You, Me & La Marseillaise

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Couldn't focus Monday no matter how hard I tried. So, I decided to finish off several sets of miniatures which needed basing, rebasing or just a new bit of foliage here and there to tidy them up.

Somehow, rather than finishing the day with a feeling that I'd accomplished something, I seem to have merely created more work for myself! I found that these guys only have 7 not 9 bases, these other guys are missing the support bases, over there those guys bases need to be drilled for drones, where's the command for this platoon? Aaaahhh!

Then whilst applying a GW wash to some bases, I'm thinking  "this is turning out very red."  It was, I'd opened Ogryn Flesh instead of Gryphone Sepia. :-o

The effect was interesting but not as colourful as my language. And then of course, I find the buggers are a squad short anyway. More filing, more basing, polyfilla, pva, sand, undercoating......

I should have just begun a new platoon of something, anything. So to cheer myself up, I took a spare bag of mixed Critical Mass Games' Light Recon and wopped their heads off, as I'd found a pack of Peter Pig separate heads wearing French berets (no onions or garlic) lurking around yesterday evening. I also cut down the bazookery thingy so it looks more like a LAW or shortened Charlie-G. Then pleased with myself and feeling very francophile, I sang/hummed three choruses of La Marseillaise.

When finished these guys will be the 'heavy' section d'assaut to my Pig French Foreign Legion for Tomorrow's War. etc I say when, as I happened to take a head from the Light Recon and tried it on a Pig Legionnaire - Oooh la la! C'est tres magnifique! I now have a pile of headless Frenchmen too!
 

Cheers

Mark
  

Film Review - INTIMATE ENEMIES (France 2007)

David, mon beau-père, popped round earlier in the week and dropped off a couple of DVD's for me to watch whilst I'm off work:

IN BRUGES; starring Colin Farrell and Brendon Gleeson, sort of Cohen Brothers meets Guy Ritchie gangster themed black comedy.

Kokoda-39TH BATTALION; starring Jack Finsterer, tells the tale of Australian troops fighting the Japanese in terrible conditions on the Kokoda Trail in Papua New Guinea, 1942. It's essentially a lost patrol movie focussing on 'mateship'. Worth watching in tandem with THE THIN RED LINE (1998).

INTIMATE ENEMIES; Benoit Magimel and Albert Dupontel lead in this gritty French language war movie set in French-occupied Algeria in 1959 at the height of the insurgency.

One of my favourite popcorn war movies of all time is LOST COMMAND (1966), starring Anthony Quinn as a tough French Paratroop C.O.. The action takes place mostly during the Algerian War of Independence (Guerre d'Algérie), 1954-1962. As a result I've always had a fondness for things French Military, particularly set in that post-war period of 'gallouise' French colonial history.


No surprises then that I was keen to watch INTIMATE ENEMIES, and I have to say the film didn't fail to deliver. It's brilliant. Gritty and often harrowing to watch, this is France's very own 9TH COMPANY. The film doesn't pull any punches about insurgency warfare and obviously one can draw comparisons with modern operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, (if you really feel you have to).



But the film also has a timeless quality that could see the action being played out within a TRAVELLER or similar Sci Fi setting. I think the French language, uniforms and equipment plus most of all, the alien nature of the Algerian mountains helps dislocate the viewer enough to be able to picture this as another godforsaken police action, on a godforsaken ball of mud at the arse end of the galaxy.

Eureka Miniatures 15mm French Foreign Legion
See more details here: Eurekla Miniatures

At the very least, INTIMATE ENEMIES will give you more fodder for AMBUSH ALLEY and AMBUSH ALLEY: Force on Force plus an excellent excuse to buy Eureka Miniatures 15mm Legionnaires. The figures in 'cowboy' hats just call out to be used as 'Mercs' regardless of whether it's 1960's Congo or 2160's Epsilon Indi.

Cheers
Mark