They hacked up the CBS broadcast pretty badly, putting very little of the landing coverage in the program, although the "first step" part was fantastic.
Their program "Moonshot" stinks. I'll never watch that turkey again.
In contrast, TCM's showing of "For All Mankind" (1989) is a keeper. Sadly, they re-edit the audio/video sync of the first step so it matches the point when Neil Armstrong drops down from the ladder to the lander footpad for the SECOND time rather than when he steps off of the pad some 30 seconds later, but most of it puts a premium on real film and video with voice-over commentary - mostly from those involved in the mission.
Few "recreations". The actual astronauts getting dressed, not some actors like in "Moonshot", and certainly no fake dinner at home with the astronaut's parents.
The best part of "For All Mankind" might be the very beginning, where they play ALL of Kennedy's speech about going to the moon. I had no idea he went into such detail about the challenges that project would face.
However, the very best part is the high resolution film looking out during launches from the moon, where you can see the entire landing site (with instruments and tracks on the surface) as they pull away. Ditto for images of the Apollo 11 landing, which were much higher resolution than I have seen before.
We got a chance to see Star Trek in IMAX this weekend, and took it.
This third viewing (others were normal format and digital) allowed my wife to confirm her belief that Scotty had a pet Tribble on Delta Vega.
Primary observation: Sound quality was superior to the otherwise outstanding theaters we saw it in originally. This might be due to the fact that there are few seats in an IMAX theater that are not centrally located, but the multi-channel separation was outstanding - particularly for the phaser battle on the Romulan ship. It was also easy to hear other details, such as Pike giving a battle order to Engineer Olson or (most important to fans) Bones giving an order to Nurse Chapel. Related observation: Film quality was similar to the digital version we saw, possibly a bit inferior at times - although it is possible our location relative to the screen and the size of the image allowed us to see flaws in the film making itself (inconsistent focus).
Other details include confirming that the Star Fleet Academy building was the library at CSUN, doing all we could to avoid saying too much about "beer factory" so we wouldn't annoy the people around us (shooting in an AB Brewery was confirmed at the second viewing), and that they definitely were using short wave antennas on the bridge of the Kelvin.
Found this video when I went to IMDB to look for the links in the discussion below.
Click on this link to see the animated short film Headwinds. It will be well worth two minutes of your day. Gravity wins in this film, which features many of the classic bits of bogus physics common to cartoons where a character falls off of a cliff, but an accurate treatment of many others.
(Some minor spoilers follow.)
As for Up ... we had a blast from beginning (including the trailers and a great Pixar short called Partly Cloudy that takes the stork creation myth one step further) to end. Only disappointment is they cut the credits short to clear the theater for the next crowd, but the dog jokes more than made up for that. (All I could think of at a few points in the movie was Chad's promo movie with his discussion of a Schroedinger's Treat experiment.)
Some nice technical work in this film. "Partly Cloudy" must have been used to do development work on clouds and cloth (cloth got a specific mention in the credits), and there was some really nice work with fabrics in our hero's tweed jacket and a montage near the start where changing styles of ties was used to symbolize the passage of many decades. There was also a breathtaking shot of water flowing in a stream, looking down from above. If you don't follow animation, water and fire have always offered some of the greatest challenges. I think they have completely mastered flowing water, just as they did with the rough chop on the ocean as The Incredibles flew to the island.
One subtle detail was the homage to Miyazaki, a good friend of Pixar's founder: One characteristic of films by Hayao Miyazaki is the use of flight in some form or another. If you have ever seen Porco Rosso, the appearance of an airship in this film was no surprise. And was the rotating weather vane an homage to the Disney classic, Mary Poppins, as these two firms join forces? Could be.
The only blatant continuity error I noticed was that the kid did not seem to be on the porch while the house was flying through the sky, and we saw under the house as it lifted off. However, there was a subfloor under the porch - so he could have been in that crawl space IF there had been an opening for him to use to get in and out.
Saw it in Digital 3D, which we HIGHLY recommend. Wouldn't see it any other way. This is the first time we have seen Disney's 3D, and we were very impressed. Heck, we were impressed with the Disney movie logo! It may seem odd, but the most striking aspect of the 3D depth to me was during the camping scene at night. The stars in the sky looked really far away. The depth was natural, not contrived. In fact, unlike the trailer for the 3D kids film about raining meatballs, there were only one or two instances where they pulled the usual 3D stunts of the past.
And we know about 3D stunts, having sat through Jaws 3-D mainly because we had been in a crowd scene in the movie while on our honeymoon trip to Orlando. We sure hope Toy Story 3D doesn't die a deserved death like that movie did! (The 3D trailer for it is pretty well done, but about all it tells you is that they are making the movie and have a release date for it in June 2010.)
Where does Headwinds fall down, physically?
The treatment of air drag during free fall is really good, and I'm not complaining about the great cartoon moment at about 0:57 where he claws at the air, suddenly falling out of his shoes when he realizes he is in trouble. No, the real problem is that the rock is much denser than he is, so it would have passed him on the way down - long before he pulled his parachute. His terminal velocity is much MUCH less than that of the rock ledge that he knocked loose.
Finally got out to see Star Trek, and all I have to say is that the movie exceeded all of my expectations. I'm no crazed fan (that would be my wife), as I never watched the series until it was long into reruns, but I know all the old episodes and new movies ... and this movie was really good.
Freakishly good, as I said to my wife on the drive home.
It must have been an even number in the sequence of movies.
As for the science [spoiler alert], others have done a betterjob than I would take the time to do. But I will add my comment that I thought they did a much better job with inertia in general. Sure, the old standby, the "inertial dampers" that got rid of the annoyance of Newton's First Law, was disabled by the time the Kelvin had its collision (or was it ... there was still gravity and gravity was allegedly produced by the same system), but it was good to see Capt. George Kirk go flying when the ship stopped. Ditto when Kirk and Sulu were beamed out of free fall and landed on the transporter pad.
[bigger spoiler alert]
And, best of all, they have freed up the time line so they can make an entire new set of movies that don't have to be consistent with ANY of the others. Brilliant.
Easy way to explain away the glitzier bridge, Spock's higher voice, the appearance of people in the original crew that were not in the crew during the first season ... and a significantly less crippled Captain Pike in a conventional wheel chair.
Next stop: Rebuilding Vulcan? Will Spock and Uhura have a son who will go on to play golf with both style and cool analysis? Or become the next President? They have managed to re-energize the series in a way that moves it from the 60s to the 21st century, opening up new story lines to make it relevant again.
Note added: I can't wait for the Director's commentary to find out what chemical plant or brewery or distillery was used to film some of those scenes inside the ship. Who knew that steel "I" beams were used inside a starship!
I've got some catching up to do, with a few articles back in the queue, but first:
What would Christmas be without NORAD tracking Santa?
The "live cam" coverage of Santa's visits around the globe has already started. Go to http://www.noradsanta.org/en/video.html to see all of them via YouTube. Noradsanta.org also includes ways to follow him on Google Earth. According to a BBC article today, they also have a live twitter feed (@noradsanta) so kids know when to expect his visit.
For any film buffs out there, I also stumbled on this clip from an 1898 film called "Santa Claus". The special effects are impressive, but it is also interesting to see Santa portrayed before the Coca Cola version provided a common version for American culture. Even as Snopes debunks this story, they confirm it. Their text from 1927 (four years before the Coke ad appeared) clearly says the standard Santa wore a hood. Notice the hoodie on Santa in that 1898 film? But the Santa in the first Coke ads wore a hat and all Santas wear a hat today. (Read the Coca Cola company version of this history here.) In other news, a priest is in trouble in Italy for telling children that Santa is not real. What was that guy thinking? Well, he said what he was thinking: that kids should only believe that Jesus is real. Odd way to treat a patron Saint of the Church, but he clearly does not appreciate the role of mythology in human culture. (I once heard a fascinating sermon drawing a parallel between the two, concerning belief in the unseen based on hearsay evidence that might be centuries old.) Of course, plenty of evangelical churches try to do away with the mythology of Halloween (the eve of All Saints Day), so maybe they will take on the commercial mythology of Santa next. Not. Santa serves too many purposes to do that.
I've gone a bit too long commenting rather than authoring, so its time to write about what a professor can learn from the Rolling Stones.
We saw "Shine a Light" (2008) some time ago on IMAX. (I'll put review notes down below the fold.) FYI, this is a combination documentary and concert film, with the bulk of it devoted to brilliantly edited film of a live performance in NYC (and possibly elsewhere). They open the set with "Jumpin' Jack Flash" (1968), and I couldn't help notice the wide smile on Keith Richards' face at one point during this joyous song.
That's when it hit me: He's played this song countless times for almost 40 years, and it looks like he is having as much fun as he did the first time. No, he is having as much fun as the first time.
And that is what I try to do every day in the classroom: put as much into it as I did when it was all fresh and new. I've taught exactly the same topic (let's say, projectile motion) lots of times, but not nearly as many times as Richards has played Jumpin' Jack Flash. If he can do it, so can I.
I shared this observation with one of our younger faculty, one who brings Jagger-like intensity and enthusiasm to the classroom. She teaches several sections of the same gen-ed class every semester, and I can tell that the frustrations of some of our students are getting to her (as they sometimes get to me). It hit home, so I am sharing it with you. We have to remember that each semester's crop of students is new (OK, most of them are new) and they have never seen us Live and In Concert. They deserve the same fresh new show, but new and improved with the riffs added as we learn more about how to teach certain parts of it and improvise in front of a live and (sometimes) responsive crowd.
Review notes:
I think it is safe to say that Martin Scorsese is in total control when he directs a movie. Except for this one. You can see the frustration on his part during the initial documentary part of the film, when he is begging for information about the song list for the set and not getting it until the band settles on it just before going on stage.
To see the organization of the stage come out of the chaos of preparation really makes it clear just how professional these guys are.
When I say you can't help notice the smile on Keith Richards' face, that is because his face is 30 feet tall on the screen. It would take a major geological expedition to find your way down into those wrinkles.
This article is driven by the discussion stimulated by an article by Matt in "Built on Facts". There were minor spoilers in his discussion, and a few more in mine.
That discussion was centered on Newton's First Law (which I will repeat here with some links), but a reply from Matt included a side remark about nuclear physics. I posted one comment on his blog but saved a more specific bit of physics for here. Newton's First Law:
The biggest joke in the entire movie was when they were riding the jet powered sled and stayed right where they were sitting after it came to an abrupt stop as a result of hitting a water tank braking zone. This is clearly modeled after the rocket sled used by Col John Stapp in the late 1940s to explore the limits of safe deceleration of a human wearing a seat belt. According to wiki, his record was about 45 times that of gravity.
(For reference, since the braking distance was no more than 14 m, he would have to go from 111 m/s to zero to have a constant acceleration of 45 g over that distance. A speed of 111 m/s, more than a football field in one second, is about 250 mph. This corresponds to a 250 mph race car stopping in 0.25 seconds while covering a distance of 14 m, about 45 feet.)
The only way you are going to stay in one place on that sled when it goes from 250 mph to zero in a quarter of a second is if you are belted in place. Otherwise, all that happens is that the sled stops and you keep on going at 250 mph. This event in the movie is totally bogus.
(We will leave out the continuity error of this happening at Area 51 in Nevada, allegedly within walking distance of an active part of the Nevada Test Site, whereas the rocket sled was at Edwards Air Force Base in California.)
On the flip side, the lead lined refrigerator he hides in apparently has almost no inertia. Despite being the densest object around, the blast wave tosses it much more easily than it does the lighter materials around, such as the house and its contents. The physics here is that of drag forces (which depend on the area and shape of an object) overcoming the inertia of the mass of an object. The basic rule is that the force of the wind will have a bigger effect on a whiffle ball than on a baseball, because the baseball has more mass while the wind forces will be similar.
Nuclear Weapon Physics:
I mentioned in passing that I was disappointed in the rendering of the mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion. They actually got most of this physics quite correct, which is not surprising given all of the film and photos of these various tests, as well as books like Glasstone's "The Effects of Nuclear Weapons", published by the US Department of Defense. (You can find much of the relevant information in the Nuclear Weapon Archive or in books such as Richard Rhodes' "The Making of the Atomic Bomb".)
Of course, it would not be the 21st century if you could not see the film from the 1955 civil defense test on YouTube. I want to call your attention to the "after" pictures of the frame house at 3:23 in the film, since I will come back to it, and how well a first floor reinforced bathroom shelter (3:43) stood up to this blast, given the tornado damage we have seen recently. You might also notice that this was done in 1955, two years before it happens in the movie!
The important effect they get right in the Indiana Jones movie can be seen around 2:20 in the movie. The light, heat, and gamma radiation all travel at the speed of light. They get there first, and burn the paint off of the building and the skin off of people. The blast wave travels at the speed of sound (actually a bit faster due to the overpressure, as I recall) and arrives much later. Notice that it does two things: it knocks down the building, but it also blows out the fire. (The house you see at 3:23 did not burn down. It is not the case that a firestorm is a necessary result of a nuclear blast.)
The part they could have done a better job on concerns the colors seen in and around the fireball and mushroom cloud. See, for example, the witness statement in a paragraph at the bottom of page 673 in "The Making of the Atomic Bomb": "Then, as a climax, which was exceedingly impressive in spite of the fact that the blinding brightness had subsided, the top of the slender column seemed to mushroom out into a thick parasol of a rather bright but spectral blue..." from one report, and "When the red glow faded out ... a most remarkable effect made its appearance. The whole surface of the ball was covered by a purple luminescence, like that produced by the electrical excitation of the air, and caused undoubtedly by the radioactivity of the material in the ball" from another.
There is a picture of the Ranger/Fox test from 1951 in Nevada that gives a hint of what colors can be present around the fireball, but most color pictures do not capture this effect. I suspect it might be seen more easily by eye than by a photograph.
The spectra of ionized nitrogen gas is a beautiful violet color. (This is why pictures of lightning bolts have a violet hue around them.) What is happening is that the intense radiation from the results of the explosion is ionizing the air and making it glow. You can also get Cherenkov light (typically a light blue) when particles travel faster than the speed of light in a medium, such as water or air. It would have been very cool if they had included this as the fireball cooled, although I have no idea if it is visible in a daylight explosion.
Radiation from a Nuclear Weapon:
The alert spectator will notice the sticker that says the refrigerator Indy hides in is Lead lined. This would protect him from x-ray and gamma-ray radiation, just as it would make it unlikely that the refrigerator would travel very far from the blast, but it would not protect him from neutrons. Heavy elements shield you from photons like gamma rays, but you need light elements to protect you from neutrons. That is why concrete and dirt are used to shield a shelter.
The biggest unexpected effect of a nuclear explosion turned out to be radiation from neutrons released in the explosion. These could have affected him even if he was inside that lead-lined refrigerator, and the damage would not wash off.
Semi-funny story. Jet aircraft were used to collect samples of radioactive material from within the mushroom cloud of the first thermonuclear test, Ivy Mike, in November 1952. I had the privilege of talking with a number of "Atomic Veterans" at one of their reunions, some of whom witnessed this test and one of the problems of neutron radiation. (Thermonuclear weapons, the H bomb, produce even more neutrons.) They knew how to decontaminate aircraft from practice runs during fission weapon tests. However, as much as they tried, they could not wash off the contamination from the planes used for Ivy Mike. My guess is that the aircraft materials had been "neutron activated", that is, the elements transmuted to a radioactive isotope as a result of neutron capture. One guy said the planes were still sitting at the end of a runway on Kwajalein a decade later, while another said he thought some had been pushed off of an aircraft carrier into the ocean.
I have been following the "Harry's War" story, the letters sent by a WW I soldier that are being posted exactly 90 years to the day after the letters were sent home. Since we don't know if he even made it home alive, the one to two week gaps between letters leave us hanging and must have been harrowing for the family.
I knew a lot about the Great War from my grandfather, who was (as I recall) over there or on his way via crowded troop ship by now (meaning April 1918). He enlisted in 1917 after the end of the spring semester at college. When November 11 rolls around I will have to post his story of Armistice Day. But this soldier was fighting on the Italian front, so this blog has opened up a whole new story for me. Among other things, I now know where Asiago is located. Turns out it is more than a cheese; it was the site of a major battle in late WW I ... a battle that could play a role in the life - or death - of the man we are meeting through his letters. Through the miracle of blogs and the web, there is now a parallel site showing satellite images of the terrain where this all takes place.
If you have not checked it out, you should, but this note is also about what is showing this next month on Turner Classic Movies. April 27, 8 pm J'Accuse (1919) is a silent film that I am looking forward to seeing for the first time. Click for TCM (includes video clips) and IMDB info and a TCM article. The film contains footage shot during the war, and this is reportedly the original 3-hour version that was banned in France.
May 24, 8 pm Paths of Glory (1957), by Stanley Kubrick, is showing as one of "The Essentials". I've seen this several times, and it is just as fresh (and harsh) each time. Click for TCM (includes video clips) and IMDB info.
Along the way, Rebecca (1940) is showing on May 3 at 8 pm as another of "The Essentials". Click for IMDB info. This just another of Hitchcock's great movies. I think it is spookier than some of his more popular ones. Another, Psycho, airs on May 31.
Now if they could only find a way to work in La Grande Illusion (1937), where Erich von Stroheim has a spectacular supporting role in another film about the futility of war. Click for TCM and IMDB info. (TCM has several video clips.) The timing of that film, just before WW II, might give an indication of why France was still recovering from its losses in WW I and utterly unable to resist Hitler. (Imagine if we had lost 5 million killed and as many maimed in the five years we have been in Iraq.) The most interesting thing to me is that these two aristocrats are multilingual, and the film assumes the viewer is as well!
TCM is showing The Bridges at Toko Ri tomorrow (Saturday, 15 March) at 6pm and, if you miss it then, again in April and May. This classic Korean War air-combat movie (set on an aircraft carrier) has a lot going for it, not the least of which is the similarity between the bombing runs against the bridge and the final attack in Star Wars.
But before giving several reasons for watching this film, I'll also mention that TCM is showing Gaslight tonight. This is a thriller made by George Cukor, starring Ingrid Bergman and Joseph Cotten with Charles Boyer heading the bill as the bad guy. (This is a good role for an aging leading man like Boyer, but a better one for Cotten.) For Cotten, this 1944 film is bracketed by two of his classics with Orson Welles: Citzen Kane in 1941 and The Third Man in 1949. Curiously, when I mentioned him to my Mom, she said she was a huge fan of his and had spotted him in Hollywood circa 1950. Must be genetic.
Back to The Bridges at Toko Ri. The main reason a Star Wars fan should see it is to compare the scenes of jets attacking the bridge with the attack sequence on the Star Destroyer. Top Gun fans should watch it for the (real) carrier action scenes from 30 years earlier. The IMDB trivia page credits two other films (Dam Busters and 633 Squadron) as resembling the final attack on the Star Destroyer. However, a long time ago in a state far away, I heard promo comments about Star Wars that said film from "Toko Ri" had been used as filler while the FX sequence was still in production. Having seen all of these movies, the reference to Dam Busters is a joke since the bombing run is over a wide lake with AA fire only from the dam itself. 633 Squadron makes more sense (attack runs up a fjord protected by AA fire), but lacks the "roll in" attack profile and intensity of the jet fighter-bomber run in Toko Ri.
Watch it, and see if you agree. The whole style of the attack, one plane at a time taking its shot at running the gauntlet to attack the target, is similar.
This film is also notable for several other things. Based on a novel by James Michener, the film captures the futility of the Korean War and the barely suppressed anger of reservists (such as the star of the film) who were called up from their civilian careers despite having served in World War II. (I think I mentioned this in a comment on one of the blogs I read. The father of an old HS girlfriend saw active duty in WW II, went to college, graduated, then went to Korea. He was not happy, although his was a case where he had experience that was needed immediately, because there was not time to train new draftees. My father was similarly resentful, mainly because what he did during Korea could have been done by a newly trained draftee rather than someone who had just graduated from college. This is the same issue that the movie "Stop Loss" will address in today's context with no draft to fill gaps in the military.)
The movie also has first-rate real footage of carrier combat operations in the jet era, having been filmed with the full cooperation of the US Navy. It is instructive to compare deck operations in 1954 with those from 1986 shown in Top Gun. It is all a bit rougher during the Korean era because the carriers had been designed for prop planes during WW II, not the early jet fighters used in Korea. Although it is a movie, much of the action footage is as real as any documentary.
Thoughts follow below the fold. Original 27 February comment: I should add some physics content here, but it is too late at night.
Finally got my Round Tuit on 11 March
The real question is, which time travel paradox are you worried about? The cat is clearly unconcerned because there is no paradox if the time travel event is a part of history as it took place the "first" time. The model for that is Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkeban, where Harry would not have been alive to save himself if he had not gone back in time to save himself. That circle closed perfectly. He even had the advantage of knowing that he could actually do it.
There are too many different Star Trek variants of the grandfather paradox to explore here, but see below.
When I went to IMDB to pull up the Harry Potter link, I noticed a trailer on their front page. A trailer for Star Trek, that was uploaded on 23 January giving a Christmas 2008 release date rather than the less optimistic May 2009 date on the IMDB page. It would appear to be an entirely new invention, the seqprequel, since it is a prequel to the original TV series but a sequel to the Enterprise TV series and caught in the center of the time loop of Star Trek: First Contact. That used an entire movie to establish the same result as Hermione and Harry did when they had to go back in time because that is what history required.
They are breaking new ground, bringing a young Kirk and Spock to the screen while all of us who saw the original series (made when they were both a spry 35 years old) are still around. The "young" actor playing Kirk is 28 and the one playing Spock is 31. I suppose the premise is that Shatner and Nimoy were playing people who were quite a bit more experienced than their age at the time would indicate. It may work. The casting for Captain Pike (someone, at 52, who is old enough to have seen the pilot!) looks pretty good.
It will remain to be seen which working title will apply: Will it be typical of the odd numbered films (it is Star Trek XI), or the even ones (they used "Star Trek: Zero" as another working title). Yes, I know that zero is not an even number, even though it can be divided by two.
We saw Enchanted this weekend, and highly recommend it to anyone, whether you have children or not. Indeed, I'd guess that half of it is wasted on children unless they have been raised on all of the Disney classic anime, but particularly Snow White (1938) with a strong bit of cross-polination from Cinderella (1950) and perhaps Sleeping Beauty (1959).
The movie was great fun. (Possible minor spoilers follow, but some might enhance your viewing experience.) It's about time that Disney take a chance by poking fun at their competitors in addition to their own movies. I mean, was that a Troll or an Ogre that Prince Edward (!) captured? Could have been Shrek's cousin. And are they suggesting that the other Prince Edward is a bit dim? I'd love to hear a UK audience watch this movie!
As a fan of Disney animation, the opening scene was a delightful surprise. The long zoom through the woods was not quite at the level of Pinocchio (1940), but it was brilliantly done. (If you have never seen that movie, check it out.) I also found the ballroom scene interesting as a tribute to the dance scene from Beauty and the Beast, which was an early triumph of 3-D computer animation rendering the chandelier.
If you watch the entire frame, you might catch a glimpse of Totoro. I missed it, but my wife says a Totoro toy was in the lower right corner of the frame during a scene in the daughter's bedroom.
A real test of any movie is whether a scene is so good that it is not spoiled by having seen clips of it in the ads or in a trailer. That is definitely the case for the scene where animals (and insects!) clean the apartment. The actual scene has much more than they gave away in the trailers, and the ad version was pretty good. Best of all, even though it was obvious how it had to turn out, it was far from clear exactly how they would get there. As expected, they live happily ever after, but the details are entertaining as can be.
Susan Sarandon rocks as the evil queen. She looked like she belonged in NYC.
Turner Classic Movies is showing "The Best Years of Our Lives" tonight (actually Sunday morning) at 2:45 AM. If you have never seen this Best Picture winner, I highly recommend it.
It might be unique in the post-war genre (it was released in 1946) in that it does not have any war film, not even a flashback, in the story. It also sends the strongest "Support our veterans" message I've ever seen.
Spoilers and commentary below the fold. Veterans needed a lot of support in 1946. Demobilizing a 4 million man army dumped millions into an economy that had not really recovered from the Depression. The money that would drive consumption, earned during the war, had all been borrowed from the people who earned it. It was still tied up in War Bonds, to be paid off over the next decade. Production lines were still set up to build tanks and planes, and those jobs were already filled.
This movie, rich with irony, follows three men who return to their hometown on the same plane ... but who never knew each other before or during the war. They come from very different social circles, and one of the messages is that the WW II draft brought America together in a very real way that other wars (including the Vietnam draft) did not.
The first to be dropped off is a Navy enlisted man who lost both hands in combat. No "Forest Gump" special effects here. The actor, in his first and only role, lost his hands in a training accident during the war. He comes from a middle class neighborhood. His reunion includes some amazing acting. Watch his mother's transition from joy to fear as she embraces him. That scene resonates today.
The greatest irony in the movie is that this man, despite his injuries, is the best adjusted of all three returning veterans. He helps center the other two.
The second to be dropped off is an Army sergeant. He is a banker, returning to the fanciest apartment building in town. Is he out of place. The doorman isn't sure about letting a sergeant in, and his family sees a different person than the one who left for three years of combat (in the Pacific, IIRC). His job at the bank is waiting for him, but he is not comfortable there. He now drinks heavily, mostly to forget, like he did after combat. And he is much more tolerant of loan requests from veterans with little collateral but lots of guts.
The last is an Army Air Force officer. He is from the wrong side of the tracks, literally. His parents are dirt poor. His wife, well, I won't spoil the whole story. He has no job. His only skills are dropping bombs and making milkshakes (while in school). He is unemployed, unemployable, and not college material. When he shows up at his old job, the guys who did not go to war are worried about losing jobs to all of those returning vets.
Happy ending for all? Sort of. Lets just say it ends on a positive note, looking ahead to the future and not back to the past.
Side note: Hoagy Carmichael (a singer / songwriter / piano player whose big hit, Stardust, has a casino named after it) plays a significant sidekick/ sounding board role in this movie as he does in "To Have and Have Not". No surprise that he is a piano player in a bar in both movies, but his scene in this movie rehearsing a group of kids is priceless.
TCM is showing The Best Years of Our Lives tomorrow (Wednesday, 4/25) at 3:30 pm ET. This is a must-see movie from 1946 about the adjustments men must make to civilian life after years at war. The fact that the role of the man with no hands was played by a man who lost both hands during the war (Harold Russell, who had only acted in an amputee training film, won 2 Oscars for his performance) puts it far beyond Forrest Gump ... and makes it particularly relevant with the return of Iraq war veterans to similar circumstances.
