High Noon on an asteroid. Sean Connery goes to investigate
mysterious deaths at a deep space mining colony. The
company town is run by Peter Boyle who decides to hire
some assassins to get rid of this bothersome marshal.
A made-for-TV movie (Starflight One) that got released
to theaters in Europe. The plot involves the maiden
flight of the first hypersonic airliner. Unfortunately,
it skips out of the atmosphere and into orbit without
the heat shielding necessary to re-enter.
Philip
Kaufman
1983, Warner Bros.
US, 193min.
70mm, 6track dolby
The movie, based on Tom
Wolfe's book, describes the original Mercury 7 astronauts
and the hyper-competitive test pilot culture from which
most of them came. These guys really were heroic and
not the dull choir boys as portrayed in the press of
the 1960's.
The movie had tremendously good reviews but was not
a box office hit. There was too little action for the
Star Wars/Star Trek audience and the arts/serious
film audience wouldn't go to a space movie.
Peter
Hyams
1984, MGM,
US, 116min.
70mm, 6 track
Dolby
A sequel to Kubrick's 2001, it follows quite closely
to Arthur C. Clarke's novel that traces the course of
events in the years after the original expedition to
Jupiter.
No attempt was made, however, to follow Kubricks style
and the film is conventional in plot and presentation.
The special effects are quite good and Roy Schneider,
John Lithgow and others make you care about the characters
as amazing events unfold around them.
Kids at Space Camp accidentally become stowaways on
a space shuttle. The movie unfortunately came out shortly
after the Challenger disaster. So even if it was a better
movie, it would probably not have been successful.
Nominated for a best documentary Oscar, Al Reinert
combed endless hours of NASA footage to create a beautiful
visual essay on the Apollo missions. Includes a soundtrack
from Brian Eno.
Apollo 12 astronaut Charles (Pete) Conrad is the narrator.
Paul
Verhoeven
1990, TriStar
US, 113
70mm, 6trk Dolby
Based on a Philip K. Dick novel, Arnold Schwarzenegger
plays Douglas Quaid, a construction worker in the year
2084 who keeps dreaming of Mars. Another personality
surfaces after a trip to a false memory parlor where
he went to experience an imaginary trip to Mars. This
new personality belongs to a member of the Mars rebel
force and he soon comes under real attack from various
assassins. Not knowing what is a real memory and what
is not, Quaid goes to Mars to investigate.
While the book is a thoughtful reflection on the ambiguities
of self-identity and personality, the movie is mostly
a routine high-body-count action movie.
"The inhabitants of the small town of Plymouth
have to evacuate their homes. Collectively they move
to a moon base. Despite the agreement that no babies
should be born there, because of the risks involved,
the base's doctor does get pregnant. And then a sun
flare hits the moon and everybody has to seek shelter."
- Amazon summary
This was a pilot for a series that was never approved.
While laudable for its attempt at a realistic moonbase
setting, e.g. no alien visitors or faster-than-light
spacehips, the attempts at drama - e.g. someone working
outside when a solar flare hits - fell flat.
Currently (May 07) the movie is available in 10 minute
clips on YouTube:
Very successful reenactment of the Apollo 13 near-disaster
in flight. Technical details are highly accurate.
Many of the weightlessness scenes, for example, were
filmed on NASA's Vomit Comet airplane that is
used to train astronauts. It flies parabolic trajectories
to provide up to 30secs of weightlessness on each downward
curve. (See Microgravity
Experience in the Space
Tourism section.)
The movie reawakened interest in space for many baby
boomers who had forgotten how fascinated they were by
space while growing up in the Space Race days. Later
Hanks produced the sucessful 12 part Earth to the
Moon miniseries on the HBO cable channel that traced
the entire Apollo program.
Russian
documentary on the cosmomaut Sergei Krikalevi and life
aboard the space station Mir, especially when he was on
board during the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Pilot for the TV
series based on the shuttle program:
"'The Cape' explores the daily lives of current-day
NASA astronauts, astronauts in training (ASCANs) and
support personnel. In the pilot, the Russians have
lost radio contact with one of their nuclear-powered
spy satellites. This satellite threatens the Eastern
Seaboard of the United States when its orbit degrades.
A Space Shuttle mission, which includes a Russian
cosmonaut, is deployed to prevent the spy satellite
from de-orbiting." - Amazon
summary
A made-for-TV movie about the first landing on Mars.
Presented as a live TV broadcast with viewers watching
the drama as things inevitably begin to go wrong.
"The most dangerous criminals in the universe
escape from the Off-World Penitentiary and stow away
to the quiet Moonbase Waste Disposal Plant. Hidden beneath
the lunar surface lies an arsenal of nuclear warheads-
the inmates' passport home to earth. Moonbase Commander
John Russell launches a desperate fight to save his
crew from a force capable of laying waste to an entire
planet." - Summary
at IMDB
An asteroid is on course to collide with earth. While
the special effects of the mission to blow up the asteroid
are quite good, the film concentrates more on the effects
of this news on the people on earth. Thus it is less
an action movie than Armageddon but has more emotional
impact, so to speak.
Bruce and his oil drilling buddies are drafted to blow
up a meteor headed for earth. More of a fun action flick
than Deep Impact and with
far less technical accuracy.
Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler, Steve Buscemi,
and Billy Bob Thornton.
Low
budget TV movie about the first mission to Mars. The movie
avoids the usual pitfalls of over the top gimmicks such
as discovering lost alien civilizations or stumbling on
human consuming animals and tries to stay within nearly
plausible technology and scenarios. However, the plot
is routine and predictable and doesn't create any sense
of excitement or realism.
Joe
Johnston
1999, Universal
US, 100min,
Color, DTS/Dolby
Based on the book The
Rocket Boys by Homer
Hickman, this autobiographical story follows the
coming of age of a boy in an isolated coal mining company
town in West Virginia in the late 1950's.
Homer is inspired by the flight of the Russian Sputnik
satellite to launch rockets of his own. The often humorous
rocketry efforts that follow are interwoven with the
story of his difficult relationship with his hard-driven
and remote father.
The collaboration of Homer and his friends, who become
known in the town as the Rocket Boys, overcomes the
discouragement and ridicule of the community and eventually
reaches great heights with ever more powerful rockets.
Documentary about the nuclear testing in the upper
atmosphere by the US and USSR during the Cold War. Narrated
by William Shatner. Music performed by the Moscow Symphony
Orchestra .Clip
- 5.8Mb
Survivors of the 20 original cosmonauts and their families
remember the exciting years following the launch of
Sputnik in October 1957. This documentary mixes interviews
and archived film as the victories and tragedies of
those days are recounted.
Released in Australia in 2000, in USA in March 2001
This Australia movie builds a fictional comedy around
the true events concerning a receiving station in Australia
that was crucial in obtaining the images from Apollo
11 and the first step on the moon.
Generally, it got very good reviews. However,
it was not released very widely in the US so didn't
make much impact. Will probably do well, though, in
video.
Contact with the first manned mission to Mar in 2009
ends just after a mysterious beacon is detected coming
from the Mars surface. A rescue mission is sent and
they soon discover an even bigger mystery.
"..Eastwood, Jones and Garner will play former
distinguished Air Force pilots who, decades past their
prime, are recruited by NASA to fly a crucial space
shuttle mission. The space agency reluctantly calls
them into action after a satellite launched in the
'60s malfunctions and is headed back to Earth.
Eastwood is the only person with the knowledge to
fix it, and he'll agree to go only if he can take
his buddies..." - Eastwood
Ropes In Cast For 'Cowboys'
James Garner, James Cromwell, Donald Sutherland, William
Devane, Marcia Gaye Harden, Eastwood and Tommy Lee Jones.
After the mysterious disappearance of signals from
the first mission to land on Mars, a team is sent to
Mars to investigate. This new mission in turn encounters
severe malfunctions during the approach to Mars. While
the leader remains to save a failing orbiting module,
the rest of the team crash lands on the surface.
The movie then turns into a survival tale with the
mysteries of Mars gradually revealed as the crew members
die off one by one.
While it is better than Mission to Mars, the movie
did poorly at the box office.
One serious flaw is the dreary tone of the movie. None
of the crew seem to really believe in going to Mars
and they all want to get back to earth as soon as possible.
Not surprisingly, most of the audience soon wants to
get away from this movie as soon as possible.
An eccentric comedy fantasy with a space motif created
by a band called The
Billy Nayer Show. Here is descriptionof the film
from the web
site:
Written, directed, and starring Cory McAbee of The
Billy Nayer Show, this space western musical uses
flinty black-and-white photography, rugged Lo-Fi sets
and the spirit of the final frontier to bring the
film, set in the dirty, isolated vastness of outer
space, to life. The film also stars Rocco Sisto and
Gregory Russell Cook. THE AMERICAN ASTRONAUT follows
the adventures of an interplanetary trader (McAbee)
through his Homeric intergalactic journey to provide
the all-female population of Venus with a suitable
singular male, all the while being pursued by the
cold-blooded and childish killer, Professor Hess (Sisto),
an enigmatic figure from his past. The film features
an original soundtrack
by the The Billy Nayer Show.
This film takes place during the days of the early
space program when test flights included chimpanzes
such as the famous Ham. Alex Linz plays a young boy
who wants to become an astronaut someday. His father
is played by James Woods.
Annabeth Gish is an Air Force veterinarian and animal
trainer in charge of getting the animals ready for their
flights.
This comedy stared Eddie Murphy whose character runs
a nightclub in a Lunar Colony in the year 2087. He refuses
to sell out his club to the local mafia.
This film became one of the biggest disasters of 2002.
After sitting on the shelf for a year or two, it finally
got released but with very limited advertising. Eddie
Murphy was so embarassed by it, he refused to do any
publicity for it. The reviews were awful.
Werner
Herzog
Hemispheric Pictures LLC
Sept.2005
81 min
Germany
The famous German art film director made this low budget
metaphorical sci-fi/fantasy. Space flight is apparently
portrayed as escape from environmental damage to earth.
See the Synopsis
on his official site for the film.
"about renowned aerospace scientist and visionary,
Dr. Robert Zubrin, and his struggle to get the first
human mission to Mars off the ground.
Shot entirely in breathtaking High Definition (HD)
and directed by accomplished documentarian, Scott
J. Gill (Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy, The
Blood Earth), THE MARS UNDERGROUND brings to life
Dr. Zubrin’s vision, known as "Mars Direct", through
startling 3-D CGI animation of the launch, voyage
and landing of spacecraft, as well as glimpses into
the future of man’s reign on Mars...."
"The story of the men who went to the Moon,
told in their own words.
Between 1968 and 1972 twenty-four Americans journeyed
to the Moon. They remain the only human beings to
have visited another world. In this film the Apollo
astronauts tell their own story, and share their reflections
on what these great voyages of exploration meant to
them and to humanity.
The film-makers have shot intimate and revealing
interviews with prime crew members from every Apollo
mission from Apollo 8, the first voyage around the
Moon, to Apollo 17, the last lunar landing, during
which two men lived on the surface for more than three
days and nights. The interviews are interwoven with
re-mastered NASA film footage, much of it never used
before."
Michael Polish
(Written with his brother Mark)
Warner Bros.
2007
USA
This film stars Billy Bob Thornton, Bruce Willis and
Virginia Madsen.
Synopsis: "The film is about a man named Charles
Farmer (Billy Bob) who is destined to reach outer space.
Forced to retire from NASA in order to save the family
farm, Charles Farmer reaches a crossroad in his life.
Should he give up his dreams to save the family farm,
or come up with a new dream to accomplish both? It is
an incredibly touching movie based on life struggles
and hardships."
The Sun is dying, and mankind is dying with it. Our
last hope: a spaceship and a crew of eight men and
women. They carry a device which will breathe new
life into the star. But deep into their voyage, out
of radio contact with Earth, their mission is starting
to unravel. Soon the crew are fighting not only for
their lives, but their sanity.
The film once again pairs director Danny Boyle with
writer Alex Garland and producer Andrew Macdonald,
who previously teamed up for the thinking person’s
zombie film, 28 DAYS LATER.
Documentary about the lunar missions from the viewpoint
of the men who landed on the Moon. The movie interweaves
lengthy and revealing interviews with seven of the twelve
moonwalkers.
A
science fiction movie made in the Machinima
3D animation style.
Created using game engine technology Stolen
Life stars Claudia Black of Stargate and Farscape and
Chris Jones of the legendary Tex Murphy interactive
adventures. Stolen Life is “Future Noir”, a dark and
moody sci-fi detective story set on an asteroid in our
solar system. It received six nominations and one award
at the 2006 New York Machinima Film Festival. The Stolen
Life trailer, interviews and screenshots can be found
at: http://www.zipworld.com.au/.../sl_ss.html
