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StephenEdwardSeale
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The World Wars (2014)
Over-simplified Pseudo-History
First of all, I will start off by saying that this film had a few redeeming qualities, including good narration and decent production quality. That having been said, the film was filled with historical inaccuracies and over-simplifications. It is, of course, understandable that when one is trying to cram both world wars into only six hours it is impossible to give everything as detailed a treatment as possible, but there were whole theaters or campaigns of WWII that were either glossed over (the Russian front, the Balkan campaigns, and most of the Pacific Theater), or ignored entirely (the North African campaigns). In brief, here are a few other issues (not by any means an exhaustive list): -Italy was not suddenly controlled by the Allies after its surrender. There were German troops on the peninsula who contested every mile of the Allied advance and it took us two years to fight our way up the peninsula.
-The wrong peninsula is highlighted when the Gallipoli campaign is discussed in the series.
-The Bolsheviks did not overthrow the Tsar. They overthrew the provisional government that had overthrown the Tsar a few months previously.
-The Germans did not go through the Maginot Line when they attacked France, and they didn't go after the Low Countries as an afterthought after finishing off France. They attacked France through the Low Countries to begin with. It would not have taken much effort to mention that the attack on France went through the Ardennes Forest of Belgium and that it was easier to go that way as the Maginot Line only protected the French border with Germany, and not with Luxembourg or Belgium.
There are dozens of other errors in the film- far too many to go into all of them in this review. The one positive thing is that it was interesting and might get students interested in learning more. If they do seek to find more they might get the real history if they do their research, as the History Channel failed to do. I think some of the historians who were involved in this should hang their heads in shame. I am almost surprised H.W. Brands was involved (though to be fair he was being interviewed and may not have known how bad it was going to be- on the other hand, he was involved in the writing of the textbook "American Stories" which is a sub-par text).
WALL·E (2008)
An Unexpected Treasure
I watched this film when it first came out in theaters, expecting it to be okay, but average. What I found was that this film, about a robot named Wall-E left behind on Earth to clean up the trash, was an endearing, emotional masterpiece. For an animated G-rated film, it really packs an emotional punch. Without being preachy, it makes a statement about taking care of resources and a warning about the dangers of runaway consumerism, which is not something you might expect from a children's movie. Wall-E is definitely one of the best animated films ever made. While most films, even good ones, have some negative counter-balance to them, this is hard to find with Wall-E. I highly recommend this film.