Summer School!!!WWII reccomendations?

kittynh

Penultimate Amazing
K
Joined
Dec 18, 2002
Messages
22,634
Since my younger daughter is learning disabled, she never has summer off. Tutoring, and home schooling!

Since we are going to Europe for 10 days I'm starting some WWII education, and art history.

My daughter works with the tutors on her reading, so that means a lot of history and learning needs to be taught via the television.

So far, we've seen....

"Memphis Belle" (not a bad movie)

"1940's House" (from the BBC, my daughter was quite impressed with rationing. She thought we should do it today!)

We start the Sister Wendy series this week. We are doing it in order, from cave paintings on. I'm an artist, and I love Sister Wendy.

I'm looking for a good Churchill movie or documentary. Our library didn't have one, but I"m willing to buy one from Amazon if they have a good one.

Any reccomendations?

Also, a good movie about Paris during WWII and the Resistance movement. I really need a decent resistance documentary or even a movie that captures the history of the time.
 
kittynh said:
My daughter works with the tutors on her reading, so that means a lot of history and learning needs to be taught via the television.
Click to expand...

Well, that cuts off most of my recommendations.

"Memphis Belle" (not a bad movie)
Click to expand...

War movies tend to have the problem that those that are good movies have bad histories and vice versa.

But here are my reommendations for movies with some value for history teaching (these are those that I remember right now, there are also others):

"The Longest Day", Normandy Invasion
"Tora! Tora! Tora!", Pearl Harbor
"A Bridge Too Far", Operation Market-Garden
"Winter War", (bit high in gore) The Russo-Finnish war of 1939-40 (namely, the events of the Karelian Isthmus)
"Das Boot", submarine war in the Atlantic (the mini series edition has some gore and lots of extremely explicit discussions but I believe that most of that was cut off from the movie version).
 
thanks! We have the
"Longest Day" and "Das Boot" (hey Pool Boy was on subs, when the sub in the movie surfaces and sees the survivors drowning Pool boy said, "ah, send a Hallmark!") Our all submariner showing was the greatest! Remember, there are 2 types of boats, "Submarines and targets". Hehehehehe, we lived at the New London sub base for awhile. All subs all the time! None of those silly targets!

Sorry....

I didn't think of the other two! Perfect! I'm also thinking there is a movie about the Battle of the Buldge. We took both children on a snowy winter tour of the battle fields when we were in Belgium. It was quite moving as there are many monuments and even old tanks in the towns where the fighting took place. The most moving part was meeting actual veterans going on bus tours! You really felt that these guys weren't going to be around much longer.

Still want to get the Resistance movement across to her.

also, if we are going to visit Churchills war room have to get some back ground for her.
 
In terms of drama, "Twelve O'Clock High" beats "Memphis Belle." In a way, "Twelve O'Clock High" brings home some of the more horrible aspects of air war, even though it is less graphic.

Case in point: one of the opening scenes shows the crash of a B-17. Not the crash of a model of a B-17, but the crash of a real B-17. The plane is all shot up, and some of the crew staggers out, clearly shaken. One of the men is forcibly carried out in a dazed condition, and the Doc (Paul Stewart) chillingly says: "I wouldn't believe it if I wasn't looking right at it. You can see his brain." Then one of the fliers asks Harvey Stovall (Dean Jagger, who won an Academy Award for his performance) what should be done about an arm that had been shot off one of the fliers. Stovall enters the plane, asks a sergeant for a blanket, and shortly afterward the sergeant is seen carrying off something in the blanket.

You don't see blood (the movie is black and white), there is no close-up of any head wound, and you don't actually see a severed arm. But this scene is terrifically unnerving all the same.

This is one of my favorite Gregory Peck movies, and Hugh Marlowe and Gary Merrill turned in excellent performances, too.

That said, one thing about "Memphis Belle" that was better than "Twelve O'Clock High" was that "Memphis Belle" used younger actors, and really drove home the point that a lot of those fliers were really kids.
 
Re: Re: Summer School!!!WWII reccomendations?

LW said:
War movies tend to have the problem that those that are good movies have bad histories and vice versa.

But here are my reommendations for movies with some value for history teaching (these are those that I remember right now, there are also others):

"The Longest Day", Normandy Invasion
"Tora! Tora! Tora!", Pearl Harbor
"A Bridge Too Far", Operation Market-Garden
"Winter War", (bit high in gore) The Russo-Finnish war of 1939-40 (namely, the events of the Karelian Isthmus)
"Das Boot", submarine war in the Atlantic (the mini series edition has some gore and lots of extremely explicit discussions but I believe that most of that was cut off from the movie version).
Click to expand...
Good recommendations.

And while it's obviously more biographical than historical in the sense of WW II events, etc, "Patton" is still IMO the best (certainly one of the best) WW II movies ever made. Memphis Belle wasn't much at all for learning about WW II, but a very good movie IMO.

Also there is routinely a boatload of WW II stuff on the History Channel and similar off-shoot channels if you get them (don't have the names offhand).
 
"Schindler's List"?

I would recommend "Soldier of Orange", but it is in Dutch with English subtitles.

There seem to be several DVD's on Churchill at amazon (possibly from the History and Biography channels):
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000A14WI/ ... this one is from the History channel.

This year the library's "When everyone reads the same book" was about the Japanese internment:
http://www.spl.org/default.asp?pageID=about_news_detail&cid=1110306746995 ... I remember they showed a movie, let me see if I can find it:
"Rabbit in the Moon"... a documentary http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181781/ ... kind of dry.

Perhaps "Empire of the Sun":
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092965/ ... ooh, look it has Christian Bale as the kid living in China under Japanese occupation, he's the new Batman.

Oh, and in ANOTHER bio-pic of one of our favorites, Feynman, try http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116635/ ... it is also kind of about the development of the atomic bomb (the reason I think of it was that in the waning months of WWII my dad was an Army MP private assigned to security for the Manhatton Project).

Can't always have pure documentaries, right?
 
kittynh said:
..Still want to get the Resistance movement across to her.

...
Click to expand...

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076734/ ... Soldier of Orange, just too bad it is subtitled. I wish I could think of one in English. The reason I think about is that hubby's grandfather was in the Dutch resistence, and because of this his family was put into a prison camp by the Germans for a time to force him to come forward (my hubby's dad was in a boarding school, so he was not imprisoned)

I think there was a PBS show on the great prison escape, and I found it on this PBS website (which has lots of other interesting and relevent programs):
http://www.pbs.org/history/history_war.html

Good luck.... there is LOTS of stuff. My brother has a subscription to a magazine that is totally devoted to World War II.
 
Don't overlook The World at War. It's extremely long, but you can select the parts you need.

It's startling to see interviews with some of the actual historical figures, like Admiral Raeder -- or, my favorite, the great non-genius Mark Clark, explaining why Anzio wasn't his fault. Bill Mauldin (who died only some months back) appears at least once. And you can't beat narration by Larence Olivier. It's maybe a little heavy on the British experience, but that's to be expected of a BBC production.
 
Hydrogen Cyanide said:
"Schindler's List"?
Click to expand...
Great and classic movie, but not very educational in terms of WW II. Also very intense/depressing; frankly I wouldn't recommend for kids.
 
Agree, and again a great movie, but still see little educational value in it, ie in terms of learning about WW II in general.
 
The Big Red 1 with Lee Marvin and Mark Hammil, the latest version if possible.

Is Paris Burning - the book is much better than the movie but it is pretty authentic.

Take your daughter to Normandy, specifically Pointe du Hoc and Omaha Beach. Even skeptics will wonder about devine intervention at those two places.
 
She's read the "diary of Anne Frank" and several really classic Holocaust books, like "Night" by Elie Weisell.

When we went to the Anne Frank house we all just cried. Heck, I started to cry when we were in line to buy tickets. I felt bad, but then noticed pretty much everyone else was crying too.
 
Brown said:
I strongly recommend "Band of Brothers."
Click to expand...
I'll also throw in a recommendation for this series.

It covers D-Day, Bastogne, Battle of the Bulge, discovery of the concentration camps, and the capture of Hitler's "eagles nest".
 
Mr. Skinny said:
I'll also throw in a recommendation for this series.

It covers D-Day, Bastogne, Battle of the Bulge, discovery of the concentration camps, and the capture of Hitler's "eagles nest".
Click to expand...

I just looked at the library and they have the series! Yeah!

Got Patton while I was there, plus some science videos.

they also had the old MOnty Python series. So, that's going to be the carrot for watching the educational video of the day!

I also found a fictional movie about the resistance. So, we'll watch it and see if it is any good or not.

I got a copy of "beauty and the Beast" by Jean Cocteau. She might as well see where Disney stole it all from! I remember watching the cartoon version having a fit thinking, "geez, think they were influenced at all by the classic MOVIE VERSION!!!"

Poor kid, her mom is making her stay in all summer and watch tv.

Not really, she has to earn spending money for her trip to Europe by being an assistant at a childrens art camp. Mind you, I have to drive her there and back. :( BUt I feel she needs to have her own money to spend since her parents are broke.


I can hardly wait to watch "Band of Brothers" ! This is a lot of fun for me!
 
kittynh said:
I can hardly wait to watch "Band of Brothers" ! This is a lot of fun for me!
Click to expand...
Although the movie is excellent, there are some places where you will have to grit your teeth to keep watching. (Such as the charge on Foy. You feel that you are right with those men in the midst of a battle, and you are at the mercy of your commanding officer, who has his head squarely up his butt. The sensation of being under fire without an effective leader is not a pleasant one.)

Also, be prepared to cry.
 
We just watched "Beauty and the Beast" while I explained the finer points of cinematography. She kept rewinding to a scene where a statue farts (indeed it does visibly fart). She also found the beast very funny, especially when his ears would perk up. She pointed out it would have been a much better movie if one of the BAD sisters had been sent to live with the beast.

Everyone go out and rent it. The statue farting is well worth the price. I wish she had been in my film history class in college. It would have been much more entertaining.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom