The official status update thread - I

[SavageEagle]

2012 came out on DVD today. I get to buy it but only if I preorder New Moon for my wife.

 

[Bigum1969]

Back from Cincy.

 

[Bigum1969]

2012 came out on DVD today. I get to buy it but only if I preorder New Moon for my wife.

I don't really ever buy movies, but I guarantee I'd never spend my hard earned cash on that new moon freak show.

 

[Bigum1969]

I think I'll make it to 9K posts tonight!

 

[RelicHound]

I think I'll make it to 9K posts tonight!

shoot your rifle yet?

 

[Bigum1969]

shoot your rifle yet?

I've been home 1 day in the past 7.

 

[RelicHound]

I've been home 1 day in the past 7.

excuses excuses! you bought it 3 weeks ago! come on man!! shoot it!!!!!

 

[ATF Consumer]

I enjoyed "the hurt locker" pretty entertaining flick. I get to go see Alice in wonderland in 3-D at Imax this weekend...woohoo

I liked it, but thought it was a lower quality production...

 

[Benny]

I liked it, but thought it was a lower quality production...

I liked that about it...Some movies are meant to be like that; it sets the mood/atmosphere better.

 

[Marc]

hurt locker is a good movie about out most recent war just like american soldiers.

 

[ATF Consumer]

hurt locker is a good movie about out most recent war just like american soldiers.

It really didn't have much of a plot...just followed along about their daily events...more like the reality shows of today.

 

[OneBadV8]

laundry officially takes way too long

 

[Marc]

laundry officially takes way too long

so does sharpening a stainless bowfishing tip been sitting here for over and hour and still dont have point on it. it can be sharp and it takes one hit on a rock and you can sit for literally hours sharpening it.

 

[BloodEclipse]

I enjoyed "the hurt locker" pretty entertaining flick. I get to go see Alice in wonderland in 3-D at Imax this weekend...woohoo

that sounds like fun but my wife wants to watch hurt locker so i dont think ill get to play

I liked it, but thought it was a lower quality production...

I liked that about it...Some movies are meant to be like that; it sets the mood/atmosphere better.

hurt locker is a good movie about out most recent war just like american soldiers.

It really didn't have much of a plot...just followed along about their daily events...more like the reality shows of today.

Some Iraq, Afghanistan war veterans criticize movie 'Hurt Locker' as inaccurate


[SIZE=-1]By Christian Davenport
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 28, 2010; E01
[/SIZE]
Time magazine called "The Hurt Locker" "a near-perfect war film," but Ryan Gallucci, an Iraq war veteran, had to turn the movie off three times, he says, "or else I would have thrown my remote through the television."
Critics adore the film and it has been nominated for nine Oscars -- a feat matched only by "Avatar," the top-grossing movie of all time -- but Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, says that's "nine more Oscar nominations than it deserves. I don't know why critics love this silly, inaccurate film so much," he wrote on his Facebook page.
Many in the military say "Hurt Locker" is plagued by unforgivable inaccuracies that make the most critically acclaimed Iraq war film to date more a Hollywood fantasy than the searingly realistic rendition that civilians take it for.
To which you might say: It's just a movie and an action flick at that. It's Tinseltown fiction -- an interpretation of war such as "Full Metal Jacket" or "Apocalypse Now." It's supposed to entertain. It's not a documentary, not real life.
But to those who were there, Iraq is real life. And they're very sensitive -- some would say overly so -- when their war is portrayed via a central character who is a reckless rogue.
Hence a rising backlash from people in uniform, such as this response on Rieckhoff's Facebook page from a self-identified Army Airborne Ranger:
"f this movie was based on a war that never existed, I would have nothing to comment about. This movie is not based on a true story, but on a true war, a war in which I have seen my friends killed, a war in which I witnessed my ranger buddy get both his legs blown off. So for Hollywood to glorify this crap is a huge slap in the face to every soldier who's been on the front line."
Even Brian Williams, the NBC News anchor, took a shot on his blog, writing a post titled, "The Hurt Locker: Hurting for a fact-checker." The movie's positive reviews could not have been "written by anyone who had spent any time with U.S. armed forces in Iraq," he wrote, wondering why none of the soldiers in the movie dipped smokeless tobacco or said "hoo-ah" -- "the universal term for hello, goodbye, understood, etc."
'Reckless' character

In an interview, Rieckhoff said the anger about "Hurt Locker" stems not so much from such small inaccuracies -- for example, the uniforms the soldiers wear in the film weren't available until well after the time the story took place -- but rather from the depiction of the main character, Sgt. 1st Class William James.
Portrayed by Jeremy Renner, who's nominated for Best Actor, James is a daredevil who in one scene takes off his protective armor while disarming a bomb because, as he says, "If I'm going to die, I'm going to be comfortable." He runs alone through the streets of Baghdad with his sweat shirt hood up like a gangster. Later, he takes two soldiers hunting for insurgents in Baghdad's back alleys without any backup.
James's fellow soldiers are, or try to be, by-the-book professionals. They call James "rowdy" and "reckless," and one worries out loud that his leader's crazy antics are "going to get me killed." James is as much cowboy as soldier, and vets fear he could become an iconic figure in the American imagination should the movie win a bunch of statues.
"Films, almost more than anything, will be the way Americans understand our war," Rieckhoff said. "So we feel that there is a responsibility for filmmakers to portray our war accurately. We see ourselves as watchdogs. . . . When he puts a hood on like Eminem and starts roving outside the wire, it's ridiculous."
Gallucci, a former sergeant who served in Iraq from 2003 to 2004, says he kept hoping James would get "blown up throughout the entire movie. I wanted to see his poor teammates get another team leader, who was actually concerned about their safety."
'Dramatic effect'

Mark Boal, the film's screenwriter, knows the soldiers in the film are wearing the wrong uniform. He was embedded in Iraq with an Explosive Ordnance Disposal team in 2004, and he's aware of what soldiers wore. Boal has worked as a journalist -- an article he wrote for Playboy became the basis for the 2007 film "In the Valley of Elah," about an Iraq war veteran who is murdered upon returning home -- and he feels a duty to hew as close to possible to the truth.
But "The Hurt Locker" is a movie, not a magazine article, Boal says, and screenwriters need ample artistic license to build a compelling -- and true -- story. So when he chose to have the film's soldiers wear the current Army uniform rather than the one they wore in 2004, it's to allow his audience "to relate to the imagery they saw on the news."
Yes, he had military consultants help him get details of radio protocol and uniforms right, but he never felt obliged to be precisely accurate. The consultants, Boal says, give a writer the information he needs so that "when you do choose to make a dramatic effect, [you] do it in a way that is not totally embarrassing."
The arc of the narrative, he says, has to come from the writer. "The story came out of my imagination based on my life experience and hundreds of conversations I've had with soldiers.
"I definitely tried for dramatic effect to make artistic choices, but I hope I made them respectfully and carefully and with the goal of not making a training video or a documentary, but showing just how hellish this war is. I was also aware, by the way, that there are many wonderful documentaries on Iraq and many wonderful articles, which no one has seen. And quite frankly, I was hoping that people would see the film."
Art vs. reality

Each writer's search for truth lands at a different point on the spectrum between art and reality. When screenwriter David Simon made the series "Generation Kill" for HBO, he considered it more important to have Marines find his work an accurate portrayal of their culture and experience invading Iraq than to win critical acclaim. "The real fun isn't trying to convince the average viewer" that we have it right, he told the Marine Corps Times. "It's trying to convince people who have been in the game."
Boal not only wanted to tell a riveting and important story, but also to raise awareness about soldiers who disarm bombs, a specialty known as explosive ordnance disposal, which he believed the general public knew little about, even though hidden bombs are the leading cause of casualties in Iraq.
As a result, despite some complaints about inaccuracies, many veterans of bomb disposal units love the movie, says James O'Neil, executive director of the EOD Memorial Foundation, a nonprofit that has benefited financially from the film.
"While there is some artistic license," O'Neil says, "there's a lot of good representation of the intensity and the courage that's displayed by EOD techs. What it takes to find, identify and then render safe those [bombs] -- that's a story, and it's an incredible story."
Filmmakers always worry that productions that servicemembers see as spot-on might leave general audiences cold. So: Is it really important that a war movie be accurate?
No, says David McKenna, a film professor at Columbia University. "Hurt Locker," he argues, isn't as much about Iraq as it is about one soldier's addiction to war. It's a character study, an exploration of courage, bravado and leadership told through "a series of suspenseful situations. I suppose it could have just as easily been set in outer space."
If veterans don't like it, McKenna says, "well, this is an opportunity to go make your own movie."

Maybe some of our INGO service members can shed some light on this.

 

[mk2ja]

FYI - They're doing the SR-71 Blackbird on "Great Planes" on the Military Channel right now Just started at the top of the hour, so you haven't missed much yet!

 

[Seancass]

FYI - They're doing the SR-71 Blackbird on "Great Planes" on the Military Channel right now

I hate you and your military channel!

well, mostly just my lack of said channel...
always with the lacking...



How come everybody who sees Hurt Locker thinks it's a war movie? It's not. It's a western. You could have put 95% or more of that plot in the civil war-ish(+/- 50 years) era west.

 

[mk2ja]

I hate you and your military channel!

well, mostly just my lack of said channel...
always with the lacking...

Haha well I won't have it when I got back to school after break, so I'm soaking up as much as I can off my parents' FiOS

 

[SavageEagle]

Wow. 3:30am. Time for bed. I gotta stop doing this. 4 hours of sleep just isn't going to cut it.

However, if I catch that SOB who's got his system turned up at 2:30am on a weekday, me and him's gonna have werds. Wake up my kids again you.... Ok. Nite.

 

[SavageEagle]

Oh, I forgot to leave my guardian behind to make sure you guys stay in line and don't get in trouble...

 

[evansvillethompsongunner]

nope..my wife and I met at an old job..she just happened to have went to school with Jim.
yeah..crackheads are stupid

to figure out what to hydrotest a cylinder at you take the service pressure of the cylinder{which is stamped on all bottles..aka D.O.T number..example D.O.T 3AA2015...2,015 is the service pressure} and times it by 5/3 then add 10% for over fill...example 2015 service pressure x 5/3=3,358.33333 then add 10% for over fill roughly 3,360 test pressure.
the most common D.O.T numbers on cylinders is 1800{test pressure 3,000 psi} 2015{TP= 3,360 psi} 2265 {TP= 3,775} and 2400 {TP=4,000} then we have some that go all the way up to 10,000 psi.

New math, new math...