apollo 13 Tagged Articles at Cinematical

In Austin, you can set your watch by the fall film festivals. We don't just have SXSW in the spring. Starting around Labor Day, it feels like we have a film festival practically every week, from Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival (aGLIFF) to the Austin Polish Film Festival, Austin Asian American Film Festival and of course Fantastic Fest. One of the oldest and biggest of these local autumn fests is Austin Film Festival (AFF), which spans eight days and seven screening venues, and includes a screenwriters' conference. In 2009, AFF celebrated its 16th year.

AFF focuses on screenwriters even in its film programming selections, as was evident with the opening-night film. Serious Moonlight is best known as the last script written by the late actress/filmmaker Adrienne Shelly. I admit I wasn't fond of the movie, but director Cheryl Hines was a trip -- mock-vampy on the red carpet (as shown above), and full of excitement about her film. Her screening was up against heavy competition: Matthew Weiner brought an episode of Mad Men to the festival and didn't reveal which one until just before it screened. (It turned out to be this season's "Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency" episode.) Weiner also was featured in panels during the conference portion of AFF.

How is it that someone as fascinated with space exploration as Tom Hanks has managed to go his entire career without appearing in a single science fiction film? Hanks has been an outspoken advocate for the space program since starring in Apollo 13 way back in 1995. He produced the award-winning HBO mini-series From the Earth to the Moon, wrote Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon 3D, and sits on the Board of Governors for the National Space Society. Hanks was recognized for this passion by the Space Foundation who awarded him the Douglas S. Murrow Outreach Award in 2006. Is he more interested in the science than the science fiction?

I don't think the two can be totally separated, at least not when it comes to space exploration. Someone needs to imagine the unknown first, they need to theorize and speculate about it before they can creating a solution that will answer their questions. The very nature of space exploration requires a mind willing to consider the fantastic, open to the possibilities that might exist in an unknown galaxy.

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Sitting next to my father in a crowded station wagon on the evening of July 20, 1969, I listened to the radio as we drove and stared up into the heavens. Man had landed on the moon, and soon we would all be exploring the universe, just like they did on Forbidden Planet and Star Trek. Things haven't quite worked out that way, so, instead, I've turned to the movies to fulfill my deep space fantasies.

George Melies made the very first sci-fi flick in 1902, A Trip to the Moon, which lasted all of 14 minutes. Interest picked up in the post WWII-era with George Pal's production of Destination Moon; the 1950s were a golden age for science fiction films. Stanley Kubrick's classic 2001: A Space Odyssey put the moon in a whole new light. After Neil Armstrong set his foot down 40 years ago, real life footage replaced all the fictional creations. (Of course, some folks believe the Moon landing itself was faked, leading to a fake Mars mission in Peter Hyams' Capricorn One.) Things were quiet until Ron Howard's Apollo 13, in which the astronauts never even got to touch down. Bringing us up to date, Duncan Jones' highly-acclaimed Moon is now playing in selected engagements.

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, please take our poll and tell us: What are your favorite movies about the moon? We've listed ten, but you're free to vote for "Other" and state your case in the comments section.

By now you've probably heard that astronauts on the International Space Station watched J.J. Abrams' Star Trek on Friday. (Here's the account in Times Online.) American astronaut Michael Barratt (left, in the photo) is evidently a hard-core fan and requested the movie specifically after realizing that "orbiting the earth in a space module was the perfect environment to watch" the flick. Also, he wouldn't have to wait in line.

I had visions of the astronauts floating in space, watching the movie as it was projected on the moon, and prompting children on Earth to point up and ask, "Is that the man in the moon, Daddy?" "No, honey, that's Spock." But actually they watched it on a computer, with their feet strapped to the floor to keep from floating away. NASA obtained a (presumably) legal copy of the film before re-formatting the movie "to enable it to be beamed up from Mission Control to the space station, floating about 220 miles above the surface of earth."

Barratt watched the movie with Russian cosmonaut and Expedition 19 commander Gennady I. Padalka (center) and Japanese flight engineer Koichi Wakata (right); any guesses as to what the Russian thought of Chekhov's accent? I didn't realize that movie nights on the space station are a tradition. Of course, that set me to wondering what other movies the astronauts have been watching and what movie I might want to see in space. Would 2001: A Space Odyssey or Star Wars be too obvious? Silent Running? Marooned or Apollo 13 might not be the best choices. If you were an astronaut, what would you want to watch? What should the astronauts watch next?

What is it about ice cream that makes distinguished former astronauts get so cranky? Buzz Aldrin, the second man to step foot on the Moon, says that "fantastic and unbelievable" science fiction movies and television shows are partly to blame for the boredom young people have with the modern space program.

During an ice cream party this week, Aldrin told Sci-Fi Wire: "All the shows where they beam people around and things like that have made young people think that that is what the space program should be doing. It's not realistic ... you can't possibly live up to the expectations you have created in young people. Why do they get bored with the space program? That's why."

Aldrin doesn't hate all science fiction films and TV shows -- just the ones that deal with "fantasy and ... traveling seven times the speed of light." He spoke favorably about Ron Howard's Apollo 13 and Tom Hanks' From the Earth to the Moon series: "They were fascinating, because it was reality history, and reality fiction can be good if you stick to reality." Got that?

While not mentioning Star Trek or Star Wars, I'd guess those were some of the culprits he had in mind. When he's not busy slagging science fiction and fantasy, Aldrin hosts Unseen Moon, a National Geographic Channel show. Hmm, I wonder if his show is "reality history" or "reality fiction"?

[ Via Classic Horror Film Board ]

"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." - Groucho Marx

That famous line is one of Groucho's best, but it is always attributed as being un-sourced. Did he actually say it? Was he in fact mis-quoted? Where did the line come from? I guess it doesn't matter. But if you're planning to dress up as Groucho for Halloween this year, you'll be wanting to memorize some of his lines, because doing an impersonation is necessary for certain costumes, such as that one. Last year I dressed up as Harpo instead of Groucho, because I'm terrible at remembering exact lines, always mis-quoting people and characters; for Harpo all I needed was to close my mouth and honk my horn.

Anyway, there's a new list over at The List Universe laying out the 15 most mis-quoted or mis-remembered lines in cinema, and I thought it would come in handy to any of you dressing up as movie characters this October 31. Going as Dracula? Don't say, "I want to suck your blood." Or as Tarzan? Don't incorrectly utter the words, "Me Tarzan, you Jane." Other famously mis-quoted lines come from Casablanca, Star Wars, Star Trek, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Frankenstein, Apollo 13, The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, She Done Him Wrong, Blonde Crazy and White Heat (poor, mis-quoted Cagney!). Sure, a few of them are just barely off the mark, and I think the list is being a bit picky with the Forrest Gump quote, but nonetheless these are lines we think were spoken, yet they never were -- except the Sherlock Holmes one, it seems.

Of course, most of the films come from a time before we could re-watch movies over and over again on VHS or DVD. However, a few were released in the modern, repeat-viewable era. Either way, it is strange how all of these mis-quotes became so commonly attributed and how they exist so prominently within the popular consciousness -- enough that parodies tend to mis-parody the mis-quotes, such as one of my favorite lines from UHF, "Badgers? Badgers? We don't need no stinkin' badgers." I guess maybe it wouldn't be as funny if the movie had correctly imitated The Treasure of the Sierra Madre by instead using the longer, " "Badgers? We ain't got no badgers. We don't need no badgers. I don't have to show you any stinkin' badgers!"