Tag: war
French exchange
In the spring of 1992, I participated in an exchange between my school at the Lycée-Collège Gambetta in Arras in the Nord Pas de Calais. The Lycée-Collège today is shown in the pair of pictures below: pretty much the same but the trees have grown bigger!
I was, I think, twelve years old at the time …
Atonement
Director: Joe Wright
United Kingdom, 2007
When a young girl uses a series of events to doom the romance of the housekeeper’s son and her elder sister, the course of each of their lives is changed beyond foresight. So goes the story of Atonement, an adaptation of Ian McEwan’s manipulative novel by upcoming British director Joe Wright.
Whilst …
Die Fälscher (The Counterfeiters)
Director: Stefan Ruzowitzky
Austria, 2007
A busy master forger, Salomon Sorowitsch is a man with little concern for political ideals. And that’s what keeps him alive when war breaks out and he ends up in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Receiving preferential treatment to other prisoners, Sorowitsch is given the task of forging the currency that will keep the …
Casablanca
Director: Michael Curtiz
United States, 1942
Casablanca needs no introduction, except maybe the first few bars of As Time Goes By. It’s a masterfully told, elliptical yarn about a difficult period and after so many decades, it’s too easy to overlook the fact that it was contemporary to those times.
Bogart’s world weary ex-pat Rick Blaine runs an …
Soldier of Orange
Director: Paul Verhoeven
Netherlands, 1977
Verhoeven’s revisionist wartime drama is a bittersweet story of five student dandies who each face the subjugation of their country in different ways. The film displays a sensitivity that’s missing in the director’s Hollywood oeuvre.
Soldier of Orange would still be an effective ensemble piece without the outstanding performances put in by Rutger …
JSA (Joint Security Area)
Director: Park Chan Wook
Korea, 2000
For those who argued that the North/South tensions depicted in Shiri(1999) took second place to a daft Bond-esque tech-fluff plot, JSA (Joint Security Area) succeeds in approaching the borderline. This hype enabled the movie to do brisk business when I was living in Korea.
For Park, who has since turned out some …
![Brotherhood [Taegukgi]](http://www.mikepadgett.com/wp-content/uploads/pth/120x120/thumb_taegukgi.jpg)
Brotherhood [Taegukgi]
Director: Je Gyu Kang
Korea, 2004
An epic saga of two brothers caught up in the Korean War, this film demonstrates the Korean sensibility for well-crafted melodrama.
What’s unusual, however, is the sheer scale of the production. Taegukgi was the most expensive movie ever to come out of Korea and the mission, led by Shiri director Kang with …
Elsewhere on MikePadgett.com …
The Paper
Director: Ron Howard United States, 1994 As a screenwriter David Koepp has been around. He’s written some terrific scripts and some not so terrific. His work on The Paper, alongside brother Stephen, manages to …
- Originally published: 15 May 2007 in Film
Muur van Geraardsbergen
Every year on the first weekend in April, the Ronde van Vlaanderen cycle race files through the lanes and villages of Flanders. If this sounds like a Sunday idyll to you, think about …
- Originally published: 4 Aug 2008 in Europe
York
York has been around since Roman times, when it was one of the principal settlements in Britain. Constantine the Great was declared emperor there in 306, following the death of his father …
- Originally published: 9 May 2008 in UK
Syriana
Director: Stephen Gaghan United States, 2005 Syriana is a literate and highly engaging story of cause and effect in the global oil industry. It has a self-propelling pace similar to the one that …
- Originally published: 5 Dec 2006 in Film
Ladybower and Castleton
Last week, J and I took a walk around the Northern section of Ladybower Reservoir and Castleton, both in Derbyshire. Regular readers will remember our visit to Longdendale in February 2007, so this …
- Originally published: 22 Apr 2007 in UK
Who is that guy?
Hello you. I'm Mike Padgett and I work in the technology sector as an Information Designer.
I also enjoy travel, concerts, films and walking.
I'm based in Brussels, Belgium. My current favourite Belgian beer is St Feuillien Brune.