I am not into fantasy much, but I checked out the Dark Crystal prequel series on Netflix. My god, it is an incredible achievement! A must watch just for the production alone. Amazing puppets and sets etc. Mark Hamill killed it once again with his voice acting and... 1/2
it uses pretty much every archetype while still making fearless plot moves. It works. Jim Henson Co. has such a great DARK side. It goes REALLY dark at times. I remembered why the original scared the shit out of me, but this is another level. I can't believe it was ever for kids!
They need to do more with Jim Henson Co. I love this medium, it is so much better than CGI or animation. The textures are so visceral. They should do a Game Of Thrones prequel with it etc. WAY underrated. Studios should be knocking Henson's door down for deals.
The bottom line, I got the message loud and clear that puppetry and tech have hit a new level, as have the budgets for these things. These factors combine to blow open the possibilities. The medium has truly come of age. I want more.
Some great behind the scenes images from the production of Airwolf were sent to me by the son of A. Mac Queen who was one of the stunt pilots on the show. Here Mac Queen and another on the crew are troubleshooting something on celeb chopper while in hover.
These guys were having a ball supporting Airwolf and a number of shows like A-Team and movies like Blue Thunder that had modified helicopter stunt flying in huge demand.
We just updated our Checkmate story again. Some interesting product card info: 8G jet and claiming a full internal load range of 1740 miles. Rough 870 combat radius, profile dependent. That is really high of course and could be very attractive... thedrive.com/the-war-zone/4…
...for potential buyers. This may be especially true for air arms without organic tanking capabilities or very limited ones. We are also hearing that the mature avionics ported over from the Su-57 will be a huge thing in the pitch for this thing. No word on Su-57's...
DIRCM system will be an option yet. We would guess so. That is also a one of a kind capability at this time. All of this is still preliminary of course. I mean $30M is also the supposed price, which is probably impossible without HUGE subsidization.
I'm fascinated with Twin Tower photos. They were really impressive sort of brutalist structures in person. Some shots are just amazing. Like this one, taken during construction showing the elevator shafts and the skeleton of the buildings. It's like something out of Blade Runner.
At least for a time, after construction, the buildings were visible top to bottom from the river view, which was just spectacular. Seeing the entire structures made them even more majestic and almost surreal. See here:
This shot is also just gorgeous. The towers were great canvases for light. So many different moods to be had, nearly endless possibilities.
They were really a sight to behold, weren't they? As a kid, I remember seeing them for the first time. Things are dense around there, when we drove into the area my dad was like look up, and I leaned out of the cab window and I was RIGHT next to them... 1/X
It was overwhelming. The cladding on the outside really made you lose a sense of scale.
20 years ago today waking up on that morning seeing the one burning. I told my parents before #2 hit that they were probably going to learn a lot about a man named Osama Bin Laden...
Sadly, I was right. The second would hit minutes later. We all knew what the deal was the second that horrific act was burned into our eyes.
The F-22 will not save Taiwan. It can't even have a major impact on an invasion of the island. Sorry, this is reality not the military fantasy in common circulation. I know this spiel of mine isn't new to many of you, but it has never been more relevant after today's viral junk
There are roughly just 125 combat coded F-22s. The fleet runs 50% mission capable rate, a bit higher for the upgraded combat capable aircraft. Assuming you can deploy all of them to the Pacific fast enough in a crisis (good luck with that), you are flying them from Guam or...
dispersed airfields if a shooting war starts. Huge tanker bridge gobbling up flight hours, and the tankers are vulnerable as F-22 has a lousy combat radius and China is fighting in its own back yard...