Quentin Tarantino on seeing the insane final shootout in A Better Tomorrow II (1987) for the first time:
“I remember when I watched John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow II, I was watching it with a buddy of mine, and it’s all building to this big climax. We hadn’t seen this movie before, so we didn’t know they were going to have the biggest shootout in the history of film.
My friend turns to me and goes, ‘If they don’t get naked and boogie at the end of this movie, this has been for nothing.’
He was right! Doesn’t matter that we enjoyed everything leading up to the end, it had to end in, like, a big way or it was all nothing!”
https://t.co/Ry8QbsNK18
Dear Dave Chappelle,
You are not the same human being you once were. You are no longer a champion of compassionate freedom of thought, a person who makes people question their prejudices and preconceived judgements. An entertainer who asks their audience to open their minds and hearts more.
Dave, you are now a champion of senseless violence who embodies the base ugliness of our body politic.
Nobody deserves to die for engaging in conversation. And no one should “feel better” after the violent murder of a husband, a father, a son and a friend. No human being deserves that.
I remain your friend and hope that you will come back to your great spirit of generosity and compassion that earned you the love and respect of so many of us.
Love,
Rob Schneider
Sadly, the last known surviving WW2 veteran of the SAS, Matthew "Matt/Jock" Mackinnon-Pattison died on Thursday 5th November aged 102years. We remember Matthew. Here is a summary of Matthew's wartime service. Please share widely: Matt MacKinnon Pattison was among hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers who fought Germans in Italy in the spring of 1944.
Sometimes remembered as the "D-Day Dodgers", in reference to their role away from Normandy, men in Italy faced brutal conditions as they battled to take Monte Cassino and dislodge enemy soldiers.
"We came back from Italy having flogged ourselves to pieces, nervous wrecks, and people say 'where were you on D-Day?'" said Matt, from Penrith, Cumbria.
"We just say we were busy bloody well fighting."
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill thought of Italy as the "soft underbelly" of Nazi-dominated Europe, but the campaign there proved difficult and costly.
With perhaps typical military irony, the men in Italy adopted the "D-Day Dodgers" moniker, even creating a song to the tune of Lili Marleen, a famous wartime melody.
"We are the D-Day Dodgers in sunny Italy," rang the chorus.
But this was no sojourn in the sun and the Allied forces knew it.
Enemy soldiers were dug in on defensive lines across the country, and at Monte Cassino it took four separate attacks from US, British, Polish and Commonwealth forces to destroy and take the hilltop monastery.
Matt still has razor-sharp memories of the battles he fought, and the comrades he lost.
He fled agricultural service in Kilmarnock as a teenager to get to Glasgow to enlist as an infantryman before ending up "right in the forefront" of the battle for Monte Cassino.
Advancing up the slopes amid the fog of deadly artillery bomb blasts and the continual crackle of gunfire, the soldier saw many of his comrades fall.
But, he said, there was no time to be frightened.
"You don’t look upon it as bravery, you just look at it as part of your life," he told the BBC.
"When the officers told you to advance, that was what you had to do.
"Every battle is the same. You get pounded to death, whether it was Normandy, Burma or anywhere."
Matt was recruited for the SAS after being injured and taken to a Naples hospital to recover.
From 100 candidates, he was just one of 10 that made it. He was dropped behind enemy lines near Genoa, tasked with finding Italian dictator Mussolini who by then had been captured by partisans.
Once the war was over, he was sent to Germany as part of the War Crimes Unit to find Nazi suspects who had executed captured members of the SAS.
There, he said, he saw a broken nation, but people "just like us".
Eight decades on, he can clearly recall the claustrophobic horror of war, from German soldiers playing dead to entice Allied soldiers into shooting range, to landmines and enormous loss.
"I lost a lot of my mates, especially one called Ginger," he said.
"And when he died he was sitting in a trench with his head down. There was a smile on his face."
"Still a smile on his face that marked the place where he and his maker met.
"And that was Ginger. He was a good lad."
Dodging D-Day was no pass, and so many thousands paid the ultimate price in Italy.
In his flat, Matt still has his SAS beret, his medals and his memories.
He also has his nation’s thanks.
(Source: https://t.co/DJA1rW5gra)
A Ukrainian Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle, supported by an M1 Abrams tank, breaks through Russian defensive lines, advancing toward a treeline controlled by Russian forces.
"At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them."
Today, Royal Navy personnel joined the nation in two minutes' silence to remember those who gave their lives for our freedom.
#RemembranceSunday
It was only right that we brought in the legendary rave flyer artist Junior Tomlin to create the iconic artwork for ‘Hypnotise 808’.
It’s OUT NOW on Bandcamp!
https://t.co/ofQl4xTcud
@blame720 Got his book a few years back . You brought the sound he brought the vision . This is one of my faves of his , probably one of the greatest jungle compilations of all time imo.