Radio Lady Discusses: The movie "Apollo 13" from 1995 -- just a great film!

I watched it while packing up one night in the UK -- didn't remember how interesting the film really was!

It was broadcast without commercials, too! Hooray for the UK!

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0112384/

Tom Hanks, Gary Sinise, Ed Harris, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, and a clutch of other superb actors and actresses made this a very exciting movie. I gave it a 9/10 on this 12-year old review!

Just thought I'd kick it once for old time's sake.

worth watching.

It's a great story, well played.

Thanks for your comments.

But I was astonished at the accuracy of the newsroom scenes in "The Paper." He must've had a newspaper veteran as a creative consultant.

Sounds pretty interesting from the description. Thanks for calling my attention to this film.

http://www.us.imdb.com/title/tt0110771/

and it does have quite a few damned funny moments (my favorite — a reporter says to chain-smoking editor Robert Duvall, "Jesus, Bernie, c'mon! My doctor found nicotine in my urine again!" to which Duvall replies, "Then keep your dick out of my ash tray").

But the film also poses an interesting question about journalistic ethics: To what extent should newspapers go to be right?

The question seems to be answered at the end, but movies aren't the Real World.

I'll try to get that film if I can find it easily. Sounds excellent. Thanks for mentioning it to me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Duvall

:)

Read them at the Internet Movie Database website. Fascinating stuff...

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0112384/trivia

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0112384/goofs

But all in all, a great film.

was the simultaneous full moon and full earth. If the craft is somewhere between the two, they can't both be full from their POV.

But for this space nut who watched the landing at the age of nine, the film can be forgiven its few flaws.

It was cool that they included Lovell's Banshee incident had in the Sea of Japan in the early 1950s. Yes, his auto direction finder had homed in on a terrestrial source and was leading him off course. Yes, his instrument panel shorted out putting the cockpit into total darkness thus allowing him to see the phosphorescent trail of the carrier's wake.

But the film decided not to mention that the cause of the outage was self inflicted. Jim had, without authorization, "invented" a lighted knee board that plugged into a power jack on the instrument panel. When he became lost, he decided to consult a frequency list on the knee board. When he plugged it in it cause either a short or an over draw of power, blowing a fuse.

Pretty sure I read that in his book, Lost Moon. But I may have read it elsewhere.

Great US Navy airplane picture by the way.

Would have been similar to the one Lovell was flying that night over the Sea of Japan.

at the Caledonian Hilton, an elegant hotel in Edinburgh, Scotland, that used to be a "railroad hotel" according to the various blueprints and renderings on the hallway walls.

The photo was behind glass, an early United Airlines propellor-driven plane. Hubby manage to take a digital photo of it -- thought it was a really neat shot, considering that we were visiting there from Portland, Oregon. I think I'll use it as a signature when hubby transfers over the rest of his memory stick.

Googled around for The City of Portland. But this is artwork, not a photo.



http://www.shop.com/op/~Art_Poster_Print_City_of_Portland_Plane_Artist:_Archive_Photos_Poster_Size:_23_X_31-prod-34839262

The only one I was familiar with was Robert West's "The City of Portland" -- beautiful!

I've taken Amtrak all around the PNW, from Whitefish to Portland and Seattle. Through the Cascade tunnel where you cross under US Highway 2 and down through the Columbia Gorge.

The buy.com link I provided offers good sized prints of the art.

I was not able to find any history on her, however.

I love the fact that the weightless scenes were all shot on the civilian equivalent of the Vomit Comet

I lived through that time and wonder now about Jules Bergman, the science reporter. The actual TV tape or kinescope clips they used were pretty fascinating. Chet Huntley and Walter Cronkite were used; as well as Wally Schirra, who just passed on recently. My cousin, an ex-AF military guy, said he met Wally a couple of times, and he was just a very down to earth guy (no pun intended)!

On edit: Bergman died in 1987 of brain tumors and seizures.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Bergman

repeatedly I still hold my breathe waiting for re-entry

it's one of Ron Howard's finest works IMO

It was a very real news event to us in Miami, and I might have gone to watch the lift-off, but I think I was busy with two small children born just fourteen months apart. It's also the year that my marriage fell apart...

Thanks for your post.

PS. Ron Howard was so cute in "The Music Man" -- my grandkids love that film on VHS! Especially the song he lisps/sings -- "All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth." That was a big hit in its time. I love red-headed kids -- but now, Ron has not so much hair, I guess.

At least, I don't remember it, and it isn't part of the score.
. I'm pretty sure the song he sings is "The Wells Fargo Wagon" I think he sings another song too, but "Wells Fargo" is the one where you really notice the "Eshes".

You know Shirley Jones was pregnant while she was making that movie.

When I see a movie, I usually sit back in my seat unless there's a really exciting part. Then I lean forward. I leaned forward all during the re-entry scene.

But it sure doesn't compare to living through the real thing. I clearly remember most of it, especially just after re-entry when we had to wait for radio contact, not knowing whether they would still be there at all. I still recall the thrill of seeing those parachutes on the TV. Wow!

:hi:

You really should get the "From the Earth to the Moon" series. It was produced by Hanks and they really did a great job of being as historically accurate as possible. If you like Apollo 13 and The Right Stuff, you'll love this box set.

Jim Lovell was speaking at a university in Illinois and I was able to see him. Someone asked him a question about the friction between Jack Swigert and Fred Haise and he said that was pure Hollywood. He did say that his wife lost her wedding ring in the shower though. That scene was accurate.

Trivia for "Apollo 13"

* Marilyn Lovell really did lose her ring down the drain but eventually found it again.

and I was on the edge of my seat the whole time, even though I lived through the events and knew how the movie ended.

Do check out From the Earth to the Moon, you'll enjoy that as well. :hi:

I was on the edge of my seat through most of it, even though I knew how it would turn out, because I remember whe the real Apollo 13 near-disaster happened. Says a lot about the quality of the movie.

And who knows? Maybe one day humankind will develop spacecraft like the USS Enterprise or the Millenium Falcon, but Apollo 13 serves as a sobering reminder of just how many things have to go exactly right all the time in order for space travel to even be feasible.

We owe a massive debt to all the astronauts and cosmonauts who gave their lives in the pursuit of spaceflight.

and it was very memorable.

We were at the beach that week and tired and hot and sunburned. We showered, ate at a nice restaurant and went to see this movie at an ice-cold theatre. I remember the night and the movie well.

Imagine my surprise when I found out that three kids in my group are the great-niece and nephews of Jim Lovell!!

(I used the scene where they had to adapt the CO2 scrubbers to fit the LEM. Then we did creative problem-solving stuff.)

There are so few moments in American film more affecting to me than Tom Hanks' croaking out, "...Ken's working on it?"

The "Failure is Not an Option" and "Can Do" spirit.
Now it's severely underfunded and sometimes laughable.

I believe in space exploration and research so it saddens me to see
NASA in its condition today.

I can't watch A13 without shedding a tear or two...

Had that happened during today's NASA, I shudder to think