Category: Band of Brothers

Trivia Tuesday: Tom Hanks’ Surprise for Damian Lewis on his 30th Birthday

damianlewisbuffalo

Welcome to the most special week of the year: Damian’s Birthday Week! We plan a cute little Birthday Party for our favorite guy on the blog on Thursday and Friday but why not kick off the celebrations today with a lovely trivia about Damian’s 30th Birthday?

We all know Tom Hanks played a major role in making Damian an internationally known actor. We blogged earlier about how Spielberg and Hanks cast Damian Lewis as Dick Winters in Band of Brothers.

source: tircuit.com
source: tircuit.com

Damian tells Independent that, once he was cast for the role, he had the opportunity to hang out with Steven Spielberg as well as Tom Hanks for a while, and in his own words, got to know, “what kids they are.” 🙂 Continue reading “Trivia Tuesday: Tom Hanks’ Surprise for Damian Lewis on his 30th Birthday”

Major Dick Winters: We Salute the Rank and the Man

damianlewisdickwinters2
source: People Magazine

Major Richard Winters died 5 years ago today. He is the real life hero that we all have come to know as the charismatic and compassionate commander of Easy Company in Band of Brothers. His obituary in Washington Post makes a note about his  leadership through a letter written by Floyd Talbert, one of his soldiers, to thank Major Winters for his loyalty and leadership in the war: “You are loved and will never be forgotten by any soldier that ever served under you. I would follow you into hell.”

After the war, Major Winters led a quiet and peaceful life on his farm in Fredericksburg and in his home in Hershey, Pennsylvania until Band of Brothers — the book as well as the TV series — put him into the international spotlight. He was a true WWII hero who was never comfortable being called one. When asked if he was a hero, he liked to answer the way his WWII buddy Mike Ranney did to his grandson: “No, but I served in a company of heroes.” This became a major tagline in Band of Brothers.

Major Winters died like he lived. Quietly. And, upon his request, his funeral service was private and unannounced. We are honored to make a tribute to his great war hero on this day.  Continue reading “Major Dick Winters: We Salute the Rank and the Man”

Bastogne

battle of the bulge, bastogne, band of brothers
Source: http://yalebooksblog.co.uk/2014/12/22/held-bastogne-2-americans-strike-back/

This week marks the 71st anniversary of the Seige at Bastogne, a pivotal confrontation in Battle of the Bulge, which saw the Allied forces assert their most courageous and bloody defense against the last big push by Nazi forces in WWII.

The Bastogne episode of Band of Brothers was arguably the most emotionally intense and beautifully filmed of the series. It was like watching a dream sequence through a filter of constant snow, a bitter cold that you could almost feel in your bones as you’re watching. Or an opera of bodies, bent over, running for cover, crouching near trees, or frozen solid to the ground. You could watch all the action without sound and still feel it viscerally.

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Band of Brothers before and after 9/11

onecollageFourteen years ago today, September 9, 2001, a documentary-like mini-series tribute to D-Day and to WWII, Band of Brothers, aired its two first episodes. Two days later that same year the world turned upside down. It was very difficult for any entertainment to be very entertaining in the days after September 11, 2001. If there were people who looked at ratings, advertising revenue, critical reviews and other such metrics to gauge the success of a series, chances are that they, like the rest of us, were distracted by other headlines. On this anniversary, I wanted to examine how Band of Brothers was perceived by critics, before and after September 11, 2001.

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Revisiting Dick Winters

A week or so short of the 14 year anniversary of the airing of the first episode of Band of Brothers, let’s revisit my second post on this blog, “Before Nicholas Brody, there was Dick Winters”. Seems the love for this series has never abated and in the months since I published this post, the remembrances of Damian Lewis as Dick Winters are still steady and strong. Enjoy!

Damian Lewis’ first role as an American was in the role of Dick Winters in Spielberg/Hanks’ Band of Brothers. (Fun fact: the title Band of Brothers is taken from Shakespeare, from Henry V’s speech to his troops: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother”)

Source: HBO
Source: HBO

Continue reading “Revisiting Dick Winters”