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The space program has always fascinated me, particularly because my interest in Science Fiction, particularly through series like Star Trek – which in turn lead me to an interest in the space sciences and some terrestrial sciences as well. So, when I heard about a documentary about the space program that I hadn’t seen before, and one that was coming out from the Criterion Collection, I had to check it out.

The Premise:

Using footage from all the Apollo missions (plus a bit of the Gemini missions), the film depicts the journey from Earth to the Moon, to the explorations of the Lunar surface, to finally the trip back home. All of this is accompanied with interview audio from various astronauts in the Apollo program discussing the program, and what it felt like to go to the moon.

The Good:

The film does an excellent job of showing what the trip from the Earth to the Moon, and what the lunar surface was like. Both through remastered versions of film footage that we’ve seen before, and footage that the public hasn’t seen before. In many ways, this is the most captivating way I’ve seen this footage before – re-mastered and looking like feature film footage, instead of the fuzzy film footage that we’ve all seen in the past.

The Bad:

The trip home from the moon gets kind of brushed over, which is kind of disappointing. I understand from a visual standpoint it’s pretty much the same, but from a psychological standpoint it would be interesting to hear in the interview audio what it was like to come back from the Moon, especially those who were on the Apollo 11 and 12 missions.

The Ugly:

Watching this after having watched all of HBO’s series From the Earth to the Moon, I feel that while the movie does a good job of showing each stage of the journey to the Moon, I feel that the time-line of the Apollo program is so captivating – the process of preparing for the final landing and preparation for the actual science to be done on the trip. The movie doesn’t have much of that prep, and we barely see any of the Science being done. This is a deliberate decision by the director, but one I don’t totally agree with totally. At the very least, I feel watching some of the science being done would be really captivating, and would give me, as a fan of the space program, a fan of science and space science, and as a layman, it would give me a better idea of what the process was like. On the other hand, as depicted in the movie, the geological process of getting moon rocks can be described as “What a pretty rock, we’ll take that one.”

The Verdict:

This is, frankly, an excellent documentary. If you are interested in the space program at all, especially the Apollo missions, you really need to watch this movie – especially on Blu-Ray if you’ve got a Blu-Ray player.

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Most people have heard about the BBC’s excellent documentary series Planet Earth… which I must admit I haven’t seen yet, but I plan to watch in the future. However, first, I’ve decided to review the BBC’s companion documentary for the series – Earth: A Biography. Is the series a worthy companion, while still being able to stand on it’s own for those who haven’t watched Planet Earth, or does it leave something to desired?

The Premise: The documentary follows Iain Stewart, a geologist from the University of Plymouth in England, as he travels the world explaining various concepts on how Earth works – specifically relating to how we got to the earth we have now, from volcanoes and plate tectonics, to ice and the movement of glaciers, to wind and the atmosphere.

The Good: This documentary is gorgeous. When I got into watching movies in HD, there were two types of films that I felt could really “use” it, as opposed to being a nice bonus (I’ve later come to the conclusion that all genres of film could stand being in HD). The first was Science Fiction films, particularly stuff like Star Trek, Aliens, Blade Runner, and Star Wars. Stuff with production values, from special effects to set design. The second was documentaries, particularly nature documentaries – where they’re filming in places that it would be expensive for the viewer to go see and, frankly, it could be rather destructive to the environment at that location if we all went out to see them. Thus, this documentary is perfect for that sort of thing.

Additionally, Iain Stewart is very knowledgeable when it comes to his field, and of equal importance, he’s enthusiastic. He cares about what he’s talking about, he’s interested in what he’s talking about and he wants you, the viewer, to care, and to be interested as well. This definitely helps make the documentary enjoyable, because of this enthusiasm. If the host doesn’t care, then it’s hard for the audience to care.

The Bad: The quick-cut documentary style doesn’t work out as well here. With such attractive visuals, it doesn’t actually give us, the audience, an opportunity to enjoy what we’re watching. I’d rather they let us look at the pretty visuals while talking about their important concept, like land bridges or human migration across Africa, instead of showing a pretty visual, quick-cutting to something to illustrate the concept, and the quick cutting to another visual before the the first 2 have had a chance to sink in.

Also, the Blu-ray disks are very light on features. I would have preferred some “making of” content, or extended interviews with some of the experts they talked to on the show – the kind of stuff that would be online at PBS.com for an episode of Nova or Frontline, except on the disk. You’ve got the space – use it!

The Ugly: Iain spends about 5-10 minutes discussing the Rare Earth theory of the universe, which suggests that microbial life is common in the universe, but complex life like plants, animals, and humans is rare if not non-existent elsewhere in the universe. I understand why he’s doing it, to illustrate the dangers of humans messing up Earth enough that it can’t support us anymore, but I don’t agree with that theory, if only because I’m a bit of an optimist about whether the universe is capable of supporting life on other planets. As the catch-phrase from the X-Files goes, “I Want To Believe.” Consequently, that segment kind of rubbed me wrong, and considering that it was presented in front of  some of the radio telescopes used by SETI, it felt very condescending, if not outright insulting.

The Verdict: Despite my problems under “The Ugly”, this is an enjoyable documentary to watch, though it feels very short – I was able to watch both disks in one evening. The lack of special features hurts it as well, in my opinion. I do recommend watching it, though it didn’t captivate me enough to want to buy a copy of it, though some other viewers after watching the show, may think otherwise.

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Travel documentary series, while at times they can be enoyable, aren’t necessarily my thing. Often times, like Travels in Europe, by Portland native Rick Steves, or Globe Trekker,  the people hosting the show are people who travel professionally – they write about it, and often times they take the time to get to know an area, and thus they have all the tricks and tips to pass along to you to make your stay more comfortable. I’ve also found that these end up making the documentary a little less approachable. They’re being told by an old hand. So, in the course of my travels and travails through Netflix, I found a travel documentary series by Michael Palin – Around the World in 80 days. Being a fan of Monty Python (as is any self respecting geek), I watched it. Now, what did I think about it?

The Premise:

Michael Palin is challenged to go around the world in 80 days, without using any form of air transport, following (as closely as safely possible) the route of Phineass Fogg, the protagonist of Jules Verne’s novel. Accompanying him on his trip is his own Passepartout – a 6-man film crew from the BBC who is recording the trip. The journey will take Palin across Europe, the Middle East, to India, China, Japan, and finally across the Pacific Ocean, the US (by Train) and across the Atlantic back to Great Britain. With improved engine technology from Verne’s time, it should be a peace of cake. Shouldn’t it?

The Good:

The documentary, from at the very leat a journalistic standpoint, is an interesting portrait of the times – The Iraq-Iran war had only recently been over, and Palin passed through Hong Kong before the hand-over to the Chinese, and more significantly, mere weeks before the Tienanmen Square protest, and Japan in the midst of the Bubble Economy. It’s also amazing to see such a comparison of boat and train travel across the trip – from the formal luxury of the Venice-Semplon (sp) Orient Express, to the mass of humanity on trains in the Middle East and India, to the middle ground of Amtrak – less luxurious than the Orient Express, but more comfortable than the trains in India. Simiarlaly with boat travel, from passenger boats to small freighters, do a Dao, to massive container ships.

The Bad:

To Palin’s credit, he never intentionally makes anyone look stupid – that’s not his humor style. But I can’t help but feel in the editing that some of the people they selected from all their copious amounts of footage were selected because they looked stupid, particularly in India and in the United States.

The Ugly:

I am pleased to say that there is nothing in this documentary that I would fit in the “Ugly” category.

The Verdict:

If you’re looking to watch this for travel advise – it’s woefully out of date for that (20 years out of date, approximately). However, if you’re watching this to see what a slice of the world was really like 20 years ago – I’d say you can’t do too much better than this.

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There have been many excellent documentary series about our cosmos and how it works.  Many of them, particularly Cosmos, Stephen Hawking’s Universe, and The Elegant Universe, have been hosted by noted astrophysicists, astronomers and cosmologists, such as the late Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, and Brian Green (respectively). They’ve also generally been on public broadcasting, or on channels like the Discovery Channel or The Learning Channel – which focus on science programming. The History Channel has now started running The Universe, a series on our universe and our solar system, how it works, and what it’s like, and how we know what we know about it. So, the question is, is the show on par with the documentaries I’ve already mentioned, or does it kind of fumble the ball like The Dark Ages did?

The Premise

Covering everythng from how our solar system formed, to the properties of the various planets, to the threat to our planet from Near Earth Objects and Gamma Ray Bursts, to The Big Bang and how we learned about it, the show covers a multitude of topics about our Solar System, using visual analogies, computer generation representations of planets, asteroids and events, and interviews with cosmologists, physicists, and astronomers to explain how the universe works.

The Good

The presentation and explanation of everything is excellent. Everything is described in a user friendly fashion, and, I have to say, I understood some concepts that I didn’t quite grasp better than I did before I watched the documentary (particularly with how Solar Fusion works.) The interviews are very well done, and they have some excellent physicists speaking on here, particularly Brian Greene (who I mentioned previously), Michio Kaku (physicist working on String Theory), and Neil DiGrasse Tyson (who hosted another documentary series on physics for PBS). Carl Sagan even gets a shout-out.

The Bad

Some of the special effects shots are, frankly, pretty dire. It really got the impresson across that they’re doing this on less of a budget then PBS has.

The Ugly

The show has some of the sensationalism problems that the Dark Ages had, but not as bad. The discussion of Near Earth Objects and Gamma Ray Bursts wiping out the planet are sensationalist topics (and they’re not entirely unreasonable, though NEO’s are more reasonable to be concerned about than Gamma Ray Bursts, particularly considering we can’t do anything about Gamma Ray Bursts, except be off planet at the time.) However, when the Documentary gets to the “Big Rip” theory of the end of the universe, then things get silly. The Big Rip theory is a relatively recent theory that hasn’t gotten quite as much traction as the Big Chill theory of the end of the universe. Basically, the Big Rip theory says that dark matter and dark energy will put a greater strain on gravity then we think, and eventually, as the universe expands, dark energy will tear everything in the universe apart, all the way to the sub atomic level. This is not expected to happen for billions of years. Oh, and for the record, the Big Chill theory basically means that as the universe keeps expanding, and things get farther and farther apart, eventually it will become too difficult for the material scattered by a star going nova to seed other stars and planets elsewhere in the galaxy, and consequently, the universe will slowly chill out.

The Verdict

This was really a lot better than I anticipated. Most science documentary junkies (like myself) will probably not se a lot of new stuff here (though there will be some bits that are different). But, I would say, reasonably, that The Universe would be in about the same league as the documentaries I mentioned at the start of this review. It’s not a first stringer, but it’s got it where it counts, and I would say that it’s a worthy companion to Comos (particularly with regards to scientific developments since Sagan did his documentary). I’d say that this is worth picking up.

(Particularly since Cosmos is really expensive!)

Link to get the DVD from Amazon.com

Thanks to the wonders of “Netflix Watch It Now”, I’ve been able to catch up on some great documentaries that I missed because I don’t have cable. I’ve also caught up on some not-so-great documentaries that I missed because I don’t have cable.  This documentary fits into one of those categories, and I’m not entirely sure which.

The Premise

Covering the period from the fall of Rome to the start of the Crusades, this documentary tries to cover basically all of the basics of European History during this period, using accounts from historians who are experts in the period, as well as footage of actors re-creating life during the period known as the “Dark Ages”.

The Good

The historians don’t err on the side of the pop-culture, the Vikings don’t have horns on their helmets (though you’d probably see more axes used in warfare at the time than we see used in this documentary, but that can be forgiven), the armor for the Centurions and most of the knights looks fairly accurate.

The Bad

The “Reenactment” sequences can be very hit-or-miss. Some times the clothing will be accurate but the houses won’t.  Little-to-no depictions of agriculture. Basically, going by the re-enactments, peasants huddled inside during the winter, and huddled outside during the summer, when they weren’t getting massacred by roaming hoards of bandits. When Monks weren’t copying manuscripts they wandered the halls of picturesque monasteries not-talking to each other, or getting massacred by roaming bands of Vikings. Oh, and Visigoths, Vikings, and the Moorish armies from North Africa look a lot alike.

The Ugly

The presentation of the documentary really errs on the side of the sensationalist. The narrator will begin discussion of one group of barbarians or another, and in a voice that is very similar to the late Don La Fontaine talk about how horrible this group of barbarians were, how all they did is rape, loot, pillage, and then go to the next village and do that some more. However, they then cut to the historians, who basically contradict the narrator on some of his points (basically getting across something to the effect that the narrator is half-right), before going back to the narrator about the next “fact” which will again, be half contradicted by the experts. It gives the film a very schizophrenic tone.

The Verdict

I’ve seen much, much worse, as far as historical programming is concerned. I have also, having watched every documentary James Burke put out, and most of Michael Wood’s stuff, seen better. If you can’t find anything better, give this a watch, otherwise, go with James Burke first.

The collapse of Enron is one of those incidents in business history that is certainly going to end up in the history books. The death of what appeared to be on of the strongest companies on the market changed the way the goverment, and the public, looks at business even more then the Dot Com Collapse did. The key here is, though, why? Why did Enron, which by all appearances was one of the strongest corporations on the stock market, collapse like a house of cards? That is the question that this documentary aims to answer.

In order to find the right answer, you really need to rethink the question, the documentary says. The real question is – how did a company that was built like a house of cards appear as one of the strongest corporations on the stock market? The answer is through three things – a extremely agressive corporate culture that favored profit over ethics, the use of mark-to-market accounting, and the pressuring of stock analysts to present a favorable profiles of the corporation.

The documentary presents these points through interviews with the participants in the events, as well as video footage taken from Enron, from the news media, and congressional hearings on the collapse, and audio recordings from trader’s on the trading floor and a few phone conversations. All of the insiders who perpetuated the fraud itself are absent from the interview footage, but are present in the internal video and phone conversations.

Overall, the presentation of the documentary is very well done. In addition to the interview footage, and the stock footage from the news media and internal footage from within Enron, we also get some very nice establishing shots of the Enron floor itself, and the areas where Enron built up their power – from natural gas fields in Texas, to their corporate offices, to California, where Enron fleeced the state government itself through the still-infamous rolling blackouts.

The one semi-negative I’d give the documentary is that it feels like an episode of Frontline or similar PBS documentary. Now, in my book that is not a negative – Frontline is one of my favorite programs on PBS, and is to a certain extent in my opinion the ideal of the documentary. However, some people find this type of documentary very dry, and to an extent it is. rather dry. So, if such documentaries are not for you, then you might want to pass on this one.

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Pink Floyd: Reflections and Echoes aims to be the comprehensive documentary on the history of the band, covering its history from it’s very beginnings as a Psychedelic live band to their final performance at Live 8, and it mostly succeeds. However, some serious flaws in the presentation prevent the series from achieving greater heights.

The documentary devides The Floyd’s history into 4 parts. Part 1 covers the band’s formation as the “The Pink Floyd Blues Band” through the various changes in the bands lineup, to the album Ummagumma. Part 2 starts at the album Atom Heart Mother and the title track of the album, to their tribute album to fouding member Syd Barrett, Wish You Were Here. The 3rd installment covers Animals to The Final Cut, the period of the band’s history where Roger Waters was doing most of the composition work.  The final installment covers Waters departure from the band, the fight over the rights of the name of the band, the band’s last two albums (A Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell), followed by the reunion performance at Live 8.

The band’s history is presented through radio and television interviews with members of the band, original interviews with music critics and historians, as well as concert footage. The interviews are the high-point of the documentary. While there is no original interview content with members of the band, the director of the documentary did an excellent job collecting interview content that is relevant and really helps provide insight into the band’s music and into events surrounding the band. The interview content from the critics is also enlightening – explaining why certain albums (like The Final Cut) are not held as highly as other albums, as well as providing technical insight into recording of the songs as well (and, in one particular occurance, a musical breakdown of the guitar riff from “Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2)”. While the technical aspects of the documentary probably wouldn’t be anything new for actual musicians, I still find it interesting.

Unfortunately the documentary has several weak links. The biggest ones are related to the concert footage. First, the documentary is presented in a 16:9 Aspect Ratio, and by all appearances the critic interview footage is shot at that aspect ratio, pretty much. However, the video interview footage with band members is not, likewise with most of the concert footage. Rather then keeping the footage at the same aspect ratio, however, the directors basically ended up mangling all of the footage. Video footage from BBC Television is stretched to fit the aspect ratio. Concert footage from Live at Pompeii gets the top and bottom chopped off of it, and Pulse, Delicate Sound Of Thunder, and Live 8 is extremely washed out. The documentary also has some odd omissions. While Roger Waters solo career gets some coverage, particularly notably a comparison between his solo albums and The Floyd’s albums without him in the lineup, there is no mention whatsoever of Syd Barrett’s solo career, or even of his famous appearance during the band’s recording sessions for Wish You Were Here. Likewise, while the legal battle over the Pink Floyd name and the band’s iconography gets coverage, the events leading up to the lawsuit (such as the band’s “breakup”) gets more coverage. The performance footage is not complete – no complete songs here. There just isn’t anything new here. The documentary is comprehensive, but and the commentary by the critics is interesting, but if you’re generally familiar with the band’s history (such as from the various other documentaries on the band that this DVD uses for interview footage), then you won’t find many new juicy tidbits about the band that hadn’t seen before.

All in all, for casual fans of the band, there is a lot to ingest here, and in general they should find the documentary to be particularly comprehensive and enlightening. Die-Hard Floyd fans probably wouldn’t find a lot new, though they might learn of a few concert performances available on video that they might try hunting down on torrent or E-Bay. Newcomers to the band might also find the documentary of passing interest, and might find the documentary to be a good place to start their listening to the band, giving just enough to reccomend the DVD for at least a rental if you can find it at your local video rental chain, local library, or NetFlix (or whatever similar service that you favor), but unless you can’t find it any other way, or unless from my description you consider it to be worth a buy, I wouldn’t recommend a purchase.

Overall Rating: 7/10.

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