A work in constant progress (and occasional regress).
Release Date:
December 31, 2017
Original Title:
Superguns of WWII
Genres:
Documentary | War
Ratings / Certifications:
N/A
Runtime: 53
The English Channel during WWII was a strategic passageway separating two major enemies: Great Britain and Germany. Whoever controlled the Channel controlled the passage of warships and commercial vessels—basically, all weapons supplies. Particularly important was the Dover Strait, the narrowest part of the Channel, where enemy encounters were more than likely, so the entire area had to be protected by powerful bunker cannons. In 1942, the Germans quickly built sixteen giant coastal artillery batteries along the French coast. The precision and force of some of them meant they could wipe out any English vessel at sea, and even reach the British coast. Churchill, in a panic over the power of these guns, in turn ordered the building of six batteries atop the cliffs of Dover. A previously unseen page out of history tells of these superguns—whose formidable firepower made them invaluable throughout the war—standing guard on both sides of the Dover Strait.
Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).
Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).
At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.
Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)
While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:
Regarding profile removals and data corrections:
Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).
Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.
Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.