Film Great: War winner - and four Oscars to boot!

The authentic gut-wrenching war movie, Platoon, I’ve seen three times, and discovered one important thing: that time hadn’t changed it. Just remember, it was made in the1980s and the dialogue was always spot on; and so was the acting, the scenery and the background noise of soldiers dying. One of my 50 best movies.

The multi-award winning movie about Vietnam just as it really was … Platoon.

Directed by Oliver Stone, Platoon scooped that year’s 1987 Oscars for best picture, best director, best film editing and best sound.

Platoon is a movie which vividly evokes the GI’s life and death on the battlefield of Vietnam. It’s a story of searing power and immediacy. It a film which detonates “a fire storm of memories about the US fighting man in the jungles of Southeast Asia,” said TIME magazine.
 

 Main: He was shot in the back by enemy snipers.
 

When it was released in cinemas around the world, Platoon earned rave reviews from the critics and long lines at the box office.

The story Platoon is based on the director, Oliver Stone’s, 15 months’ war experience in Vietnam.

“He has created a time-capsule movie that explodes likes a fragmented bomb in the consciousness of America,” said TIME, “showing how it was back then.” 

Before it reached the screen, Stone had been trying to get Platoon before the cameras since the late 1970s but Hollywood treated the project with indifference.

He banged on every door in tinsel town to get it done, but Vietnam was still anathema in the eyes of movie moguls.

Stone said he carried the project around for so long as “it almost broke his heart.”
 

Compared to Platoon, other films on Vietnam have been wide of the mark.
 

Platoon is historically and politically accurate. Its shows something the architects  of war never understood until it was too late: How foliage and the thickness of the jungle negated US tectological superiority.

Compared to Platoon other films on Vietnam have been a “rape of history”.

“Thirty years from now,” said David Halberstam, who covered the war for The New York Times, “people will think of the Vietnam war as Platoon.”

Cast: Tom Berenger, Willem Defoe, Charlie Sheen and many others. Director and Writer : Oliver Stone. Oscars for best director, best picture, best editing and best sound.

Platoon (Film Analysis)

Remember when …

Housewife Superstar

You all know the depression-era gal, Marjorie Bligh? Yes, of course. The real-life Dame Edna, who was about be launched into the US with her biography Housewife Superstar, describes her as “unique.” Everything turns out just rosy! Marjorie’s tip for a happy marriage: Choose carefully; when it comes to food, be imaginative, original and appreciative; don’t gossip about your partner’s failings; be honest with each other - but not brutal. Also, be kind to each other; nagging never accomplishes anything; always apologise first – even if you’re right. - FM.

Hello, again!

Patti Page and her silken voice were once dubbed “the singing rage”. Critics assailed her style as plastic and antiseptic - but those opinions were not  shared by the millions of record buyers. When I covered her show in Sydney in the early 1980s, I fell in love with her. She sang the old favourites, but her honey-sound alto soothed me no end. Patti sang at the 1965 Academy Awards; she did 40 to 50 shows a year up until 2003. Patti Page died in 2013. - FM.