Band of Brothers
Also on this holiday, I managed to finish watching Band of Brothers (wow, this series seriously has more than 10 years already??), and I think I liked it more than it's healthy. I'm not usually interested by World War II media and, frankly, I don't know what the hell motivated me to get the DVD for Band of Brothers (probably because it was cheaper than the usual), but I definitely don't regret it.
Band of Brothers takes a slightly different approach for the World War II events, telling the story of a bunch of guys rather than doing an overview of the WWII like any other documentary. Maybe this is what makes it so good: it portrays soldiers as human beings rather than those heroic images we usually see in video games and movies. There wasn't a single character I didn't love and hate through the course of the series. For an instance, I hated Guarnere with passion when the Easy Company landed at Normandy just because he didn't follow Winters' orders, but until the Bastogne events, he had already become one of my favorite characters (along with Dick Winters, Malarkey, Lip, Doc Roe and Buck). I like the fact that no character is black-and-white, nor they should be. Hell, they ARE human beings, for heaven's sake.
There are several hero movie clichès. Since it is a story told in the point of view of the Allies faction, the Axis is obviously portrayed as the most hideous and villainous creatures of the universe (and I think that every country that sided with the Allies will see it that way) and pretty much every non-American will always screw up with the story at some point, even though I'm pretty sure that in real life that's not what happened. Still, I try to ignore this and see Band of Brothers just as a beautiful story of a bunch of guys who stood together in a difficult situation and had to face starvation, cold, losses and homesickness.
Bonus points for the DVD's extras:
...seriously, the backstage is better than any TeniMyu. With a bit less of fanservice, okay. But still, absolutely hilarious.
I loved the series so much that I ended up buying Stephen E. Ambrose's book and read it right away. *sighs*