The Nerdstream Era: History

Showing posts with label History. Show all posts

Friday, January 10, 2014

Stalingrad 3D

This is a thing. Russian filmmakers produced a movie about the battle of Stalingrad in IMAX format. Real 3D. And not only that, they also took a full swing at the asthetics of "300" with it, including the soundtrack. Have a look at the trailer and don't mind the Russian text; there's no dialogue other than the contemporary monologue in the background anyway:

Yes, this is really a thing. And it cries for some analysis after the break.

History Podcast, episode 2

In the second episode of my history podcast with Steven Attewell, we talk about historical perceptions and how they are changed based on the culture you live in. Specifically, we talk about the American Civil War and World War II and how Americans and Germans see them, respectively. The differences are striking, and I'd wager you'd be surprised at just how different two peoples can see the same event.

Download here, part 1 here.

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

The one movie that ruined it for the Eastern Front

In 2001, a slightly unusual World-War-II-movie hit theaters: "Enemy at the Gates". It was unusual because the heroes of the story were the Soviet soliders in Stalingrad, not the heroic American soldiers storming the beaches of Normandy or holding out in the grim winter against the German onslaught in the Battle of the Bulge. Since there isn't exactly a flood of movies about the Eastern Front in World War 2, "Enemy at the Gates" came to shape the view on that part of the conflict for pretty much everyone who saw it. And that's not exactly a good thing.

An obituary on Tom Clancy

Tom Clancy 1989 (Gary W. Gilbert, CCBYSA 2.0)

Today, Tom Clancy died in a Baltimore hospital, age 66. I can't say that I have been a huge fan of his work in the last decade. But Clancy was formative for my youth, I can't deny it. I fell in love with his style and his universe, but at some point, the love died, and we departed. I haven't touched one of his products again, save for a failed attempt of a friend to bring me in on the Ghost-Recon-games.

I think I first read a book of his age 14, perhaps 15. It was "Red Storm Rising". A curious choice perhaps, not being a Jack Ryan novel, but a friend picked it up, liked it and lent it to me. At that age, the idea of NATO and the Warsaw pact trying each other on the battlefield without nuclear weapons has a clear appeal to someone who builds models of various military equipment and has a collection of little plastic soldiers that would make a coup in Woody's little toy realm a perfectly possible option.

Podcast about counter-factual history

Together with my colleague in the field of academic historical research, Steven Attewell, the author behind the brillant blog "Race for the Iron Trone", I talk about counterfactual history and its impacts on our culture. We discuss the tripping wires that surround this field and why it is so attractive to Science Fiction authors as well as some examples of where counterfactual history is applied with a real gain and where it simply delivers nonsense. You can download the podcast here as an MP3. If you speak German, make also sure to check out my blog about history.

Be sure to uncheck the "Sendspace Accelerator" box to avoid downloading useless software.

The Nerdstream Era