Comments by "broadbandislife" (@broadbandislife) on "The Critical Drinker" channel.

  1. It's "Koschei", from a classic Russian folktale. An evil wizard who's undying because he's hidden his life outside his body - basically the prototype of the D&D Lich.
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  2.  @coadacatalin4510  Not really, given the banal mundanity of many of the contexts the concept can be and gets applied to. A rather closer approximation would be the American concept of "grit" (as in the classic Western True Grit etc.) methinks.
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  3.  @TheSaturnV  Probably simply because they could actually get a working T-72 to use without too much trouble. If I've understood correctly there's two running army-surplus ones still around in Finland.
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  4.  @8numb160  Something people like to forget to mention nowadays is that the first-wave Red Army divisions that blundered in blind deaf and dumb and duly got encircled and ganked were from Ukraine... Reason being Stalin had another of his paranoid episodes and decided troops raised from the NW districts (who would have, y'know, had some idea about how to fight in deep forests) could not be relied on to fight against their immediate next-door neighbours and ethnic kin, never mind ample evidence to the contrary from the idiotic Finnish land-grab attempts during the Russian Civil War, so he insisted they had to come from further afield.
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  5.  @mythdweller  Transliteration of Cyrillic Russian words and names into the Latin alphabet is a whole topic all in itself, but my point was that the commonly accepted written rendition of the name (in English at least) is "Koshchei" (alternatively "Kashchei" - I see I missed that first "h" in my initial comment). Pronounciation isn't really relevant to the matter in the context of non-phonetic languages anyway, but in German it's rendered as "Koschtschei" and in my native highly phonetic Finnish as "Koštšei" (in older works more simply as "Kašhei" or "Košhei") which all amount to essentially the same thing. See also the bewildering range of renditions Nikita Khrushchev's family name gets in different languages for a fine illustration of such difficulties. (We Finns nowadays spell it as "Hruštšov" for ex; older transliteration was "Hruštšev".) 'Course, it can also be argued (by way of a "Watsonian" explanation) that there's no particular reason to presume the German troopers would be very familiar with the name or have any fucks to spare for related pedantry in the first place...
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  6. 1:05 Factual correction - they weren't fighting the Soviets. They were fighting the Finns, seeing as how the recently signed Moscow Armistice stipulated their eviction. (Look up "Lapland War" for details if interested.) Somewhat comparable to how Romania summarily flipped sides after the Red Army was over their border. The Soviet Petsamo-Kirkenes offensive ran more or less simultaneously off to the north in Norway. As an aside while the Finns were initially rather reluctant to aggressively push their erstwhile brothers-in-arms the German scorched-earth policy changed that rather quickly, plus the Allied Control Commission was breathing down on the govt's neck to actually carry out the letter of the Armistice and not just pretend to.
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  7.  @alonsocastro6742  The M24 Chaffees with odd paintjobs attacking the Paris police precint were quite something, too.
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  8.  @elmohead  That's not like any of that works, or worked.
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  9.  @vespenegas261  Hey, you're the one who tried to try rationalizing it.
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  10. No that's just a T-55 or clone that the makers could find and rent for cheap. The arctic ass-end of Lapland certainly wasn't where anyone field-tested their protos.
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  11.  @ragnarrklangsrok1685  Just sayin' but there's an awful lot painfully wrong with that post.
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  12. Only Odin had squat to do with Finland, he's an old Scandinavian deity (an offshoot of the wider North (proto-)German religion). Preciously little is known of pre-Christian Finnish paganism but near as I've ever heard no specific war god is attested.
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  13.  @Northwoods62  Stalin only backed down because he was staring a Franco-British intervention in the face and really could do without that kind of added complication you know. 'Bout in time too because by that point Finnish defences were on the brink of complete collapse and there were some actually competent Soviet commanders on the job who'd fixed the worst issues on the fly.
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  14. @@jzsbff4801 AKCHUALLY they just didn't have the tech to add voice tracks, BGM came from live musicians sitting in the corner of the theater too.
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  15. @@jzsbff4801 Can't say you're wrong there. ...still kinda miss the times when Buster Keaton could literally drive a fucking train into a lake for the sake of a good shot :P
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  16.  @mythdweller  Pretty much. My mother's studied Russian and that quality is her biggest peeve with the language (Chinese was even worse if in a somewhat different fashion). Certainly a far cry from say Spanish which goes out of its way to encode pronounciation guidelines into the writing. My original comment wasn't about the particular spoken form used in the movie though, but the OP. I'm enough of a grammar nazi to get on the case of such obviously erroneous written forms.
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  17. That was basically because the forces the Soviets used in Winter War didn't know shit about fighting in forests tho.
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  18.  @AFGuidesHD  You do realise your numbers are complete horseshit right. Anyway, if you're making a WW2 exploitation movie tongue in cheek it's gotta be Nazi pigdogs no question. For gr8 🧀. Plus the fighting Soviets part is kinda been done as Finnish war flicks go.
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  19. Oh you bet it was completely intentional. The whole thing's a loving pastiche of B-movie 🧀 after all.
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  20.  @JohnTavastian  There certainly are T-34s in Finland. Running ones, not so much. I'm pretty sure the Parola Armour Museum isn't too keen on renting out their exhibits anyway.
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  21. Been done too many times already in Finnish war films, and what would a self-aware B-movie pastiche be without proper Nazi pigdog 🧀 anyway?
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  22.  @Front-Toward-Enemy  What part of "Finnish" did you miss...? Also, again, deliberately cheesy Nazisploitation vibes.
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  23.  @Front-Toward-Enemy  You must not have seen very many Finnish war movies then.
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  24.  @Front-Toward-Enemy  Cry me a river. Near as I can think of there isn't a single Finnish movie about the Lapland War so, like, whatevs. Don't see how international marketing is the slightest bit relevant.
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  25.  @Front-Toward-Enemy  I fail to see why that should be a relevant context. The "international market" you're referring to factually means "Hollywood products" so whatevs - Helander & Co. aren't. Finns fighting Soviets is both very well known internationally and already amply covered in Finnish filmography in case someone actually bothers looking so also whatevs. Also, "just as many atrocities"? Eat shit. The Germans are directly responsible for the death of tens of millions of people in just a few years through flagrant, systematic and deliberate crimes against humanity - and had the USSR not pushed their shit in, would have doubled down on that hard. You do realise they had every intention to essentially exterminate all Slavs west of the Urals (save for a small remnant to be reduced into perpetual slavery) just for starters...? We're talking about a regime that actually somehow manages to make the fucking Stalin palatable in comparison; he at least didn't make an ideological cornerstone out of wholesale genocide. Hell even the Japanese were better as their ghastly mass atrocities were something of an accidental byproduct of their dogmatic insanity rather than a core policy goal (and actually directly contrafinal to many of those).
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  26. That's... not a particularly rare expression though?
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  27.  @pietermoorer3679  No we mostly did it with a shitload of foreign material aid, terrain advantage, the assorted internal Soviet difficulties (the Red Army in '39-'40 was shambles srsly) and being a seriously secondary concern in the late war. Factually surrendered on terms in both cases regardless of what nationalist historiography might want to tell you. And the jury's still out on Ukraine, Nostradamus.
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  28. T-55, probably privately owned Army surplus the makers could rent for cheap. And no you would NOT find one anywhere near '44 Lapland, even the T-44 was barely accepted into service at the time. The theater wasn't exactly brimming with cutting-edge war machinery on either side; the Soviets were still by the late-war years running into what the Germans indexed Panzerkampfwagen 35-S 739(f) - French SOMUA S35's captured back in '40.
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  29. That war was over already you know. Which is the specific reason the Germans are GTFO'ing from Finland and burning shit in the first place - as per the terms of the Moscow Armistice the Finns were obliged to boot them out.
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  30. I mean every element heavier than helium ultimately comes from what the boffins term "stellar nucleosynthesis" - in plainer terms stars blowing up.
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  31. The DShK entered service in 1938 tho. It's pretty much the Soviet M2 Browning (1933, water-cooled forerunner dates from '21).
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  32.  @belesariius  Hey, they used captured stuff like alot... This one they'd need a time machine to loot mind you and at that point we'd be looking at a quite different sort of Nazisploitation flick :P
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  33. Pretty sure surplus T-55s are substantially more plentiful. Should be a few puttering around Finland too, the Army used the things until few decades back.
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  34. Captures particularly got new insignia painted all over them to avoid unfortunate incidents with your own guys, you know.
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  35. Budget. Take a wild guess which is easier and cheaper to rent, a surplus T-55 (there ought to be few around Finland too) or something period-authentic? This is lovingly crafted B-movie cheese, "off model" props are par for the course.
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  36. It's more like the bigger the budget the more safe the makers are obliged to play because Corporate and Shareholders are risk-averse about their investment. That kind of checking-off-list can't but eat into the final product.
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  37. Not like the Germans sent any of those big boys to the trackless wilderness of the Arctic front anyway. They had damn trophy SOMUA S35s up there more like, which probably puzzled the Soviets a bit.
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  38.  @Redrosewitch  It's also plain straight up Confucian value system. Which were, and are, pretty Bass Ackwards in that they basically categorically put the interests of the parents before those of the children which kind of flies in the face of basic logic of sustaining the family/genetic lineage...
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  39.  @Redrosewitch  *shrug* The Chinese obviously have never been very big on questioning the encoded assumptions of the whole Confucian framework, never mind now that the sociopolitical paradigm it promotes has been an empirical repeat failure (see: collapsing into bloody chaotic interregnums every few centuries). My point is the whole moral of the original story is specifically the classic Confucian virtues of self-sacrificing filial piety and duty to the State.
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  40. Koschei (Коще́й) is just the guy's name, the "Deathless" bit (Бессме́ртный) is just an epithet. Kind of a prototype D&D Lich that one - an evil wizard become immortal by storing his soul in an object outside his body.
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  41.  @JustTooDamnHonest  I'm referring to the mythological figure, Koschei the Deathless. The point being you're confusing the given name for the epithet. That's kinda like saying Billy is a figure in Old West mythology that means The Kid.
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  42.  @thunderstruck8087  Can you burgerlords keep your puerile machobullshit power fantasies out of this? Thanks.
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  43. TBF they were themselves pushing the buggers away from Murmansk and well into northern Norway at the same time. They sure weren't going to put up with all those guys at their southern flank.
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  44. No.
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  45. No doubt Finnish Defence Forces surplus rented from a private owner, the Army had them in stock until like the end of the Cold War. Assuredly easier and cheaper to get onto the set than anything even remotely authentic. I find it gives the movie that little wink-and-nod touch of old action-adventure war movies that for similar reasons dressed up like M24 Chaffees as Tigers and Panthers. Not even trying to obfuscate it is just a layer of grindhouse B-movie cheese on top.
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  46. what.
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  47. The moniker "Koshchei" comes from the classic Russian folktale figure Koshchei the Deathless, an evil sorcerer who had made himself undying by hiding his life/soul/whatever outside his body. (In some tellings he learned the trick from an even more classic figure, the fearsome hag-sorceress Baba Yaga.) And yes the OG D&D Lich shamelessly cribbed the concept. (As an aside "lich" is just German for "corpse, dead body" - compare Swedish "lik".) For a more recent (and weeb) example the soul-gems in the Puella Magi franchise are a very similar idea.
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  48. I daresay I'm allowed to take umbrage at your conflation of Hollywood as "western movie industry" and implicit claim Finland isn't "western".
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  49.  @toastertech1181  *shrug* It's what happens when creators have to work off risk-averse Corporate marketing checklists. The kinds of investments Hollywood works with there better be returns.
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  50. "Gold may not keep an edge, but it can cut a man's soul." - Shogun: Total War 2
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  51. Indeed it does, though the real reason was very likely simply that a surplus T-55 ought to be rather easier to find for rent than actual WW2 hardware...
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  52. Not a lot of AFVs among the materiél, the Germans kinda needed those themselves. Even their own forces oop north mostly got second-string and captured stuff (the ex-French SOMUA S-35s probably caused some bemused head-scratching among the Soviets for ex). The major exception was the batch of StuGs sent over to help with the decisive Red Army offensive of '44. The Army had T-55s in stock until like the close of the Cold War and AFAIK a handful of surplus specimen in running condition are now in the hands of collectors etc. around the country. Renting one of those is naturally much easier and cheaper than anything authentic. Not sure there even ARE any to be found 'round here.
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  53. The Romans never even saw Norsemen. You're, like, the better part of a millennium off.
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  54. what.
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  55. T-54 was barely in the proto stage at the time. Just chalk it up to surplus T55s being way easier and cheaper to rent than anything period-authentic. And it does add that extra B-movie touch no?
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  56.  @Saltasaur  "A tank from the late Forties can't fight mid-late Cold War ones without major modernisations, what a POS" Uh-huh.
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  57.  @Saltasaur  That was literally what your closing statement boils down to you know. And basically everything else is heavy [citation needed].
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  58.  @Saltasaur  You do realise that reads as "my source is I MADE IT THE FUCK UP" right?
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  59.  @Saltasaur  And you had the gall to try to insult my reading comprehension.
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  60. Budget. Also, deliberate B-movie narm.
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  61. What I read was "why didn't they paint by numbers all the dead-horse tropes reeeeeeee"
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  62. Take a guess which one's easier to find for rent on a budget, a surplus T-55 or authentic WW2 ironmongery... Adds to the B-movie 🧀tho
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  63. Uh, no. That's just straight up a surplus T-55. Probably simply found one for rent for cheap, the Finnish military used to run a bunch until few decades ago. Running-order WW2 stuff is in bit of short supply nowadays.
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  64. Helander mentioned in an interview that at when they started shooting Doolan went and swore he'd do the whole movie shirtless - "and boy did he come to regret that later!" (It got rather cold and very windy, not to mention all the biting insects...) Doolan apparently took the stoic stance that "pain is temporary, art is eternal" :P
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  65. Pretty sure surplus T-55s are rather easier and cheaper to rent.
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  66.  @007oskari  Only the northernmost parts of Lapland past the "tree line" are bare tundra at that, most is taiga terrain rife with forests of hardy conifers and boreal birch. Very beautiful in a stark, rugged fashion but not very amenable to life.
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  67.  @YTsux100pct._of-the-time.  Comparatively speaking, perhaps. But let's not go regurgitating the "Clean Wehrmacht" whitewashing bullshit ex-Nazi generals were allowed to peddle during the Cold War in return of helping to set up the West German military; the Heer (regular army) was up to its eyebrows in diverse atrocities and war crimes, especially in the East. Didja know they specifically decriminalized rape before Barbarossa started?
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  68. ...I'm tolerably certain that's a grotesque misreading of There Will Be Blood right in the face of it.
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  69. The English name is "Lapland War" actually. And describing the until recently co-belligerent German forces in the northern half of Finland as "in charge of defence of Lapland" sounds euphemistic at best given they were there to A) capture Murmansk or failing that at least the railroad connection to the Soviet heartlands thus severing a critical artery of Western aid (they succeeded in neither) B) secure the major nickel mine in Petsamo which at times supplied like 80% of the German war industry's needs of the vital strategic resource (successful until the Soviet Petsamo-Kirkenes Offensive threw them right back to northern Norway) The factual German loss of strategic initiative already in 42-43 didn't change this fundamental equation.
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  70. TBF a running-order surplus T-55 rents way cheaper than one of the few authentic WW2 pieces still in working condition. Just take it as extra B-movie cheese on top.
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  71.  @Badvibesdude  A Tiger in Lapland would be no more accurate... Anyway, given the Army was using some until the turn of the millennium I'd imagine there's some surplus T-55s readily rentable around Finland so yeah. Can't hurt that there's a proper international market for spare parts for the things.
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  72.  @Badvibesdude  It actually would given important differences in layout and dimensions. Doesn't really help that the T-34 has a very distinctive profile.
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  73.  @Badvibesdude  It's more that a Tiger dress-up is so much larger that you have ample room for the necessary tacked-on bits. Problem here is that between the two the T-34 is actually the bigger and heavier tank, especially the by now much more common /85 version whose turret is just a straight up no-go for dolling up into even halfway credible facsimile. Clearly the makers just said "fuck it" and embraced the B-movie narm of a flagrantly Off Model prop.
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  74.  @Badvibesdude  A T-34 is probably the only period tank still found in running order in any real numbers that'd make even remotely workable starting point - there should be a fair number of Shermans around too but those are obviously Right Out given the drastic disparity in hull shape. There's even some sitting in the deep material reserves of some militaries AFAIK. Anyways, the point is that the makers clearly decided to just embrace the 🧀in keeping with the self-aware wink-and-nod character of the rest of the film instead of wasting additional time, money and effort on a half-assed facsimile that wouldn't have been terribly convincing anyway.
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  75.  @m.falcon6412  OW THE EDGE
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  76. Waitwhat. Are you for real trying to argue the bullshit hypocrisy of the Fifties and codified finger-wagging conservative Moral Guardianship are somehow supposed to be admirable? Also movies and TV had existed for quite a while bafore that so yeeeeaaaaahhhhh...
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  77.  @yougeo  Bold of you to assume I watch TV. And your sources were what exactly, again?
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  78. Finnish Army used to run T-72's and if I understood correctly there's still two running-order surplus ones around the country used for exhibits and whatnot. Wouldn't be surprised if they just rented one of those simply because it was the best thing available on a budget - the Parola Armour Museum probably isn't too keen on loaning the authentic WW2 stuff. Plus it adds that extra touch of B-movie narm.
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  79.  @The_Judge300  T-54 was barely in prototype stage in '44 and you sure as shit weren't going to see any in a backwater zero-infrastructure theater like North Karelia. Just treat it as extra B-movie narm in the vein of those old war movies that had like M24 Chaffees with funky paint jobs and some kibble standing in for damn Panthers.
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  80. "T-60" was a wartime light tank, the Soviets didn't reuse that index later. They did have a T-62 and a T-64 (which was never exported) but bore evacuator placement pegs this guy as a T-55.
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  81. T-55, guess which one's easier to find for rent on a budget? Just treat it as extra B-movie 🧀 in the vein of all those old war movies that had like surplus Stuarts with some kibble glued on standing in for Tigers.
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