Young Winston - Movie Review 9

Simon Ward

Hello my dear Friends ! And once again, a movie that I think is very good. Young Winston. The life of Winston Churchill in the pre WWII era.
Once again, Simon Ward, you will often encounter him in my movie reviews.

The very humorous manner of presentation is fun and gives a glimpse of the late Victorian era. The clichés and class differences.

Young Winston is a 1972 British film based on the early years of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
The film was based on the book My Early Life: A Roving Commission by Winston Churchill. The first part of the film covers Churchill's unhappy schooldays, up to the death of his father. The second half covers his service as a cavalry officer in India and the Sudan, during which he takes part in the cavalry charge at Omdurman, his experiences as a war correspondent in the Second Boer War, during which he is captured and escapes, and his election to Parliament at the age of 26.

Churchill was played by Simon Ward, who was relatively unknown at the time but was supported by a distinguished cast including Robert Shaw (as Lord Randolph Churchill), John Mills (as Lord Kitchener), Anthony Hopkins (as David Lloyd George) and Anne Bancroft as Churchill's mother Jennie. Other actors included Patrick Magee, Robert Hardy, Ian Holm, Edward Woodward and Jack Hawkins.



Antony Hopkins

Robert Shaw

The film was written and produced by Carl Foreman and directed by Richard Attenborough. It was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Screenplay, Best Art Direction (Donald M. Ashton, Geoffrey Drake, John Graysmark, William Hutchinson, Peter James) and Best Costume Design.^[3]



Have an nice Week. Enjoy.

Gordon

 

Workbench Report

Hope you all have a nice Weekend !

Yesterday evening i spend my time to finish and begin some projects. After looking the canadian movies in begin to paint the BIF from Perry Miniatures Range.

The Canadians is an funny project. The BIF is an "what was when" project of the Perrys and based open the Trent Affaire and an maybe War cluster of the british Empire during the american civil war from 1860 till 1866.

Take a look...

This is the canadian Militia Bataillon.... 

for the colours i have used napoleonic one.

Even i finished the Dragoons.....

...and the Heliograph and Royal Engineer Team arround Major Dudley and Lord Wimsay...

Cheers, Gordon

Masters in Miniatures - New Stuff

 

Excited I finally received my copy of the Masters in Miniatures.

Signed by Michael and Alan Perry. Wow. I love it. Very detailed and even with hidden joke in the captions.

Ok, ok .... I think it is worth the price  ... here are two pictures to it.

Beautiful rest of the week!

 

Cheers, Gordon

 

North West Police - Movie Review 8

Hi guys...it is Movie Monday !

The last of the three Movies about the "Canadians" i want to review is North West Mounted Police, an 1940 American adventure film produced and directed by Cecil B. DeMille and starring Gary Cooper and Madeleine Carroll.

 The STORY:

Texas Ranger Dusty Rivers (Gary Cooper) is sent to Canada during the 1880s in pursuit of outlaw Jacques Corbeau (George Bancroft), arriving in the midst of the Riel Rebellion. Dusty meets nurse April Logan (Madeleine Carroll) and quickly falls in love with her. However, she is already involved with Canadian Mountie Sergeant Jim Britt (Preston Foster). Dusty and April have become involved with one another, which becomes evident to Jim, to whom April wishes to remain loyal.
Meanwhile, April's brother, Ronnie Logan (Robert Preston), who also is a Mountie, is in love with Corbeau's daughter, Louvette (Paulette Goddard). Louvette loves Ronnie intensely and is determined to protect Ronnie in the coming fight at all costs, using Ronnie's feelings for her father's benefit at times.
Corbeau is eventually tracked down to his hideout. When the showdown between Dusty, the Mounties, and the supporters of Corbeau finally arrives, Louvette tricks Ronnie, and ties him to a chair to keep him safe, after he had given her information vital to the Mounties' planned attack on the outlaws. Ronnie is unable to warn his fellow Mounties and Rivers that they are riding into a trap. The lawmen are ambushed and think Ronnie is a deserter. Dusty Rivers helps to turn the tide of the battle and Sergeant Jim arrests Corbeau. Rivers tracks down Ronnie at Louvette's hideout and convinces him to turn himself in, however, he is killed in a case of mistaken identity.
Afterwards, Dusty Rivers is set to return to Texas, but first gives April and Jim his blessing.


That was canada in british times. Nextweek i will show you "Young Winston".
 In memoriam of Simon Ward.


Greetings,
Gordon



The Canadians - Movie Review 7

Hi guys,

there he his....the Movie Monday. The next movie I review is "Here come the Canadians" from 1961.
It shows us the hard life of the mounted Police in Canada in the time, when the US deals all with the Cavalry. I am very impressed about the courage and bravery of this little troop in this big country ...

The Story:

After the Battle of Little Big Horn, 6000 Indians of the Sioux tribe flee under their chief Four Horns to Canada, where they are, however, sought after crossing the border quickly Inspector William Gannon, who is one of the North West Mounted, in their camp. His offer: The Indians are allowed to stay in Canada if they submit to the laws of the country in which they agree. When the rancher Frank Boone from Montana and three of his employees on a quest for stolen horses on one of the related Indian villages encounter, they massacred the inhabitants as horse thieves and kidnap a white squaw who does not speak with them.

The Mounties feared an uprising of the Indians and take Boone and his men into custody; they claim they have wanted to save only the woman;

The Indians want the four Americans; Gannon insisting on compliance with the law. On the way to court, he learns of the woman that she had been kidnapped as a child by Indians. Her half-blood child had been killed in the attack. The Americans managed to escape, again with the woman hostage. As in the pursuit by the Mounties a gunfight breaks out, they will be shot, which saves Gannon life. On the top of the cliffs, the bandits hit the Sioux that trigger a stampede, and so driving Boone and his men over the cliffs to their deaths. No signal was given on the part of the Sioux, which thus wahrten the law. The Mounties return to their headquarters.

I hope you enjoy. Have an nice monday.
Gordon



Nexttime we see: North West Mounted Police....

North West Mounted Police

Pony Soldier - Movie Review 6

Hi guys,

 

now before weekend a Review of one of the older Movies. At first I have to explain why I review this kind of older movies.  As I was young often in summer, when the weather was bad, i saw this and other old western movies. Actors like Tyrone Power or Gary Gooper are the first Heros of my childhood.

It is also a shame that most people only see under the Western, the United States History time. This may be due to the known prejudices of US Americans to the Canadians, but I do not think so. There are good Western, like Pony Soldier, there deal with Canada and the same problems like the US.

Pony Soldier is a kind of them. This Movie is a 1952 Technicolor Northern Western set in Canada but, what a shame, set in Sedona, Arizone. It is based on a 1951 Saturday Evening Post story Mounted Patrol by Garnett Weston. It was retitled MacDonald of the Canadian Mounties in England and The Last Arrow in France and Spain. In Germany it was titeled Pony Soldier.

The Story:

 

In 1876, the NWMP send Constable Duncan MacDonald (Tyrone Power) and a blackmailed Blackfoot scout (Thomas Gomez) to get the Cree to sign Treaty 6 with The Crown. Initially hostile, the Cree are influenced by a Fata Morgana type mirage and they mistake for the power of Queen Victoria.

In addition to negotiating with the Cree, MacDonald of the Mounted rescues white hostages arrests a murderer, and adopts a Cree son.

I think it is a classic and have to see. Hope you enjoy. Have good weekend.
Nextweek we see "North West Mounted Police"


Greetings,
Gordon

North West Frontier (titled Flame Over India (US) and Empress of India( Australia) - Movie Review 5

Hi guys,

this weekly review talks about a other movie in time of British India and belong the North West Frontier. The title of the movie is given in three forms:

Regular : North West Frontier
US: Flame Over India
Australia: Empress of India

It is is a 1959 British CinemaScope adventure film starring Kenneth More and Lauren Bacall.
The film is set in the North West Frontier Province of British India, which now lies within modern Pakistan. The film explores tensions between Hindu and Muslim Indians as Muslim rebels attack a fortress to kill a young Hindu maharajah.
^{- from Wikipedia}

That shows the plot:
 
North West Frontier, British India, 1905: a Hindu maharajah asks British Army Captain Scott (Kenneth More) to take his son, Prince Kishan, to the safety of the Governor's Residence in Haserabad because a Muslim uprising has begun in his province. Accompanying them is a widow, Mrs Wyatt (Lauren Bacall), the prince's American nanny/governess. Soon after leaving, the rebels storm the palace and kill the maharajah.

On arrival at Haserabad, Captain Scott sees that the last trainful of local Hindus and Europeans are leaving on the last train to Kalapur. After it leaves, the rebels close in and take control of the outer wall and gate beside the railway yard. The British governor then tells Scott that he must take the young prince to Kalapur because it has become too dangerous to keep him in Haserabad. In the railyard, the British captain discovers the Empress of India, an old, obsolete engine lovingly cared for by its driver Gupta (I. S. Johar) and a battered old carriage.
In the early hours of the next morning, Captain Scott quietly loads the passengers on the train. They include Mrs Wyatt, Prince Kishan, arms dealer Mr Peters (Eugene Deckers), British ex-pat Mr Bridie (Wilfrid Hyde-White), Lady Wyndham (the governor's wife), two Indian NCOs and half-Dutch, half-Indonesian journalist Mr Peter van Leyden (Herbert Lom). To avoid detection the Empress freewheels out of the yard, but unexpectedly the old engine lets off her whistle, alerting the rebels to the plan, so Gupta engages the steam to smash through the outer gate.
Later that morning, the train encounters the refugee train that had left the day before. It is found that everyone on board had been massacred by the rebels. But Mrs Wyatt, who rebuffs Captain Scott's order to remain on her train, finds one survivor; a small baby who was concealed by his mother's body.
The next morning, the train has to stop because part of the track has been blown up. However, they then realise that the rebels are already waiting for them in the surrounding mountains. The rebels' cover is blown when Mrs Wyatt spots a light shining at the mountain summit, which turns out to be a heliograph, the method of communication the rebels are using. With the job barely finished, the train gets away under a hail of gunfire. Gupta is hit in the arm but he survives.
Later on that day, while stopping to refill the engine's tanks, Scott walks into the pump house to find Van Leyden allowing Prince Kishan to stand dangerously close to the spinning flywheel. During the night, Mr Van Leyden again approaches the prince only to notice Lady Wyndham staring at him.
The train then reaches a large viaduct bridge which has been damaged by a bomb although the rails remain intact. All the passengers disembark and carefully cross the broken section. But again Van Leyden's behaviour nearly results in the prince's death because he held him too short almost letting him fall. Captain Scott accuses Van Leyden of trying to kill the prince. The reporter is placed under arrest. After that, Captain Scott (under the guidance of Gupta) then carefully drives the train across the broken section.
While going through a tunnel later on, Van Leyden (who was under guard in the luggage compartment) uses the opportunity to overpower his guard. He then uses a Maxim machine gun to hold the passengers hostage. But he cannot kill Prince Kishnan immediately because he is riding on the engine outside. Eventually Scott returns to the carriage with the young prince, after spotting more heliograph signals used by the rebels, showing they've been waiting for them again, but they are saved as Van Leyden is knocked off balance at the crucial moment. The British officer Scott pursues Van Leyden onto the carriage roof. However it is Mrs Wyatt who shoots and kills Van Leyden just as he is about to finish off Scott. The rebels catch up with the train on horseback, however they have to stop when it enters a two-mile-long tunnel. On the other side, the train and its passengers reach the safety of Kalapur. At the station Prince Kishan is met by senior Hindus, Gupta is taken to hospital, Lady Wyndham is informed her husband is safe because the rebels withdrew with the departure of the prince and Scott and Mrs Wyatt leave together. - from Wikipedia
 
Sorry that I have taken a long summary of Wikipedia. But I do believe that this film is not very well known. I consider him to be a little gem from the old days. It is well made and has voltage even though one knows quickly who is good and evil.

That was from India for the time being. Over the next three weeks, I dedicate myself another British Dominion, namely Canada. Also there are hidden old classic movies, because America is not only US cavalry and cowboys ....

I will start with: Pony Soldier