{"id":13380,"date":"2016-03-29T15:00:36","date_gmt":"2016-03-29T19:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=13380"},"modified":"2016-03-29T15:08:10","modified_gmt":"2016-03-29T19:08:10","slug":"dvd-turned-towards-the-sun-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=13380","title":{"rendered":"DVD: Turned Towards the Sun (2012)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"TurnedTowardsTheSun\"Film<\/strong>:\u00a0Very Good<\/p>\n

Transfer<\/strong>: Very Good<\/p>\n

Extras<\/strong>:\u00a0Good<\/p>\n

Label:\u00a0<\/strong>Secret Weapon Films \/ MVD Visual<\/a><\/p>\n

Region:<\/strong>\u00a00 (NTSC)<\/p>\n

Released:<\/strong>\u00a0December 15, 2015<\/p>\n

Genre:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0Documentary \/ WWII<\/p>\n

Synopsis:<\/strong>\u00a0Intimate chronicle of Micky Burn, a WWII commando who participated in Operation Chariot, the daring 1942 raid on a dry port in Naraire, France, and his 3 year incarceration at Colditz Castle.<\/p>\n

Special Features:<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>5 deleted scenes: \u201cAirplane Poem\u201d (1:55) + \u201cMickey Outtakes\u201d (6:05) + Saint Nazaire Tour\u201d (8:12) + \u201cSunset Poem\u201d (1:50) + \u201cTour of Mickey\u2019s House\u201d (8:28).<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

Review:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Made after he co-directed the critically lauded Lemmy<\/strong> (2010) with Wes Orshsoki, Greg Oliver\u2019s Turned Towards the Sun<\/strong> is an intimate chronicle of Micky Burn, a WWII veteran who participated in the daring and deadly Operation Chariot<\/a>, in which a team of British commandos rammed a TNT-packed ship into a dock in St. Nazaire, France, to prevent the Nazis from maintaining their battleship Tirpitz<\/a> in what was then Europe\u2019s largest dry dock.<\/p>\n

Burn was ultimately arrested and locked up in Colditz Castle<\/a> for three years, after which he returned to postwar civilian life building a mussels business in his hometown in Wales.<\/p>\n

Although he passed away at the age of 97 in 2010, Oliver managed to interview Burn in 2008 and 2009, and followed him when the vet returned to St. Nazaire for a rare reunion with two other survivors, and his first trip back to Colditz \u2013 two sequences that make up the doc\u2019s main historic highlights \u2013 but as Burn admits, he\u2019s a man who happened to be in the right places at the right times, meeting and affecting a sometimes unreal group of people.<\/p>\n

Born into a semi-privileged family \u2013 his father worked for the royal family \u2013 Burn began as a journalist, became a heroic commando, war prisoner, and through an act of generosity saved the life of a future film star.<\/p>\n

He also shifted politically from a pre-war admirer of Adolf Hitler to a Marxist. Burn met Hitler twice \u2013 the first at the 1935 Nuremburg party rally, the annual fascistic lovefest documented by Leni Riefenstalh in Victory of Faith<\/a><\/strong> (1933) and Triumph of the Will<\/a> <\/strong>(1935). Burn reluctantly explains the reasons why many upper-class Brits looked upon Hitler\u2019s regime with wonder: after the defeat and massive depressions following WWI, Germany managed to rebuild itself from the ashes of war, and regain its national pride, re-establishing itself on the world stage with bits of economic miracles.<\/p>\n

Burn also discusses being gay in 1940s Britain, his relationship with notorious Cambridge Spy<\/a> member Guy Burgess<\/a>, and his committed marriage to Mary Booker, who was also his muse, inspiring his numerous published poems.<\/p>\n

Oliver filmed Burn at a period when the war vet had already engaged a historian to gather the massive personal archive of correspondences, photos, documents, and home movies, so that after his passing an organized archive would chronicle the historic events and his personal challenges. Burn\u2019s wit and health remained solid due to what he describes as always being in love, and loving a treasured activity, and although his WWII heroics are a main anchor within the film\u2019s narrative, it\u2019s really about capturing the nuances of the man in candid private moments when he\u2019s alone, with friends, and reflecting on old companions.<\/p>\n

That informal approach \u2013 augmented by an extremely sparse score \u2013 does affect the films\u2019 pacing, but Oliver\u2019s film is like a filmic archive, assembling past and present day snapshots and vignettes for a man few may have heard of. There\u2019s a few excerpts from an early seventies BBC doc narrated by Burn as he visited St. Nazaire for the first time, and Oliver\u2019s film takes its title from Burn\u2019s 2003 autobiography.<\/p>\n

MVD\u2019s DVD includes some bonus footage, mostly outtakes of Burn reciting poetry in flight to Nazaire, at a sunset, and during a tour of his rustic home, but the most interesting is a lengthy tour given by his colleagues who describe their landing, fighting off German soldiers, blowing up the wheelhouse, and being discovered by German officers after finding refuge for their wounded comrades.<\/p>\n

The St. Nazaire Raid was dramatized in two \u2018fictionalized\u2019 films Gift Horse<\/strong> (1952) and the low-budget quickie Attack on the Iron Coast<\/a><\/strong> (1968). Burn also appeared in Jeremy Clarkson\u2019s 2007 BBC doc The Greatest Raid of All Time<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a9 2016 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

External References:<\/strong>
\nEditor’s Blog<\/a> — IMDB<\/a>
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\nVendor Search Links:<\/strong>
\nAmazon.ca<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.com<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Made after he co-directed the critically lauded Lemmy (2010) with Wes Orshsoki, Greg Oliver\u2019s Turned Towards the Sun is an intimate chronicle of Micky Burn, a WWII veteran who participated in the daring and deadly Operation Chariot, in which a team of British commandos rammed a TNT-packed ship…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[4224,4362,4361,4363,4364,4365,4360],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-3tO","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13380"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13380"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13391,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13380\/revisions\/13391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}