----- Original Message -----
From: "Rikk Rogers" <rkltd@swbell.net>
To: "Military Vehicles Mailing List" <mil-veh@mil-veh.org>
Sent: Friday, March 02, 2001 8:15 AM
Subject: Re: [MV] Enemy at the gates
> I am excited!
> Enemy at the gates sounds like, and I hope it is, a dramatization of the
> Dual between the famed Russian sniper, and the master German sniper sent
to
> kill him to allow the German troops to take???, Stalingrad??? can't
> remember.
> As a story the location is only important in that it sets the stage for a
> titanic struggle between 2 masters of an extremely dangerous and difficult
> art.
> Done correctly this will depict the lethal chess game that their conflict
> was.
> And keep in mind the Russian was soooo good, and did sooo much damage, the
> Germans imported their very best to match him.
Yes, that's the movie. I caught a trailer for it during the run-up to
"Traffic", and it looks every bit as good as it should. I didn't see any
mil-veh's in the trailer sequences, though - and the number of
Eastern-European sounding surnames in the credit roll likely means some
ex-Eastern Bloc country was used for the setting.
I didn't know anything about this movie despite being part of the business,
but can now easily explain why there was such a dearth of WWII German and
Russian stuff when we needed it for other projects! The film company I work
for was doing the uniforms for the CBS miniseries 'Haven' and just couldn't
come up with enough of the proper canteens and bread-bags to sort out the
required number of Jerries. We wound up getting later German police stuff
in the same pattern but an annoying dark-blue polizei colour, and hoped the
stuff would pass muster anyway. Fortunately, the scenes involving the
Germans were done in black-and-white, so you don't really notice at all.
You can see colour production stills of the same thing on the company site
at www.internationalmovie.com/uniforms.htm and check out some of the
vehicles they used in place of their WWII counterparts. Off-hand, I think
the only two 'real' period MV's were the Liberty Ship John W. Brown
(masquerading as the 'Henry Gibbons') and the WC-56 3/4 Dodge with our
debutante hero riding in the back.
Andy Hill (responsible for the ugly feldgrau of the Jerry helmets - thanks
to no time and a poor aftermarket repro helmet for a colour model.)
MVPA 9211
Vancouver, B.C.
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