Battle of Britain (1969) Review

An all-star cast fills in-between beautiful scenes of aerial combat in this recounting of the famous World War II battle over Great Britain’s skies. While the fictional characters are nothing to write home about, the real drama comes from the unfolding nightmare that really did happen. Glorious cinematography will make you want to see it on a big screen – the bigger the better. UPDATED August 2014 for a full rewrite, Blu-ray details, and HD screen captures.

From August 12 to October of 1940, a fierce bombing campaign by Germany took place in preparation for an eventual amphibious invasion of Great Britain. Badly outnumbered and riven by arguments over strategy, the British very nearly lost this critical battle during the early stages of the Second World War. Any attempt to portray this complicated history was bound to be flawed in one way or another, so it was perhaps too big a story to tell in one movie.

Three main focuses are interweaved throughout: the factual RAF Fighter Command struggle to form an effective strategy (based on book The Narrow Margin), depictions of the air war itself, and drama around fictional fighter pilots.  Most of the focus is on the second and features the best aerial footage I’ve seen in any movie not named The Blue Max. With the noted James Bond film series director Guy Hamilton helming the movie, great action was guaranteed.

Laboring Along

It’s been a week or so since I last posted, nearly two weeks now that I look at it. Things have been tiring with not as much drama as July. Currently suffering from a cold or the ilk, so the post will not be terribly lengthy.

Dad has been losing weight rather than gaining or stabilizing, which led to two appointments this week. One was an expected follow up to see how his gastric decompression tube was doing – no problems there. The second was with a dietician to review the weight loss issue.

Waiting for…

At the moment, my father is not in the hospital and not looking like he has to head for the emergency room soon. I’m not sure how to handle that after the events of last month. Currently, all we can do is try to get him stronger and see what happens.

Wednesday we had a round of appointments to go to as follow ups to the cancer treatment and the surgery. The first looks good so far and it will be several months until his next round of testing. It was the meeting with the surgeon that was most interesting.

A Real Russian Invasion?

I’ve been watching Putin play the propaganda game with great success against the West this year which has allowed him to take the Crimea without real opposition. Sorry folks, but economic sanctions aren’t opposition when they leak like sieves due to countries like France. So when he put a huge aid convoy to Ukraine and started having armored vehicles painted with peacekeeper symbols on them, I knew he was about to do something.

Events lately have shown Obama is an uninvolved weakling obsessed with golfing while the world burns. With America out of the picture to protect Europe, somebody was going to start throwing their weight around and Russia is the only country capable of that today.

Knowing that, the news that Russian armor had crossed the border into Ukraine today (Hot Air is collecting links to news as they come in) came as no surprise. Now it is a waiting game to see how far Putin will push things. Don’t be surprised if he goes to a full on war for he has the advantage right now.

Russian Spam Invasion

Things have been relatively quiet on the referral spam front for awhile, but the last month or so has seen an uptick in my Blogger stats. Most are not shown as links due to Google filtering, however the country of Russia is showing a ridiculous amount in my “Audience” figures. In fact, it is close to matching my traffic from the United States which is mostly legit.

Remember not to click on strange links in your Blogger stats because you never know where they will take you. Leave that to people crazy or skilled enough to safely investigate.

The latest spam from the Land of the Bear comes from a fake auction site. Oh you can really buy stuff there, but the timer is just a come on to influence you into an impulse buy. A long running con is magnetic bracelets for athletes and arthritis sufferers exploiting the placebo effect to work “miracles” through bogus science. Power Balance is one of those cheap trinkets being flogged at http: // power-balances . apishops . ru / proving that scams are universal or at least international.

The Bobo (1967) Review

Famous comedian Peter Sellers anchors an excellent cast in this inconsequential yet highly enjoyable comedy about a penniless bullfighter tasked with seducing a beautiful gold digger. Gently charming humor, well written characters, and note perfect performances highlight this little known gem from the great comedian’s career. It also illustrates just why one should never trust a singing matador.

Ah, the 1960s. Though there was much going on in that decade, one defining characteristic of the era is all but forgotten today. That would be the airy and sometimes witty comedies from Europe that graced the silver screen like effervescent bubbles floating through the air. Often they were international productions filmed in Italy or England and featured actors from all over. These films were whimsically entertaining in a way that simply isn’t seen in today’s more vicious and crude culture.

Being old enough to have grown up with reruns of the genre on television, I grew rather fond of them during my childhood. But even then they were fading away so recountings of certain movies were told to me by my late mother and half brothers. One they kept regaling me about was The Bobo which turned out to be very obscure. In fact, I didn’t get to see it until the late 1990s on a cable movie channel.

Fortunately for me, the film was just as funny as they claimed.

In Progress

Now that things have calmed down somewhat, I’m hoping to have a movie review up by the weekend. That is barring unexpected circumstances, which have gotten dangerously closer to the norm than one would wish.

Everything is done but the writing on the review and that was started over a week ago. Now to remember the film! There’s a reason I take several pages of notes…

Hints would be dropped about which film it is, but nobody would get it since it’s an obscure ‘60s flick. Instead I’ll tease that actor starring was most famously associated with the color of pink, was something of a goon, and wasn’t all there even when he was being there. For posterity and the random chance someone will actually pay attention to this post a final clue will be given to actor’s identity:

He was the kind of guy who drive his boss homicidally insane.

Now off to work on the thing…