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rewatching the pacific e01 and the alligator creek battle 36 minutes in is so dark and dimly lit its actually really effective. you can't see much, just flashes of tracers and moving bodies in the bushes. it makes me feel like masters of the air is not only sleek and slightly overcooked with its hollywood visuals, but hasn't really depicted anything in an incoherent or chaotic manner yet. everything is as clear as possible, which i guess makes sense given how unclear and confusing this theatre could potentially be to depict. so they course correct. still, the pacific is its own thing with its own editing problems, but i'm enjoying th contrast with masters of air 
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Feb 11, 2024 13:44
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I still think that early Band of Brothers episode where they assault the German artillery is amazing in how it is filmed and edited, and how effectively it showcases the result of all that training, including adapting when things don't go according to plan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtHscTcEb4k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cr-RsS0w-4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4o4LU9yM3s
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Feb 11, 2024 14:02
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The Brécourt Manor Assault is a masterclass of filmmaking and it alone makes Day of Days a strong contender for best episode of the series.
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Feb 11, 2024 18:39
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Arc Hammer posted:The Brécourt Manor Assault is a masterclass of filmmaking and it alone makes Day of Days a strong contender for best episode of the series. The night shots after the initial jump are their own class in how to light a night scene and make it comprehensible, as well.
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Feb 11, 2024 19:23
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I've got some bad news for whoever cares about the F/G model distinctions in this show. IIRC somebody mentioned they were a little concerned to see F models flying on a D-Day raid in the intro, mentioning that they should be in silver livery with the chin turret, as G models, but I either can't find that comment right now or I dreamt it up, my apologies. This plane caught my eye in the title sequence today recalling that comment. It's silver, but it's an F model. But that nose art makes it a known plane, so I looked it up.  Bingo. B-17G-85-VE. Ergo, vis-a-vis, concordantly, IT SHOULD HAVE THE CHIN TURRET IN THE SHOW. 
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Feb 12, 2024 06:15
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I've canceled Apple TV +, I charged back everything I've ever paid them, I smashed my ipad. This is too far.
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Feb 12, 2024 06:28
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That plane didn't get delivered until Feb 1945, so D-Day is out.
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Feb 12, 2024 06:30
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Stegosnaurlax posted:That plane didn't get delivered until Feb 1945, so D-Day is out. Yeah, maybe I was dreaming about having read that comment. Either way, Tim Apple is going to be receiving a sternly worded iMessage tomorrow let me tell you.
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Feb 12, 2024 07:08
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Interestingly B-17 G 48824 was a Pathfinder aircraft from the factory. It had a radar dome where the bottom turret should have been. https://100thbg.com/aircraft/?aircraft_id=10090 
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Feb 12, 2024 07:12
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I will hunt the effects artists who worked on this show to the ends of the Earth.
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Feb 12, 2024 07:20
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XYZAB posted:
Boy I hope someone got fired for that blunder.
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Feb 12, 2024 14:47
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All the B-17s still flying are G models, how is it this hard for them?
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Feb 12, 2024 14:50
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McNally posted:All the B-17s still flying are G models, how is it this hard for them? People keep crashing them or getting them sliced in half by an errant Kingcobra
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Feb 12, 2024 14:52
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They probably need 363 days maintenance for every airshow they do.
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Feb 12, 2024 14:56
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Sally B is a regular on the airshow circuit and gets used for filming pretty often but as far as I can find out was only used for some promotional images and maybe a single fly-by, which is absolutely crazy to me because if you don't give a poo poo which model of B-17 you're featuring why not use the real thing? At least a few B-17F's were fitted with the chin turret so it's not that glaringly inaccurate, they even removed it for filming Memphis Belle. I find it hard to believe they couldn't have got hold of her for a few days instead of loving about animating this: The show has been better the last couple of weeks but the problems are still there, maybe fleshing out the characters a bit more could have been done from the start instead of ramming it all into episode 4, it was an obvious budget saving episode though, those will always be a thing. We're not going to see any B-24s when the shift to Italy happens, are we?
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Feb 12, 2024 16:13
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Eau de MacGowan posted:it's hard to build suspense about your main character maybe getting ned starked in episode 4 when there's footage of him freezing in a POW camp in the intro Cinematic rule number 3: Doubt until you see a body, and even then sometimes doubt.
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Feb 12, 2024 18:36
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Almost done with a rewatch of the Pacific, and it's astonishing how much better of a show it becomes once Sledge comes on. It spends a lot of consecutive scenes with him and his company as Leckie and Basilone get less and less screentime, so the show actually feels like it has a plot -- showing him as a green recruit getting hazed by Mr Robot, going through his first battle, slowly developing that thousand-yard stare as he sees more and more horrible things. This really could have been just as good as Band of Brothers if they'd based the whole show around him, maybe flesh out another few characters in his company for a little breadth. I don't know why they had to felt they had to follow around the other two at all, the first half was so disjointed that you never really got a feel for where anyone was or what they were going through. I also think it benefited from the previous scenes we had with Sledge, before he joined the Marines, so we saw him as a regular person being forced to go to war, rather than being introduced to him as a trained soldier. I really think Masters of the Air should have taken the hint and included a training episode like Toccoa from BoB, really helped to get that sense of them as ordinary folks having to do things they'd never dreamed of. I'm also not getting a real sense of the regiment as a band of brothers. I don't know if that's going to be nearly the same thing, though, since they're just hanging out doing their own thing in a well-furnished town rather than digging in the mud together out on the front lines.
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Feb 12, 2024 23:20
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Yeah, I think the Pacific really would’ve benefitted from just sticking with one the books/stories/campaigns versus trying to weave in several and jumping around. As is though, the Sledge story worked better because you do at least get to see him somewhat in the earlier episodes.
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Feb 12, 2024 23:24
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They probably felt like each book wouldn't be able to tell enough of a story. I think it would have been better if they just stuck with Leckie and Sledge. While the story of Basilone is interesting, it feels like they crammed it in there simply because they wanted to put him and Chesty Puller in the show, and that story by itself also wouldn't carry a whole miniseries. If we didn't already have Saving Private Ryan and it's depiction of landing on the beach in Normandy, the makers of BoB might have been tempted to show that as well, simply because it's the one thing everyone knows about Americans in WWII. And thinking on it some more, while a training episode would have been great for this show, it probably wouldn't let us get to know many people. Based on how many planes and crew have already been lost, and knowing that the 8th took half of the USAAF's casualties, it might not be possible to have a big ensemble that goes through the whole thing like BoB did.
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Feb 12, 2024 23:39
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I love The Pacific, and loved Sledge in it. However, I read With The Old Breed after that. What a disappointment. A disjointed book with poor grammatical structure. A mediocre writer would be an insane praise for Sledge as an author, sadly. He has passion and cool stories, but can't write well at all.
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Feb 12, 2024 23:46
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Cojawfee posted:They probably felt like each book wouldn't be able to tell enough of a story. I think it would have been better if they just stuck with Leckie and Sledge. While the story of Basilone is interesting, it feels like they crammed it in there simply because they wanted to put him and Chesty Puller in the show, and that story by itself also wouldn't carry a whole miniseries. If we didn't already have Saving Private Ryan and it's depiction of landing on the beach in Normandy, the makers of BoB might have been tempted to show that as well, simply because it's the one thing everyone knows about Americans in WWII. I wondered about that, but it's not like Easy Company starred in all of America's Greatest WWII hits, did they? I'd never heard of Operation Market Garden before the show, and obviously as paratroopers they're not storming the beach. The scenes with Sledge and Mr Robot on whatever godforsaken island were good enough to hang the whole show on, just following around their company more closely and seeing more of the war through their eyes. Especially if you include an officer like Winters who can give more of a larger picture of the war (while still being attached to Sledge's company and not being another random far-flung PoV character). And I did a rewatch of BoB just before this (Masters of War makes me crave more big-budget WWII stuff lol) and their death toll in Bastogne was something ridiculous too, less than half of the original number came out of those woods. I don't think it would be hard to have introduced us to a bunch of civilian pilots going through training school for the sake of the juxtaposition, and then slowly pare down to the group that survive, while watching all new pilots replace everyone that came before.
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Feb 12, 2024 23:58
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I enjoyed the Leckie and Basilone stories but without a doubt, Sledge’s story is the heart of the show. I also enjoyed Sledge’s book, and remember it having a great effect on me, though it’s been a very long time since I’ve read it.
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Feb 13, 2024 00:06
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The disjointed nature of the Pacific for me is that the first cohort is treated with a level of reverence that is in sharp contrast with the second Makes people in the sledge story feel more human
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Feb 13, 2024 00:09
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I meant that they might have been tempted to show another unit that stormed the beaches. Because Tom Hanks had already done that in the movie, he'd be able to focus on just the one story, because the other thing had already been done. The Pacific felt like they wanted to show as much about the war as possible.
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Feb 13, 2024 00:11
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The superior date format is year/month/day, China is right
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Feb 13, 2024 00:23
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Batcat posted:Sally B is a regular on the airshow circuit and gets used for filming pretty often but as far as I can find out was only used for some promotional images and maybe a single fly-by, which is absolutely crazy to me because if you don't give a poo poo which model of B-17 you're featuring why not use the real thing? At least a few B-17F's were fitted with the chin turret so it's not that glaringly inaccurate, they even removed it for filming Memphis Belle. I find it hard to believe they couldn't have got hold of her for a few days instead of loving about animating this: According to the records, the first G the 100th got was in October 43, still hadn't flown a mission until November when it's Pilot, Co-Pilot and Navigator took two nurses on a joyride and crashed it into farm buildings. https://b17flyingfortress.de/en/b17/42-31035-hang-the-expense/
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Feb 13, 2024 01:08
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Stegosnaurlax posted:According to the records, the first G the 100th got was in October 43, still hadn't flown a mission until November when it's Pilot, Co-Pilot and Navigator took two nurses on a joyride and crashed it into farm buildings. God I hope this is the plot of one of these episodes. Also this channel rules: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPk5C50ajho
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Feb 13, 2024 01:10
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I feel like the story of Guadalcanal and the campaign around it could easily carry a full series. I’d imagine at some point in the future it will get one. I think The Pacific did an ok job showing the start of it and some of the marine side, but it kind of glossed over the real importance of it IMO and missed some of the the big beats…well, basically all of the naval ones. Which I understand as that wasn’t the story they were trying to tell, but still. The major slugfests the US Navy had with the IJN over the few months of the campaign are pretty loving crazy, and it’s really the coming of age story for the USN. It’s one of the only times that US and Japanese battleships directly fought each other and pretty much every engagement in iron bottom sound was a barroom brawl (the pacific shows a smidge of the first skirmish where the US got its rear end handed to it), plus there were major carrier duels and submarine exploits. It was wild and at some point that will definitely hit more of the big screen. It’s only the last few years I’ve really learned a good deal about it. The book Neptune’s Inferno is an amazing read. ColonelJohnMatrix fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Feb 13, 2024 |
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Feb 13, 2024 01:15
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The Pacific is the Story of the Marines and you can't do that without touching on Guadalcanal. It sorta bifurcates the story in two because aside from the brief bit on Leckie's experience in the Solomon Islands it's really one show set in 1942 and another set in 44-45. As much as I'd like to have seen the Tarawa campaign it wouldn't have been much different than Peleliu as far as television is concerned.
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Feb 13, 2024 01:31
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XYZAB posted:God I hope this is the plot of one of these episodes. That would be funny now i know the story, The G was in the pipeline long before october 43, but i think the last episode and the next one sort of threw a spanner in the order works. the 100th only got 6 G models out of the first 100 from Boeing, and from what i can gather the first one they lost out of that production run besides the joyride was December 22nd. So maybe they didn't put them up in a formation until they had enough to do so
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Feb 13, 2024 01:37
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Yeah I just did a rewatch of the pacific as well and its interesting to think back on. -some really great jump edits where you go from civilian life to the horrific battlefield. -lots of great character detail and texture. lots of little, incidental moments that helped make Band of brothers good too. -favourite eps: 3 (australia), 6 (peleliu airfield), 8 (iwo jima), 9 and 10. the send off in 10 is good and bittersweet. sob. -like BoB you have some incredible acting by bit-part one shot actors. everybody from the intelligence officer to the ladies and chaps back home in america + australia. i do recall the reception was pretty mixed. in retrospect, i'm just grateful we got a pacific theatre miniseries 
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Feb 13, 2024 03:31
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BoB just lent itself so much better to narrative storytelling. Following the same group of guys from training under a martinet to their first combat jump and all through the war, it just can’t not work. The fragmented storytelling of the pacific does hurt it in comparison, but as previously mentioned, it all picks up seriously when Sledge joins. His arc is the main one of the series and the heart of the show; his experience from naive boot to salty veteran, followed by his postwar stuff, is heartbreaking. I felt kind of let down by The Pacific when it first aired, but on repeated viewings I began to view it as a story of the effects of war on the individual (as told in three cases), as opposed to the effects of war on a group. The Pacific works much better if you view it with that lens IMO.
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Feb 13, 2024 03:41
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yeah i wonder if they could have leaned into the fragmentation a bit more. like, each episode has a brand new primary cast and island/setting. then you could have characters appear in the background of other eps, playing tertiary roles, maybe having some small crossovers. i guess they could save that idea for the 2039 sequel miniseries: set in the ???? theatre!
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Feb 13, 2024 05:28
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Lampsacus posted:yeah i wonder if they could have leaned into the fragmentation a bit more. like, each episode has a brand new primary cast and island/setting. then you could have characters appear in the background of other eps, playing tertiary roles, maybe having some small crossovers. i guess they could save that idea for the 2039 sequel miniseries: set in the ???? theatre! Africa. They need to do Africa. Lot of important poo poo went down there.
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Feb 13, 2024 05:35
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No they need to do the theater my grandfather was in: The Caribbean. He was a dentist in the navy and had harrowing stories about stuff like seeing a huge spider in the dental clinic on the ship
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Feb 13, 2024 05:47
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ColonelJohnMatrix posted:It’s only the last few years I’ve really learned a good deal about it. The book Neptune’s Inferno is an amazing read. That's a terrific book, highly recommended. The USN lost more killed in the Guadalcanal campaign than the USMC did. The Marines tend to gloss over that fact in their mythology of the campaign.
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Feb 13, 2024 05:54
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Stegosnaurlax posted:Africa. They need to do Africa. Lot of important poo poo went down there. Tom Hanks and Spielberg making the most dramatic and stirring tale of the 1st Armored Division in Africa and Sicily and then season 2 of SAS Rogue Heroes drops beside it and Paddy steals all their tanks for his one-man crusade. Arc Hammer fucked around with this message at 06:41 on Feb 13, 2024 |
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Feb 13, 2024 06:37
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my favourite part of the pacific was when sledge and snafu took a few weeks off and wrote bohemian rhapsody
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Feb 13, 2024 07:02
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Eau de MacGowan posted:my favourite part of the pacific was when sledge and snafu took a few weeks off and wrote bohemian rhapsody Gunny, I just killed a man. Put a mortar 'gainst his head hosed my stovepipe now he's dead. Gunny, war had just begun But now I've gone and thrown it all away.
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Feb 13, 2024 07:09
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Basilone’s story was worth telling because I never get to see Anna Torv outside of Fringe. But no amount of storytelling will ever make me understand why he’d go back.
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Feb 13, 2024 08:05
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