It’s been a slow week or so. I have done little in the way of gaming; the solitaire C&C: Ancients battle of Raphia has not moved since last Sunday. Mostly this is down to me being too tired after work to bother much in the evenings. After my sit-ups and cross-trainers sessions, my body is as tired as my mind and I am asleep within minutes of hitting the pit.
And the weekend was spent cleaning and clearing out the
rubbish that has accumulated in the flat over the last two years; mostly cardboard
boxes for stuff I have bought and might have had to return. They soon mount up.
So Saturday was lost to that exercise, and to driving to the rather
distant recycle dump in Warrington to drop it all off.
Sunday, however, saw me in the mood to do a little
model-making; in this instance a SMER 1/28 Klik-Kit of a Skoda Favorit. I have had
two of those wagons over the years, with differing levels of enjoyment. I
bought the model years ago, but just found it again in the clear out and
decided it was time to make it. It took less than an hour to click the major components
together, and the painting and final assembly can wait ‘til later.
The rest of Sunday I sadly wasted catching up on a film I
had promised myself to watch, but not got around to for years; Flyboys. Now I am a keen WW1 aviation historian, and
what with the breadth of modern research and the current standard of GCI, I
expected great things for this film, which was supposedly based on the exploits
of the Lafayette Escadrille in the early years of the First World War.
What I got was a film with a plot and script so dire that a
1930’s audience would have thought it clichéd, and dreadfully unhistorical and
inaccurate combat scenes. For Odin’s Sake, Hollywood. With GCI it’s just as
easy to get it right as to get it wrong, so what the hell was the reason for
making all the German aircraft Fokker DRI’s? And red ones at that - except for
the sneering baddy of course, who flew a black one. The only reason that
springs to mind was that the director thought his audience so stupid that he
believed they would only be able to recognise the “bad guys” if their planes
had three wings and were painted red. This mismatch grated, and set the tone
for the rest of the “history” in the film.
I would hate to have been the historical adviser on that
film; they must have had a hell of a time with that director, or perhaps they
were just as clueless. Every clash involved massive squadron-sized formations,
and the air over the Lines was full of Gothas and Handley Pages and Zeppelins!
Okay, so some of the little details were right, such as uniforms, flying gear,
etc… But what’s the point of making sure those tiny details are fine, when the
major part of the supposedly historical film is banal rubbish?
The guns fired wispy smoking bullets that made a little
swishing noise as they passed. Anyone who has been shot at knows that bullets
crack when they go past, but obviously the little swishing sounds matched the smoky
trails better. And those smoky bullet trails? Tracer existed back then and was
widely used. By 1916 all sides had tracers that could be followed out to 500
yards or so. The only rounds that left smoky trails were incendiaries, which
were not widely used except against those specific targets that required it,
such as balloons and zeppelins.
The rotary engines did not rotate. Ok, some of the footage
featured actual modern replicas with radial engines, but the CGI aircraft could
have included it. Deflection shooting? Not in this film, baby! The sights were
always spot on the target when the triggers were pushed or pulled. And the scene were the hero carefully managed to time his swerve to ensure that a stricken Triplane, falling from above, plunged down to strike the Triplane sitting on his tail, was derisory. Another hoot was generated when the hero deliberately pulled up from a head-on attack and, with incredible skill, ripped off his opponent's top wing with his undercarriage, which remained remarkably intact afterwards!
Next week I intend to catch up on The Red Baron, a German-made film which preceded Flyboys by a couple of years. It can hardly be worse.... can it?
