Blog Archives
The Other D-Day (Dunkirk-Day) is Here
Christopher Nolan’s newest film has arrived in theaters across the country. And today’s blog post is fairly short and sweet going into this weekend:
Go see Dunkirk in IMAX.
‘Dunkirk’ Is a Tour de Force War Movie, Both Sweeping and Intimate (Manohla Dargis, The New York Times)
A spare, propulsive, ever-intensifying combat thriller, Nolan’s history lesson is both a rousing celebration of solidarity and the tensest beach-set film since Jaws (Nick De Semlyen, Empire online)
‘Dunkirk’ chronicles heroism during WWII rescue with beauty and intensity (
The Bottom Line: A stunning victory (, The Hollywood Reporter)
For history’s sake, please go see Dunkirk this weekend.
1 Ticket Will Transport You to the Peril of 400,000
War is hell.
But the new film Dunkirk (an epic war story set for release this week) has been viewed as heavenly by movie critics regarding its acting veterans and young newcomers, storytelling dynamics and daring cinematic achievements involving practical effects in the air, on the land and in the sea.
Famed director and screenwriter Christopher Nolan explained his first ambitious journey into framing and telling a real story from history.
Having followed the inception of this film (I had to) concerning the earliest reports of what Mr. Nolan was up to following his 2014 science-fiction epic Interstellar, the fragmented bits of information that were revealed throughout the past couple years that a war film was the director’s next venture was genuinely thrilling. This news was before any IMAX cameras were reserved by his production team. And as Mr. Nolan says in the video interview above, Dunkirk strives to be an experience wherein the silver screen offers no barrier for the audience from feeling the intense action sequences being projected on said screen.
Dunkirk portrays a hellish ordeal for 400,000 Allied soldiers. For history’s sake, that’s a good thing and precisely what Mr. Nolan was aiming for with his brand new cinematic epic on a massive scale.
War is hell. However, if the events of Dunkirk had turned out differently, then something much larger than a solitary war would’ve become hell.
For that reason alone, people should see Christopher Nolan’s newest film centered on that surreal, and historically consequential, evacuation effort.
Zimmer’s Super 8
Christopher Nolan’s highly-anticipated World War II epic Dunkirk doesn’t premiere in movie theaters for a couple weeks.
Lucky for us, one of the songs for the forthcoming war film by composer Hans Zimmer made its way out of enemy gun fire, via WaterTower Music (ie- Warner Bros.).
What is it with famed directors and composers and the word “super” and the number 8 (think J.J. Abrams, Steven Spielberg and Michael Giacchino of the science-fiction thriller Super 8)?
At 8-minutes in length (8:03, to be precise), the titled track, “Supermarine” is everything you’d expect from a Hans Zimmer-Christopher Nolan collaboration. That’s an intense, emotionally climbing tempo with a larger-than-life feeling that puts you squarely into the action projected on silver screens so immersive as to blur the line between the film and reality.
This is the point where you’re itching to play the song again. Go ahead. I’m doing the same thing. And if the soundtrack is already this powerfully engrossing, just imagine what the action sequences are that this music was acutely designed for…let alone the sound of the remaining soundtrack.
Mr. Nolan and Mr. Zimmer seem poised to present war cinematically and musically we haven’t yet seen and heard experienced.
As if “Supermarine” isn’t enough of a clue to confirm that declaration.
History’s Clock Never Stops Ticking
The present and the future becomes the past in a hurry.
Having said that, Christopher Nolan’s forthcoming World War II epic Dunkirk about the past during the mid-1940s is a heroic present for the 21st-century future.
400,00 men. 933 ships. 9 days.
The harrowing events portrayed in the film Dunkirk strive to capture the legitimately incomprehensible odds Allied soldiers faced against the merciless German army during World War II on the beaches of France. Incredibly, the battlefields of World War II may never be seen again in the context of the three figures listed above. Wars, throughout time, have contained many threads of commonality with innovative changes and strategies according to the century and respective technological advancements. Still, the magnitude of the Battle of Dunkirk is still staggering.
And it’s that reality of history, the scale of the Battle of Dunkirk, that sparks curious intrigue for Mr. Nolan’s first filmmaking venture into an event during a historic war that defined the 20th-century. Beyond Dunkirk being the first war film by Mr. Nolan, which is an exciting moment as a directorial benchmark and cinematic reference point, one of the storytelling gifts the aforementioned director gives movie fans is the skill to scale a moviegoing experience onto the largest IMAX screen while simultaneously grounding the story and characters in deeply intimate struggles (internal and external) with powerful acts of heroism, defeat, and mystery.
And mind-bending surprises in the finale.
Or, in another word, prestige.
Jimmy's Daily Planet 