the m0vie blog

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released every Saturday at 6pm GMT.

This time, Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan.

It is D-Day. Allied troops are launching the liberation of France from Nazi occupation. Having led his men on the beaches of Normandy, Captain John Miller receives a unique set of orders. He is to track down lost paratrooper Private James Ryan and return him home, no matter what the cost.

At time of recording, it was ranked 28th on the Internet Movie Database‘s list of the best movies of all-time.

Show Notes:

• Recorded 9th June 2019.
• Saving Private Ryan at The Internet Movie Database.
• The IMDB 250 as it appeared at time of recording.
• Rachel Donadio at The Atlantic visits Omaha Beach on the seventy-fifth anniversary of D-Day, June 2019.
• Dennis Persica at The New Orleans Advocate eulogises Harold “Hal” Baumgarten, December 2016.
• Dwight D. Eisenhower talks to Walter Cronkite at CBS News about those who gave their lives on D-Day, June 1964.
• Drew Middleton at The New York Times reports on Ronald Reagan’s commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of D-Day, June 1984.
• William A. Galston at the Brookings Institute on the nostalgic patriotism of Ronald Reagan’s invocation of D-Day, June 2013.
• Harvey J. Kaye reflects on Ronald Reagan’s patriotic invocation of D-Day in The Fight for the Four Freedoms, June 2014.
• The Atlantic reports on the Encyclopedia Britannica tie-in feature at the launch of Saving Private Ryan, July 1998.
• David M. Halbfinger at The New York Times on the perfect timing of Saving Private Ryan and Second World War nostalgia in the nineties, October 2006.
• Peter Beaumont at The Guardian on why the legacy of Pacific theatre has always been more complicated than the European theatre, April 2010.
• Neil A. Lewis at The New York Times reports on the controversy around the Enola Gay exhibit at the Smithsonian, October 1994.
• William Neff at The Washington Post on the lingering debate around the nuclear bombing of Japan, August 2017.
• Danny Lewis at The Smithsonian Magazine on the legacy of Operation Paper Clip, November 2016.
• Lucette Lagnado at The Wall Street Journal on the legacy of Huburtus Strughold as “the father of space medicine”, December 2012.
• Amy Shira Teitel at Al Jazeera on the complicated legacy of Wernher vo Braun, May 2013.
• Ryan Hollinger at YouTube on how the combat sequences in Saving Private Ryan work so effectively, April 2016.
• Clint Worthington at Consequence of Sound on the legacy of the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan, July 2018.
• Tom Hanks talks to RogerEbert.com about shooting Saving Private Ryan, July 1998.
• Steven Spielberg talks to Rolling Stone about his childhood, May 2007.
• Clarisse Loughrey at The Independent on reports that Steven Spielberg actually directed Poltergeist,July 2017.
• Steven Spielberg talks to RogerEbert.com about what drew him to Saving Private Ryan, July 1998.
• Christopher Probst at The American Society of Cinematographers on the production of Saving Private Ryan, August 1998.
• Steven Spielberg explains to The American Cinematographer why he is consistently drawn to the Second World War, August 1998.
• Janet Davis at Not Even Past on the intersection of Jaws and Vietnam, November 2015.
• Mort Marks at The Villager on Eisenhower’s documentation of the concentration camps, February 2018.
• David Denby at The New Yorker on the importance of Hollywood directors in shaping the history and memory of the Second World War, March 2014.
• Ray Kelly at WellesNet on Orson Welles’ service during the Second World War, May 2013.
• Sarah Boesveld at The National Post on the depraved extent of the feud between Orson Welles and the Hearst family, January 2012.
• Jess Hassenger at The A.V. Club on the creative partnership of Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, December 2015.
• Sidney Fussell at Business Insider on whether movies are getting longer, June 2016.
• Bernard Weinraub at The New York Times on how Miramax and Dreamworks ended up in a spending war over the Academy Awards, March 1999.
• Bernard Weinraub at The New York Times on how Shakespeare in Love pulled an Oscar upset against Saving Private Ryan, March 1999.
• Edward Rothstein at The New York Times on how Saving Private Ryan privatises patriotism for the nineties, August 1998.
• Chris Hayes at ChrisHayes.org argues that nineties nostalgia for the Second World War paved the way for the War on Terror, September 2006.
• Oliver Stone talks to The National about his anxieties around the glorification of the Second World War in American popular consciousness, May 2011.
• Calum Marsh at The Atlantic on the tensions within the “anti-war” war film, January 2014.
• John Biguenet at The Atlantic on the patriotic paradox at the heart of Saving Private Ryan, June 2014.
• David Sims at The Atlantic on the mess of contradictions and complications at work within Saving Private Ryan, July 2018.
• The New York Times reports of the F.C.C.’s anxieties about screening Saving Private Ryan during the Iraq War, November 2004.
• Nate Jones at Vulture on how much money the United States has spent trying to rescue Matt Damon, December 2015.
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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: anniversary, d-day, films, greatest generation, heroism, Movies, Saving Private Ryan, second world war, steven spielberg |