Movie Thoughts: Red Tails
Jan. 29th, 2012 08:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerIt wasn't that long ago that I saw news that Lucasfilm had completed work on Red Tails and the movie would be premiering in theatres in a matter of weeks. All of a sudden, some old memories were hurtling back to me, memories of when I had my first chance to look at that "Usenet" thing people were starting to talk about and I read some posts from the Star Wars newsgroup, including a "New Movies FAQ" that happened, among the actual quotes, the rebuttals of rumours, and the speculation of its own, to mention there was another project at Lucasfilm to follow Radioland Murders that would be about the Tuskegee Airmen. Not that long after that, it now seems, I noticed someone speculating that "Red Tails" had a certain resemblance to that famous cover name "Blue Harvest," but since then certain other things had attracted all the attention.
On seeing the news, though, I began to entertain thoughts of seeing the movie. I suppose I might have wondered just a bit if it being a Lucasfilm production was somehow "enough" to justify going to it, but I might also have thought it would somehow be setting myself in opposition to people who can't stop dwelling on how they don't have Blu-Rays made from film prints of the "pre-Special Editions" and just might recall some of the staggering quantities of mud flying around in 1999...
After all of that, though, on seeing the movie I think I was able to see it for what it was and enjoy it. From the trailers, I might have wondered just a little how the flying scenes would look, but they seemed to work just fine on the big screen. Too, the scenes on the ground also worked with them; how much more I'm "qualified" to say I don't know, as thin as these comments seem.
There was the small bonus of getting to see the trailer for the impending 3D release of The Phantom Menace (even if it was a "flat" version of it), although my odd hope that with 20th Century Fox releasing the movie the studio credits would be "very familiar" didn't quite work out. So far as the movie went, though, a small sign of how it did work might have been how I was able to push thoughts about the "newsreel animatics" and everything else back... until, perhaps, I was seeing names including Matthew Wood and Ben Burtt in the end credits.
On seeing the news, though, I began to entertain thoughts of seeing the movie. I suppose I might have wondered just a bit if it being a Lucasfilm production was somehow "enough" to justify going to it, but I might also have thought it would somehow be setting myself in opposition to people who can't stop dwelling on how they don't have Blu-Rays made from film prints of the "pre-Special Editions" and just might recall some of the staggering quantities of mud flying around in 1999...
After all of that, though, on seeing the movie I think I was able to see it for what it was and enjoy it. From the trailers, I might have wondered just a little how the flying scenes would look, but they seemed to work just fine on the big screen. Too, the scenes on the ground also worked with them; how much more I'm "qualified" to say I don't know, as thin as these comments seem.
There was the small bonus of getting to see the trailer for the impending 3D release of The Phantom Menace (even if it was a "flat" version of it), although my odd hope that with 20th Century Fox releasing the movie the studio credits would be "very familiar" didn't quite work out. So far as the movie went, though, a small sign of how it did work might have been how I was able to push thoughts about the "newsreel animatics" and everything else back... until, perhaps, I was seeing names including Matthew Wood and Ben Burtt in the end credits.