Well Peter Jackson's WWI documentary was not what I expected. All the trailers and ads for it showed off the colorized footage and smoothed, natural-looking motion, but when I actually watched the film, the color footage didn't start for almost an hour. First we had to wait through the black and white jittery footage during the recruitment of young lads, then their bootcamp, and their travel to the front lines in Belgium. If we were gonna wait that long, then why show the "please put on your 3D glasses" message at the beginning? And after the Armistice, the color once again was replaced by black and white footage while soldiers narrated their feelings of isolation when they returned to civilian life. If the ads for this documentary had described it as half color, half black and white, then I wouldn't have felt so irritated. The way this was advertised as a marvelous, immersive transformation, they should have gone to color immediately after the long drawn out title sequence of soldiers marching until the screen turned white. That would have made much more sense.
Anyway, the depiction of the British soldiers showed a lot of faces with personality and lots of humorous moments as the soldiers coped with their unsanitary, makeshift conditions. With no toilets, the soldiers had to instead sit on a plank suspended above some holes in the ground. There was no privacy of an enclosed outhouse; this primitive lavatory was exposed, with several people using it at once. The documentary footage is also interspersed with some propaganda posters and newspapers cartoons of the war, helping to flesh out stories that they didn't have footage for. There were some hard to watch images of trench feet, dead horses and rats, etc, and it added to the drama about the horrors of war. There's also lots of footage and stories about captured German prisoners of war. The British soldiers often recognize that the Germans are kids like them, and that it's a shame that the war makes them foes. Overall, this is an affecting movie of the war, but with very few glimpses of regiments of color who also fought for Britain as part of the Empire. This is very much limited to the point of view of a white British soldier. I suppose it was originally tailored that way, since it was broadcast for UK audiences on their Armistice Day. But still, the UK was not, even back then, all white.
On TV, A Million Little Things finally gave some plot answers about Jon's suicide, but the melodrama of the subway stop vote seems like a distraction from the mumbo-jumbo about Jon taking out a second insurance policy called Rutledge with the guys as beneficiaries. What the fuck? Because of the whole suicide thing, I read up that insurance policies will pay out for suicide after two years have passed, just to make sure that the person didn't intentionally buy the policy so they could kill themself. But here Ashley is implying that either Jon knew he was screwed for two years and staked his entire family's welfare on the stupid subway vote and on a 2nd insurance policy, OR Jon only realized everything was screwed in the day before the vote and he somehow bought an insurance policy that day and killed himself the next day, even though no insurance would pay off that??!!! What the fuck is wrong with these writers and their convuluted suicide scenario? Jon, you're still an egotistical, reckless gambler, and Ashley you're still an asshole for not giving Delilah the envelope the day you found it. No, you weren't being "helpful" or trying to "save" the family and the house by secretly paying the loan out of Rutledge Trust. You were withholding truths they needed to hear, and not letting them prepare themselves and find other solutions to keep their fucking home! And fuck the tiresome Barbara Morgan mystery which continues to be unsatisfactory teases.
Sheesh. At least The Orville had a good episode of Claire and Isaac dating. Isaac has always been a clear knockoff of Data from TNG, but this relationship was really well done. A great way to give him more dimensions, and his grand gesture from "Singing in the Rain" was great.
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