In the Shadow of the Moon

My girl friend called me yesterday morning. She wanted us to go see a
movie that evening. Something called “In the Shadow of the Moon”. I'd
never heard of it, and the title suggested it was a chick-flik. It
isn't. It's an Apollo documentary. Rather good, in fact.

It consists of intercut interviews with most of the remaining Apollo
astronauts, contemporary coverage, and period TV commercials added for
spice. The interviews are recent, and the guys are more articulate than
usual. The old footage looks better than ever – digitally cleaned up,
perhaps?

A clip of the old I've Got a Secret showed a Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong,
whose secret was that their son Neil had just been named an astronaut.
The quizmaster may have been the first person ever to ask them if they
thought their son would ever go to the Moon.

Centerpiece of the show was an extended session on the launch of Apollo
11. This is the first time, ever, that I've seen a film get the sound
right! From anywhere a cameraman might be standing, the sound of the big
engines igniting is heard *after* the rocket leaves the pad. Other films
move the soundtrack up so the sound matches the ignition, ignoring the
fact that it takes at least 15 seconds for the sound to travel from pad
to cameraman.

On the other hand, we heard Gene Cernan explaining that he had trained
so long and hard to fly the Saturn V by hand that he almost wanted a
guidance-system failure so that he could actually do it. I have no doubt
that he had that training. I doubt that he had that training at the time
of Apollo 11. I'm certain that he wasn't in a position to take over
during the Apollo 11 launch – he was on the ground! It is a common
practice in documentaries to edit the order of bits of interviews for
the best flow of the story, even at the expense of historical accuracy.
sigh...

Both stagings were shown from the onboard cameras. We've seen this
footage many times before, but I don't think I've ever seen them looking
this good, and it is rare to see it uncut. When the interstage falls
away, it looks like it is burning – can't be, as the second stage hasn't
started yet. Anyone know it looks like the ring looks like it is
surrounded by flam?

The biggest disappointment: Armstrong wasn't interviewed.

Watch the credits. The astronauts were asked what they thought about the
moon hoax. The answers are amusing,. My favorite: “if it was a hoax, why
did we do it 12 times?”

New material was shot on HD digital and looked pretty good.
Cinematography was TV-style, with most of the talking heads being framed
as chin-to-mid-forehead. Rather harsh on even a small movie theater
screen. The film looked like a not fully polished cut. Several slugs
between scenes, and after the final credits, the screen when white, not
black.

Well worth seeing, but you might want to wait for it to show up on TV
rather than paying for a theater ticket.

--
Kevin Willoughby lid

Kansas City, this was Air Force One. Will you change
our call sign to SAM 27000? -- Col. Ralph Albertazzie

On Sep 24, 2:32 pm, Kevin Willoughby
wrote:
My girl friend called me yesterday morning. She wanted us to go see a
movie that evening. Something called "In the Shadow of the Moon". I'd
never heard of it, and the title suggested it was a chick-flik. It
isn't. It's an Apollo documentary. Rather good, in fact.

It consists of intercut interviews with most of the remaining Apollo
astronauts, contemporary coverage, and period TV commercials added for
spice. The interviews are recent, and the guys are more articulate than
usual. The old footage looks better than ever - digitally cleaned up,
perhaps?

A clip of the old I've Got a Secret showed a Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong,
whose secret was that their son Neil had just been named an astronaut.
The quizmaster may have been the first person ever to ask them if they
thought their son would ever go to the Moon.

Centerpiece of the show was an extended session on the launch of Apollo
11. This is the first time, ever, that I've seen a film get the sound
right! From anywhere a cameraman might be standing, the sound of the big
engines igniting is heard *after* the rocket leaves the pad. Other films
move the soundtrack up so the sound matches the ignition, ignoring the
fact that it takes at least 15 seconds for the sound to travel from pad
to cameraman.

On the other hand, we heard Gene Cernan explaining that he had trained
so long and hard to fly the Saturn V by hand that he almost wanted a
guidance-system failure so that he could actually do it. I have no doubt
that he had that training. I doubt that he had that training at the time
of Apollo 11. I'm certain that he wasn't in a position to take over
during the Apollo 11 launch - he was on the ground! It is a common
practice in documentaries to edit the order of bits of interviews for
the best flow of the story, even at the expense of historical accuracy.
sigh...

Both stagings were shown from the onboard cameras. We've seen this
footage many times before, but I don't think I've ever seen them looking
this good, and it is rare to see it uncut. When the interstage falls
away, it looks like it is burning - can't be, as the second stage hasn't
started yet. Anyone know it looks like the ring looks like it is
surrounded by flam?

The biggest disappointment: Armstrong wasn't interviewed.

Watch the credits. The astronauts were asked what they thought about the
moon hoax. The answers are amusing,. My favorite: "if it was a hoax, why
did we do it 12 times?"

New material was shot on HD digital and looked pretty good.
Cinematography was TV-style, with most of the talking heads being framed
as chin-to-mid-forehead. Rather harsh on even a small movie theater
screen. The film looked like a not fully polished cut. Several slugs
between scenes, and after the final credits, the screen when white, not
black.

Well worth seeing, but you might want to wait for it to show up on TV
rather than paying for a theater ticket.

--
Kevin Willoughby

Kansas City, this was Air Force One. Will you change
our call sign to SAM 27000? -- Col. Ralph Albertazzie

"In the Shadow of the Moon"
It must be a serious boat load of fun being as snookered and thus so
easily dumbfounded past the point of no return, or isn't it?

Much the same as having been snookered into this phony war, as having
taken nearly a million in mostly innocent lives and counting, plus at
least 10 million seriously injured or ****ed as hell at us for any
number of good reasons, and to think it's only costing us $4,000 per
second (not including our DHS or those lives and ongoing investments
by a few other nations). Such a deal, as clearly we are not after the
likes of Osama bin Laden, or any other oil rich and powerful Muslim or
Islamic fundamentalists (good or bad).
- Brad Guth -

Kevin Willoughby wrote:
My girl friend called me yesterday morning. She wanted us to go see a
movie that evening. Something called “In the Shadow of the Moon”. I'd
never heard of it, and the title suggested it was a chick-flik. It
isn't. It's an Apollo documentary. Rather good, in fact.




Lucas - Star Wars.
Howard/Hanks - Apollo.
Milk it for everything you can get.
"Critics telling producers how to make movies are like virgins telling
whores how to ****." :-D

Pat

In article ,
says...
Kevin Willoughby wrote:
“In the Shadow of the Moon”.

Howard/Hanks - Apollo.

Actually, In the Shadow of the Moon is listed as a Ron Howard Film.
--
Kevin Willoughby lid

Kansas City, this was Air Force One. Will you change
our call sign to SAM 27000? -- Col. Ralph Albertazzie

Kevin Willoughby wrote:
My girl friend called me yesterday morning. She wanted us to go see a
movie that evening. Something called “In the Shadow of the Moon”. I'd
never heard of it, and the title suggested it was a chick-flik. It
isn't. It's an Apollo documentary. Rather good, in fact.

Your *girlfriend* suggested it!?

Wow. We have a worthy successor to Beady's wife! Does she have a
sister for OM or Pat?

--
Dave Michelson

Kevin Willoughby wrote:
Howard/Hanks - Apollo.


Actually, In the Shadow of the Moon is listed as a Ron Howard Film.



"Apollo 13" was a superb movie, as was Hanks' from "The Earth to The
Moon" miniseries, but there's a time when you are going back to the old
watering hole for one-too-many sips of brilliance (in the case of Lucas,
around three-too-many times. A wise person quites while they are ahead).
Which Sci-Fi author once explained their lack of sequels regarding their
stories as "never returning to the scene of the crime"? I thought it
was Clarke, but after the 2001 sequels, we can safely write that concept
out, can't we?
I liked Ron Howard better when he was doing mermaid movies; it shouldn't
even be possible to do a good mermaid movie, but Ron Howard made it look
effortless, and "Splash" is one of my favorite movies of all time.

"If the retard brothers here..."
"We aren't brothers...."

"Freddy...I'm..._.on_.. the...bar."

"What are two Swedes doing so far from Stockholm?"
"Hey babe, I've got a twelve inch penis."

"You know, you see those movies a couple of hundred times, and you start
picking up on the language."

"It was horrible! RAYS came out of her eyes! She melted his face! You
stay here...we're going to get NUCLEAR WEAPONS!"

The last time they had that many great comedians working hand-in-glove
in one place at one time with a superb script was "Caddyshack".
Don't even get me _started_ on memorable lines from that one. :-D :-D :-D

Pat

Dave Michelson wrote:

Your *girlfriend* suggested it!?

Wow. We have a worthy successor to Beady's wife! Does she have a
sister for OM or Pat?

Pat's out of the girl-chasing business for around a decade or two; it
was fun, but having to get up at around 3 am to go into the bathroom to
fart because that's something unromantic that a guy shouldn't do while
being in bed with his girlfriend seemed like a annoyance, and despite
the fact that that Little Kiki explained to me that she had to go to the
bathroom after every time we screwed (rather than cuddling like women
want guys to do rather than the guy rolling over and going to sleep)
because her gynecologist explained to her that the reason she was
bleeding after "poking" was due to having violent vaginal contractions
during orgasm, and it wasn't something bad, and I looked at her while
she was explaining this while trying not to smile and thinking something
like: "Me and Henry Miller..yes, now you know what "The Tropic Of
Capricorn" was really about, don't you, Anais?"
Or, as another woman I know once said: "You sure got her to like
****in', didn't you?"*
But Little Kiki is long gone, and married to a Jewish cabdriver from
Chicago for over a generation, and I wonder if his Rabbi ever says to
him: "Oi! That goy girl that's your wife sure likes the shtupping,
doesn't she?" :-D

* This was one of the rare exotics of Jamestown, North Dakota... one of
the around the 100 Negroes that ever lived, or even visited, this
blighted place where even the bison are born white:
http://www.buffalomuseum.com/whitecloud.htm
Want a whole line of white buffalo? Simple! Breed the mother with its
offspring.
Buffalo incest may lead to feeble-mindedness in their progeny, but I
mean, they're buffalo...who's going to notice?
It's like its offspring dropped its IQ from 1.0 to 0.5?
If it can breathe, eat, drink, walk, ****, and crap...it meets the high
standards of intelligence that this harsh realm demands of all the
animals and people that live in it. :-)

Pat

On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 02:27:08 GMT, Dave Michelson
wrote:

Wow. We have a worthy successor to Beady's wife! Does she have a
sister for OM or Pat?

....OM has both of his exes taking care of him at the moment. They're
apparently trying to make up for the fact that they weren't around
back in '05 when my gall bladder got yanked out. Serves the bitches
right :-P

OM
--
]=====================================[
] OMBlog - http://www.io.com/~o_m/omworld [
] Let's face it: Sometimes you *need* [
] an obnoxious opinion in your day! [
]=====================================[

OM wrote:
On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 02:27:08 GMT, Dave Michelson
wrote:

Wow. We have a worthy successor to Beady's wife! Does she have a
sister for OM or Pat?

...OM has both of his exes taking care of him at the moment. They're
apparently trying to make up for the fact that they weren't around
back in '05 when my gall bladder got yanked out. Serves the bitches
right :-P

We need to lobby Mike Judge to have you make an appearance on "King of
the Hill," which a fellow from UT Dallas tells me is about as accurate
a portrayal of Texas as one can get in a TV series.

--
Dave Michelson

Pat Flannery wrote:


Dave Michelson wrote:

Your *girlfriend* suggested it!?

Wow. We have a worthy successor to Beady's wife! Does she have a
sister for OM or Pat?

Pat's out of the girl-chasing business for around a decade or two; it
was fun, but....

Wow. *Way* too much information.

Anyone seen or heard from Henry Spencer lately?

--
Dave Michelson