Apollo 11 – A Night To Remember (Acorn DVD) + Journey
To The Moon – One Giant Leap (Mill Creek DVD) + Moon Machines (Image DVD)
Picture: C+/C+/C Sound: C+ Extras: C/D/B Main Programs: B-/B/B-
You can
never have enough good programming about The First Moon Landing or the U.S.
space program in general, which is good, since good titles keep on coming. For the 40th Anniversary of the
event, three new titles have been issued that are all worth catching; so good
is the history of the event and the rich material out there about it.
For
starters, we recommend you check these previously reviewed releases on the
subject, which represent only some of our coverage over the years on
spaceflight in general:
Apollo 11: Men On The Moon (Spacefilms/Fox DVDs)
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/421/Apollo+11+(Spacecraft+set)
Tony Palmer’s Space
Movie/Magnificent Desolation/Garofalo: Apollo 11 (DVDs)
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/6249/Tony+Palmer%E2%80%99s+Space+M
The new
programs all have their highlights and key points that make them thoroughly
worth your time to check out. Apollo 11 – A Night To Remember is the
British take on the subject with archival footage in an older special as space
expert Patrick Moore covers the landing live and an older Moore hosts a special
with the footage that survived. It is
ironic that some of the footage had been lost in the BBC archive, but after it
was just revealed someone at NASA “accidentally erased” the original tape of
the moon landing, they’ve been one-upped for the worse. That program lasts about two hours and is a
fine alternate look at the event you have likely missed. It is 1.33 X 1 with Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
sound and the only extras include a text bio of Moore and 17 minutes of the
program The Sky At Night.
Journey To The Moon – One Giant
Leap is only half
as long, but is not bad, despite its age and low budget, as it was sourced from
an old NTSC analog video master. Still,
it has some good footage and interviews help this hold up more than you would
expect from the way it starts. It also
is 1.33 X 1 with Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono sound, but the extras are more
impressive, with two slide shows, the JFK speech on the subject and five
excellent archival color documentaries on the subject by NASA at about a
half-hour each that are all must-sees.
Moon Machines has no extras, but is the only
program in stereo (Dolby Digital 2.0), widescreen (anamorphically enhanced 1.78
X 1) and a mini-series from The Discovery Channel’s Science Channel running six
episodes adding up to 4 hours, 25 minutes on the technology that made it all
possible. Very detailed and articulate,
it is one of the best series connected to either network to date and I wish it
had been longer, but it covers:
The
Saturn V [5] Rocket
The
Command Module
The
Navigation Computer
The Lunar
Module
The Space
Suit
The Lunar
Rover
Nothing
like celebrating one of the greatest events of all time with three winners!
- Nicholas Sheffo
