Month: October 2017

094: The Puritan of the North

Mark Podcast
Venustiano Carranza, the 37th President of Mexico.

 

After the murder of Francisco Madero and the accession of Victoriano Huerta, the revolutionaries Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata returned to the field to fight against the new regime, joined now by the governor of Coahuila, Venustiano Carranza, and Woodrow Wilson, who ordered the US military to seize the Mexican port of Veracruz.

Listen:

 

Download.

Transcript.

 

Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening War Theme

“Morenita”
Written and performed by Ed Kliman, and used pursuant to a Creative Commons CC BY-NC 3.0 license. Source.

“La Cucaracha”
Traditional. Public domain.
Performed by Kenmayer (mix), Sean Buss (Guitar), Elisa (vocals), and created as a supplement to the Educational Options Spanish course (edoptions.com). Used pursuant to a Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0 license. Source.

Closing War Theme

 

Except when otherwise indicated, the contents of this podcast are © and ℗ 2016, 2017 by Mark Painter, all rights reserved. Some music and sound effects used by arrangement with Pond 5.

The Great War in Modern Film

Mark Pop Culture

Interesting article using Wonder Woman as the point of departure for an examination of why so few American films are set during the Great War:

And yet, Wonder Woman is something of an anomaly at the box office: Hollywood rarely supplies Great War stories. Of the top 25 highest-grossing films from 2011 to 2016, just 14 percent were set during a clearly defined historical period, according to data from the Motion Pictures Association of America. Of those, two (The King’s Speech and Captain America: The First Avenger) were set during WWII; none were set during WWI.

Period war films remain prestige projects in Hollywood, and they still see fairly regular releases. But so far in the 2010s, several WWII-set films including Hacksaw Ridge (2016), The Imitation Game (2014), and The Book Thief (2013) have been nominated for Academy Awards, while Stephen Spielberg’s War Horse (2011) was the only nominee to take place during the Great War. WWI’s share of acclaimed films most often come from outside the U.S.—think of Australia’s Gallipoli (1981), the United Kingdom’s Regeneration (1997), or the 2016 French-German release Frantz. Iconic American contributions to the genre, such as Lawrence of Arabia (1962) or All Quiet on the Western Front (1930, 1979), tend to be older.

So why is the Great War missing from the American movie theaters? The void stems in part from how the U.S. preserved the war in contemporaneous media. But a greater part, perhaps, has to do with how the conflict reflects on the U.S. as a nation….

093: The Twenty-One Demands

Mark Podcast
Japanese field gun position during the siege of Qingdao.

 

Japan was allied with Britain, and eagerly entered the Great War soon after it began. Helping out your ally is nice, but also the Germans had some colonial possessions in the western Pacific.

Listen:

 

Download.

Transcript.

 

Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening War Theme

“Kimigayo” (The national anthem of Japan)
Traditional. Public domain.
Performed by the United States Navy Band. Public domain recording. Source.

“Spring Blossoms on a Moonlit River”
Traditional. Public domain.

Closing War Theme

 

Except when otherwise indicated, the contents of this podcast are © and ℗ 2016, 2017 by Mark Painter, all rights reserved. Some music and sound effects used by arrangement with Pond 5.

092: Home Before the Leaves Fall

Mark Podcast
The front lines in 1914. The dotted red lines in the south show the farthest advance of the German right flank. The solid red line shows the German position after they fell back. The dotted red line running north from the right end of the German line shows the “Race to the Sea.” The Western Front will remain stable along these lines for the next three and a half years.

 

The failure of Germany’s offensive in the West leads to a static front line that will not change very much for the next three and a half years. Military leaders on both sides considered what to do next.

Listen.

Download.

Transcript.

 

Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening War Theme

Coriolan Overture
Composed in 1807 by Ludwig van Beethoven. Public domain.
Public domain recording. Source.

Closing War Theme

 

Except when otherwise indicated, the contents of this podcast are © and ℗ 2016, 2017 by Mark Painter, all rights reserved. Some music and sound effects used by arrangement with Pond 5.

091: The Luxury Navy

Mark Podcast
German illustration depicting the sinkings of HMS Aboukir, HMS Hogue, and HMS Cressy by U-9 in September 1914.

 

Germany heavily invested in its Navy in the two decades prior to the Great War. In this episode, we see what all that investment bought.

Listen:

 

Download.

Transcript.

 

Playlist:

Fanfare

Opening War Theme

The Hebrides
Composed in 1830 by Felix Mendelssohn. Public domain.
Performed by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra. Public domain recording. Source.

Closing War Theme

 

Except when otherwise indicated, the contents of this podcast are © and ℗ 2016, 2017 by Mark Painter, all rights reserved. Some music and sound effects used by arrangement with Pond 5.