Apollo 13 (UK)

this was a real story that happened years ago 3 men are stuck in a spaceship going to the moon. the actors are good but this film takes a long time with some good action bits and it kept me watching

not much on this dvd but you can listen to the peeple who made it

Introduction
I couldn`t believe it when I first heard they were making a film of Apollo 13. What? Don`t you remember it? Didn`t you see it live? You weren`t even born - oh dear - the passage of time catches up with me (rather rudely I feel).

For me being something of a space nut, the missions hadn`t got boring at the time. I was still glued to the TV for any little detail, so I followed all the missions quite avidly. Apollo 13 being no different.

When the film came out, I wondered what it might be like. Would it be one of those shallow portrayals with an all american hero bringing home the goods against the odds?

Luckily, it was not.

The Plot
It was quite an accurate portrayal of the life and times of the ill fated mission. I mean, its not a documentary, and maybe some of the events are slightly overhyped, but theres a line to be walked between history and bums on seats. The panic over the CO2 levels, and the solution is quite inspiring. The tension over available power for restart, and the general tetchyness as the lack of sleep and worry start to catch up with them is all very realistic.

Much of the filming for the weightless scenes was done in the vomit-comet, the aircraft that does parabolic flight profiles to simulate a few seconds of weightlessness. Must have been "interesting" at least, given its well deserved nickname. Also, given you can get about a maximum of 45 seconds at a time, must have taken a few goes to capture all the footage!

The drama is well done, and each of the trials thrown there way is coped with together with the ground crew. You can see how far we`ve come in terms of technology as you see slide rules and long hand arithmetic being done for course calculations.

The Visuals/Audio
Visually its a good transfer, and the sound is good to.

The Extras
The extras are where this film shines for me. We get two commentary tracks.

The first by Ron Howard, goes into some of the details of filming. Some nice observations here and there. He comes over as the sort of bloke you could easily chat too. He got to drive the huge transporter vehicle for instance (and thought he might send a picture to Arnie who drives a HMMV) as one up - then hastily tells us actually he doesn`t really know Arnie. For those of use who remember him as Richie Cunningham, he`s done pretty well. I think he says somewhere he didn`t see much of the original footage as he was out filming as an actor.

The second commentary is by Jim Lovell and his wife, and is quite insightful. He points out where the film deviates from the historical facts (usually only in minor ways) and his wife relates some of the ground story. It shows how accurate the film is for the most part.

Summary
I guess I`ve watched this DVD several times - and must be one of the earliest ones I bought. If you haven`t seen it - well worth doing so.

It does capture the moment well. One of the Great escape stories of human history. All Sci-Fi and space movies need decent transfers for Special effects and space shots to look clear & effective, this one doesn`t let down...