Have a Solemn and Thoughtful Veteran's Day

To our men and women who have served and continue to serve daily to protect the US and allied countries abroad I say to you "Thank You! From the deepest pit within me I say this, and from the deepest part of my heart I say it again. THANK YOU!

A prayer:
May God bless those soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen and women who have fallen in defense of our great nation. May he take them and allow them to walk the Elysian Fields with Michael, Archangel, and may he allow them to defend Heaven and Earth from the evil that lurks. For only God knows that there is no fighting man or woman on this Earth or in his Heaven that is capable of protecting him. Other than Michael...Amen.

Do NOT judge this blog by the content!

I received an email the other day and it was from someone who had to hide their name and pretend to be invisible. Before I post an excerpt from that email it should be clearly understood that this blog is not pro or anti war. I developed this blog to highlight the actors that are veterans of our military who after serving continued to service their country by acting and providing us with great entertainment whether it be in making war movies, westerns, or police dramas or whatever. This is for them.

"The quote"
"I decided to click the blog link at the top of my blog and low and behold you were the first blog to appear. Though I admit that there are some great war movies your blog is nothing more than an advert supporting war and promoting military action. This sucks and you in-turn you suck as well. You have taken great actors and culled their military experience and ignored everything else making these great people nothing more than fodder for your silliness and making them look like warmongers."

So, I suck and the actors are warmongers. The fact is that war is part of our lives as Americans. We went to war to free us of the oppressive Kings of England during the Revolution and the War of 1812. We went to war with our own states over States Rights. We went to war with Spain over Cuba. We went to war with Germany in 1917 during WWI and then again in 1941 with Germany and Japan. We committed to a Police Action in 1950 and then again in 1961 which led to the Vietnam conflict in 1964. We went to Grenada in 1983 and Panama in 1989. In 1991 we went to war to remove Iraq from Kuwait and a portion of Saudi Arabia. In October of 2001 we went into Afghanistan and then proceeded to Iraq (good or bad). If you look at what we have done war wise you can see pattern. The pattern I see is the US removing the scum of the earth or attempting to, while others see it differently.

Again, the goal of this blog is to highlight the actors and actresses that served our country and to showcase those movies and shows that they made to entertain us.

Dave Matteson 

Head Shots



Ty Hardin

Best known as Bronco Layne, in the long running TV Series Bronco, Ty Hardin started his acting career after walking into a western clothing store looking for a costume for a Halloween party and that as they say was history. Ty starred in several creature feature type movies until moving on to the American Western. Starring as an alternating walk on cast member Bronco :) starred in Maverick, Cheyenne, Sugarfoot, and his own show Bronco which lasted 4 seasons and was one of the top TV shows in the country. Ty also starred abroad in several Spaghetti Westerns and in Australia he had his own TV show Riptide. 

While making westerns he filmed the epic war movie Merrill's Marauders as Lt. Stockton in 1962, in PT-109 as Ens. Lenny Thom in 1963, in The Battle of the Bulge as Schumacher in 1965, and in Custer of the West as Maj. Marcus Reno in 1967. I asked him about these movies and he told me that he enjoyed making them and he enjoys acting. Ty has been selective about what he does but when he does it he is all professional. Ty has continued his service to his country outside by being a proud patriot and America is proud to have him as one.

Ty served in the US Army for 5 years of which he was overseas during the Korean War for 3. We thank Bronco for his time and his service to our country!

Incoming!

(While we have brought you some of the older movies we are going to try to get info on new releases or movies in the works.)


In the works -
John Woo - The Flying Tigers
Red Dawn Redux
The makers of the "Call of Duty" games have filed for copyright protection for the "Callof Duty" title to include movie and video rights to the name. ( The commo line says a movie is in the works)
Dale Dye - No Better Place to Die - Rumored nothing has been seen yet
Tom Hanks - They Marched Into Sunlight

We Were Soldiers!

From left to right clockwise; Jason Robards joined the US Navy in 1939 and was honorably discharged in 1947. His ship was at sea with the carrier task force when Pearl Harbor was attacked. Robards starred in Tora, Tora, Tora and was a doctor in the WWIII drama The Day After. James Arness was drafted into the the US Army from college in 1943. He served with the 3rd ID in Anzio where he was severely wounded. Arness starred in Battleground and the period historical drama Alamo: 13 Days to Glory. Neville Brand enlisted in the Illinois Army National Guard in 1939. In March of 1942 he was accepted into federal service where he did various service related work as an infantryman until just after D-Day. In December he was part of the reenforcements that pushed forward during the Battle of the Bulge. He served in Europe for just under 10 months. He starred Stalag 17 and The Halls of Montezuma. Sterling Hayden joined the US Marines just prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor. While at Parris Island he was recommended for and became an officer. After his training he accepted into the CIO under the leadership of Wlliam Donovan. Later this office would become known as the OSS inwhich hayden served until December of 1945. He served in Europe and receive numerous awards including several from Marshall Tito. Hayden starred in the movies Battle Taxi and Fighter Attack.

Brief. Polite. Review. The Pacific.

Some of you reading this may or may not agree but I have to say that Tom Hanks "killed" The Pacific for me when he said the war in the pacific was one of racism. Asked to clear his thoughts and define what he stated he said exactly what everyone was thinking but my question is how can the Japanese taking of Manchuria and the US stopping oil shipments to Japan and Japan's attack on Hawaii a Racist war?

Up until the attacks on China, Japan had been a great ally of the US. Many states and many cities in those states were sisters to many states and cities in Japan.

My review is based on the books that I have read that were the basis of this series. First I want to say that Hanks and Speilberg screwed the pooch with this series. They could have shot the moon with it and used the characters and their war stories to further the Island Hopping Campaign. The fact is Hanks focuses more on their personal lives than the tragedy that befalls each one during the war. He focuses on their hospital stays, their R&R, and their sexual romps (I've seen more boobs in this series than I did in the R rated "Life of Linda Lovelace").

During the campaigns we get flash backs and cut overs. We got stuck in Peleilu for three segmenst of the series so we can watch each character turn into thieves and crapping machines. The only real action in the whole 10 episodes is the 2nd Guadalcanal segment where Basilone receives his CMOH.

Don't get me wrong. This was a miniseries that depicted war. But It could have been a whole lot better. They had access to tanks, amtracks, planes, ships, and other gear that made this a one of a kind movie. Sadly this was NOT Band of Brothers. No, we did not want this to be an exact copy, what we wanted to see was the taking of the Islands, the bitter fighting, the reason why these guys got CMOH and other high ranking awards.

Basilone returns to the fleet for the invasion of Iwo Jima and was a machine-gun section Sgt on Red Beach during the battle. Japanese had blockhouses every 100 yards and in one section a maze of them had his unit pinned down. Basilone worked his way around behind the Japanese positions until he was directly on top of the blockhouses. He attacked with grenades and his .45 destroying the entire strongpoint and its garrison.
He then worked toward Airfield Number 1 helping a Sherman tank that was pinned down in an enemy mine field taking mortar and artillery fire. Guiding the tank to safety, despite heavy weapons fire from the Japanese he pushed forward on the edge of the airfield. Unfortunately a Japanese mortar round landed several yards from him and he was mortally hit by shrapnel.

Sadly, Hanks left this out along with a lot of the action from Sledge amd Leckie's books.

The Pacific is good. Unfortunately for me, the reviewer, my opinion of it is rather low. I give this 3.5 of 5 American Stars.

War Movie - The Definition

Over the years I have enjoyed everything that was classified as a war movie. Good or bad they entertained me becayse they either had some form of REAL military equipment in them or I wanted to see how they handled the topic of war movie.

Well, the definition of war is; the waging of armed conflict against an enemy.

Now, the definition of a movie is; a form of entertainment that enacts a story by sound and a sequence of images giving the illusion of continuous movement.

In most cases the war movie is a movie based on an actual event from the past. Most war movies from the American point of view are based on World War II. The same goes for the UK and in some cases France. In Russia many war movies were based on the Great Revolution while in China war movies are based on the Japanese incursion in the early 30's. But I digress.

My goal is to point out the qualifiactions of a war movie as opposed to a military action movie or a drama. As much as we want the Caine Mutiny to be a war movie it is not. It is actually a military drama. On the other hand we have a movie like Tears of The Sun. It has all the classic pieces to be a war movie but in short it's a team of Seals sent to rescue a doctor from an evil man trying to kill her. The fact is, this is a Military Action Movie.

Classic War Movies:
Battleground
Go For Broke
To Hell and Back!
The Story of GI JOE
Sand of Iwo Jima
The Longest Day
The Fighting Seabees
The Big Red One
Odd Angry Shot
We Were Soldiers
Wake Island
Bataan!
The Siege of Firebase Gloria


Military Action Movies:
The Raid on Entebbee
Tears of the Sun
Hart's War
Top Gun
Ice Station Zebra



Military Dramas:
The Caine Mutiny
Father Goose
A Soldiers Story

Above are a selection from each catagory so that you can decide on your own. Like I said, in most cases a War Movie is a solid movie that depicts a war or a specific action during a war.

We are always accepting of constructive criticism.

We Were Soldiers!

Top Left: John Russell-Well known westerns actor Russell was a decorated Marine who faught at Guadalcanal. His last movie was Pale Rider were he played the Chief Regulator hunting the pale Rider. Top Right: Glenn Ford-Well known actor played in many movies including war and westerns, Ford was a motion picture production specialist in the Marines and later transfered to the Navy where he became a Captain in the Public Affairs team. He served in Vietnam for over a month. Bottom Right: Henry Fonda-With roles in Mr. Roberts, Battle of the Bulge, Midway, and many more Fonda served in the US Navy in WWII as an Air Combat Intel Officer. Bottom Left: Nancy Kulp-best known as her role as Ms. Jane Hathaway on the Beverly Hillbillies Hathaway was a Navy Electronics Specialist during WWII.

News

For those of you checking out the blog regularly I will be doing some updates and some movie reviews in the coming weeks.

One of my favorite actors is Bo Svenson who has appeared in such movies as Walking Tall, Inglorious Bastards, Inglorious Basterds, Heartbreak Ridge, The Great Waldo Pepper, and was a character actor on TV in the 60's doing westerns. But my favorite roll was his portayal of Ivan on Magnum P.I. Anyway, we wrote Mr. Svenson and asked for an interview but he politely declined. We want to take this time to thank him for taking the time to respond. We have asked several actors to comment but Bo was the only one to respond. Thanks Bo we understand and respect your decision.

If you haven't seen it yet, The Pacific has been released and is currently in series run on HBO. It is very much worth getting HBO just for the series. Well acted and to the book, it tells the story of Eugene Sledge, Robert Leckie, John Basilone and several other Marines and their exploits in the Pacific. This is not a saop opera. This is the true story of these Marines.

I have been reading Brothers in Arms: The true story of the 761st Tank Battalion. If you are reading this note you should be reading this book. Last year it was announced that Actor Morgan Freeman and Pro Athlete Kareem abdul-Jabbar were working a script for the movie. Nothing has come of this yet.

Thats the news..... :D