Love Letters in the Sand

Saw Letters from Iwo Jima last night, the Japanese half of Clint Eastwoods two feature exploration of the battle of Iwo Jima. This was probably the better of the two films in many ways, and delt with issues of loss, authority, and futility that the American experiance best grapels with through tales of our civil war. It's a strong film but I don't think its the best picture of the year, and I even liked Flags of our Fathers better. Still it is worth seeing. Ken Watanabe forever.

I also watched a 1938 film called Alexander's Ragtime Band. This is the story of the rise of a small group of musicans from the backwater dives of turn of the century San Francisco, to Carniage Hall in New York. Staring the likes of Tyrone Power, Don Ameche and the unmistakable voice of Ethel Merman, this then inovative film is now mostly boaring. In fact I enjoyed the special feature biography of actress Alice Faye more then I enjoyed the movie. The World War One sequence in this film is largely replicated in 1943's This Is The Army, another Irving Berlin musical outing.