For our 19th round pick, the continuingly aptly named Selfmade Heroes picks When Trumpets Fade (1998) in the War category.
Opening scene:
A sort of a spoiler, but one of the best scenes:
When Trumpets Fade is small-screen film that came out the same year as two major budget WWII epics, Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line, and was understandably overshadowed by those two. This is a shame, because When Trumpets Fade is simply a superior film to both of those mammoths.
Director John Irvin ("Hamburger Hill", "Dogs of War") has created his best warfilm yet, hopefully a future classic of the realistic war-film genre, hailed by some as the most true-to-life depiction of infantry warfare.
There's no soul searching and love stories around, there simply isn't time for that when the only thing on your mind is the shrapnel flying overhead. There's true heroism, but it's not the sort born from extraordinary dedication to the cause, but something that happened because it made the most sense at the time.
The setting is unusual also. The battle of Hurtgen forest was an inconsequencial waste of human life, a tactical and strategical blunder that is on occasion compared to the battle Ant Hill in WWI, and largely forgotten because of the much more significant Battle of the Bulge that started a few days later.
The protagonist private David Mannings (Ron Eldard) is neither the classical motivated warrior-hero nor the postmodern "unlikely" anti-hero, but a true human being, who only becomes a hero because there's no one else around that seems to have enough of the three things truly needed: front-line experience, a working head on his shoulders and a healthy fear of dying.
The acting is solid throughout, every role is excellently written, the battle scenes are gut-wrenchingly realistic (even if some of the special effects aren't top notch due to budget reasons) and the story is simply brilliant.
The B-List Celebs are proud to select in Wildcard #3 the Bert Reynolds classic - Smokey and the bandit.
In the summer of 1976 "Big Enos" Burdette, a flamboyant aspiring Georgia politician, needs a vast quantity of beer for a rally in his honor, but the brand of beer he needs is west coast beer that at this time cannot be legally transported across the Mississippi, and at least one attempted shipment has already been intercepted by police. To get this job done, Burdette recruits modern day moonshiner Bo Darville, nicknamed Bandit for his previous exploits, for a hefty six-figure payment. Darville in turn recruits his pal Cledus Snow and his eighteen-wheeler for the job, entailing driving from Georgia to Texas, picking up 400 crates of west coast beer, and returning to Georgia, all in a span of twenty-eight hours. To draw off the heat of snooping state police, Darville will drive interference for Cledus in a hot Pontiac Trans-Am, the two of them maintaining contact via citizen's-band radios and the seemingly bizarre lingo used within. The trip to Texas and loading of beer goes without interruption, but the trip back to Georgia begins to pick up complications when Darville is stopped by a runaway bride, Carrie, who is fleeing a forced marriage to the son of a full-of-himself Texas county sheriff, Buford T. Justice. Sheriff Justice's pursuit of his prospective daughter-in-law soon becomes an interstate high-speed pursuit involving police from four states and also the intervention of varied interstate truckers aiding Darville and Cledus as they close on Enos Burdette's Georgia bash.
There really are not alot of good clips on youtube
For our 19th selection, Team That's What She Said is beyond pleased to call to the podium a movie that we consider a steal this late in the draft, Love Actually, as a Wildcard selection.
I have borrowed the following from Wikipedia's entry on this film as they say it better than I could:
Love Actually is a 2003 British romantic comedy film written and directed by Richard Curtis. The screenplay delves into different aspects of love as shown through stories involving a wide variety of individuals, many of whom are linked as their tales progress. The ensemble cast is composed of predominantly English actors.
The film begins five weeks before Christmas and is played out during a week-by-week countdown until the holiday, with an epilogue that takes place one month later.
The film starts with a voiceover from David, commenting that, whenever he gets gloomy with the state of the world, he thinks about the arrivals terminal at Heathrow Airport, and the pure, uncomplicated love felt as friends and families welcome their arriving loved ones. David's voiceover also relates that all the known messages left by the people who died on the 9/11 planes were messages of love and not hate. The film then tells the "love" story of many people, culminating in a final scene at the airport enacted to the tune of The Beach Boys' "God Only Knows", that closes their stories. The film ends with a montage of anonymous persons greeting their arriving loved ones that slowly enlarges and fills the screen, eventually with a shape of a heart appearing.
YouTube Goodies!
Love Actually Intro
Colin Firth Speaking Portuguese (for the ladies!!!)
^^^I like Love Actually and considered selecting it a few picks ago! Glad to see an actual chick (no offense intended!) selected this particular chick flick.
Bill Nighy is an absolute hoot in this movie, He's worth the price of admission alone.
the scene from Love, Actually that my ex-girlfriend seemd to like above all others was this:
Yeah that one was awesome - and really just sooooooooo romantic!
But then there are really so many good scenes it's hard to say which ones are the best of the best! One other thing I like about this movie is that while it is a chick flick (and no offense was even remotely taken Jagger ) there's enough in it for guys to be entertained (at least a little) while watching it with us.
Is anyone else having problems narrowing down their picks now when you start thinking about all the different movies you'd like to pick that are still available and realizing you only have a limited number of slots left? This part of the draft is almost harder than the early rounds.
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