Moonshot
Going dramatic with historical footage of the moon landing
Tags: Misc DVD 2009 Categories: DVD/TV Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Daniel "monk" Pelfrey on Dec 18th, 2009
Moonshot is a made for television movie depicting the 1969 landing on the moon – which may not sound like much, but this presents something different. While it is based on facts, the story is much more “human” as the focus is on the three astronauts, Michael Collins (Andrew Lincoln) Neil Armstrong (Daniel Lapaine) and Buzz Aldrin (James Marsters).
While many other films have taken a look at the human drama from the astronaut’s point of view, or their wives, or provided a more technical perspective, what Mooshot does is immerse the viewer in the events, with a mixture of archival footage seamlessly integrated into the narrative, sometimes it is hard to tell what is genuine and what is reconstructed footage.
Even though Moonshot is a dramatization, care was taken to keep everything as authentic as possible – down to the smell of the moon and reactions of the astronauts to each other. It may not be as insightful or informative as some other films or documentaries, but it is interesting and entertaining.
The film is broken down into two parts, the first being the years leading up to the landmark event, with the second half focusing on the mission itself. At just over an hour and a half, events blow by quickly, almost as if this were a highlight reel. This is my biggest complaint about Moonshot, in that it is over almost as soon as it begins. Granted, any one facet of the early NASA missions could be the subject of a multi-hour miniseries, let alone one this monumental. Still, it would have been nice to have more than just a 2 hour television film that gets almost 30 minutes snipped because of commercials.
Despite the short running time, because of the combination of historical footage, Moonshot works. Wit the historical footage remastered in high definition, the viewer is transported back in time. This is what Moonshot is meant to do, and does it well..
Extras on the disc include a few galleries from the Apollo, Gemini and Mercury missions, (very) brief text bios of some Apollo personnel and 5 tracks from the film’s score.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
| + Great integration of historical and new footage | 7.0 |
| What Doesn't | |
| - Really short | |
| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| An interesting take on this historical event. | |
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Tags: Misc DVD 2009
Posted by Daniel "monk" Pelfrey on Dec 18th, 2009 and is filed under DVD/TV Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
