DVD Review: For All Mankind- Criterion Collection [Blu-ray]: Jim Lovell, Kenneth Mattingly, Russell Schweickart, Eugene Cernan, Michael Collins, Charles Conrad, Richard Gordon, Alan Bean, Jack Swigert, Stuart Roosa, James Irwin, Charles Duke, Al Reinert, Susan Korda, Ben Young Mason, Betsy Broyles Breier, David W. Leitner, Fred Miller, Jonathan Turell: Movies & TV

Jul16

DVD Review: For All Mankind- Criterion Collection [Blu-ray]: Jim Lovell, Kenneth Mattingly, Russell Schweickart, Eugene Cernan, Michael Collins, Charles Conrad, Richard Gordon, Alan Bean, Jack Swigert, Stuart Roosa, James Irwin, Charles Duke, Al Reinert, Susan Korda, Ben Young Mason, Betsy Broyles Breier, David W. Leitner, Fred Miller, Jonathan Turell: Movies & TV

Posted by admin | on 16 July, 02:39 AM

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A Special Message from Jonathon Turell, Criterion CEO

I was nine when the Apollo 11 Eagle landed on the moon. I remember vividly watching it on a small black-and-white TV at sleepaway camp that summer of 1969. I’ve been hooked on the space program ever since. Just about twenty years ago, a friend told me he had seen a rough cut of a new space movie and I should see it. I got a tape and watched For All Mankind for the first time. It was unlike anything I had seen before, and I knew that I wanted to be a part of it. I met Al Reinert and we became friends. Janus Films helped to finish the film, and I became an associate producer as we completed the movie. For All Mankind was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary—losing out to Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt. It played festivals around the world. There was a special screening for NASA and the astronauts in Galveston, Texas, and the film showed at the Air and Space Museum at the celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the moon landing.

We started working on the laserdisc release of For All Mankind before the film was complete, and I traveled to Houston to meet Al and interview Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean for inclusion on the disc. Bean’s comments were so good that Al recut the film to include a wonderful story about piloting the lunar module in orbit around moon. Meeting one of the astronauts who walked on the moon is still one of the greatest thrills of my life. Last year, when we began working on our Blu-ray release of For All Mankind, we got in touch with Bean again and asked him to participate. He happily agreed to update the feature on his paintings and also to sit down and talk with us about a subject I had become very interested in—science versus art. I wanted to explore the question of whether the astronauts (or the people at NASA) realized they were shooting some of the most artistic images ever recorded (and now some of the most famous) or if it was really all about moon rocks and beating the Russians. This second meeting with Bean didn’t disappoint; he says some wonderful things that are included on the disc. When we finished taping our interview session, he gave me a ride to lunch. The famous Apollo 12 Corvette is gone, replaced by a truck to carry his paintings, but that ten-minute ride will stay with me forever. He talked about walking on the moon; I talked about what movies I like. It didn’t seem quite parallel—for him it was an interesting conversation, for me, it was an audience with a hero.

Over the years, I think I’ve seen every film and TV miniseries about the Apollo program (at least twice), but for me For All Mankind still stands apart. It is unique in its poetic approach and ability to capture the pure emotion of the greatest journey of our time.

Product Description
In July 1969, the space race ended when Apollo 11 fulfilled President Kennedy’s challenge of: landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No one who witnessed the lunar landing will ever forget it. Al Reinert’s documentary, For All Mankind, is the story of the twenty-four men who traveled to the Moon, told in their words, in their voices, using the images of their experiences. Forty years later, it remains the most radical, visually dazzling work of cinema yet made about this earth-shaking event

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:

• New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised and approved by producer-director Al Reinert

• DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack

• Audio commentary featuring Reinert and Apollo 17 commander Eugene A. Cernan, the last man to set foot on the Moon

• An Accidental Gift: The Making of: For All Mankind, a new documentary featuring interviews with Reinert, Apollo 12 and Skylab astronaut Alan Bean, and NASA archive specialists Don Pickard, Mike Gentry, Morris Williams, and Chuck Welch

• On Camera, a collection of excerpted, on-screen interviews with fifteen of the Apollo astronauts

• New video program about Bean’s artwork, accompanied by a gallery of his paintings

• NASA audio highlights and liftoff footage

• Optional on-screen identification of astronauts and mission control specialists

• PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by film critic Terrence Rafferty and Reinert

Looking back at Apollo across a lifetime,

By C. James Cook (Westborough, MA USA) -

The presentation is impeccible, but the soundtrack by Brian Eno nails it.

During the Apollo flights (1968 - 1972), we all felt part of the space age. When this documentary was released in 1989, Apollo still felt like it was just yesterday. Now in 2009, with Eno’s ethereal music in the background, a feeling of the surreal overtakes me as I look back half a lifetime ago.

Buy this documentary for the interviews as well as the expected accompanying NASA pictures and movies - you won’t be disappointed. It complements other more recent offerings, such as “In the Shadow of the Moon” and “The Wonder of It All”. But only this film captures the feeling of what it is like to have lived through it and now look back.

It was an age, and now we shake our heads in wonder.

This Re-Issue Soars!,

By Cubist (United States) -
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: For All Mankind- Criterion Collection (DVD)

This is a re-issue of a previous release by the Criterion Collection but features a brand new transfer of the film, which looks fantastic. All of the previous extra material has been carried over.

There is an audio commentary by filmmaker Al Reinert and astronaut Eugene Cernan, the last man to set foot on the Moon. Reinert provides some insight into how the film came together. He went through thousands of hours of footage and managed to put together an 80-minute film. Cernan shares some of his experiences about what it was like to be an astronaut at that time.

New to this edition is “An Accidental Gift: The Making of For All Mankind,” a 30-minute retrospective documentary. Reinert always wanted to see this outer space/Moon footage on the big screen and this was the impetus for the film. He got his start as a journalist covering NASA in the early 1980s. Through his contacts he got access to their film archives and found footage that had never been shown. This is an excellent look at how For All Mankind came together.

Also new is “On Camera,” a compilation of on-camera interviews Reinert conducted with 15 of the Apollo astronauts. In the film itself only the audio is used and it is nice to put a face to the voice.

“Painting from the Moon” is an updating of an extra on the original edition. After retiring from NASA, astronaut Alan Bean became a painter and this is a gallery of his work with commentary.

“NASA Audio Highlights” is a collection of 21 soundbites from the first ten years of the American space program. Some of the most famous words have spoken during this time, including Neil Armstrong’s immortal words.

Finally, there is “3, 2, 1 . . . Blast Off!” a collection of launch footage of various rockets taking off for outer space.

Film, not video, for the first time,

By L. Scott (Colorado) -

When I first saw this movie back in 1989 (?), the stunning part was seeing film footage from Apollo for the first time. The film was printed from the originals in the archives, with a machine constructed there for that purpose, as I understand it. This was the first time we saw film, not video, from space, and it was stunning.

Now having watched the DVD today, the film-in-space aspect is less startling. But what I found compelling now was the footage of the engineers in Houston watching the first steps on the moon. The astonishing moment in history is written on their faces, which have expressions almost as blank and childlike as the faces of the characters seeing aliens for the first time at the end of Spielberg’s Close Encounters. Except that in this film it’s real.

The Blu-ray holds promise of restored footage. The DVD seems to show some wear and tear on the film that was not so apparent when the movie was in theaters. As I write this, the Blu-ray is ordered but has not yet arrived.
Search For All Mankind- Criterion Collection [Blu-ray]: Jim Lovell, Kenneth Mattingly, Russell Schweickart, Eugene Cernan, Michael Collins, Charles Conrad, Richard Gordon, Alan Bean, Jack Swigert, Stuart Roosa, James Irwin, Charles Duke, Al Reinert, Susan Korda, Ben Young Mason, Betsy Broyles Breier, David W. Leitner, Fred Miller, Jonathan Turell: Movies & TV from AmAzon

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