The Pacific (series)

[Craig]

Apparently you can watch the first episode online on HBO: http://www.pacificfans.com/ Whether they'll upload more than one episode I think is pretty unlikely but I dunno if I can wait for the DVD release to get a taste of the series for myself. EDIT: Damn, seems it was posted accidentally or too early and HBO have removed it.

[MinionZombie]

Apparently you can watch the first episode online on HBO: http://www.pacificfans.com/ Whether they'll upload more than one episode I think is pretty unlikely but I dunno if I can wait for the DVD release to get a taste of the series for myself. If you have Sky Movies you'll get it there soon, not sure whether they'll show it on channels that all Sky users have, and indeed no idea how long it'd be until it turns up on BBC or whoever else after that.

[ProfessorChaos]

recorded this while i was at work this evening, then me and some buds from work picked up some beers and watched it after work. pretty good stuff, no complaints. nothing ground-breaking, but it's WWII and there's tons of films/movies already out there, so what do you expect? definitely had that "band of brothers" feel to it. all the acting was top-notch. uniforms, weapons, and locations all looked authentic and convincing. good character establishment/development so far. the action scenes were pretty intense, though it took a bit to get to them. i've seen a few preview hinting at lots more epic battle scenes, and i believe that next week's episode will cover how basilone won his medal of honor. on a side note, i was reading my local sunday paper today and there was an article by a woman who's father and uncle both served in the pacific, her uncle is one of the featured characters. in the article, she mentioned something about a dvd due out in may...? seems like a pretty early release, but if they're already done filming and whatnot, maybe we'll be able to purchase the series (very) shortly after its initial run on HBO. all in all awesome stuff so far, and i'm very excited about what's yet in store.

[Neil]

recorded this while i was at work this evening, then me and some buds from work picked up some beers and watched it after work. pretty good stuff, no complaints. nothing ground-breaking, but it's WWII and there's tons of films/movies already out there, so what do you expect? definitely had that "band of brothers" feel to it. all the acting was top-notch. uniforms, weapons, and locations all looked authentic and convincing. good character establishment/development so far. the action scenes were pretty intense, though it took a bit to get to them. i've seen a few preview hinting at lots more epic battle scenes, and i believe that next week's episode will cover how basilone won his medal of honor. on a side note, i was reading my local sunday paper today and there was an article by a woman who's father and uncle both served in the pacific, her uncle is one of the featured characters. in the article, she mentioned something about a dvd due out in may...? seems like a pretty early release, but if they're already done filming and whatnot, maybe we'll be able to purchase the series (very) shortly after its initial run on HBO. all in all awesome stuff so far, and i'm very excited about what's yet in store. So how much of BoB and this series are based on true people/events?

[ProfessorChaos]

the inspiration for "band of brothers" was a book by the same name, and "the pacific" is based upon two books, "helmet for my pillow" and "with the old breed". all are based on true events, characters, and settings, with the latter being authored by two men featured as central characters in "the pacific". with BoB, the series stays pretty true to the source material, but not always. here's the wiki entry's section about the accuracy of the tv adaptation: In order to preserve historical accuracy, additional research was done outside of the Band of Brothers book by Ambrose, Spielberg, and Hanks. One such source was Easy Company soldier David Kenyon Webster, a budding writer. His memoir, Parachute Infantry: An American Paratrooper's Memoir of D-Day and the Fall of the Third Reich, was published by LSU Press in 1994 after his death in a boating accident. Stephen Ambrose's Band of Brothers book quotes liberally from Webster's then-unpublished diary entries. Webster's trained eye, honesty, and writing skills helped give the book and miniseries a tone not available in other G.I.s' diaries because it captured in detail the daily life of the infantryman working his way with comrades across Europe. Dale Dye, a retired Marine Corps captain and consultant on Saving Private Ryan, as well as most of the surviving Easy Company veterans, such as Richard Winters, Bill Guarnere, Ed Heffron, and Amos Taylor, were asked for input.[7][18] Dye (who additionally plays the role of Robert F. Sink) had the actors undergo a 10-day boot camp.[18] Similarly, great attention was paid to details of weapons and costumes. Simon Atherton, the weapons master, corresponded with veterans to match weapons to scenes, and assistant costume designer Joe Hobbs extensively used photos and veteran accounts.[7] Similarly, most actors had contact with the people they were meant to portray, often by telephone, and several of the veterans came to the production site.[7] Nonetheless, co-executive producer Tom Hanks admitted that they could not provide complete accuracy: "We've made history fit onto our screens. We had to condense down a vast number of characters, fold other people's experiences into 10 or 15 people, have people saying and doing things others said or did. We had people take off their helmets to identify them, when they would never have done so in combat. But I still think it is three or four times more accurate than most films like this."[11] As a final accuracy check, the veterans saw previews of the series and approved the episodes before they were aired.[19] Nonetheless, some inaccuracies did manage to get into the series, such as in the case of Albert Blithe. Blithe is a focal point of the third episode, which incorrectly states that he died in 1948. In fact, Blithe lived on to 1967 i imagine they'll probably do the same with a few moments in the pacific. but still, it'll be pretty darn close and will most likely be on the same level (if not better) than BoB.

[Neil]

Well, here's hoping! I think BoB was probably one of the best pieces of TV (drama) I have ever seen...

[paulannett]

Well, here's hoping! I think BoB was probably one of the best pieces of TV (drama) I have ever seen... Without a shadow of a doubt it's my favourite, I've rewatched it more than anything else I've ever owned.

[Neil]

Without a shadow of a doubt it's my favourite, I've rewatched it more than anything else I've ever owned. Actually, there's me asking how legit was it.... but if I recall each episode started with a interview with some of the real people? Is that right? I can't recall clearly?

[paulannett]

Each episode did start with a brief interview with the real Easy Co veterans. They usually gave their thoughts on the main theme of each episode (from what I remember). eg. In the episode The Replacements (I'm sure it's called that), the veterans give their thoughts on the real replacements and how they were treated.

[MinionZombie]

Watched the first episode and I thought it was pretty good. We've got to get used to this not being Band of Brothers, first of all, and get introduced to a whole new bunch of soldiers and in a different theatre of war. It's not an action-heavy episode, which is a good thing really, as it lets us ease into things a bit first - although there's more action in it than the first episode of BoB (i.e. we've seen the training episode in that, so there's not really much need to see that aspect again with this crew). I'm eager to see how the next episode plays out, as I think this first episode sets things up quite well - a solid footing to kick things off with, shall we say.

[AcesandEights]

Well, I can certainly agree that the Thin Red Line was annoying as fuck and for the exact reasons mentioned above.

[paulannett]

Watched the first episode and I thought it was pretty good. We've got to get used to this not being Band of Brothers, first of all, and get introduced to a whole new bunch of soldiers and in a different theatre of war. It's not an action-heavy episode, which is a good thing really, as it lets us ease into things a bit first - although there's more action in it than the first episode of BoB (i.e. we've seen the training episode in that, so there's not really much need to see that aspect again with this crew). I'm eager to see how the next episode plays out, as I think this first episode sets things up quite well - a solid footing to kick things off with, shall we say. Where did you see it, MZ?

[MinionZombie]

Where did you see it, MZ? It's a secret ... but I can say that ninjas were involved.

[MikePizzoff]

So how much of BoB and this series are based on true people/events? Both are based on real people/events. If you ever watch BoB you'll see the actual real-life soldiers in the opening of each episode. My buddy's grandmother lives next door to one of the guys, in South Philly.

[Craig]

Here's Wikipedia's synopsis for the benefit of Neil and anyone else: The Pacific is based primarily on two memoirs of U.S. Marines, With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa by Eugene Sledge and Helmet for My Pillow by Robert Leckie. The series will tell the stories of the two authors and Marine John Basilone, as the war against the Empire of Japan rages. It also draws on Sledge's China Marine and Red Blood, Black Sand, the memoir of Chuck Tatum, a Marine who fought alongside Basilone at Iwo Jima. The series will feature well-known battles involving the 1st Marine Division, such as Guadalcanal, Cape Gloucester, Peleliu, and Okinawa, as well as Basilone's involvement in the Battle of Iwo Jima. I read Sledges book With the Old Breed last summer, certainly an excellent read and many would say the best war memoir to date, I'd probably pick up Leckie's book if I didn't have a lot of books to read already. The opinions of reviewers and forumgoers on the Pacific Fans website, while generally positive haven't all been overwhelmingly so, which I'm kinda happy about since it keeps me from getting overly excited myself, because despite how good it may turn out to be it's only a (very long) film after all, certainly not the be-all and end-all of the history behind it.