If you follow Warming Glow on a regular basis, you know that I’ve been excited about the arrival of History’s “WWII in HD” for months. Well, the ten-hour, five-night event finally begins on Sunday night, and here, again, is the goosebump-inducing trailer, which gives you glimpses of the crystal-clear footage of a war only ever seen in grainy black-and-white. If that’s not enough to convince you to watch, check out the LA Times’s review:

I know film purists are supposed to eschew such tinkerings [with the original footage], but for the most part the various refurbs are almost disturbingly effective. Hitler never looked so human, Allied and Axis soldiers alike appear woefully young and grubby, and you’ve never seen a battleship blown up until you’ve seen it in HD.

F-CK AND YES. But wait! There’s more! After the jump I’ve got preview clips of the documentary miniseries’ coverage of Iwo Jima and Okinawa that are so good your brain will turn off the blinking function in your eyes. God I can’t wait for this.

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Pictured: No episode of “Ice Road Truckers” ever

Following up on the success “Ice Road Truckers,” the History Channel has approved of several new reality series, including shows about artifact hunters and rivalries at a NASCAR track. My favorite, however, has to be the spin-off of “Ice Road Truckers”:

For next summer, [History president and GM Nancy] Dubuc plans to introduce “Extreme Trucking,” which takes the North American-based “Ice Road Truckers” format to locations worldwide where truckers navigate hazardous highways.

“There’s an endless supply of dangerous roads, and they’re in places where they’re highly unregulated,” she said. [THR]

“We’re always looking to develop new content where we have the chance to get footage of people falling to their deaths,” she continued, “and if it involves a big rig jack-knifing off a cliff and tumbling down a sheer rock face before exploding into a gruesome inferno, all the better.” Dubuc then added, “Our viewers deserve to see these brave truckers at work. Especially if they die.”

The best two minutes of anything I’ve seen over the last two months was the first trailer for History’s “WWII in HD” (seen here), which was an absolute revelation: color images of the Second World War so striking and clear that I got goosebumps.

Well, goosebumps are about to get goosebumpier, because here’s the newest trailer for “WWII in HD,” and I think it might be even better than the first. This one not only has images that give me chills and make my eyes well up, but it’s also set to music similar to the Requiem for a Dream soundtrack over Winston Churchill’s “Never surrender” speech while bombers drop payloads and a soldier clears a bunker with a flamethrower. It is, without slipping into hyperbole, The Greatest Trailer That Ever Trailered.

The ten-hour miniseries begins November 15th. Mark your calendars. If you miss this you’re dead to me.

The History Channel unveiled the trailer for “WWII in HD,” in which they used HD technology to sharpen and colorize film taken during the war… and triple-D tits alive, this looks f-cking spectacular.  I got goosebumps watching this.  I was absolutely transfixed.  The Live Feed sums it up:

There’s still the grain, scratches and flatness that one expects from 65-year-old footage, but you also get a sense that you’re looking at a moment in history from a perspective you have not seen before. It’s a safe bet that Hilter-in-high-def will do well for the network, especially with History taking the extra step of crafting a story around the footage rather than simply leaning on images.

And can I take a moment to say, “ABOUT DAMN TIME, HISTORY CHANNEL”?  Because let me tell you, a reality show about people driving trucks on ice is NOT history.  Now get to work on doing this for Korea and Vietnam.

“Here are some apples for you to enjoy.”

Variety has an article about the History Channel’s upcoming docu-drama “WWII in HD” — Gary Sinise will narrate, and a solid cast of actors (including Steve Zahn, Amy Smart, Ron Livingston, and LL Cool J) will provide additional voice work.  But what I found most interesting was a tidbit about a History project farther down the pipeline:

History will also unveil “The People Speak,” a Matt Damon-spearheaded adaptation of the Howard Zinn book “A People’s History of the United States,” in the fourth quarter of this year.

Rewind to 12 years ago.  Damon’s titular character in Good Will Hunting tells Sean (Robin Williams) that A People’s History (first published in 1980) is a book that “will knock you on your ass.”  Damon, of course, wrote that script with Ben Affleck, and their Zinn-fatuation goes back to childhood.  From IMDb:

As a boy, Matt Damon was Zinn’s neighbor and provided the voice for the CD recording of that book.

I’ll save you several hundred pages of wasted hours and sum up A People’s History for you: white men are dicks.  Man, I’m tired of that book getting lauded by faux intellectuals with liberal white guilt.  Zinn’s book is a leftist, reactionary piece of garbage.  Granted, popular American history texts glossed over our darker moments of racism and injustice for too long, but a one-sided history from the other side is still one-sided.  It’s just as incomplete and inaccurate as the works Zinn was fighting against when he wrote it.

And now, because Matt Damon was his neighbor growing up, we get a televised version of it.  Blech.  Get bent, Damon.