Category: Band of Brothers

It’s Veterans Day! We Salute Major Dick Winters – The Rank and The Man

Today is Veterans Day – a day of honoring all men and women that served in the United States armed forces. And it gives us a great opportunity to salute all war heroes, and in particular Major Dick Winters and Easy Company.

I know a thing or two about war. My day job is to study and understand war. I have written academic articles on war, I have taught on war… and even though I can write about war for pages and talk about it for hours as a scholar, the human cost of war is still incomprehensible to me.

Let me take a moment and look at my own family. My maternal grandmother never knew her father because he was a soldier in WWI in the Eastern Front in Turkey, and he literally froze because of the cold as he fought against the Russians. My paternal grandmother never knew her father, either; because he was also a soldier in WWI and was killed by a shrapnel in Gallipoli as he fought against the Anzacs. Continue reading “It’s Veterans Day! We Salute Major Dick Winters – The Rank and The Man”

Currahee! – The Best Tattoo Story You’ll Have Ever Read

Damianista’s note: The lovely, crazy, adorable story you will read below comes from our own “Dark Horse” Vicky (well, she loves Soames!) who is one of the first, if not the first, fans that I met online the day Fan Fun with Damian Lewis was born in 2015. I remember that we exchanged a few words about Damian and she told me about how she became a fan of the “Ginger Prince.” Over the years, Vicky has written several posts for Fan Fun, participated in every Fan Fun community project, and become a friend. I know you will LOVE her tattoo story. I am thrilled to have been a little more than an extra in it and excited to share it in the D-Day week. Enjoy!

Continue reading “Currahee! – The Best Tattoo Story You’ll Have Ever Read”

Band of Brothers at 24: Revisiting Dick Winters

Damianista’s note: Band of Brothers is 24 years old. Currahee!

As one of the most iconic mini-series of all times, Band of Brothers may have turned 24 but it has never got old. People are still in love with Damian Lewis’ Major Winters and his Easy Company and thousands of families and friends enjoy a Band of Brothers marathon (multiple times!) every year.

To celebrate the the mini-series’ 20th anniversary, HBO had Roger Bennett host an official Band of Brothers 12-episode podcast that followed the Easy Company’s footsteps from Normandy to the Eagle’s Nest, episode by episode, with insight from Tom Hanks as well as actors who brought the members of Easy Company to life  – including Ron Livingston, Donny Wahlberg, Matthews Settle, Scott Grimes and our beloved Damian Lewis.

Please hear Bennett’s Band of Brothers podcast episode with Damian Lewis below…

Continue reading “Band of Brothers at 24: Revisiting Dick Winters”

Book Review: Meeting Damian Lewis

Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers.

Il ne faut pas toucher aux idoles: la dorure en reste aux mains.
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

How I love when art gets meta: when a writer or artist has the self-awareness and genuine capacity to make fun of themselves. That’s what we mean when we say the writing is “honest”. There’s no agenda to convince or win over the reader, just a need to show, everything, even the warty not-attractive bits.

With her first novel, Meeting Damian Lewis, Christine Wilson has succeeded beautifully in that effort. Continue reading “Book Review: Meeting Damian Lewis”

From Dick Winters to Steve McQueen: The “American” Damian Lewis

“This sounds absurdly pretentious, but the American Damian, I’m sort of oddly comfortable with him.” – Damian Lewis

A Guardian article from July 2015 talks about Brits versus Yanks in Hollywood:

“The invasion of British and Irish leading men in Hollywood has now gone beyond a joke for many in the American entertainment industry. First noticed some time in 2011, the trend was initially dismissed as a novelty: an interesting phase that would pass, rather than as a threat. But this summer actors and directors are calling for action to mobilise American drama teachers and schools to counter it.”

So Hollywood has finally taken notice and is now somehow mobilizing to defend its territory against the British invasion 😀 Well, maybe it is too little too late at this point? I mean, it is not that the Brits are coming, but they have already arrived. Besides, Vanity Fair says “victory is assured” in the video clip below, with fabulous ginger alert at 0:29, about which I blogged about earlier here! Continue reading “From Dick Winters to Steve McQueen: The “American” Damian Lewis”