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Dom Robinson reviews
Channel 4 DVD
DVD: 
HD-DVD:
- Cert:
- Cat.no: F4DVD90105
- Running time: 96 minutes
- Year: 2007
- Pressing: 2008
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 16 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: English for the hard of hearing
- Widescreen: 1.85:1
- 16:9-enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £19.99 (DVD), £24.99 (HD-DVD)
- Extras: Theatrical Trailer, Scoring Apollo, Behind The Shadow: More Unseen Footage and Astronaut Stories From Apollo
Director:
- David Sington
Producer:
- Duncan Copp
Music
- Philip Sheppard
Interviewees:
- Buzz Aldrin
Alan Bean
Gene Cernan
Mike Collins
Charlie Duke
Jim Lovell
Edgar Mitchell
Harrison Schmitt
Dave Scott
John Young
plus archive footage of Neil Armstrong, John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon
The title of this documentarycomes from that period on the way to landing on the moon where, after spending the entire journey so far in the daylightof 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 theirown words and it includes new footage and stories of the Apollo space missions never before seen nor heard, as well asthe 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 seesdaily from afar. Then there’s Buzz Aldrin, also from Apollo 11, who was the second man on the moon, given that, as we allknow, Neil Armstrong was the first. Despite Mike Collins being in that craft, he was assigned to having to stay inside andoperate the command module and there’s quite a moment when we hear the speech that would have been read out had the lunarmodule 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 intoa film directed by Ron Howard – who also had a hand in thisproduction, 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 wasout. The footage of him shows him making such a claim, the same way you’d see one of today’s politicians saying the samething about their latest policies, but you know they’re talking crap and, at the time, they didn’t know how Kennedy’sclaims 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 wiringinside the spacecraft, but were told to basically keep their mouths shut. This resulted in the deaths of three men on aroutine test.
Once we get to the launch of Apollo 11, all of the astronauts who took part in this documentary who boarded that and thefollowing spacecraft, plus some key ground crew members, then tell us how their journey to the moon went, as if thejourneys were all taken simultaneously, so we can get a sense of comparison and scale. Following a blow-by-blow accountof Neil and Buzz taking their first steps on its surface, including Buzz admitting that he “filled his urine bag” justbefore 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 wondrousstories 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 ofblokes 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, whichwould 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 longsince stopped playing the long game and only think about their own terms of office, so rather than set about planning forthe 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 thetime of writing this, MPs in the UK are being challenged to reveal all of their expenses and not just the ones that theycan dress up as ‘essential’, and as facts sneak out here and there it’s all proof-positive that they’re all as bent as theday is long.
The documentary is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen with 4:3-pillarboxed clips for old footage of the space explorations, whichis 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 reasonit 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 ScoringApollo (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 StoriesFrom 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 menufeatures music from the film and there are 16 chapters which is okay for the length of the film. There could be more, butit generally confines them to one per topic so that’s not too bad.
PICTURE QUALITY
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Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.