ACADEMY AWARDS LIVE STREAM

Downfall [DVD]

Called dramatic, accurate and harrowing by the San Francisco Chronicle and nominated for the Oscar(r)for Best Foreign Film, Downfall takes you into Hitler’s bunker during the brutal and harrowing last days of the Third Reich. Seen through the eyes of Hitler’s infamous secretary Traudl Junge, optimism crumbles into grim realization and terror as it becomes clear that Germany’s defeat is inevitable. As the Russian army circles the city, the dimly lit halls of the underground refuge become an execution chamber for the Fuhrer and his closest advisors.

Setting the scene for what follows….as briefly as possible.

Prior to 1802 all that lay between Poole and Christchurch was pretty much uninhabited heathland criss crossed by various tracks worn by those travelling across the heath between the surrounding towns and villages.
Across the north and east of the heath were small long established communities such as Wick, Iford [ Pokesdown ], Holdenhurst and Throop. To the mainly poor agricultural folk that lived in the villages the heath was a valuable asset that allowed them to graze their livestock, cut heather turf for fuel to heat their homes and to cook upon, and to gather a whole host of materials that could be used for a variety of purposes.
Apart from these small communities the heath itself was for all intents and purposes uninhabited. There were some exceptions that i won’t go into detail about here [ Bourne House / Decoy Pond Cottage, Stourfield House, Littledown House] although further information is available elsewhere in my photostream on Flickr.

Between 1802 and 1805 the heath that had been common land was effectively privatised with some owning large amounts of land and others relatively small plots. [The Christchurch Inclosure Act 1802 – The Christchurch Inclosure Act Awards 1805.]
As the heathland wasn’t suited for farming traditional crops much of the land was planted with pine trees that could one day be harvested to supply the building and mining trades.
However in 1810 a plot of land was purchased by Lewis Tregonwell, a Dorset estate owner, from Sir George Tapps for the purposes of erecting a large house to be used as a holiday home. This act is celebrated as the official birth of Bournemouth with the house still existing within the structure of the Royal Exeter Hotel that still stands opposite the B.I.C.
Tregonwell purchased further land and built up a modest estate dotted with a few cottages for staff members and a few for letting mainly to friends, family and aquaintances. The estate, known as Bourne Tregonwell, remained all but unknown to the outside world.
In 1835 Sir George Tapps, who owned much land in the vicinity of Bourne Tregonwell, mainly to the east of the Bourne stream, passed away and his son Sir George Gervis inherited the land. Perhaps inspired by the efforts made at Bourne Tregonwell he set about creating a new seaside resort that was known initially as the Marine Village of Bourne and included the Bath Hotel, Belle Vue Hotel, public baths and Westover Villas. It was this development that really sparked the development of Bournemouth as we know it today.

As what might be described as the Original Bournemouth spread out from what we would think of today as the town centre more and more people were needed to build new properties and to provide services to those residing in them. As there was a need for working class / artisan properties to be built as people couldn’t keep travelling in from Poole and Christchurch everyday,
a small area in the town centre, in modern terms behind where Debenhams now stands, became a small artisan development and eventually led to the town’s first shops opening along what is now Commercial Rd in the 1850s
Soon the land prices anywhere near the town centre were too expensive for working class folk to afford and so Springbourne and Winton began to grow as artisan areas in the 1860s / 70s.

By 1856 there was a need to bring a sense of cohesion to the growing development around the town centre and so Parliament set Bournemouth’s first boundary as being within a one mile radius of today’s Pier Approach. This was known as the Commissioners boundary, the Commissioners being in effect the town’s first Council, charged with the task of raising funds from property rates [ an early form of Council Tax ], with which to pay for much needed improvements such as better roads, drainage, sewers and public services such as street cleaning.
The town continued to grow at a rapid rate especially between the 1870s, when the railway first arrived, and 1900.
As the town had expanded parts of the surrounding area that lay outside the Commissioners boundary had also started to be developed. Between 1876 and 1932 Bournemouth expanded it’s boundaries with Parliamentary consent, to include outlying areas such as Boscombe, Pokesdown, Westbourne and going on to include everything that is part of Bournemouth today.

Now we are getting closer to the matter at hand which is the history of that part of Christchurch Rd that is today the Boscombe Precinct…….but we’re not quite there yet.

In 1810 when Lewis Tregonwell purchased the land upon which he built a large villa, as previously mentioned, there was no development of any sort at Boscombe, with one exception.
A small cottage, known as Boscombe Cottage, stood a few hundred yards to the south of the track that crossed the heath between Christchurch and Poole, that became today’s Christchurch Rd. It was there in 1801 and possibly before, and existed in isolation, occupi

Major Richard "Dick" D. Winters (January 21, 1918 – January 2, 2011) was a United States Army officer and decorated war veteran. He commanded Company "E", 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, during World War II.
Winters parachuted into Normandy in the early hours of D-Day, and fought across France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and eventually into Germany. Later in the war, Winters rose to command the 2nd Battalion. Following the end of hostilities Winters was discharged from the army and returned to civilian life, working in New Jersey.
In 1951, during the Korean War, Winters was recalled to the Army from the inactive list and briefly served as a regimental planning and training officer on staff at Fort Dix, New Jersey. Although issued orders for deployment, he was not sent to Korea. After his discharge he worked at a few different jobs before founding his own company and selling farming products.
Winters was featured in a number of books and was portrayed in the 2001 HBO mini-series Band of Brothers by Damian Lewis. He was a regular guest lecturer at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He retired in 1997. He was the last of the Easy Company commanders to die.
Winters enlisted in the army on August 25, 1941, in order to shorten his time in service. In September he underwent basic training at Camp Croft, South Carolina. Afterwards he remained at Camp Croft to help train draftees and other volunteers, while the rest of his battalion was deployed to Panama. In April 1942 he was selected to attend Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia. It was there he met his friend Lewis Nixon, with whom he would serve throughout the war in the 101st Airborne Division. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant after graduation from OCS on July 2, 1942.
During the course of his officer training, Winters reached the decision that he wanted to join the parachute infantry. Upon completing training he returned to Camp Croft to train another draft as there were no positions available in the paratroopers at that time. After five weeks he received orders to join the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment at Camp Toccoa (formerly Camp Toombs) in Georgia.
He arrived at Toccoa in mid-August 1942 and was assigned to Company E, 2nd Battalion, 506th PIR, serving under First Lieutenant (later Captain) Herbert Sobel. Company E was also known as "Easy Company" per the contemporaneous Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet. Initially he served as a platoon leader in charge of 2nd Platoon, but later, in October 1942, he was promoted to first lieutenant and became the acting company executive officer, although this was not made official until May 1943. The 506th PIR was an experimental unit, being the first regiment to undertake airborne training as a formed unit. As many of the men had very little previous military experience the training at Toccoa was necessarily very tough and as a consequence there was a high level of personnel wastage. Indeed, of the 500 officers who had volunteered, only 148 successfully completed the course. The enlisted men had it equally tough, with only 1,800 men being selected out of 5,300 volunteers.
On June 10, 1943, the 506th PIR was officially attached to the 101st Airborne Division. Later in the year they embarked on the Samaria bound forEngland, arriving there on September 15, 1943, and disembarking in Liverpool. They then proceeded to Aldbourne, in Wiltshire where they began an intense training program designed to make the regiment ready for the invasion of Europe that was planned for 1944.
It was while Easy Company was based at Aldbourne that the tension and competition that had been brewing between Winters and Sobel came to a head in November–December 1943. Winters had privately held concerns over Sobel’s ability to lead the company in combat for some time before this and many of the enlisted men in the company had come to respect Winters for his competence and had also developed their own concerns about Sobel’s leadership. Winters has stated that he never wanted to compete with Sobel for command of Easy Company. However, the situation became out of hand when Sobel attempted to bring Winters up on charges for failure to carry out a lawful order. Feeling that his punishment was unjust, Winters requested that the charge be tried by court martial. When Winters’ punishment was set aside by the battalion commander, Sobel proceeded to charge Winters with another, separate charge the following day. While the investigation was being undertaken, Winters was transferred to the headquarters company and appointed as the battalion mess officer.
Following this, though Winters tried to talk them out of it, a number of the company’s noncommissioned officers (NCOs) gave the regimental commander, Colonel Robert Sink, an ultimatum: either Sobel be replaced, or they would hand back their stripes. Sink was not impressed and several of the NCOs were

An inspirational story in the rich tradition of MUSIC OF THE HEART and MR. HOLLAND’S OPUS, THE CHORUS has moved critics everywhere to declare it one of the year’s very best films! When he takes a job teaching music at a school for troubled boys, Clement Mathieu is unprepared for its harsh discipline and depressing atmosphere. But with passion and unconventional teaching methods, he’s able to spark his students’ interest in music and bring them a newfound joy! It also puts him at odds with the school’s overbearing headmaster, however, locking Mathieu in a battle between politics and the determination to change his pupils’ lives!

By getting nominated for Academy Awards in both the Foreign Language Film and Best Song categories, Les Choristes (The Chorus) made a rare (for a European film) double impression at the 2004 Oscars. This sentimental tale follows the arrival of a new teacher at a remote boys school in 1949 France (the war is a largely unspoken but ghostly presence). With disciplinary problems rampant, and the policies of the old-fashioned headmaster not helping, Monsieur Mathieu decides to introduce choral singing as a way to bridge the gap with his students. You don’t need a crystal ball to figure out where this will go, although the movie uses its atmospheric location and lush vocal arrangements well. Bald, dumpy Gerard Jugnot provides a refreshingly offbeat hero (though securely in the traditions of the My Most Memorable Teacher movie); he’s sort of a younger Philippe Noiret. Director Christophe Barratier works in the winsome-cute mode that makes a certain kind of French movie into an overly sweet bon bon, although at least this bon bon sings. –Robert Horton