|
Post by Allen Wiener on Apr 16, 2012 12:42:38 GMT -5
Tons of documentaries on the DVR still to watch, sevearl with Ballard.
|
|
|
Post by Jim Boylston on Apr 16, 2012 14:54:30 GMT -5
Really can't watch it that way as it jumps back and forth: The first episode it hits and then you are getting backstory, then its sinking, then more backstory. I agree. It's a device that, in this case, doesn't really work. It does, however, allow Fellowes to show the Titanic hit the iceberg and sink 4 times over the course of the series. Oops, did I spoil the ending for someone? Jim
|
|
|
Post by Allen Wiener on Apr 17, 2012 8:36:17 GMT -5
Still catching up with all the TV docs & viewed a 2-hour program from Discovery Channel last night called "Titanic: The Final Moments," released in 2011. I think this is a Canadian production that was originally released under the title "What Sank Titanic?" It's one of he better ones I've seen; a well done docudrama/reenactment and better than most of the Titanic feature films I've seen.
The film puts far more blame on Capt. Smith than past films or books have. I did not know that he had also helmed the maiden voyage of Titanic's sister ship Olympic and managed to get into a serious accident with that one too. Another ship plowed into the Olympic's side doing extensive damage, but not sinking her. Smith was very quick to claim that it was not his fault. On the Titanic, he acts irresponsibly by ignoring repeated ice warning messages and actually continues plowing ahead at full speed. Everyone's pretty tough on Capt. Lord of the Californian (deservedly so, IMO), but at least he had sense enough to stop for the night in that ice field. Once the ship hits the berg, Smith shows little leadership and seems hesitant and confused, not sure what to do. Other films and books have pointed out that he pretty much checked out and went into a kind of daze, leaving it for subordinates to make decisions. Someone even had to tell him that he needed to get the lifeboats full and away from the ship.
Two other things I hadn't heard before. First, shortly after the ship hit the berg and began flooding, Smith had the engines restarted and began moving again. No idea where he thought he was going, but the effect was to speed the flooding as the ship's momentum forced more water through the gashes in her side. It would have sunk anyway, but Smith may have hastened the end and hampered efforts of the crew to keep her afloat as long as possible.
Second, when Boxhall took the ship's coordinates to the wireless room for the S.O.S. that was going out, he got them wrong and was off by 10 miles. That's about as far as the Californian was from Titanic. Any rescue ship that had arrived in time would have spent additional time figuring out where Titanic actually was. That made no difference in the end as no ship, aside from Californian, was within range.
|
|
|
Post by Jim Boylston on Apr 17, 2012 9:34:45 GMT -5
The Fellowes series also shows Capt. Smith in a bad light and illustrates the above examples. It seemed to me that both Lord's book and the "Night to Remember" film painted a largely uncritical picture of Smith.
Jim
|
|
|
Post by Allen Wiener on Apr 17, 2012 12:46:15 GMT -5
For most of history, Smith's gotten a pass and was even considered a hero for going down with the ship. I'm not sure if the more critical picture of him is based on any new information or just a reconsideration of the record.
|
|
|
Post by loucapitano on Apr 17, 2012 13:25:01 GMT -5
The Titianic documentory I saw the other night that traced the debris field and reconstructed a computer model on it's last hours was interesting, but waited too long to deconstruct the sinking and its conclusions. What was the rush? They painstakingly showed the tremedous effort these masterful scientists and technicians did to catalogue and study every bit of information available over a year and then summed it up in 5 minutes, leaving the viewer very little time to digest their hypothesis. Perhaps the Titanic was better built then previously thought. Perhaps the shortage of lifeboats was not the glaring failure in planning most historians have concluded. I don't think it did much good making superficial comparisons to Lusitania and Andrea Doria in defense of Titanic. Maybe I'm getting old, but the last 10 minutes were the only parts worth watching. The 100 minutes of fluff and pseudo-drama was lost on this amateur historian.
|
|
|
Post by Allen Wiener on Apr 17, 2012 17:43:33 GMT -5
I saw a couple of specials like that on History Channel; very little really meaningful information over a total of 3 hours, which could have been summed up in 45 minutes or less. They kept going on and on about how they believed the ship broke apart because of a fault in one of its expansion joints. Not terribly earth-shattering and certainly not with 3 hours and two separate specials. The two Discovery Channel docudramas were much better and the longer one was actually superior to some Titanci feature films. National Geographic ran two films about Robert Ballard's expeditions and his efforts to preserve the Titanic, and another focusing on James Cameron's many dives to the Titanic and his own theories of what actually happened.
I don't think Titanic was necessarly badly designed or built for what was state of the art at the time. Its enormous size (for the time) did create special problems, like turning it or slowing it down in an emergency. The idea that it was unsinkable was laughable. The iceberg proved that the so-called water-tight doors were not every effective in any case and useless if enough of the ship's compartments were ruptured from outside and began flooding.
The lifeboat shortage was inexcusable. The regulations called for a maximum of 16 lifeboats on ships of a certain size or larger, but those regulations were written long before a ship Titanic's size was ever dreamed of. Not only were those regulations clearly out of date, but the White Star line had been told, in no uncertain terms, by the ship's original architect, that it must have at least 32 boats. White Star refused to hear of it, believing that so many boats would actually frighten passangers and suggest that the shipbuilder had safety concerns; also, White Star did not want so many boats on the boat deck because it would obscure the view. That architect refused to continue work on the ship and was replaced by Andrews, who ended up going down with the ship.
|
|
|
Post by Allen Wiener on Apr 18, 2012 19:14:19 GMT -5
I finally slogged through all 4 hours (3 without commercials) of Julian Fellowes "Titanic" mini series. It's probably one of the worst Titanic films I've ever seen. The episodic nature of the four separate hour-long chapters (which is how it was shown in England) included multiple replays of several scenes without adding to the story, and fatally detracting from the flow of the action. The Titanic story is driven by suspense as much as tragedy. It works because the viewer (or reader) gets caught up in the sudden shift from complacency aboard ship, to the shock of realizing that your "unskinkable" ship is going down, there aren't enough boats, and you're probably going to die. The buildup to that climax is essential to the story. Instead, you have the story start and stop four times in this production, killing any sense of suspense.
The Titanic story is full of amazing people and incidents, without having to invent fanciful ones, which this series does to a far greater degree than other Titanic fictionalizations. It even mixes fictional characters with real ones, creating fake "relationships."
The efforts to use the ship as a microcosm for the British class system are clumsy and heavy handed. Most of the first class passangers are a petty, shallow, dislikable lot who hardly scare up much sympathy from viewers when their fate is known. Viewers are more like to think "who cares?" if so-and-so drowns? Fellowes explores this area far more effectively in "Downton Abbey" than he does here. Most of the characters are cardboard cutouts, despite having 3 hours to flesh them out.
ABC-TV could not have done a more horrid job in its telecast of this series. Why the network chose to air 3 hours one night and only 1 hour the second night is really puzzling. By some odd front-office reasoning, the film was not shown in widescreen/letterbox format on the ABC stations, but was letterboxed on its HD channel! What sense does that make (or am I asking a dumb question here)? Commercial breaks were countless and occurred at an average rate of every 7 minutes!!! How can you maintain any sort of story momentum with constant disruptions like that? Moreover, the commericial breaks cut in suddenly and abrasively, with not so much as a short fadeout of the film as they went into commercial break. One second some poor sod is drowning, the next you've got a supermodel smiling and salsa dancing; quite a jolt.
I'd forgotten just how annoying, artless and bottom-line network TV had gotten since defaulting to my DVR for most viewing. This was a stark reminder.
|
|
|
Post by loucapitano on Apr 19, 2012 17:26:18 GMT -5
Allen, I feel your pain! I've gotten to the point DVRing virtually everything so I can fast forward through the commercials. Unfortunately, my cable company only lets us DVR one show at a time and watch something else. If two show DVR simultaneously, we can't watch another show, unless we go to another TV. Some companies allow you to DVR many more shows at a time, but they don't meet my other cable needs. Fortunately, I watch baseball on one TV and DVR the two shows I can. Then I have to find time to watch what I've recorded. I'm still 5 weeks behind in Spartacus and two weeks behind Game of Thrones and SouthPark.
|
|
|
Post by Allen Wiener on Apr 19, 2012 19:08:44 GMT -5
Lou - I have the same deal with Comcast; can only DVR two shows at a time and, if you do, you can only watch one of those two shows.
|
|
|
Post by loucapitano on Apr 25, 2012 10:07:33 GMT -5
I saw an excellent docudrama titled Why Titanic Sank last night. Very well acted and narrated. Also, it cleverly fit the entire 2 hr. 12 min. it took to sink into the 2 hour time slot. It also made the case that the Captain and senior crew members apparently did all they could to keep the ship afloat and on an even keel for as long as possible which may have added 20 -30 minutes to its life. Plus, virtually all the action and dialogue was based on survivor's testimony. So well done that I kept switching over from the Yankee/Ranger game which was awful. How come the best hitters on the Yankees are suckers for new or rookie pitchers they've never faced? Just deer in the headlights (except for Jeter, naturally.) Lou from LI
|
|
|
Post by Allen Wiener on Apr 25, 2012 10:57:44 GMT -5
I saw an excellent docudrama titled Why Titanic Sank last night. Very well acted and narrated. Also, it cleverly fit the entire 2 hr. 12 min. it took to sink into the 2 hour time slot. It also made the case that the Captain and senior crew members apparently did all they could to keep the ship afloat and on an even keel for as long as possible which may have added 20 -30 minutes to its life. Plus, virtually all the action and dialogue was based on survivor's testimony. So well done that I kept switching over from the Yankee/Ranger game which was awful. How come the best hitters on the Yankees are suckers for new or rookie pitchers they've never faced? Just deer in the headlights (except for Jeter, naturally.) Lou from LI Lou - I saw one on Discovery Channel titled "What Sank Titanic," which was very good. Is that the same one by any chance? Funny that they reached that conclusion; one or two other new documentaries in this recent cycle came down hard on Smith for kind of losing it, not giving timely or clear orders, and for actually restarting the engines and getting the ship moving again, which only increased the flooding. I wouldn't worry about the Yanks; they'll figure out these new pitchers soon enough. Most teams have trouble with new pitchers; the ones that keep giving them trouble are the ones that blossom into stars. Allen
|
|