RE: [Leica] MOVIE LEICA SIGHTING - 'We Were Soldiers"

["B. D. Colen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net>]

Kevin - The US and Saudi Arabia aren't contiguous either! I don't know if
whoever wrote the piece to which you refer meant Quebec, but someone CAN go
from Ontario to Vt., by any number of routes.

We may make mistakes in America, but we aren't quite as dumb and incompetent
as you obviously feel we are - just as you aren't a bunch of dumb beer
drinkers who wander around saying 'Ay" all the time either. :-)

B. D.

- -----Original Message-----
From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
[mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us]On Behalf Of Kevin Argue
Sent: Sunday, March 03, 2002 11:55 PM
To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Subject: Re: [Leica] MOVIE LEICA SIGHTING - 'We Were Soldiers"


B.D.- you said if they could come from Saudia Arabia to the US why not
Ontario to Vermont. Check you geography book. The borders of the state and
province do not contact one another. In the TV series they say it does. Goes
to show America and some americans no nothing of Canada!

Kevin
>From: "B. D. Colen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net>
>To: <leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us>
>Subject: RE: [Leica] MOVIE LEICA SIGHTING - 'We Were Soldiers"
>Date: Sat, Mar 2, 2002, 10:02 PM
>

> Thanks Tim...Funny  to find that reference at the end to Henri Huet's
> photos. I was just going through Requiem this evening after coming back
from
> the movie, and was left thinking once again that the work of Huet, who I
had
> never heard of before seeing Requiem, may just be the absolute best in
that
> book - as good as Larry Burrow's stuff was, and Burrows was pretty
amazing.
>
> As to the movie, I will admit to leaving the theater with tears streaming
> down my cheeks - and that from someone who is no fan of the military, was
> certainly no fan of the Vietnam war, and did not lose any friends during
> that conflict. A VERY strong movie.
>
> B. D>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
> [mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us]On Behalf Of Tim
> Atherton
> Sent: Saturday, March 02, 2002 8:49 PM
> To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
> Subject: RE: [Leica] MOVIE LEICA SIGHTING - 'We Were Soldiers"
>
>
> Here is a review by Dirck ("big hair") Halstead -  a great photographer, a
> man who will always help you out if he can and UPI Saigon Photo Bureau
Chief
> at the time
>
>
> tim a
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>
>> Subject: A Review of "We Were Soldiers"
>>
>>
>> A Downholder's Review of "We Were Soldiers"
>>
>> The story of the battle of the Ia Drang Valley
>>
>> By Dirck Halstead (SGP)
>>
>> Washington, DC: Feb 28,2002:
>>
>> "We Were Soldiers", the Paramount version of  " We Were Soldiers,
>> Once. And Young"  by Lt. Gen Harold G Moore (ret) and UPI's Joseph L.
>> Galloway opened
>> to an Army brass filled audience at the Uptown Theatre in Washington
>> last night.
>>
>> The two hour twenty minute film recounts the struggle in November of
>> 1965 between four companies of the newly-formed second regiment, 7th
>> Cavalry (Airmobile) of the U.S. Army and the 66th Regiment of the
>> People's Army of North Vietnam. It was the first time U.S. forces had
>> joined in a battle with a main-force North Vietnamese Regiment. For
>> three days, the U.S. troopers held out against an overwhelming force.
>>
>> On the first evening of the battle, a young UPI reporter, Joe
>> Galloway, joined Lt. Col. Harold Moore at his Command Post in the
>> center of the battle.  For the next 48 hours, Galloway would
>> alternate between shooting pictures and firing his M16 in a furious
>> battle for survival.
>>
>> The film, directed and written by Randall Wallace is true in both
>> word and spirit to Galloway and Moore's book.
>>
>> To watch, the film is exhausting. For most of the running time, the
>> viewer is subjected to never-ending rushes of North Vietnamese troops
>> into the camera, as casualties vividly mount on the American side.
>> Wallace wisely chose to cut between the heaviest fighting to scenes
>> of the wives of the troopers receiving telegrams of  the cost of the
>> battle
>> Back in Ft. Benning. These scenes help to ground the film.
>>
>> Virtually every word uttered by the troopers in the battle was taken
>> from the book.
>>
>> To the moviegoer who was too young to remember the Vietnam War, and
>> especially this battle, there will be a temptation to think that this
>> is "just another Hollywood War movie, with Mel Gibson as Col. Moore
>> wading into
>> hordes of enemy soldiers. However, I was sitting next to an Army
>> General who had taken part in the real battle, and he was spellbound.
>> When I asked him at the end how he liked it, he said "it was
>> outstanding! It's the first time the movies have gotten a battle
>> right."
>>
>> At one point , actor Barry Pepper, as the young Galloway is stretched
>> out on the ground as enemy fire whips around him. Suddenly  Sgt Major
>> Basil Plumley, played in an Academy Award-winning turn by veteran Sam
>> Elliott, towers over him, and says "you can't take no pictures laying
>> face down on the ground, Sonny!"
>>
>> Some of those pictures Galloway took are used in the film.
>>
>> In the three days of battle, the troopers of the 7th Cavalry killed
>> by body count  some 1,215 North Vietnamese troops, and captured six.
>>
>> On the American side, 79 were killed, and 121 wounded and missing.
>>
>> The North Vietnamese had lost their first battle of the war. In a
>> bitter sweet moment, the NVA commander, Col. Nguyen Huu An, portrayed
>> by Don Duong,
>> muses as he removes his dead from the battlefield,  "what a tragedy !
>> The Americans have won this battle, now they will feel they can the
>> win the war. In the end it will be the same, but so many will die."
>>
>> Tech credits are superb. Despite the fact that the movie was
>> entirely shot in
>> Georgia and California, Director of Photography Dean Semler captures
>> the feeling of the place and the soldiers on both sides who fought
>> the battle, and a young UPI reporter who witnessed it.
>>
>>
>> Dirck Halstead was the UPI photo bureau chief in Saigon from
>> 1965-1966. He is now the Editor and Publisher of The Digital
>> Journalist at http://digitaljournalist.org
>>
>>
>> To view Henri Huet's photographs from  the Ia Drang, go to
>> http://dirckhalstead.org/issue9711/req19.htm
>>
>> --
>
>
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