Tag: documentary

Categories
movie

Apollo 11

The US space program and more specifically the first moon landing (Apollo 11) has gotten a lot of play in various films and documentaries because it’s a Really Big Deal. As much as I love basically everything adjacent to the space program (hello, Hidden Figures) I gave First Man a miss because I didn’t really feel like it was going to tell me anything new or interesting about the event.

Apollo 11 is a little different. It’s not a feature film that promises to have its female cast mostly staring anxiously at the radio. It’s a documentary, rather than a fictionalization of a well-explored historical event. There have also been quite a few space program documentaries… so what makes this one worth seeing?

I’m not going to claim that I’ve seen the breadth of all Apollo 11-related documentaries, but this one certainly feels different. It comprises almost entirely original (and beautifully-restored) footage and audio. The only additions are little things like name labels to let us know who people are, or countdown clocks, or velocimeters to give context to just what acceleration or braking mean at particular points. There are a few times we get simple line-drawing illustrations of what a maneuver the capsule is about to do looks like, since there’s no exterior footage. There’s some music, which occasionally drowns out the audio for dramatic effect in a way that works rather than being annoying. Apollo 11 viewed on the big screen is probably the closest any of us who weren’t born before the launch can get to actually experiencing it.

It’s history, relying only on its inherent drama rather than anything added. It’s a massive compliment to the director and editor that even though we already know how the mission goes before we ever set foot in the theater, it still feels tense and dramatic and like the massive undertaking that it was. The documentary isn’t just interested in what’s going on in the capsule either; we see people buying Krispy Kreme donuts and Cokes as they wait for the launch. We get low-res camera footage of technicians checking a leaking valve before launch. We spend a lot of time in the tense focus of mission control. And we see a different angle on Neil Armstrong as he goes down the lander’s ladder than most of us are used to seeing. Be prepared for some serious Space Feelings. It’s beyond worth seeing. If you’re like me, it’s borderline spiritual.

The end of the documentary is a quote taken from John F. Kennedy’s Rice Stadium speech about going to the moon. And again, it’s not everyone’s favorite soundbite from the speech. Instead, it’s:

But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun–almost as hot as it is here today–and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out–then we must be bold.

https://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/ricetalk.htm

It’s a deliberate film, and it’s a deliberate quote to end on. Apollo 11 is about the United States undertaking a task that, when described, sounds absolutely ridiculous and impossible. It’s a task we know that we achieved, on one hand for uglier reasons of Cold War fear and national pride and on the other, for the lofty stated goal of peace for all mankind. Apollo 11 comes at a time when we are faced with far larger, more frightening, more immediate, and more existential challenges, and it reminds us that we are great, and creative, and we can do damn near anything we put out minds to. From 50 years in the past, it offers us a vision of what we can do.

Then we must be bold.

Categories
the reel britain trip report

The Reel Britain in London

I just realized I should probably record this on my own personal blog as well, since y’all might be interested in this and, I don’t know, not following me on Twitter. (Seriously, why are you not following me on Twitter? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?)

From October 13-25 I was in London. Me being in the UK is not actually that unusual, considering that I have in-laws and friends there, and now I have money since huzzah I am no longer a grad student. However, this time I was over in London to work. But not geology work–no, it was to work on filming for The Reel Britain. We filmed 15 interviews and 4 red carpets in the time we were there, as well as other footage in London, so as you can imagine we were busy.

Want to find out more? I blogged almost daily:

This was honestly one of the most incredible experiences of my life. I’m lucky to have had it, and glad to share it.

Categories
movie shakespeare

Muse of Fire (Or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the Bard)

Thanks to the wonders of magical, lying VPN services, I got to sneak in a watch of Muse of Fire [Warning, video begins to automatically play on the site, SHAME ON YOU DAN AND GILES.] on the BBC iPlayer. I really wanted to watch this slim little documentary because I was in on interviewing Dan Poole for The Reel Britain and it sounded like great fun. And also, I’m a giant Shakespeare nerd, for all that my Shakespeare nerd cred is often called into question because I cannot memorize for shit.

The documentary is excellent. It’s very personal, since it’s all about following Dan and Giles on their journey, and it’s done with a lot of love and humor. Hopefully it’ll be available to American audiences who don’t want to engage in internet cheating relatively soon. And the interviews they got–aaaa! Dame Judi Dench! (I got to shake Dan’s hand, so does that mean I’m now one degree separated from Judi Dench oh my god I’m hyperventilating.) The topic is framed as Dan and Giles getting over their own fear of Shakespeare, so it goes to why people find his work so intimidating and how it can be made more accessible.

Anyway, good documentary, watch it when you can, Dan and Giles are both adorable and adorkable and they put the film together in a very fun way.

One point they bring up is often, how someone first comes to Shakespeare is really what colors their feelings for the rest of their life. (Though when you put it like that, it sounds like when people talk about how they came to Jesus, and it becomes quite evangelical.) I’ve always been bothered by how Shakespeare is presented as so intimidating and impenetrable, because I never really found him to be so… but I also got into Shakespeare entirely because of Kenneth Branagh’s 1989 Henry V movie. He got me when I was young.

Which was for the best, come to think of it. When we hit Shakespeare in school, the first (and sometimes only) play that seems to get done is Romeo and Juliet. I don’t know why. Maybe teenagers are supposed to identify with the characters more, since they’re teens as well, but ugh. I just thought they were very stupid, to be honest. (I can appreciate the play more now, but as a bitter and angry teenager, not so much.) I think if that had been my first exposure to Shakespeare, I wouldn’t like him nearly so much now.

But instead, thanks to Branagh’s Henry, I’m stuck on Shakespeare. I was even excited to take a Shakespeare for Non-Majors class as an undergrad, despite the fact that it was an 8am class (yes, those are things that exist and proof that we live in a godless universe of pain) and the teacher constantly used the word problematize. I read and re-read plays all the time now, though the funny thing is, I still have difficulties with Shakespeare when I’m just reading it to myself.

Which is why I read it out loud to my cats. Shut up, that’s totally normal. I’m teaching the furry little bastards to love Shakespeare too.

Categories
movie

[Movie] Salinger

I’ll note right now that I went into this documentary absolutely blind. I know nothing about JD Salinger beyond the fact that he wrote Catcher in the Rye and fought in World War II. So I honestly can say nothing in regards to the veracity of anything that was said in the documentary. I can, however, tell you if I liked it.

And… I mostly did. The focus was definitely more on JD Salinger himself than on his works, which makes sense. There were quite a few interesting interviews, which covered his more reclusive days, his lingering trauma from the second world war, and his (in my opinion) incredibly creepy thing for really young women. What I found most interesting about the people discussing his reclusive tendencies was the divide between those who really saw him as Howard Hughes in author form, and those who pointed out he wasn’t a true recluse, because he still reached outside his own world and seemed very conscious of the power behind his name. (And used that power on the aforementioned really young women.)

Really, the best and most powerful piece of the entire film was the portion about Salinger’s experiences during World War II… and the fact that he continued to write through all of it. The continued struggle to keep writing no matter what is something I really appreciated as a writer (though obviously, I have never experienced that kind of adversity, and hope that I never will). Also, his determination to be published in the New Yorker really struck a chord. (And nice to know rejection letters really haven’t changed much.)

I also found notable the interview with a fan of Salinger, who had gone to the man’s home and wanted to speak with him. Going in to Salinger’s antagonistic relationship with his own fame was something I found fascinating, particularly the way people would feel as if they had a deep connection to him because of the way they related to his work and felt they were entitled to his time.

While I still don’t think it was anything close to a full portrait of the man, it did all add up to a very multidimensional picture of a human being deeply wounded, intensely flawed, and beautiful.

So all of that was excellent, and kept my attention.

Unfortunately, there was a lot about the documentary I didn’t like. All of the above that I spoke of was done with interviews and fairly sparing analysis from the director. But there was a lot of flash and bombast that kept making me ask why is this necessary. The music was often intrusive and frankly annoying. There was also reenactment footage (way too much of it, in my opinion) which really did not add any value; rather, it was more distracting than anything else. Seriously, the movie didn’t need minute upon minute of a man, smoking, clacking away at a typewriter while the music pounded home that something portentous had happened.

If you’ll have a hard time concentrating on Catcher in the Rye with the knowledge of the more sordid aspects of the author’s life banging around in your head, I’d recommend skipping this one. And if you’re hoping for more depth about Salinger’s work, this documentary won’t cut it. Salinger might have believed that a writer should be known solely through his work, but the documentary was determined to find out as much as possible about the man himself. If only it could have worked on that question without the music.