Monday, March 23, 2015

The Wipers Times (2013)


THE WIPERS TIMES  (2013)  
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    D: Andy De Emmony
    Ben Chaplin, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Steve Oram,
    Michael Palin, Ben Daniels, Josh O'Connor,
    Jarrod Cooke, Colm Ash, Hugh Skinner
British troops dodging bullets in Belgium and France during the Great War uncover a printing press and use it to publish their own satirical trench newspaper. A case study in narrative compression, a 90-minute movie in which nothing seems wasted and puns and jokes punctuate the script the way artillery fire punctuates the background soundtrack. That's no accident, and in fact, it's a big part of what the movie's about: the way humor in any form helps keep men in battle from going insane. Michael Palin's well cast as a sympathetic general who (unlike some of his junior officers) both reads the paper and gets the joke. Produced for British television.