Dresden Does Suck After All
Cassandra-like, I made the call on Dresden, the ZDF's Pearl Harbor knockoff which has been bombing critically, if not in the figures:
"...I am going to go out on a limb and suggest that its politics will be half-hearted and its quality will be of that tentative tepidity we've come to appreciate from TV movies. As far as the bombing of Dresden is concerned, German voices of protest are doomed to be drowned out. Sympathy for its citizens is too easily mingled with the plight of the Nazis. As Spielberg and other comparable pop filmmakers attest, they are still quite expendable."
Eagle-eyed Anglofritz reader Victor N. also makes a sizable point:
"It seems that the made-for-TV status will relegate Dresden: The Inferno to a mere flash-in-the-pan, just some fun in the afternoon: Germans talking about Germans' history and not something for the Poles or the French to have a say about. Will the movie ever play in British or American theaters (I'm thinking of smaller houses that screen foreign and independent films)? It will have to be shown im Ausland if it is ever to generate transcontinental, let alone intercontinental dialogue. Right?"
Right, Victor. There might be a discussion somewhere in there, but if Teamworx get the viewers, what do they care? In the meantime, it's safe to say that Dresden is not leaving the country.