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Domsez Youtube |
w/e 23.08.08 |
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at the Proms @ DVDfever Youtube |
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Aug 20 2008
DVDfever co uk
Just £17.99! 
Persepolis
Gossip Girl
Stargate Continuum
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Dom Robinson reviewsIn the Shadow of the MoonDistributed by
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The title of this documentary
comes from that period on the way to landing on the moon where, after spending the entire journey so far in the daylight
of the moon, you're now over in its dark side...
Between 1968 and 1972, nine American spacecraft went up to the Moon, and this documentary tells their stories in their own words and it includes new footage and stories of the Apollo space missions never before seen nor heard, as well as the race between the Soviet Union and the US to be the first to put a man into space in the 1960s. We hear from Mike Collins, who went up in Apollo 11. He dreams of two moons - the one he saw up close, and the one he sees daily from afar. Then there's Buzz Aldrin, also from Apollo 11, who was the second man on the moon, given that, as we all know, Neil Armstrong was the first. Despite Mike Collins being in that craft, he was assigned to having to stay inside and operate the command module and there's quite a moment when we hear the speech that would have been read out had the lunar module with the two men on in the moon not been able to get back off it. There's also Jim Lovell, who went up in Apollo 8 and Apollo 13, the latter of which was obviously made into a film directed by Ron Howard - who also had a hand in this production, as they didn't quite reach the moon. JFK, who was President at the time, claimed that the USA would get a man to the moon before the decade of the 1960s was out. The footage of him shows him making such a claim, the same way you'd see one of today's politicians saying the same thing about their latest policies, but you know they're talking crap and, at the time, they didn't know how Kennedy's claims would pan out, but in his case it seemed to work out. Sadly, he never got to live to see that day. That said, Gene Cernan (Apollos 10 & 17), declared Kennedy a visionary, a dreamer and politically astute. It's not all positives within this documentary, though, as a number of the men were very concerned about the dodgy wiring inside the spacecraft, but were told to basically keep their mouths shut. This resulted in the deaths of three men on a routine test. |
Once we get to the launch of Apollo 11, all of the astronauts who took part in this documentary who boarded that and the
following spacecraft, plus some key ground crew members, then tell us how their journey to the moon went, as if the
journeys were all taken simultaneously, so we can get a sense of comparison and scale. Following a blow-by-blow account
of Neil and Buzz taking their first steps on its surface, including Buzz admitting that he "filled his urine bag" just
before setting foot, all the following missions, up until Apollo 17, landed as well except, of course, No.13.
In The Shadow Of The Moon is a fantastic documentary with no political agenda to follow. Just many wondrous stories of achievement that are nothing less than 100% compelling. A great addition is that sometimes when the men are talking, we see clips of them from back in the day so we can picture them exactly in the scene, rather than just seeing a bunch of blokes in their 70s with permatans. It's a shame that, given that Neil Armstrong's still alive, he take part in this. Apparently he's quite a recluse, which would answer the query, although you only get to live once so why not speak out? Once you get to the end of all this, you'll wonder why we've never been back to the moon. In my view, politicians have long since stopped playing the long game and only think about their own terms of office, so rather than set about planning for the next 30 years and what might be achieved in space, they just care about making a big name for themselves right now, which often results in making a mess of things through pointless wars and a failing economy. This is confirmed as, at the time of writing this, MPs in the UK are being challenged to reveal all of their expenses and not just the ones that they can dress up as 'essential', and as facts sneak out here and there it's all proof-positive that they're all as bent as the day is long. |
The documentary is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen with 4:3-pillarboxed clips for old footage of the space explorations, which
is most welcome so they don't get cropped in any way as such things can be when they're later repeated on TV or film.
Both the picture and sound are faultless, the soundtrack from the latter complementing the visuals perfectly. The only reason
it doesn't get 5/5 because this isn't a special FX film.
There aren't too many extras but the ones included are very interesting. The smaller ones are a Theatrical Trailer (2:16), which is a nice intro, then a piece about the music within as told by composer Philip Sheppard, entitled Scoring Apollo (10:40), shot in 4:3 but within a 16:9 frame. The main supplemental on this DVD is a long featurette, Behind The Shadow: More Unseen Footage and Astronaut Stories From Apollo (57:30), which I've yet to delve into fully but runs for nearly an hour and is broken up into 18 chapters. On the face of it, if you enjoyed the main feature - and who wouldn't be? - then this is a must-see. The DVD comes with English subtitles which is necessary for the archive footage that mostly has scratchy sound, the menu features music from the film and there are 16 chapters which is okay for the length of the film. There could be more, but it generally confines them to one per topic so that's not too bad. |
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DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
DVD: 
