Red Tails

Upcoming from Lucasfilm. Tons of CGI (of course) and likely lots of technical / historical liberties taken, but it might be worth checking out. The director is Anthony Hemingway, who has done mostly TV work up to now.

http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1810095581/video

 

Looks to be a revival/continuation of the Tuskeegee Airmen story. Looks like some of the same actors too.

Jeff

 

Looks like the WW-II equivalent of Flyboys, with tons of computer graphics.

Taz
Terry Phillips

 

THAT IS ABSOLUTELY GHASTLY. Like a animated little kids comic book.

 

Bob- Hopefully, nobody in this one shoots the bad guy with a .45 after doing a loop, like in Flyboys. Hollywood and aviation have not mixed well since 12 O'Clock High and The Battle of Britain.
Taz
Terry Phillips

 

The .45 cal. pistol comment brings back a wonderful memory when I was on furlough and joined up with a high school buddy on leave from flying C-46's over The Hump. Of course we were having a little get together with some pretty young ladies that were completely awed by the dashing Lt. and his description of shooting down some Zeros with his "forty five". " That's how I got this medal right here, " pointing to his good humor bar. What laffs we had that night!

 

Where's your book, Bob? You have GOT to put all these reminscences down in writing! At the very least, everyone on AviatorChat will buy a copy!

 

I am working on it every night and I have something like 78,000 words put down and I'm gathering photos and my own drawings to go with it. The writing on which I'm working deals only with the aviation part of my existence. I have completed one that covers anything and everything. It is 148,000 words long and will probably bore anyone who reads it but my family will have record.

 

Yes, it's likely pretty bad, and CGI has a comic book appearance. "Pearl Harbor" set the bar very low. That was horrible, but on top it added bad acting and a hackneyed love triangle plot.

 

Jim, this has opened up a few thoughts about those times. The boy that I referred to in my recall was a fellow football player and went on to be a professional in the medical field but died in his forty's. Another fellow player was a pilot and he also passed in his forty's. They were a year ahead of me but two friends in my class went into the Marines and saw action in the Pacific, one on Tarawa and Iwo Jima, the other on Iwo Jima. Both of them came back, both wounded, but they weren't the guys that I knew when we played football. So, I cannot ever accept any recognition for having been in the service because I was nothing but an observer and I did absolutely nothing when I think of what the others did.I was surrounded by it for 3 1/2 years and saw and heard a lot. It was fortunate that I was always two weeks late when I tried to get into a flight class but I didn't know it then.

 

Bob- Affirmative. Flying is fun. Getting shot at while flying is not.

Getting shot at in any format is not fun.

Taz
Terry Phillips

 

I wish Mr. Jackson would do his WW1 film. Here is a brief trailer he made in his backyard just as an experiment. No CGI, all the planes and tank are part of his colletion.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpTHFVBlm_A[/ame]

 

Now that is what I mean, real stuff. The two SE-5's and the Bristol Fighter made me drool...more than I do all the time.

 

Russ- They are building reproduction Oberursel Ur.II and Mercedes D.IIIa engines so something good is going to happen. Plenty of Hissos still around, so the Entente side is a bit easier, but those are reproducible as well.

Taz
Terry Phillips

 

Taz, who is building the repro engines? That is amazing and very interesting and I would love to gear the D-111A run.

 

Bob- Peter is. With the help of some really well qualified friends.

Taz
Terry Phillips

 

Man that is amazing! They have to have some drawings from 1917, qualified pattern makers or some stereo lithography experts, a foundry, and some very good machinists. Where did all this information come from? Somewhere I have an isometric drawing that I did of the Fokker D-7 and the Mercedes engine that I did in 1952 that qualified me for a job in the Production Illustration Group at Boeing. That got me out of the mechanical work. The BMW engine proved to be a better engine then and it would be great to have both of them running in two or more 1917 replicas.

 

Well, the CGI is better than that History Channel's 'Great Dogfights' (or whatever it was called) series.

But it's still awful.