iandubin-588-278331
Lifetime Total
1+
IMDb Member
11 years
Reviews
Hangar 1: The UFO Files (2014)
C'mon HC stop with the spoon feeding
I have been a MUFON member, Country Representative and Field Investigator for many years since first becoming interested in the UFO phenomena in the early 90s, This could have been a great series and it certainly highlights a huge number of very interesting cases.
However, it is almost unwatchable for me due to the constant breathless tone of awe and even more annoying, the incessant repetition, the same bits of information being spoon fed to the audience over and over again, the same bit of hoaked up footage repeated ad nauseum. Why are you using faked footage of the 1952 Washington flap when the actual footage exists? C'mon History Channel, I have several post graduate degrees and I don't wear a tinfoil hat. You seem to have created this series for people with the attention spans of house cats.
Ramp up your game. Not all of your audience needs everything repeated over and over in words of one syllable.
However, it is almost unwatchable for me due to the constant breathless tone of awe and even more annoying, the incessant repetition, the same bits of information being spoon fed to the audience over and over again, the same bit of hoaked up footage repeated ad nauseum. Why are you using faked footage of the 1952 Washington flap when the actual footage exists? C'mon History Channel, I have several post graduate degrees and I don't wear a tinfoil hat. You seem to have created this series for people with the attention spans of house cats.
Ramp up your game. Not all of your audience needs everything repeated over and over in words of one syllable.
All Is Lost (2013)
ALL IS LOST - especially credibility
Offshore sailors have longed for a movie showcasing the elemental forces that we routinely cope with in the briny deep. We've looked for a cinematic experience that accurately portrays what it is like out there on a sailing yacht, the beauty and the joy and the danger, and especially the skills and gear we routinely employ to survive in the hostile environment of the open ocean. We're still waiting because this movie isn't it.
It's an interesting concept – beautifully shot and acted and as the reviews and box office point out, it was a huge success.
What spoiled it for me as a sailor however, was the constant, never ending stream of nautical bloopers.
Our hero wakes to a crunching noise and discovers water swirling into the forward berth where he's been asleep. He discovers his boat, the Virginia Jean, has been holed in a collision with a container. Despite the calm seas – from the sea state not ten knots of wind - somehow the boat (with him asleep below and a dodgy looking wind vane auto helm and the main sail down) has been sailing along fast enough to do serious damage in a glancing collision well aft of the beam.
Not credible but I let it go to get the story going. What annoyed me more was that in any collision that will hole a 1980s fiberglass yacht like the Cal 39 (they were very solid boats), there will be a helluva lot bigger bang than we heard at the start – anyone on board, even in a bunk is going to be thrown out and onto the cabin sole. Not suddenly see a gentle swirl of water as his first sign something is wrong. He discovers water pouring in onto the nav station, he goes on deck, spots the container and tries to pry it loose with an aluminum extendable boat hook. Not surprisingly it doesn't work. I would have simply pushed against the offending bit of the container from below – used the boat hook, a piece of lumber or a floorboard and levered it out of the opening from inside the yacht. Or put on a harness, attached to the boat and climbed onto the top of the container and pushed with my legs against the yacht hull. That certainly would have been something to try before doing something as unbelievably dangerous as getting out the drogue (conveniently labelled sea anchor for landlubbers) and walking out to the other end of the container – no harness, life jacket or line securing him to the boat. I wouldn't have been surprised to see the container suddenly shift, the yacht come free, the sails fill (the jib was up throughout this) and the Virginia Jean sail merrily away on her own leaving our hero perched forlornly atop the container and eligible for a richly deserved Darwin Award.
It gets worse. As he climbs back aboard, at the top of the frame, the boom is clearly visible – with the mainsail down and lashed to it with sail ties. Suddenly in the next scene, the main is up and our hero has to wrestle it down and back onto the boom where it was in the previous shot. This is not a sailing issue – it is a film continuity error and clearly fell into the 'no one will notice' category. We'll let that go. Throughout the next scenes when he sails back to the container to retrieve the drogue he has tacked the boat onto Port, conveniently putting the hole near the water level again and allowing more sea into the yacht, I nearly shouted at him 'tack the boat onto Starboard! Get some heel on and get the hole out of the water!!. More Darwin Award material.
With the drogue improbably retrieved (another opportunity for the Virginia Jean to sail away and thus shorten this dubious tale) the boat on Port tack and water still pouring in, he then finally gets around to trying the electrical bilge pump, which not surprisingly doesn't work. The bilge pump should have been the first thing he did after climbing out of his bunk and on most yachts it would have come on automatically with a float switch in the bilge. However, by dint of keeping the hole at or below the water line on Port tack he's now got three feet of water in the boat. By this time, the batteries, immersed in sea water would have been pouring out chlorine gas to add to his woes. Thankfully not dealt with in the script as I have no desire to see Robert Redford choking to death from chlorine gas.
No electric bilge pumps. Okay, let's use the standard manual pump (or pumps) that all boats (including the Cal 39) are fitted with, or even better from a cinematographer's standpoint apply, that old bit of nautical wisdom – 'the best bilge pump is a frightened man with a bucket'. The filmmakers missed a great (and plausible) scene of Redford bailing frantically.
He doesn't use either – just sloshes around in the half flooded cabin, with water slopping in through the holed hull. Nor does he take the opportunity to stop water ingress by stuffing the hole with the sodden cushions that keep floating around. There are later scenes with his life raft tethered to the boat, ¾ submerged, where he should have been frantically cutting the tether as the yacht headed to the bottom of the Indian Ocean. There is no way it could have floated at all with the cabin five feet deep in water.
I could go on and on about where the movie gets it wrong, but that would be tedious. Plus I am over the IMDb limit and have to cut a lot out.
Still waiting for the definitive offshore sailing move. Happy to help write and advise, especially if I get to go sailing.
It's an interesting concept – beautifully shot and acted and as the reviews and box office point out, it was a huge success.
What spoiled it for me as a sailor however, was the constant, never ending stream of nautical bloopers.
Our hero wakes to a crunching noise and discovers water swirling into the forward berth where he's been asleep. He discovers his boat, the Virginia Jean, has been holed in a collision with a container. Despite the calm seas – from the sea state not ten knots of wind - somehow the boat (with him asleep below and a dodgy looking wind vane auto helm and the main sail down) has been sailing along fast enough to do serious damage in a glancing collision well aft of the beam.
Not credible but I let it go to get the story going. What annoyed me more was that in any collision that will hole a 1980s fiberglass yacht like the Cal 39 (they were very solid boats), there will be a helluva lot bigger bang than we heard at the start – anyone on board, even in a bunk is going to be thrown out and onto the cabin sole. Not suddenly see a gentle swirl of water as his first sign something is wrong. He discovers water pouring in onto the nav station, he goes on deck, spots the container and tries to pry it loose with an aluminum extendable boat hook. Not surprisingly it doesn't work. I would have simply pushed against the offending bit of the container from below – used the boat hook, a piece of lumber or a floorboard and levered it out of the opening from inside the yacht. Or put on a harness, attached to the boat and climbed onto the top of the container and pushed with my legs against the yacht hull. That certainly would have been something to try before doing something as unbelievably dangerous as getting out the drogue (conveniently labelled sea anchor for landlubbers) and walking out to the other end of the container – no harness, life jacket or line securing him to the boat. I wouldn't have been surprised to see the container suddenly shift, the yacht come free, the sails fill (the jib was up throughout this) and the Virginia Jean sail merrily away on her own leaving our hero perched forlornly atop the container and eligible for a richly deserved Darwin Award.
It gets worse. As he climbs back aboard, at the top of the frame, the boom is clearly visible – with the mainsail down and lashed to it with sail ties. Suddenly in the next scene, the main is up and our hero has to wrestle it down and back onto the boom where it was in the previous shot. This is not a sailing issue – it is a film continuity error and clearly fell into the 'no one will notice' category. We'll let that go. Throughout the next scenes when he sails back to the container to retrieve the drogue he has tacked the boat onto Port, conveniently putting the hole near the water level again and allowing more sea into the yacht, I nearly shouted at him 'tack the boat onto Starboard! Get some heel on and get the hole out of the water!!. More Darwin Award material.
With the drogue improbably retrieved (another opportunity for the Virginia Jean to sail away and thus shorten this dubious tale) the boat on Port tack and water still pouring in, he then finally gets around to trying the electrical bilge pump, which not surprisingly doesn't work. The bilge pump should have been the first thing he did after climbing out of his bunk and on most yachts it would have come on automatically with a float switch in the bilge. However, by dint of keeping the hole at or below the water line on Port tack he's now got three feet of water in the boat. By this time, the batteries, immersed in sea water would have been pouring out chlorine gas to add to his woes. Thankfully not dealt with in the script as I have no desire to see Robert Redford choking to death from chlorine gas.
No electric bilge pumps. Okay, let's use the standard manual pump (or pumps) that all boats (including the Cal 39) are fitted with, or even better from a cinematographer's standpoint apply, that old bit of nautical wisdom – 'the best bilge pump is a frightened man with a bucket'. The filmmakers missed a great (and plausible) scene of Redford bailing frantically.
He doesn't use either – just sloshes around in the half flooded cabin, with water slopping in through the holed hull. Nor does he take the opportunity to stop water ingress by stuffing the hole with the sodden cushions that keep floating around. There are later scenes with his life raft tethered to the boat, ¾ submerged, where he should have been frantically cutting the tether as the yacht headed to the bottom of the Indian Ocean. There is no way it could have floated at all with the cabin five feet deep in water.
I could go on and on about where the movie gets it wrong, but that would be tedious. Plus I am over the IMDb limit and have to cut a lot out.
Still waiting for the definitive offshore sailing move. Happy to help write and advise, especially if I get to go sailing.