Gettysburg back on the big screen

[matthew mckeon]

VS, I liked the Pettigrew book scene.

[ole]

Oh, heck! Now I'm going to have to waste 2 hours looking for jet trails.
Ole

[blue_zouave]

I get a kick out of the extreme nitty-picky things, like "it was obviously tire tracks and not wagon tracks!"

Tubby gray-haired troops, well, you'll get that when you use reenactors. (Meself included) The good thing about reenactors is that they work for way cheap, you don't have to pay them scale!

I do agree about those balletic bloodless battle scenes. I've never seen a Civil War movie with authentically brutal battle scenes a la "Saving Private Ryan", and subsequent horrible hospital scenes. "Dances with Wolves" was nearer to getting it right... and I hate to say it, but the railyard scene in "Gone With the Wind" is also closer to reality.

As for jet contrails and tire tracks, CG technology would probably clean that up nowadays.

As much as we "experts" hate it, filmmaking is an inexact art, going more for the feel of authenticity than the actual number of threads per square centimeter in somebody's drawers!

Movie-lovin' Zou

[tomh]

Folks,

In the exteneded "Director's Cut" there are even more mistakes.

As the troops begin to leave the woods for PPT's assault a white panel truck drives by behind them.

During the attack on LRT, in one scene a monument momentarily appears, then dissapears as a soldier passes through it.

My biggest complaint is the inaccuracy of the battle scenes. Above and beyond the sanitized version of the effects of bullets and shells the explosions resulting from the case shot and shells is a bit overdone. This is 19th century ordnance, not HE rounds that we have become familiar with through countless WWII (and subsequent wars) sagas. CW ordnance simply did not explode that dramatically nor did it blow large craters in the ground. Also, several of the explosions (especially the canister at the fence scenes) are actually the same stunt filmed by multiple camera positions and replayed in different parts of the scene.

Second biggest complaint ... Longstreet's "road kill" beard.

Later,
TomH

[blue_zouave]

Oh Tom, you've hit on one of my pet peeves in historical battle scenes, the "napalm effect" of muzzle blasts and artillery explosions! Huge clouds of orange flame!

Zou

[JerseyBart]

Tom,

Longstreets' beard, especially when he is flooring it on horseback on Day 3 is actually Rollie Fingers' mustache borrowed specifically for that day. That thing needed a comb and some gorilla glue.

Bart

[tomh]

Zou,

Huge clouds of orange flame!

Inaccurate, but dramatic. Still better than the Manasas battle scene in "The Blue and The Gray" where the Federal firing line pops open the trapdoors on their Model 1873 springfields to reload. Must be that time warp thing again.

JerseyBart,

Longstreets' beard ... is actually Rollie Fingers' mustache

And all this time I thought it was some poor unfortunate groundhog that had wandered in front of the camera equipment truck. Any comments on Sheen's portrayal of Lee with a south Jersey accent?

Later,
TomH

[william42]

As the troops begin to leave the woods for PPT's assault a white panel truck drives by behind them.

Thanks for that Tom. I was never sure if I saw that or not. Now I know it wasn't just me..

I had an old VHS of the movie where I thought I saw a white van speeding from left to right during Pickett's charge. I lost that tape, like in 1999 or so. Recently I bought the movie on DVD and looked for the van, but instead I saw what looks like a horseman carrying a large white fluttering flag, way in the back where the van was, from left to right in the same scene. So then I began to doubt whether the van was in the original VHS I used to have, or if I had just imagined it. I guess high-tech editing has pretty much disguised the van. It was probably a snack truck carrying hot dogs and goodies for the crew and reenactors. Whoever was driving it was really booking through there. Probably knew he was going to be in the shot and wanted to get the heck out, or maybe he just wanted his 15 minutes???

Wonder if the scene was too much to re-shoot, or if the truck wasn't even noticed by anybody until the editing stage.


Terry

[tomh]

Terry,

The van is only in the massively long director's cut. I first saw it on a special TBS screening on the fourth of july a few years ago. The white horse is in both cuts. Apparently the director's cut never made it to DVD, only VHS, and it was sold in a collectors' edition with the soundtrack CD, a bullet and a map. There are a few deleted scenes that have been restored and several scenes are lengthened.

There are a few hilarious outtakes in it, soldiers laughing and embracing at the angle, and, my favorite, a hummingbird that appears at chest level during a Lee/Longstreet conversation and hovers like he is listening.

There used to be a website dedicated to continuity faults in movies and for the long edition G'Burg there were more than 100 gaffes.

Later,
TomH

[JerseyBart]

Tom,


You didn't know that R.E. Lee was born and raised on the Jersey Shore? Yeah, he was known to play the slots at Trump Taj Majhal & rode the roller coaster at the Steel Pier. And you call yourself a historian.

What is worse than the really bad accent is the fact that Cartman from South Park looked exactly like Sheen's Lee in their Civil War Reeanactment episode. I think that they were the same height too.

Bart
"respect the authoritaaaah of the south!!!"