Series in Progress

Here’s one I’d really like Artler’s opinion on: The Dawns Here are Quiet.

This is a 4-episode series on Prime Video. It’s Russian and subtitled in English. It’s from 2015.

The story is about a small Russian outpost during WWII. A soldier, still recovering from his wounds (I guess), has been relegated to the backwoods where little is happening — that is until a squad of SS special forces paratroopers land, apparently intent on blowing up some nearby strategic facilities.

No problem. Just call out the boys and hunt them down. The problem is, there are no boys. This lone officer has been given a bevy of good-looking (complete with nude shower scene) women soldiers who have been tasked with manning the AA guns after the men were shipped off elsewhere.

This is why I need Artler’s opinion. This is without a doubt a Russian production. But the women are all gorgeous and kinda-sorta play men. But then back then the women were often pressed into service, right?

But I doubt they looked like this. So although this is a thoroughly Russian production, it’s surprising to see what looks like your usual Hollywood feminist women-replacing-men adaptation. The only notable difference being that it’s obvious from a couple nudes scenes that these are indeed women, not butch men. And although they are playing soldier, it’s clear most of them haven’t got much of a clue. (No ass-kicking females quite yet…in fact, one of them loses a shoe in the swamp). They (gulp) need the man to be in charge.

Maybe in a few years this would be done as an all-girl cast, no men need apply. Still, two episodes into this, it holds together rather well. The basic story is good, plus you get some flashbacks to the disrupted lives of each one of these women (as well as the main dude). I think this aspect is well done and not over-done as most flashbacks are.

I’ve still got a couple episodes to watch before I come to a final conclusion on whether to recommend this and thus to do a full-blown review. But I do think Artler should tune in and give it a go. At least make it to the shower scene.

Thanks for the info, Mr. Kung. That was good background to read.

They have one scene in the first episode of “The Dawns Here Are Quiet” that speaks to the brutality of women. A German reconnaissance plane is flying overhead. The women take to the AA battery and shoot at it. For some inexplicable reason, the German plane strafes the AA battery and then takes a long, loping climb into the skies when it could have hugged the top of the trees after the strafe and been safe. McGuffin #1 in this series.

The chicks hit the plane and the pilot bails out. This one chick then continues shooting at the pilot in his parachute going against the orders of the officer in charge not to waste ammunition and, besides, the pilot would be more useful as a prisoner. But one chick tells the male officer, “For her, this is personal.” And we get some backstory and see why. The Nazis had killed her husband.

Although this series is by no means anti-Stalin, you do get this sense of how horrible it must have been for the Russian people to have to endure both Stalin and Hitler

Episode 3 is not so tightly scripted. They have the characters doing intentionally stupid things just to move the plot along. You can at least give the filmmakers credit for not turning these into Super Women, the Ass Kicking Females of the Russian Variety. They have much to learn. They are willing but green and not particularly bright in terms of the necessities of war.

For instance, this one chick (the one who lost a boot in the swamp) refused to wear the boots taken from a dead person. The male officer reminds her that in war the living must take care of each other. And my favorite part (other than the shower scene) — and a scene that takes this beyond stale Hollyweird conventions — is when one of their own is killed. The whole group of chicks suddenly comes upon the body. One of them starts blubbering. The senior Good Looking Combat Chick there tells her “Enough with the drama.”

You wouldn’t get that in an American film. So they allow these women to be both brave and to be women. This is what I object to in the horrible American portrayals of the Super Woman. They are just Clark Kent with a vagina. And I’m not too sure about the vagina.

Despite some of the stilted plot points, this seems like a more balance portrayal of women fighting the Great Patriot War. I’m through three episodes with one to go.

One can only marvel at the Russian spirit to fight back against the Nazis. One line in this series went something like: “They are not animals. They are not barbarians. They are Nazis.”

Most of our “fighting back” these days is false, ritualistic, and little more than the result of a narcissistic need for drama and validation. These Russian chicks were laying it on the line against a real and deadly foe. They were not burning their bras because someone, somewhere, supposedly was not earning us much as a man.

I hate Hollywood Ass Kicking Females and whiny feminists. Natalie Portman is one of the worst examples. But I love these Russian women (and not just for the sauna scene). They were fighting back against an evil foe. Our fake fights are with Christian cake bakers. Women (and homosexuals) today are embarrassingly thin and shallow compared to these Russian mama bears.

I’ve watched about half of Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking on Britbox.

Sadly, even Holmes is not free from the recent craze to do yet another serial murderer plot. Goodness this is overdone.

The portrayal of Holmes by Rupert Everett isn’t awful. The main problem is that the material isn’t very good. With good material, I think he could bring the character to life.

But the Watson character is a complete joke. Forget everything bad I’ve ever said about Nigel Bruce. This clown (Ian Hart) who plays Dr. Watson is awful. He looks more like he wants to be in an after-school-special playing a young Albert Einstein.



The truly cringe-worthy moment, though, was when he adopted an America accent in order to try to get information out of someone. It just destroyed any chance of this guy being a Watson.

The Lestrade character (played by Neil Dudgeon) is bland and deferential. He will definitely make you appreciate the animated performance by Colin Jeavons as Lestrade in the Jeremy Brett series.



And correct me if I’m wrong, but Holmes delved into his seven-percent solution only when he was bored and in between cases. The hacks who wrote this drivel have him doping up in the middle of a riveting case, and apparently with the motivation to get some kind of “mystical” insight as to the crime.

Worst of all for this hackneyed plot is when Holmes tries to bait the serial killer at the funeral of one of his victims. He hangs a couple of the girls dancing shoes on a wreath of flowers that are set outside on the church’s steps. Holmes is about 10 yards away keeping watch. And he’s the only one keeping watch. Quite a plan.

And the laughable thing is that just after the funeral, the 13-year-old daughter of one the prominent people attending the funeral is nabbed soon after they exited the funeral. Nice job of keeping watch, Sherlock. Still, I may see this through if only because it’s veering toward “so bad it’s good” territory.

In other news, it really made my day when Francis Ford Coppola made a statement in support of Martin Scorsese about how awful the Marvel comic books movies are. They’re catching up to me in this regard, of course.

 

With the right direction and story, I think Rupert Everett is capable of the character. But there is neither artfulness nor restraint on either side of it. At the same time, I wouldn’t say that this is your typically schlepped-out British series. It would appear to be a try at quality. I think the problem is, tastes have been so eroded in Great Britain (not to mention Hollywood) that even an honest effort at doing quality can come out looking like something that might have been given a B+ as a college drama project.

I don’t hate Everett in this. He’s just not given very much that is Sherlockian to do. I’ll definitely watch the rest of this and report back on it.

But it is very unlikely that anyone will surpass the Jeremy Brett Holmes. And it’s not that there isn’t some fine talent still out there. It’s not they they don’t know how to do a period piece in Great Britain. They have production values up the ying-yang when it comes to recreating the look.

I think the problem is completely because no one is willing to take Arthur Conan Doyle seriously. Every fucktard little snot-nosed snowflake no-talent libtard wannabe wants to put his own stamp on the story. With the Brett series, John Hawkesworth, Michael Cox, and the executives at Granada Studios wanted to recreate Arthur Conan Doyle’s vision as authentically as possible.

That’s the difference.

I see you made the same point that occurred to me -- that one reason for the success of the Granada series was that they made good use of the original stories.  It's easy to forget that the quality of the stories was very relevant to the success of the series.  There's a reason why some of the canon I've only read once (mostly from Doyle's last two books, though they had many good stories as well).  There's also a reason why just about every rating of the stories lists "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" first.  (It was also the first I read, in my 9th grade reader, which also included an excerpt from The Caine Mutiny, "The Eletelephony", "The Cremation of Sam McGee", "The Tell-tale Heart", and "The Ransom of Red Chief".)

I can't tell where the old Baker Street set was.