A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Book cover photo by NASA.  © 2019 HarperCollins “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”  - John F. Kennedy, May 25, 1961 It's hard to believe that fifty years have passed since three manned missions (Apollo 10, 11, and 12) made the still-amazing voyage from the Earth to the Moon and fulfilled President John F. Kennedy's 1961 pledge that American astronauts would go to our closest celestial neighbor and return safely to the big, blue marble we call home before 1970. Of the three Apollos that flew between May and November of 1969, only two (11 and 12) landed on the Moon; Apollo 10 was a dress rehearsal that involved everything in a lunar mission except the landing itself. To commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing (July 20, 1969), many publishers have published new books about various aspects of Project Apollo, including the t...

On March 1, 2019, Neon (the production company that distributed 2017's I, Tonya ) and Universal Pictures released Apollo 11, Todd Douglas Miller's documentary about the first manned lunar landing. Produced by CNN Films and Statement Pictures, the documentary focuses on the eight-day period between July 16 and 24, 1969, with a few "flashback" sequences tracking the careers of astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins via montages of black-and-white and color still photos provided by the astronauts and their families. Miller, who also edited and produced Apollo 11, eschews the conventions of most documentary films by not using a mix of "present day" interviews, voiceover narration, or dramatic recreation of events. Instead, Miller and his team use a technique called "direct cinema," relying exclusively on archival material from the National Air and Space Administration (NASA), which consists of a mix of 16mm, 35mm, and newly r...

© 2009 Discovery Networks. “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth."  –  President John F. Kennedy's Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs,  May 25, 1961 July 20, 2019 marks the 50th Anniversary of Apollo 11's successful mission to fulfill the late President John F. Kennedy's famous commitment of "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" before 1970. Half a century after astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the surface of Earth's nearest celestial neighbor, two generations have grown up with no direct experience of Projects Mercury, Gemini, or Apollo and have lived only peripherally aware of the now-defunct Space Shuttle and the still-active International Space Station.  And even for millions of people in the U.S. and other parts of the ...