SPOILER ALERT




On 26 Sep 2006 20:01:55 -0700, "Harry K" wrote:

Aw, that scene was just unbelievable, full moon or not. Just like the
scenes in "Pearl Harbor" where the protaganist fights in the Battle of
Britain, the attack on Pearl Harbor, AND the Doolittle Raid on Japan.
It's just Hollywood being Hollywood, and there is apparently nothing
anyone can do to stop them from doing this sort of thing.

Ah, Pearl Harbor. Brings tears to me eyes how bad that movie was.

Urrrrp. I am reminded of the old proverb, "I cried because I had no shoes,
until I had a man who had no feet."

Or to paraphrase a more recent quote: "Sir, I've seen 'Pearl Harbor,' and
'Flyboys' is no 'Pearl Harbor.'"

Flyboys doesn't even come CLOSE to the skankiness of PH. I fully intend to get
the DVD of Flyboys and watch the movie again...skipping through the worst bits,
of course, but there's no way I'm even getting NEAR 'Pearl Harbor.'

All right, enough of my whining. What did I *like* about Flyboys?

1. Introductory scenes at the beginning. Thought the movie did very well at
introducing the main characters and their varying backgrounds.
2. Most of the acting. Richard's probably a better judge than I, but I thought
that young cast did pretty well.
3. The *ages* of the pilots. We tend to forget how young they were. I love
the way the producers found some baby-faced actors.
4. Jean Reno. He's always fun to watch.
5. Most of the combat sequences. Very exciting...I may have some nits about
how the planes moved, but the CGI was used effectively to allow the action to be
both exciting and easily followed.
6. Ground sequences around the airfield. I though it appeared to be a pretty
realistic depiction of a WWI combat airfield. I especially liked them showing
Rawlins inspecting his own ammunition...a pretty common theme, among the
survivors of the WWI air war.
7. Depiction of the Germans. Yes, we had a nice, hissable villain, but he was
nicely contrasted by the other major German pilot.
8. Rawlins' internal conflict the "good guy" German... his reluctance to
shoot him down after the guy had spared his own life on a previous flight. This
was a well-depicted internal conflict, very nicely depicted.
9. The scenes in the pilot's mess, where the (new) Americans can't believe the
old hands are ignoring the recent losses.

Doing some heavier-duty thinking about the movie made me reflect that I was
perhaps wrong in my earlier comment that the control positions of the CGI
airplanes weren't matching those of a real aircraft. The main case was one
where a Fokker in an established 90-degree bank was showing almost full left
rudder. I came to realize that the rudder position was probably accurate *for a
rotary-engined* aircraft! The gyroscopic effect of the high pitch rate would
probably be driving the nose to the right, hence the depiction of full left
rudder. Cool.

Ron Wanttaja