Announcement
Collapse
No announcement yet.
Straight Up: Helicopters in Action
Collapse
X
Collapse
-
Straight Up: Helicopters in Action
Straight Up: Helicopters in Action
2002
An IMAX release for the Smithsonian Institute National Air & Space Museum
BD
Finally releasing this title on the format it deserves Straight Up is the Smithsonian's ode to helicopters and their many roles in modern society. Martin Sheen narrates the film that offers up IMAX-level views of helicopters doing their thing: Life-flighting someone off a mountain, dropping off and extracting Marines, saving victims at sea, or the less dramatic uses such as delivering food in remote areas of Sierra Leone and helping conversation of the African black rhino in West Africa.
The short (:34 min.) film uses some recreations - such as with drug runners in the Caribbean - to show these vehicles' capabilities. In other scenes the filmmaking crew tags along and records the actions of, for example, a tall powerline technician getting dropped off at work. This variety helps keep the tone light and moving along while also allowing for some sweeping panoramas from the helicopter's point of view.
The film starts with some basic history of the vehicle, moving from the autogyro to the whirlybird and on to different types of helicopters. And after providing some basic aerodynamic information the remainder of the film is safe propaganda.
Audio/Video
The IMAX release gets to fill up the 16x9 widescreen format nicely and the transfer is pretty solid. I only noticed a couple of hairs and scratches, too. The available audio is Dolby Digital "True HD" 5.1 and the only available subtitles are in English as well. The soundtrack thunders and roars nicely in accompaniment to the various action scenes on-screen. It won't push your surround system to its limits by any means but it's very supportive of the subject matter at hand.
Extras
Director David Douglas provides commentary on the only other audio track available on the disc. He's mostly anecdotal, providing nerdier details on the cameras and mounts used to get particular shots and how weather conditions played a big factor in the making of the film. His input here is very similar to the included Taking Off: Behind the Scenes of Straight Up: Helicopters in Action short that also interviews the film copter pilot and the film's producers for some additional information. The best thing about this extra is that it underscores the extraordinary ability of the helicopter pilots they filmed and all involved are simply in awe of them.
The remaining extras are the “career day†infomercial Careers In Action which features interviews of Customs agents, Marines, Coast Guard, and electrical technicians shown in the movie and then the HD version of the film's trailer.
Summary
If you like short, non-taxing documentaries about the various uses of helicopters then I suppose this is your film. I'd have preferred if they'd talked more with the pilots that have to manage in these various circumstances and let them geek out on the vehicles but maybe that's just me.Posting comments is disabled.
Categories
Collapse
article_tags
Collapse
- album review (218)
- album reviews (274)
- arrow video (272)
- blu-ray (3225)
- blu-ray review (4162)
- comic books (1392)
- comic reviews (872)
- comics (988)
- dark horse comics (484)
- dvd and blu-ray reviews a-f (1969)
- DVD And Blu-ray Reviews G-M (1711)
- DVD And Blu-ray Reviews N-S (1757)
- DVD And Blu-ray Reviews T-Z (878)
- dvd review (2513)
- idw publishing (216)
- image comics (207)
- kino lorber (391)
- movie news (260)
- review (318)
- scream factory (279)
- severin films (300)
- shout! factory (537)
- twilight time (269)
- twilight time releasing (231)
- vinegar syndrome (497)
Latest Articles
Collapse
-
Released by: Kino Lorber
Released on: February 22nd, 2022.
Director: Gianfranco Parolini
Cast: Lee Van Cleef, Jack Palance
Year: 1976
Purchase From Amazon
God’s Gun – Movie Review:
Directed by Gianfranco Parolini in 1976, quite late in the spaghetti western boom years, God's Gun (Diamante Lobo in Italy) introduces us to a bad, bad man named Sam Clayton (Jack Palance) who, along with his gang of equally bad, bad men, start wreaking...-
Channel: Movies
04-17-2024, 12:10 PM -
-
Released by: Kino Lorber
Released on: October 8th, 2019.
Director: Mario Bava
Cast: Christopher Lee, Reg Park, Leonora Ruffo, Gaia Germani
Year: 1968
Purchase From Amazon
Hercules In The Haunted World – Movie Review:
Directed by Mario Bava in 1961 and featuring a screenplay by Bava (and Sandro Continenza, Francesco Prosperi and Duccio Tessari), Hercules In The Haunted World (also known as Hercules At The Center Of The Earth and...-
Channel: Movies
04-17-2024, 12:08 PM -
-
Released by: Cinématographe
Released on: March 26th, 2024.
Director: Jack Nicholson
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Mary Steenburgen, Christopher Lloyd, John Belushi
Year: 1978
Purchase From Amazon
Goin’ South – Movie Review:
Made at the height of his career as an actor, 1978’s ‘Goin’ South’ sees Jack Nicholson once again in the director’s chair, seven years after his directorial debut, ‘Drive, He Said,’ failed to set the...-
Channel: Movies
04-17-2024, 10:29 AM -
-
Released by: Radiance Films
Released on: April 20th, 2024.
Director: Noburo Nakamura
Cast: Miyuki Kuwano, Mikijiro Hira
Year: 1964
Purchase From Amazon
The Shape Of Night – Movie Review:
Directed by Noburo Nakamura for Shochiko in 1964, ‘The Shape Of Night’ follows a young woman named Yoshie Nomoto (Miyuki Kuwano). In the opening scene, she’s working as a streetwalker on the outskirts of town and soon enough, she’s picked...-
Channel: Movies
04-17-2024, 10:26 AM -
-
Released by: Film Masters
Released on: April 23rd, 2024.
Director: Bert I. Gordon
Cast: Richard Carlson, Juli Reding, Lugene Sanders, Susan Gordon
Year: 1963
Purchase From Amazon
Tormented – Movie Review:
The late Bert I. Gordon’s 1963 horror film, ‘Tormented,’ is an effectively spooky ghost story made with an obviously low budget but no less effective for it.
The story revolves around a professional piano player...-
Channel: Movies
04-17-2024, 10:19 AM -
-
Released by: Grindhouse Releasing
Released on: March 12th, 2024.
Director: William Grefé
Cast: William Shatner, Jennifer Bishop, Ruth Roman, Harold Sakata
Year: 1974
Purchase From Amazon
Impulse – Movie Review:
Directed by the one and only William Grefé, 1974’s Impulse is one of those rare films that allows you to witness what it would be like if a really sweaty William Shatner got mad at a lady carrying balloons. Before that...-
Channel: Movies
04-15-2024, 01:20 PM -