Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Eagler on December 02, 2002, 09:30:44 AM
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Steven Speilberg's "Taken"
starts tonite - the "making of" looked pretty good
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Yeah I'm going to check this out. I hope its better made than most of the Sci Fi channel original stuff.
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Forgot to mention a pretty neat scene involving B17's & 109's over Europe
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Im stoked! Ive been waiting for this! It looks damn good too!
So to all who enjoy killing me i wont be on from 9pm - 10p EST
Lets enjoy boys! ;)
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Originally posted by Eagler
Steven Speilberg's "Taken"
starts tonite - the "making of" looked pretty good
I've seen promos for it but missed the "Making Of" show. Hopefully I can catch it again.
Too bad tonight's showing conflicts with the Jets vs Raiders game. Hopefully the Raiders will lose quickly. ;)
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that WWII scene looked awesome in the previews...
I just hope the show lives up to the hype....
but I have my doubts
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sametime as WWE !! priorites priorites!
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sheet, I have to stay at school for a stupid project :P
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I don't know. Maybe its because I was watching the JetsvRaiders game at the same time and switching back and forth during commercials, but I really didn't get much out of this. A lot of it was somewhat predictable and never really had much drama to it. Not one of Spielberg's better ones. The special effects weren't anything special, either. I kept waiting for Scully and Mulder to walk in via some sort of time-warp thingy.
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It jumped right into the air battle - good computer animation
as for the rest of the story - I'll give it a few more episodes b4 passing judgement
letting tivo grab it as 11pm is bout an hour past me weekday sacktime :)
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I missed it and I was wanting to watch it but had to take my son to the Christmas parade and had a blast with him.
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Originally posted by Reschke
I missed it and I was wanting to watch it but had to take my son to the Christmas parade and had a blast with him.
Part One is on again tonite, right before Part 2 - think around 7 EST
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not impressed one bit
the air battle was kinda cool, although short.
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The air battle was pretty impressive... all done in CGI.... except they had 109Es attacking B17Gs. You'd think if they went through all that effort to make the planes, they'd atleast get them right.
-SW
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Yeah, that air combat scene was fantastic. I loved the way the tracers wobbled as if the camera was being vibrated.
BTW, I bet that intelligence officer capt. is really an alien. ;)
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Many Americans seem to think every Bf109 is an Emil, I have noticed this in old plastic models, most radio control Bf109s, in movies, in paintings in many games etc etc.
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How could you tell it was an E?
And why do you care?
It was an OK show. I don't see myself watching 20 hours of it though.
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It had squared off wingtips, internally wing mounted guns, and horizontal stabilizer struts.
That's how I could tell it was an E.
-SW
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Agreed - by this time - everyone thinks every, as Ben Aflack (sp?) would say "M E" has wing mounted guns - what are you gonna do.
I wasnt very impressed by the B17/109 scene - I thought it was more cartoonlike than anything. Granted there were some good shots showing the rate of closure as 109's streaked through the formation when the camera was on a side angle - but the rest of it was too cheezy IMO. The tracers looked good - but they were the only thing "shaking." I guess the CGI guys just looked at gun cam footage and decieded thats what they looked like going through the air instead of considering what the pilot/gunner actually sees as opposed to the gun cam.
Oh - and the "15 rounds of .50 makes any aircraft explode like TNT" rountine is getting old...
The story itself was ok I guess - I was busy in the DA for much of the time, but its nothing that would leave an impression on me.
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The 109's were Emils. And the compositing of 3D and live action was horrible did you see the scene when they were supposedly in fornt of the Enola Gay? I could have done it better. I think they spent most of thier effects budget on the 3D aliens.
All in All I enjoyed the show and will try to catch most if not all of the series.
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Originally posted by Reschke
I missed it and I was wanting to watch it but had to take my son to the Christmas parade and had a blast with him.
Your son was the better entertainment value.
As far as I could tell, the plotline went something like this:
(I missed the beginning, so I'll have to pick it up from where I first started watching it.) An older man with two young boys is staring at the wreckage of a UFO. Suddenly, an Army officer emerges from the craft. John Madden is describing what the Jets need to do to stop the Raiders offensive package that features the venerable Jerry Rice and an always-dangerous Tim Brown who is just shy of making his 1,000 catch in his NFL career. A man is sleeping in his farm-house with his wife next to him and wakes up to nightmares of German officer and doctors coming to bring him back (to where?). He wakes up and his wife is comforting him, trying to find out what's troubling her husband. He doesn't want to talk about it because she wouldn't understand. He just has flashes of memories that are being suppressed by his sub-conscious, of him being strapped down onto a cot while doctors poke him with needles. Rich Gannon starts the Raiders drive at the Raider 27 with a hand-off to Charlie Garner on a draw play. Gannon's next plays are hand-offs to Garner and passes to Rice and Brown. They drive down into Jets' territory but the Jets defense rallies and Janikowski kicks a field goal.
A waitress at a local diner gets off work and goes home to feed her two kids. She's a single mom struggling to make ends meet in her rural household. One night she's smoking a cigarette in bed and hears a noise outside, so she lights a camping lantern and goes to investigate. Its windy outside and the door to the tool shed is banging in the wind. She goes over and hears something inside the shed. She goes in finds a man hiding in the shadows. "Help me", he says, so she takes him into the house and lets him sleep in her son's room and pooh-poohs her son's questions and objections about the man. Chad Morton takes the kick-off out to the Jets' 40-something yard line and Pennington shows some of his rookie-season magic, but the Jets can't score and are forced to punt. Meanwhile, the husband is boarding up the windows to his house so that "they can't get in." Of course, the wife doesn't understand what he's talking about and objects - "How are we going to get out?".
At a US Army base, a team of scientists are examining wreckage from a UFO crash site and have managed to recover alien bodies, including one that's still alive. Apparently, the alien cells have the ability to transform into anything the scientists can imagine, and the living specimen is able to become invisible and crawl upside down on walls. One of the scientists is inside the room, chanting in Hebrew, as if in some sort of trance. Gannon's Raiders get the ball back and march down the field but can't score. Meanwhile, the husband from the first storyline continues to have nightmares, wakes up one night, goes to his desk and pulls out a listing of his bomber crew and starts making phone calls. The Jets get the ball back but can't do anything with it and are forced to punt.
The waitress is talking to her new friend on the back porch of her rural house, getting all mishy-mashy. Back at the base, a local Army officer is starting to piece together the pieces of the puzzle and knows that the wreckage they recovered wasn't from Earth. He doesn't know about the aliens yet. Gannon completes passes downfield to Rice and Brown, supplemented by some strong rushing by Garner, and the Raiders are able to get the ball within field goal range. Janikowski bangs it through. The husband reveals that he's made calls to the families of his crew and has learned that all of them are dead except for him and his co-pilot, and his co-pilot is gravely ill in a hospital and not expected to recover. He packs his suitcase and makes plans to speak with the ailing co-pilot. The Jets are moving down the field and Chad Pennington completes a pass underneath that allows some no-name runningback to run 10 yards for the Jets' first touchdown.
One of the scientists at the US Army base thinks he's 14 again and is reliving his barmitzvah. He enters the room where the alien is being held and says "I'm here to see my father." Gannon takes the Raiders down the field, but they can't convert on third down and they're forced to punt. The Jets get the ball down the field inside Raiders territory and kick a field goal. At the half its 10-6 Jets.
A couple of scientists at the US Army base have found the dead body of the Jewish scientist, along with the dead body of the alien. How a pencil-necked scientist under the influence of an alien can have the strength to kill it isn't answered. Meanwhile, the husband is interviewing the co-pilot and the co-pilot tells him all about their stay in captivity, how they were held down on cots and used for medical experiments, and how the husband was "a real Audie Murphy" and managed to break loose and shoot the German doctors and guards with a machine gun that they had set near the head of a cot - "But we both know they weren't really Germans. Its as if they didn't even know what the machine gun was for." The husband flashes back and realizes that the doctors were actually aliens and that his crew was being subjected to experiments.
A scientist from the US Army base is pulled over by the sheriff on a remote road in the rain. The sheriff asks the scientist to step out of the vehicle, but doesn't say why the scientist is being pulled over, so you know something bad is about to happen. Just then, the US Army officer steps out of the gloom and apologizes for the unorthodox methods, but there's a security leak at the base and he's conducting an investigation and wants to ask the scientist some questions. The scientist tells him about the aliens' shape-shifting and mind control abilities. The Raiders get the ball but can't do anything and are forced to punt.
A woman pulls up to her mobil home and goes inside. Just as she turns on the light, a man goes "Boo!" and startles her. Its the US Army officer and she's his wife (or something like that). They exchange pleasantries and he turns away, then suddenly turns back and slugs her, then continues to pummel her as she's on the floor. The Jets get the ball on the kickoff but don't really get much of a return. They move the ball down the field but are forced to punt. The Raiders get the ball back and Tim Brown makes his 1,000th catch of his career. The game is stopped for 4 minutes while everybody celebrates. The US Army officer is meeting with the base commander and shows him a piece of the UFO that he's had examined. He knows that the debris isn't from Earth and he knows about the aliens that the scientists have been studying. He threatens to reveal what he knows unless the base cooperates with his investigation. As he turns to leave, he reveals that he would never harm his wife (or whatever she was) - "She is the Sun and the Moon to me."
Play has resumed and Gannon is marching the Raiders down the field, scoring on a short pass to Rice in the end zone. The waitress is at the diner, but is sitting in the bathroom with pregnancy-induced nausea, a bit of a scandal for an unwed mother in the '40s. The kindly short-order cook makes her comfortable and helps serve the dishes to the diner's patrons. Back at the base, the US Army officer launches an investigation to find an alien that's loose while the Jets try to move the ball down the field but are forced to punt. The Raiders get the ball back but they can't move so they punt too. Just as Chad Morton fields the punt deep in Jets territory, he's drilled by a Raider and fumbles the ball. Raiders get the ball and convert for a score.
The waitress returns to her house and tells the strange man she had found in her shed that a Army officer is in town looking for him. He explains that he must leave and she tells him to take her with him. Of course he can't, so she gives him a little piece of jewelry to remember him by. There's bright blinding flash of light and he's gone. Meanwhile, the Army officer and some cops are out on a nearby road when their car stalls and won't start. They look up and see 3 lights zip off into the sky. The Army officer drives on up to the lady's house and introduces himself. He says "He's already left, hasn't he?" and she nods. Pennington is guiding the Jets down the field in the 2-minute drill and get down to the 35, but on the last play he overthrows the Hail Mary pass and its picked off by the Raiders. Jets lose by 3 points.
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LOL
sure you weren't sitting on the remote controls "back" button ??
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Sometimes I just have to let art flow over me, in a sort of "stream of consciousness" thing. ;)
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LOL!!!!!
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Don't forget: tonight its "Taken: Part II" at 9 with an encore presentation of Monday's episode at 7pm. I'll probably be jumping between "Taken" and either "The Sons of Katie Elder" or "Goldfinger". That should make for an interesting write-up!
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I watched it with Mrs. easymo. She commented that she had been probed often, And it really wasnt so bad.
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Originally posted by easymo
I watched it with Mrs. easymo. She commented that she had been probed often, And it really wasnt so bad.
lol good one
i noticed the emil thing too - i thought they should have been g6's oh well. it wasn't too bad - they advertised this show so much even i remembered it'd be on last nght and i never remember that stuff :)
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Originally posted by easymo
I watched it with Mrs. easymo. She commented that she had been probed often, And it really wasnt so bad.
I got about 5 minutes into the film before the House Committee on Arts and Sciences made a determination to withdraw its support in favor of "Forensic Detectives" and a show on the History Channel about the history of motorcycles.
Apparently, Part II takes place about 10 years after Part I, with the waitress' child being in school and possessing amazing telepathic abilities, demonstrated by the young boy predicting what's in a schoolmate's lunchbox and seeing (in his mind's eye) the events that happened the night before in the schoolmate's house.
Once scene that really turned me off to the show was early on in the film, where a mother reads a bedtime story to her young son about a rabbit named Artemus who is invited to dinner at a house that's carved out of a tree (an obvious rip-off of Winnie The Pooh). Sure enough, as soon as mom closes the door, there are bright lights outside the boy's window and a giant rabbit dressed in a morning coat appears at the boy's window and summons him outside. They hop and skip down the fairy tale lane into a house that's carved out of a tree. As soon as the rabbit closes the door, bright lights eminate from the windows of the house and we see it transformed into a UFO. In the next scene, the boy (or is it an alien that looks like the boy?) is standing in the middle of a deserted highway and is almost hit by a truck.
So why was this scene so bad? Well, besides the rip-off of Winnie the Pooh? Because it reminded me of the downfall of the Star Wars trilogy when the Ewoks were introduced in order to appeal to young children. Spielberg stole a page from Lucas' marketing strategy. But he gave it a somewhat evil twist, involving capture of small children by evil aliens. Bah.
After that, I learned all about the evolution of the motorcycle; why the British motorcycles were so good, why Indian faded away, how Vespas were developed, why Harleys used to be good, then sucked, then became good again, how Honda revolutionized the motorcycle world with its Model 50 and its Gold Wing, and the rise in popularity of motorcross, supercross, and freestyle. I also learned some interesting trivia, such as when you see a motorcycle rider tap his helmet, what does that mean?
S
P
O
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L
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S
P
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It means there's a cop ahead, so you better put on your helmet.
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gofaster, excellent writeups. I would like to correct a few mistakes if you don't mind.
The US Army Officer (who in the first episode is a Captain) was a member of the Intelligence Corps. He went with the old man and the two boys to the crash site. He entered the alien craft, and came back out a few minutes later.
His CO (a Colonel) decides to take the Captain's original idea of covering it up, especially now that the craft has been found intact. This angers our Captain because he is now out of the loop. He begins his own investigation.
We see a Jewish scientist in a room with an alien. The scientist is chanting in Hebrew. When questioned, the scientist states that the alien was able to show him visions, and that he was going through his Barmitzfa, and was just about to talk with his dead father again. Later that evening, the scientist returns to the room to talk to the alien, wishing to see his father. When the Army Officers arrive, the scientist is dead, with blood coming out of his eyes, nose, mouth and ears. The alien is apparently dead as well, lying motionless on the floor.
The girl (who we assume the Captain has had a few encounters with) had witnessed the crash and recovered a small piece of the ship. The only reason she had witnessed the crash was because our dear captain stood her up in favor of the Colonel's daughter.
This former fling finally manages to see the Captain, who up until this point has been purposely avoiding her. She pulls him aside and shows him the alloy she recovered from the crash site.
Fast forward to that night, and our good Captain beats the girl to death so nobody but he is aware of the alloy. Fade into his wedding to the Colonel's daughter.
He takes the Colonel aside and blackmails him into a promotion. His tool is the recovered alloy, and obviously the Colonel's own daughter who is now the Captain's (sorry...promoted to Major by the Colonel) wife.
The Captain now has complete control over the investigation. He realizes, based on the testimony of the doctor on the roadside, that the aliens are capable of some pretty amazing things and decides to broaden his search to include something "a little more human."
This is how the Captain, and our Texas waitress become -- very briefly in the first episode -- acquainted.
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The Texas waitress was not a single mother. She was married, however, her husband left on a three week business trip. Apparently her marriage is in rather poor shape. When the stranger shows up (who interestingly enough looks just like the guy in the comic book) she welcomes him into her home. It becomes obvious very quickly that this new found friend is in fact one of the surviving aliens from the wreck.
The alien befriends the poor lonely woman, and they end up doing the horizontal bop in the same shed she found him in. Her son, who has been very suspecting of mom's new beau, figures him to be an army deserter. When going through his stuff, he finds the comic book, and realizes the main character looks just like his mom's friend. At this point, the alien walks in, and we witness the first semi-hostility on the part of the aliens. He tells both kids that they will not interfere with plans, and causes the son's nose to bleed. Although, as soon as he sees the boy's nose bleeding, he gets very aplogetic.
The kids, obviously suspecting the man of being a deserter now more than ever, race off to find the Sheriff. Mr. Alien says his goodbyes to the waitress and goes his merry way, via a pretty blue light show.
Next, our waitress is experiencing morning sickness, and tells the diner owner she's pregnant. She then walks out of her job. Later, while at home, she meets the coniving Major briefly.
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The bomber pilot was over Germany when his formation was attacked by the Luftwaffe. His plane gets shot up, as does he (took at least one in the gut). As they are going down, the blue lights follow them. His copilot says they have to bail, and he tells him that they aren't going to die. How he has this premonition, we don't find out.
He returns home from the war, marries a girl from the bank and has a son. All seems to be going well, except for the dreams he keeps having of his experiences in Germany. He wakes up one morning after one and finds bruises and needle puncture wounds on his arms.
As the "dreams" continue, he becomes more and more paranoid, eventually boarding up his house so that "they" can't get in. Finally, one night, he wakes up and calls all his crewmen. Much to his surprise, all but his copilot have died of mysterious causes. His copilot is gravely ill in an Army hospital, and is not expected to survive.
He tells his wife that he must leave because he needs to find out what's going on with him. She tries to argue, but he says that he can't be a father for their son until he can sort things out. So, he gets in his car and drives away.
He ends up at an Army hospital speaking to his gravely ill copilot. Although the pilot has no memory of the events, except for the flashbacks and dreams, his copilot recalls it clearly. As he is reliving it, the captain finds out that "those weren't really Germans you were shooting."
In a later dream sequence, we see the captain unloading on German doctors, when suddenly, the scene changes and he is now in a UFO firing upon the aliens.
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those grey guys are pretty freaky
thought I saw one holding a Democrat voters card :)
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Thanks for filling in the gaps, JohnnyB. It certainly answered some questions I had, and pretty much confirmed what I suspected this show was going to become: a new-millenium retelling of "V", that '80s sci-fi miniseries that NBC ran where alien vistors come to Earth and start their conquest of the human race.
The real kick-in-the-teeth will be if the aliens are killed by a common Earth virus ala "War of The Worlds" and "V".
I guess its a good thing I didn't pay good money to see it in the theatre.
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Originally posted by Eagler
those grey guys are pretty freaky
thought I saw one holding a Democrat voters card :)
No, the alien in the shed said he was a farmer, which we all know is a strong Democratic voting block, but when the lady questioned him about his farming, he got defensive and dodgy so obviously he was faking it. I'm guessing he was a Libertarian.
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Episode II was pretty interesting.
I think Spielberg has read a little of Dr Greer. Or at least somebody has on the Production team has. I'm glad Spielberg did this, or at least put his name on it.
Could the German Scientist be Dr Werner Van Braun?
Braun was supposedly a big part in the alleged reverse-engineering of alien technology.