1 Topic by paisley1 (edited by paisley1 2024-03-02 03:29:51)

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Topic: Masters Of The Air [Historical War Drama]

Masters Of The Air | Next-Episode Show Page | Official Trailer

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BYzgwNTI2YjAtMDM5Zi00MTAzLThkMmUtNTEyYWY1ODA2ZDdjXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMzQ2MDI5NjU@._V1_FMjpg_UY3000_.jpg

Masters of the Air is an Apple TV series that recounts the story of the 100th Bomb Group during World War II. Led by Gale 'Buck' Cleven and John 'Bucky' Egan, the series follows the airmen as they embark on dangerous missions to reach bombing targets inside Nazi Germany.

2 Reply by paisley1 (edited by paisley1 2024-02-05 05:57:39)

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Re: Masters Of The Air [Historical War Drama]

I've watched the first 2 episodes and so far so good.  Band of Brothers is the gold standard for a mini series and this is not in that league, but it's about as good as The Pacific, and I'm about as interested in the characters.  The choice of using digital instead of film, depreciates the quality to me, too clean, and the problem of speaking through masks in loud noisy planes will have you turning up your center channel speaker to hear the dialogue in some scenes.

3 Reply by fassy

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Re: Masters Of The Air [Historical War Drama]

paisley1 wrote:

I've watched the first 2 episodes and so far so good.  Band of Brothers is the gold standard for a mini series and this is not in that league, but it's about as good as The Pacific, and I'm about as interested in the characters.

Saw all released  three episodes so far... Yeah, next try to catch up to Band of Brothers but long way to go. And yes, it is mostly about the characters which do just not "click". I couldn't care less if they come home or not. I think the first two Episodes of Band of Brothers was key to the whole series. I realize they learned from the Pacific and tried to create some more memorable characters and interactions in Masters of Air... but fail. 

paisley1 wrote:

The choice of using digital instead of film, depreciates the quality to me, too clean,

The problem is not "digital" vs "film". It is what the post-production team does with the source material. And yes, in this case, they did either not have the talent to create atmosphere or a feeling of realism or just adopted the modern movies standard "can't go wrong if you are following the mainstream super clean look". Which probably most people hate, often enough without realizing.

4 Reply by paisley1 (edited by paisley1 2024-02-07 03:30:30)

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Re: Masters Of The Air [Historical War Drama]

fassy wrote:

The problem is not "digital" vs "film".

Post production can't hide digital from my eye, and can't properly recreate that soft grainy film aesthetic that matches an historical drama, also, the more you mess with it in post, the more modern it looks.  The Executive Producers probably know that this story doesn't merit/warrant the cost of film, but it just looks so digital I wouldn't be surprised if they used an iPhone....just for apple TV+.

This is how I'd want it to be done:

https://cdn.theasc.com/Band-of-Brothers-Bluescreen-Shot.jpg

One of the reasons why I think Succession is one of the greatest TV series ever made, is because of the look, it was all shot on Kodak 35mm negative, just like Band of Brothers, which has a quality to it.

5 Reply by fassy

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Re: Masters Of The Air [Historical War Drama]

paisley1 wrote:

This is how I'd want it to be done:

True, fully agreed. But there are better and worse digital productions. Most of the last few years have been on the side of awful.

Back to "Masters of Air"... EP4... Boooooooooooooring. What a snoozefest. After a promising start, this miniseries went downhill fast. Lost almost all interest by now...

6 Reply by fassy

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Re: Masters Of The Air [Historical War Drama]

Well, the comments on IMDB are mostly (besides the odd 9/10 or 10/10 I-love-every-crappy-show-idiot-comment) spot on. Funny enough when the rating is 7.9/10 while it should be more like 5.4/10 or so.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2640044/reviews

7 Reply by paisley1 (edited by paisley1 2024-03-03 05:49:48)

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Re: Masters Of The Air [Historical War Drama]

Pun intended, this show took a nose dive.  It's not a very cohesive or compelling story to cue into.  My biggest gripe with the story was when:

▼Spoiler

Gale "Buck" Clevens goes for a mission and gets shot down with all the other men, and it's not shown at all, only talked about in passing, which really broke up the flow of events and was kind of jarring, and the only thing I can think of is that they'll talk about it in a later episode as backstory, which I'm not sure will come off now that they're all in a POW camp.  Not my favorite story telling.

8 Reply by inkblot

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Re: Masters Of The Air [Historical War Drama]

paisley1 wrote:

Pun intended, this show took a nose dive.  It's not a very cohesive or compelling story to cue into.  My biggest gripe with the story was when:

▼Spoiler

Gale "Buck" Clevers goes for a mission and gets shot down with all the other men, and it's not shown at all, only talked about in passing, which really broke up the flow of events and was kind of jarring, and the only thing I can think of is that they'll talk about it in a later episode as backstory, which I'm not sure will come off now that they're all in a concentration camp.  Not my favorite story telling.

I thought

▼Spoiler

Flyers where sent to POW camps.

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9 Reply by bvereshagen

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Re: Masters Of The Air [Historical War Drama]

inkblot wrote:
paisley1 wrote:

Pun intended, this show took a nose dive.  It's not a very cohesive or compelling story to cue into.  My biggest gripe with the story was when:

▼Spoiler

Gale "Buck" Clevers goes for a mission and gets shot down with all the other men, and it's not shown at all, only talked about in passing, which really broke up the flow of events and was kind of jarring, and the only thing I can think of is that they'll talk about it in a later episode as backstory, which I'm not sure will come off now that they're all in a concentration camp.  Not my favorite story telling.

I thought

▼Spoiler

Flyers where sent to POW camps.


They were. Stalag Luft III was  a POW camp for allied airmen that was run by the Luftwaffe.  My grade 10 English teacher spent about two years there after his Lancaster was shot down in 1943. He said he was treated about as well as could be expected under the circumstances.

10 Reply by paisley1 (edited by paisley1 2024-03-03 03:03:05)

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Re: Masters Of The Air [Historical War Drama]

Splitting hairs imo but ya:

▼Spoiler

A POW camp in particular of course, not to be confused with all the other types of camps like Extermination Camps, Labor Camps, Transit Camps, SS Camps, Internment Camps, etc, my point was that Gale Clevens story was broken up in a way that can only be fixed in backstory, irrespective of the type of camp they all ended up in.

11 Reply by BigZ

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Re: Masters Of The Air [Historical War Drama]

To even mention this series in comparison to Band of Brothers is a sin...

This is so disappointing. So flat and boring, the dialogue is bad, the script is bad, so predictable, and that Elvis dude... my god what a boring character/dude/actor (don't know if I shall fault the director/screenwriter/actor)
Maybe some of the CGI with the air battles is ok, but that does not make the series good.

Horrible show IMO.

12 Reply by inkblot

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Re: Masters Of The Air [Historical War Drama]

BigZ wrote:

To even mention this series in comparison to Band of Brothers is a sin...

This is so disappointing. So flat and boring, the dialogue is bad, the script is bad, so predictable, and that Elvis dude... my god what a boring character/dude/actor (don't know if I shall fault the director/screenwriter/actor)
Maybe some of the CGI with the air battles is ok, but that does not make the series good.

Horrible show IMO.

%100 Agree. But this show has its own charms. May not be many, but they are there if you look for them.

And don't forget The Pacific.

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13 Reply by Pharazon666

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Re: Masters Of The Air [Historical War Drama]

With those survival odds, even

▼Spoiler

Babyface

can pop up at any moment