Seven-Eleven!

Two of these 3 hour movies later, i really made some progress. I am currently building some Spartan Scenics, and started with The Great Escape and some of the hallways.

The Spartan Scenics can mostly be assembled without glueing just by sticking it together. They have a tight grip, in many cases too tight, so you need to file down some edges and parts, if you don't want to damage parts by using too much force to put them together. That makes the whole process incredibly time consuming. Beside that the assembly constructions are unclear in many parts, you get one A4 sheet for all of the sets there are - all of them on one single sheet. They don't rotate, they don't go close ups, so some parts, especially on the larger rooms are assembled by guessing, assuming and seeing that is left when you build other stuff. That is not really a good way to go.

About the Great Escape, a movie from 1963 about a world war II prisoner of war camp. For a movie that is 50 years old, this is a really good watch (some movies don't age well). Of course, some of the scenes, especially the fights and action sequences are not as fast / round / well acted, like you are used to them by newer movies, but it is still an interesting and dynamic flick. I enjoyed it, through all of the 3 hours and i liked that they didn't show all of the germans as generic bad guys, but gave the characters on both sides depth. I can recommend this movie.

Continuing with the next movie, A Bridge too far and more MDF building. Another 3 hours solid block, with a lot of well known actors. Robert Redford got paid 2 million USD for his role, that was ~10% of the complete films budget and i am still asking why they even bothered. The movie has a strong anti-war message and has broad characters on both sides, allies and axis, but there were some parts that just bothered me. They actually used a Leopard I with a strangely modified turret to play as a wehrmacht tank. What the hell. You have a lot of "stars", but there are so many of them, that none of them actually brings something to the table (besides Sean Connery), it feels just like prolonged cameos. So my conclusion, you can watch this, it is okay, but don't expect to much from it.

At some point i really had enough of the spartan scenics and needed a break, so i prepared the bases for my Spaniards for Saga. I started glueing down small pieces of cork as rocks and added filler to smooth the gaps betweens the metal and plastic. Now these are waiting to get sanded.

Yesterday Thagrosh, Painter of Everblight, arrived. It is a limited miniature variant by Privateer Press, they exchanged his regular weaponry for a paintbrush and gave him a tiny khador warjack. Isn't it awesome?

So the next two movies for today are already set, and i am getting ready for "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" along with "The magnificent seven" while doing some more MDF and basing.

I'll add some preparation coverage of the Spartan Scenic next week to the blog.