Friday, March 1, 2019

Moonwalk One

Moonwalk One (1970... or 1971)

Runtime: 95 minutes

Directed by: Theo Kamecke

Starring: This is a documentary

From: Francis Thompson

The best documentary you'll hear narrated by the guy who played Sybok in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

Here is a documentary which managed to dovetail into what I watched this afternoon (and will review tomorrow). I'd recommend watching this on YouTube rather than Amazon Prime as the former's copy is of better quality. Let me copy and paste the description from that video as it delivers a nice basic summary:

“This film details the comprehensive coverage surrounding the July 1969 launch of Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins to the moon. The film details activities of both the astronauts and mission control during pre-launch and launch sequences, daily activities aboard the spacecraft and the moonwalk, and provides a view of the historical and cultural events of the time. The footage includes clips from science fiction television shows such as "Flash Gordon" and "Buck Rogers," as well as a lengthy segment on American rocket pioneer Robert Goddard. The film also explores some of the critical preliminary stages of the Apollo program, including medical testing of the human body in space conditions, as well as the assembly and testing of space suits as worn by the astronauts.”

It was nice seeing those ladies sew together the space suits, the movie makes it clear how big a deal this event was around the world, and the soundtrack was good-including the organ music that was played on a church organ-yet I understand why someone on Letterboxd said this was “portentous”, as even for me this was on the dry and stuffy side. The late 60's animation showing the journey to the moon was cool, but the narration (from Laurence Luckinbill)was rather flowery and pretentious, and heck if I know why this opens and closes with shots of Stonehenge; how that connects to Apollo 11, I am not quite sure.

At the same time, there is plenty of nice footage of this historic event, so for that reason alone I am glad I saw this curio.

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