"Based on a true story...."

I particularly liked that David Carradine an actor who sang and played guitar was cast as Woody, eliminating those cute cut away shots

The Damned United is excellent. Michael Sheen nails Brian Clough. probably not so interesting for those who aren't into English football, but the story is very good nonetheless.

Read the entire thread. Reminded me of some movies I loved. Philomena is terrific. Another movie based on a true story starring Judi Dench that is a tour de force is Iris in which Kate Winslet and Judi Dench both play the novelist Iris Murdoch at different times in her life. There is nearly a six inch difference in height between the two women and their voices have markedly different pitches but they managed to pull it off.

Mozart...

...and Barabbas. (even when the movie is anything but the story found from different sources, the movie ending is close to what happened to him.)

Serial Mom. Hahaha....yeah, I know.
Then I recently watched Backcountry. Story of a couple who were attacked by a bear in a National park. Movie took the liberty to alter the survivor and the way one was eaten by the bear.

The Searchers, with John Wayne, Natalie Wood, and some others was loosely, and I mean very loosely based on historical events. The name of the little girl kidnapped was changed from Parker to something else, for no reason I can think of. She really stayed with the Comanche band, and later became the mother of Quanah Parker. No part of it happened in Monument Valley. That's just where John Ford filmed most of the John Wayne westerns.

I guess you could say it was pretty much fiction

The Long Riders didn't do too much damage to history, and speculation has to fill in where things are not known, or are in dispute. The Keach brothers spent nearly a decade getting financing and rounding up a cast. James and Stacy Keach played the James brothers; David, Keith and Robert Carradine played the Younger brothers; Dennis and Randy Quaid played the Miller brothers, and the Ford brothers were played by Christopher and Nicholas Guest. It may have seemed rather obsessive, but it was a nice touch. The narrative is never an outrageous departure from history, as far a i know.

EDIT: A few of the boys smile for the camera.

Just saw this thread, cool.
Theres a true story about 2 lions that hunted an killed anywhere between 30 and 130 Indian railroaad workers(depending on who we believe) who were hired by a British construction company to build a Railroad Bridge over the TSavo River in Kenya in 1898.
The event of the background, the hunt and the killing of the lions was depicted in the Movie The Ghost and the Darkness. The movie, starred Val Kilmer, as the engineer in charge of building the railroad bridge, and Michael Douglas, an American "white hunter" who was hired to do the hunting.

The movie took a lot of liberties (as do most "...based upon...." movies), but it was enjoyable . AND at the end , it reminded us that the actual skins of the two maneless male lions, had been bought , mounted and are now on display in the Field Museum in Chicago, since the late 1920.s.

Road Trip!!

The film Spotlight about the Boston Globe's at first reluctant unraveling of the priest abuse scandal is in theatres now. It is excellent. The writing is such that suspense is built up, despite that everyone knows the story.

The last time I saw that successfully pulled off was in the British made for television film known either as Life Story (in Britain) or The Race for the Double Helix (in the US) starring Jeff Goldblum as James Watson and Tim Piggot-Smith as Francis Crick.

The acting is also top drawer with two of my favorite character actors, Stanley Tucci and Liev Schreiber.

The Queen, about the current British monarch, during Diana's death. This movie made me like Helen Mirren. Then watched a couple more of her "based on a true story" movies.
Woman In Gold, about a woman trying to recover a valuable family painting after many years.
Calendar Girls, aha... we see her bare breasted. Come on, it is a British humor movie and it's true.

She's a treasure.

Helen Mirren was dynamite in "Woman in Gold". I've always loved Klimt and the true story behind the Nazi's looting of masterpieces. And the history of those who kept those paintings even after the Nazi's were defeated.

Speaking of which.
Watched The Train with Burt Lancaster about the struggle to stop the Germans from delivering French art treasures back to Nazi Germany.
Don't know how accurate it was but it sure was entertaining.

The film's story is loosely based on a book by Rose Valland

There you go. And it connects with The Monuments Men, another based on actual events.
Rose was a true heroine and deserves her own film.
Shame on Hollywood and Euro-Film.

My hero was Han von Meegeren who painted Vermeer knock offs and sold them to Goehring and Himmler. Von Meegeren was so good that he was arrested by the tribunals council and had to stand trial for Selling national treasures of Holland to the NAzis. The only way he saved his ass was to paint an actual knock off Vermeer in the court room.
There is a book "I am Vermeer" and "The Rape of Art" (about the Sonderauftrag Linz). "Rape..." mentioned von Meegeren as a small segment .

Yet there are several thousands of valuable art works stolen by the NAzis that remain unaccounted for . Ill bet that a few hundred are in private AMwrican or Brit collection because we were not acting in a purely selfless fashion.

Thanks for sharing that info. I vaguely remember a movie about WWII art treasures where they're loading army trucks with some artworks from a German tunnel full of them.

Every time I think I've heard everything about WWII, another part of the war is revealed. I can't remember if you and I talked about it before, but my Dad served in the Army Air Corp and he (like many others) was trained to do many things because many skills were necessary to survive. I know he installed early warning radar along the East Coast, he was an air traffic controller and also a D.I. Other things he didn't tell us until he was in his mid-70's. I'd have to go off forum to discuss that.

But I do remember Vermeer, makes me all happy that he sold knock-offs to Goehring and Himmler. This past summer our neighborhood lost our oldest member. He was 94 and served on a desalination ship, he survived a torpedo hit and so did the ship. When I think back, I realize I lived among so many brave and clever people who I assumed were just dads, uncles, and cousins or other kids dads, uncles or cousins. I didn't know that they were responsible for me being able to grow up in a safe place with access to education, health care and freedom.

Don't mean to be maudlin, but we have so much to be grateful for and I hope we are always grateful.

That's not maudlin; it's the truth that needs to be repeated for all to know. That includes all the good and the bad so that future generations learn from our mistakes.

Thank you CI, too often we take things for granted.