Warbird Information Exchange

X-rayist pretty much nailed it. The war lover and 633 squadron.Longest day was great.My favorite is the great escape.Not for accuracy but it is still a great movie.

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Hang The Expense

Found a link on youtube with a 3 minute clip from the movie "The Beast".

Pretty cool flick if you ever get the chance to see it.

John

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTEQLBTDpMQ

Most realistic?

You have to discount the Battle of the Bulge and some others.

The problem with Saving Private Ryan is the disobedience of Capt Miller on direct orders of the Chief of Staff to evacuate Ryan. The attack on the radar station emplacement is another. They were not there to take ground and engage the enemy, but to find a man and return him.

The ones that will stand the test of time are the classics like Best Years of our Lives, 12 O'Clock High, Battle Ground, A Walk in the Sun, They Were Expendable, The Battle of San Pietro.

Band of Brothers is the first one that allows the audience to bond with the cast and as one of the vets I know has said" How did they recreate that shelling in the Bois Jacque? It was just like when we were there". They took great pains to be as exact as they could under the demands of schedule. The Airborne community will pick out some of the discrepancies in the uniforms and weapons, but for the most part the production was as authentic as you will ever find.

The personalities were merged in some cases for dramatic license. It wasn't a luger that Donald Hoobler shot himself with , it was a Belgian 32 with no safety. For one example. Another is the family that David Webster finds hidden in a room was actually a instance where going house to house, Babe Heffron was ready to open a door and throw a grenade in and for some reason he didn't, he spared a young family and the grandparents. HBO felt it was better viewing it through Websters's eyes.

Ron Spiers actually did shot a group of prisoners in Normandy. So on and so on.

Why is it so bad if a movie talks about these guys lives other than fighting? Some look at it as a bad thing, I think it show them more as humans. Peral Harbor had a lot of mistakes in it, it was still a cool movie! A ton of my non-aviation friends then became interested in learning abou the Doolittle raid. These guys are not airplane buffs so they are not going to sit through 12'oclock high or thirt seconds over Tokyo, but Pearl harbor had enough there to at least peak people's interest in the subject. Love triangles did exist, the war interupted lives, and sorry that they used J model B-25's instead of B's. We need to chill out for the sake of non aviators that want to watch a movie and get an understanding of some of what these guys went through. If you want to watch the real stuff, put on a documentary.

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Manager

I just watched Best Years of Our Lives this weekend for the first time. What a great movie. I imagine the "homewrecker" scene was quite shocking for the time. The scrap yard scene was shocking for me though! Especially cool to see after seeing the scrapping exibit at the CAF museum last week.

I like Pearl Harbor. I have the directors cut which is a bit more gory. I enjoy it but I do have to disengage the brain a bit. The cinematography is great. That, Hawaii and Kate Beckinsale is enough for me to watch it again and again. The Doolittle thing is completely ridiculous though.



Bridges of Toko Ri... it was quite shocking to me as a little kid that all the main characters were killed by the bad guys.

Band of Brothers set the bar so high... anything produced afterwards will be compared to that for years to come.

mustangdriver,

It is a matter of taste, not what is "correct". You like a movie and I don't - that's OK and it IS human to not agree on everything.

Personally, I believe that, in this day & age - 60+ years after the WWII facts, a wide-release, major studio feature film that fictionalizes historical truths (like the "Pearl Harbor") and has so many historical inaccuracies in it, often becomes accepted as "fact" by people with little historical education/knowledge.

I believe that virtually everyone who regularly visits this forum also acknowledges and celebrates the veterans of the armed conflicts that have guaranteed our liberties and way of life. You are welcome to your views, that is part of what so many gallant warriors have fought and died for. But, to me, combining so many personal aviation stories into the same movie characters, like they the way and manner they did in "Pearl Harbor", diminishes or minimizes the very real heroic actions by m-a-n-y ordinary citizen soldiers/sailors/marines who acted extraodinarily in uncertain times.

If you contrast "Pearl Harbor" with "Band of Brothers" you will see it is quite possible to make the truth a very compelling and entertaining event; an event that is profitable for the producing entity as well.

FYI: The entire (12 hour?) series "Band of Brothers" cost less to make and distribute than "Pearl Harbor". Quality entertainment has nothing to do with $, but it does require real imagination. For many of us that imagination was wasted in "Pearl Harbor". But, I'm truly and sincerely glad you and your friends enjoyed it. Perhaps they will now dig into the real history and become hooked on the real accomplishments of real people.

Best quote from the movie...."Platoon."

"Keep your pecker hard and your powder dry and the world will turn"

FYI, The boys who brought you Band of Brothers , will begin production soon in Australia on the new mini series, tentatively called "The Pacific"

Read "A Helmet for my Pillow" and "With the Old Breed". they will give you some insigt into th eupcoming mini series.

THat is exactly what I mean. The average person isn't going to watch 12 hours of band of Brothers (which is my favorite of all time). Pearl harbor had 2.5 hours to do it. It was a movie. Maybe it would spark enough interest in the subject to find out the whole story. Look at Saving Private Ryan. It got a major motion picture star interested enough to help with getting the National WWII Memorial built. I think that we need to keep in mind that it is a movie that is for the generla public and not a history channel special. I love those as well, but they are different. My wife learned alot from watching Pearl harbor, and it gave her a new appreciation for what her grandfather went through.

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Manager

Quote from my wife while watching a PBS story on the Battle of the Bulge.


"I didn't know that World War 2 was so big!"

One of my favorites: Enemy At The Gates

One of the worst (my opinion): Platoon

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"Everyone wants to live here (New Jersey), evidenced by the fact that it has the highest population per capita in the U.S..."

One that I think stands up quite well today is Sahara (1943). It is purely a wartime propaganda film, but the writing, acting and overall drama of the piece, I think, has held up well over time. Considering that such films were being cranked out at a high rate by the studios, this film had fairly high production values. Also it was filmed on location at the Desert Training Center using "modern" equipment and not on the back lot using models on a sand table.

Has it truly stood the test of time? Probably not. I catch parts of it on tv once in a very great while. Unfortunatly I suspect it has been largely forgotten and will soon become only a curiosty to all but a few people.

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It's you and me against the world.

We attack at dawn.

MustangDriver is right, these movies get folks in the seat to watch something that if explained properly would probably bore some to tears. Yes, its hard to believe that so many have not clue of the sacrifices made for our freedom and some of these movies, as shlocky as they may be, at least get folks to open their eyes.

Like I said, most of my views are mine and mine alone. I own Pearl Harbor and all the other movies I have mentioned and have not even come close to finishing my collection. I must admit, Pearl Harbor was a fun date movie and that is how I first saw it, with a date! I just watch the flight stuff now on the DVD. At least its in DTS!

When I went to see Titanic with my cousin we started goofing off and he said outloud " I heard the boat sinks in the end!" The girl standing in front of me, spins around and yells "What! Are you kidding me? You just messed up the movie for me!"

Yes Alex, I'll take a clue for $1,000!

And for the record Kate beckinsale is beautiful in that movie. I am a fan of the scenes and how they were filmed. Very awsome camera work. band of Brothers on the other hand should be manditory viewing in highschool.

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Manager

The biggest issue with Pearl Harbor in my opinion is that they had the guys on the Doolittle Raid (except for the fact that some of my friends had the chance to earn some $ for their bombers). I think that was sort of a disgraceful use of literary license. I can put put up with the love story (especially if they would have had some brief nudity lol), I can put up with hte crappy CGI, I can put up with the dogfight at 50ft AGL, I can put up with the handy talky to the P-40 radio conversation and I can put up with some composite or even completely fictional characters.

What I just can't sign onto is having these guys on the Doolittle Raid. The Doolittle Raiders is small, close knit group of guys who are well known. Representing 2 crews of them as people who they are not I think is poor use of literary license. It is one thing to tell a fictional story of one of 800,000 US troops who participated in the Normandy invasion but I think to do the same with a group of 80 that are easily identifiable is a real stretch of what is acceptable in my opinion of literary license with historical events.

Ryan