In 1998 two legendary directors released World War II films that couldn’t be more different: Stephen Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan is considered a masterpiece of the genre and the film’s arrival was treated like a national event when it first hit theater screens. Audiences hailed the realism of the film’s battle sequences while Spielberg was still able to play sentimental virtuoso with Ryan‘s rescue themes. There’s no doubt that Ryan is an important cinematic accomplishment, but the masterpiece war film of 1998 was Terrence Malick’s adaptation of James Jones’ The Thin Red Line.

Red Line features an insane cast spotlighted in a number of separate-seeming scenes viewed through the eyes of shifting protagonists and linked together by the kind of voice over internal monologues often featured in Malick’s films. Ryan offers a kind of penultimate WWII movie along with a nostalgic celebration of those films along with the Greatest Generation. Red Line is as subversive as Ryan is reverent — it’s specifically an anti-war movie, and where most war films are direct and action-filled Red Line is surreal and full of quiet poetry.

And take a look at some of this cast:

Jim Caviezel as Pvt. Robert Witt
Sean Penn as 1st Sgt. Edward Welsh
Elias Koteas as Capt. James ‘Bugger’ Staros
Nick Nolte as Col. Gordon Tall
John Cusack as Capt. John Gaff
Adrien Brody as Cpl. Geoffrey Fife
John C. Reilly as Sgt. Maynard Storm
Woody Harrelson as Sgt. William Keck
Jared Leto as 2nd Lt. William Whyte
John Travolta as Brig. Gen. David Quintard
George Clooney as Capt. Charles Bosche
Nick Stahl as Pfc. Edward Bead
John Savage as Sgt. Jack McCron
Tim Blake Nelson as Pvt. Brian Tills

Here’s Nick Nolte talking about making the movie…

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I love animation, and recently I’ve featured more than one Blank-On-Blank project here, bringing archived audio to life with moving drawings. This is a new series I just discovered that promises to document some of the biggest feuds in the world of philosophy. Here’s a bit about the first installment which covers the great friendship, and bitter break between French philosophy giants Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus…

The French existentialists Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus were once close companions. Post World War II, their friendship enchanted the public: “Europe had been immolated, but the ashes left by war created the space to imagine a new world. Readers looked to Sartre and Camus to articulate what that new world might look like,” writes Sam Dresser for Aeon. What happened for the two to split so intensely? Watch this engaging animation by Andrew Khosravani for Aeon to understand how a rift over communism and human nature dissolved the intellectual pair’s connection for good.

This is the first episode of “Philosophy Feuds”—Aeon’s original series of short animations which tell the stories of famous falling-outs.

Here’s the vid…

The Hells Angels Motorcycle Club were the wild and wooly Zeligs of the American counterculture of the Vietnam Era: The Angels partied with Ken Keasey and his Merry Pranksters; they saw their reflections on the big screen in Easy Rider, and in the pages of Hunter S. Thompson’s first book; and they effectively ended the hippie dream at Altamant. But the group’s roots dig deep, back to an earlier generation of soldiers returning home to California after World War II, and naming their motorcycle club in the same bold, fierce nomenclature brandished by fighting squadrons in the war.

Here’s a great documentary from 1983 that tells the story of the rise and fall of Hells Angels. Here’s Hells Angels Forever…

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While David Bowie’s portrayal of Nikola Tesla in The Prestige is still my favorite on-screen depiction of the famous mad scientist, this 1980 production from Yugoslavia is an ambitious attempt at bringing Tesla’s tale to the cinema, and Orson Welles’ turn as J.P. Morgan is worth the price of admission. Here’s the Wiki…

The Secret of Nikola Tesla (Serbo-Croatian: ‘Tajna Nikole Tesle’), is a 1980 Yugoslav biographical film which details events in the life of the discoverer Nikola Tesla (portrayed by Serbian actor Petar Božović). Tesla was born to ethnic Serb parents in 1856 Croatia (at the time, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). He arrived in New York in 1884, became an American citizen in 1891, made immense contributions to science and died in Manhattan at age 86 during World War II in 1943.[1]

This biography includes references to his amazing abilities of detailed mental visualization as well as the slowly intensifying personal habits, indulgences or eccentricities for which he became nearly as well known. The film portrays Tesla in a battle with Thomas Edison over the clear superiority of Alternating Current over Direct Current. It also depicts Tesla’s dream of supplying consumers all around the globe with limitless free energy.

If you’re new to Tesla’s story this production is a perfect primer. If you’re a Tesla scholar you’ll still want to take a look at this rare gem. Here’s The Secret of Nikola Tesla…

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We’ve just begun to experience the first cooler days in awhile here in Nashville, and the drop in temperature has put me in mind of autumn and Halloween. It’s too early for aisles of orange and black in the grocery stores, but they’ve already turned their leaves. It’s too early for costume store ads, but I saw one yesterday. It’s too early for spooky blog posts, but why fight it?

Here’s a teaser for the dreadful posts I hope to come up with next month: 2014 marks the 35th anniversary of Werner Herzog’s remake of the F.W. Murnau classic Nosferatu. Not only does Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre tip its hat to one of the earliest and greatest vampire films, and to the horror genre in general, it also attempts to create a link between the movies Herzog and his German peers were making in 1979 and the brilliant German cinema that was made before World War II and the rise of the Third Reich.

Here’s a great making-of documentary about the movie…

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