy dying on the boat is a true story. i saw a version of dunkirk i think in the 1960s told from a fishermanspoint of view.
Saw Dunkirk last night. Whenever there was an airplane around, it was riveting. I would have thought when the French soldier was discovered impersonating a British soldier, he would have been shot on the spot. Entertaining and educational.
As for marieclaire – not even worth commenting.
My Grandpop fought at the Third Ypres in the British Infantry.
I have fond memories of him floating in the ocean with his knarled toes sticking out of the water… some 60 years later.
Thank you for my morning vocabulary lesson. I am sad to say I have never read the word “bibelot” … despite my own French (mutt) lineage. I may have heard it before … but just in passing, believing it was some personal make-believe slang. It’s a perfect sounding word for a mistress as well … a type of trinket or bauble for those who can afford them …
Ha ha ha ha … a whole new story line for Best in Show II
“To sum up Dunkirk in one word ‘disappointment'” – I think you would have preferred the movie “War for the Planet of the Apes” which was the worse waste of my time at any movie I have ever seen over the last 60 years. But that’s just me.
Speaking of PC-revisionist history … My own grandmother had a black cleaning woman (Bea) for years. For so long, she was like a member of the family. She was a wonderful woman who,put both her own children through college on a cleaning woman’s salary. When I got married, I invited Bea to the wedding. My grandmother was pleased that I remembered her … but said that I was wrong to invite her as a guest. My grandmother told me that Bea would WANT to serve at the wedding … as a maid. I had to remind my grandmother that it was the 1970’s now … and that I saw Bea as an equal. She would be my guest, as one of my social peers who watched me grow-up from an early age. I had to sternly argue with my grandmother who thought I was committing some social fauxpas. Bea did attend my wedding (I still remember the pill box hat she wore). She was the same wonderful, warm, and funny, woman I remembered. She had a ball.
The point of another one of my rambling stories is this … I didn’t ever feel the need to scold or HATE my grandmother for her belief system. She didn’t want “the Help” (Bea) to serve at my wedding out of malice. But she just came from a different era … where social boundaries were sacrosanct. Bea even understood this, and was quite comfortable navigating both sides of the social barrier. The film “The Help” was a malicious send up of my exact same life experience. But it was written as a screed that screamed RACISM! When in reality, it was simply a different era … lived by different people, with different morays. Am I denying racism existed ? Of course not. But not every historic cultural attitude = racism. I get weary of the Hollywood scolds who cherry-pick story after story to depict the HORRORS of former cultural norms. Dude … life moves on. We’ve moved on today. Enough already with the revisionist history viewed from a completely inappropriate perspective (today). Gawwd … it’s ALL Obama ever did. What a pampered putz.
No one in Viet-Nam was hangin’ around celebrating his male-ness. I assume the same obtained for Dunkirk, the Somme, and Gettysburg, but I was only in Indo-china.
I know if they weren’t being shot at, that would solve it all. Feeding their testicular fortitude simply isn’t worth the price.
I know if they weren’t being shot at, that would solve it all. Feeding their testicular fortitude isn’t worth the price. Patriarchy must die for the sake of peace.
If millions die, it’s worth it because then civic society improves; and Trump’s an idiot, like Gord says, or “something” like that.
So simple if you don’t think about it. But feel it you can, especially if economic rents are available, then we must be saved.
Except in reality; the apparatchiks are not there, so not shook within their gilded, gated think tanks.
It amazes me how statists deny the concept of sentient creation, but marvel at their abilities to marshal and control the random transactions of the market.
No, it’s all about junk, sorry empirical science and faith in the stupidity of humanity; along with irrational rational beings shooting themselves in the foot.
Women’s magazines are devoid of anything readable.
Put this in the junk pile.
Also, watch “Dunkirk”.
That is a good story. I agree with you about attitudes reflecting different eras. My ex-in-laws were from the US South and that has given me some sympathy for the Southern point of view. I am appalled at the way statues are currently being pulled down and the Civil War being used to actually promote racism. A writer from the South (there are many wonderful Southern writers), has a story about a Southern doctor. He studied at Harvard and was sneered at by all of the Northerners he encountered. After graduating he chose to go back to the South to practice where salaries were much less. He would often treat poor blacks for free. I think there is a genuine feeling of mutual dependence among Southerners (black and white) and that the violence around racial issues is mostly bread by blacks in larger cities who get involved in drugs and crime. Most people these days are not racists,but reject criminal behaviour. Many involved in Black Lives Matter are funded provocateurs. When riots happen, it is mostly black businesses that are hurt. Obama (and the left) are using race to provoke and fuel anger.
Hester Burton’s “In Spite of all Terror” is a narrative of the first years of WW II from the perspective of a young evacuee from London. It touches on Dunkirk and the flotilla. Anthony Price, in “The Hour of the Donkey”, tells a much grittier tale of Dunkirk as seen by a British soldier stationed in France; although a novel, it gives a theory as to why the Germans slowed their advance and allowed the “miracle of Dunkirk”.
I don’t think it’s that much of a mystery that the Germans didn’t press the attack at Dunkirk. They had no way of knowing that France was about to collapse, and they thought they might need all their strength, and especially their tank forces, to complete the conquest of France. The British (and allied) forces at Dunkirk were effectively neutralised; it made sense to let the air force deal with them and put the army to better use. They didn’t expect the British to be able to escape, and it didn’t seem to matter if they did. And indeed, it would be many years, and in a very different war that was beyond imagining in 1940, before British forces would be doing any damage to the Germans.
The tale I sometimes tell was of Bernard Montgomery, who rose to fame later in the war. In World War I he had been a regimental commander in the BEF when they had moved into their position in Belgium and clashed head on with the bulk of the German Army. They had to withdraw from their position and pull back 10 miles to the rear; then do the same again the next day; then fight a pitched battle and fall back yet another 10 miles. By the time that was over they were a shambles and had to be pulled out of the fighting line and reorganised.
25 years later Montgomery commanded a division in the BEF when it settled into its position in France and proceeded to do nothing for six months. Having nothing better to do, and remembering his experience, he began ordering his division to pull back 10 miles to new positions on varying amounts of short notice. After a while they got to the point where they could take it in stride.
When the German attack finally came, the BEF once again had to fall back 10 miles a day for several days in a row. The result was the shambles on the beach at Dunkirk – except for Montgomery’s division, which was battered, but still intact and fighting effectively. The Germans had to judge the British by what they could see, and that was a British force that had handled the retreat and could fight. They saw no reason to take that on if they didn’t have to, and they clearly didn’t have to.
“To sum up Dunkirk in one word ‘disappointment'” – I think you would have preferred the movie “War for the Planet of the Apes” which was the worse waste of my time at any movie I have ever seen over the last 60 years. But that’s just me.”
Anyone who would entertain seeing the movie ‘War for the Planet of the Apes’ has no credentials to criticize my option of ‘Dunkirk’. As a war movie at best would give Dunkirk 3 stars out of 5. Much, much better recent war movies are ‘Saving Private Ryan’,or ‘Fury’.
Yores was a different war. and far from the ocean. unless you count the mud.
My grandfather fought at Passendaele , got his arm shot through at age 16, gassed , taken to London , repaired , sent back and got shot in the stomach.
not having quite enough he went back for round 3 in the second world war , this time as a Canadian . we have a signed commendation from Montgomery date june 1944, we have no idea what he did but it must have been good as i think Monty had lots to do at the time .