One Giant Leap

On Tuesday we went to see In The Shadow of the Moon - if, like me, you love anything to do with space just go an see it. And go and see it on the biggest screen you can find. As a guy who wasn't even 2 when it all happened and has no recollection of any of the events of the time there is something wonderful about seeing the rockets go up and the lunar module go down to land on a big screen and hear the engines on a nice big audio system.

Of course since this is a documentary its never going to be shown at a mainstream theater, or my favourite big screen The Cinerama (Thank you Paul Allen for saving it) which of course means that its not going to get the audience it really deserves.

All the guys who went to the moon, either landing on it or orbiting it are getting old - most of them are in the 70s - and in this movie they interview as many of them as were able or willing to tell the stories of the Apollo missions. The interviews are interspersed with the great space footage which the credits proudly boast are "100% real NASA footage with no computer graphics involved".

It was a shame, though not a surprise, that Neil Armstrong declined to participate but instead we got the wonderful Micheal Collins - the guy who had to stay up on the command module of Apollo 11 while Neil and Buzz went down. He is funny, charming and totally made the movie for me.

As the credits are rolling at the end several of the astronauts expressed their opinions to those who think the moon landings were faked. I'm a big fan of the "how on earth do you keep thousands of people from telling the truth" argument, especially in a country where people will go on Jerry Springer to tell the world about their third testicle, but my favourite new one was "if we faked it why did we fake it 8 times???"

Anyway - get off your butts and go out and support it even if you have to go to the less desirable theaters and sit in an audience of 8 people.