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I saw Tom Hanks's, "Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon 3D" at the IMAX theater at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia twice. It was stunning from beginning to end. Outer Space has always been my first love and when the film showed 3D shots of the lunar surface and what a future lunar base would look like, I got emotional to the point that tears were in my eyes. It is a must have for everyone's home movie collection and especially if you are a space buff like me. It will be in my collection, count on it!!!!
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(2008 HOLIDAY TEAM)If you saw the superb 2007 documentary, In the Shadow of the Moon, I am not certain what the point would be in viewing this forty-minute 2005 IMAX film at least if you are old enough to remember the television coverage of the Apollo missions. The former film includes spectacular archival footage of those missions and insightful on-camera interviews with ten of the surviving astronauts. This one is aimed more directly as a motivational film for a youthful audience as it seeks to reignite the pioneering spirit that sparked the first space flights. NASA aficionado Tom Hanks wrote and produced (along with director Mark Cowen) this enthralling if somewhat cursory look at what it took to get to the moon and what it will take to continue the legacy. The film not only recreates some of the actual Apollo lunar missions but also posits what could have happened had disaster struck. The result adds a suspenseful element obviously designed to engage younger viewers.Hanks applies his storytelling skills to full dramatic effect during these fictitious interludes. They are intertwined with a whirlwind of facts presented in a breezy manner, an especially effective tactic in chronicling mankind's fascination with the moon since this film is meant to inspire as well as to educate. To reinforce the approach, there is a series of quick interviews with youngsters that bookend the featurette showing how the space race has completely preceded them and how it could be resuscitated for the next generation of lunar exploration which targets us back on the moon by 2016. A number of famous actors provide the voices of the astronauts Matt Damon, Morgan Freeman, Paul Newman but few are recognizable. The 3-D visual effects are lost on the 2007 DVD, though I think not as much as the elongated dimensions provided by an IMAX theater. Even more than the technical elements, what really brings the film together is Hanks' obvious enthusiasm for the subject. The DVD includes additional video footage and photographs from the Apollo 11 mission plus a trivia game.
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Disappointing. I had hoped for actual photos and images from the Apollo missions, but found mostly computer generated images. The best real stuff, and the majority of it, is in the end credits. The bonus material is anemic. If you are looking for something to get pre-teens excited about going back to the moon, show them this. If you are someone that grew up in the early days of space travel, as I did, don't waste you time or money.Honest reviews on IMAX:Magnificent Desolation - Walking on the Moon (2007)
This is a total fraud and a colossal gyp. The product descirption says it provides the experience of walking on the moon along side of astronauts. And so it does -for about three minutes total. The rest of the time is taken up with things like asking some dumb, dumb-looking kids if they know who Niel Armstrong is. And the whole movie is only 36 minutes long. The walking scenes are simulated (the simulation is a good one), so it would have been easy to expand them to 30 minutes.I have had much the same disappointment with some other IMAX products. Don't buy this disc -teach movie makers, at IMAX and elsewhere, not to be so full of themselves, and instead to give the viewers what they would really like to see, which in this case is what IMAX promised.
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I had high expectations for this film, but they weren't really met. The special effects are good, but it is interspersed by a mainly NASA recruiting film for kids. It has dumbed down the moon landings to a 8 year olds level. Ok it may be great for kids and I guess that is the intended audience, but I am sick of the modern way of dumbing everything down so it is boring. There is nothing to inspire me, no romance for returning to the moon, no excitement or adventure, even though they did try on this. The series "From the Earth to the Moon" got it right, why did Tom Hanks let us down with this one which could have been the best ever? The IMAX films "The Dream is Alive" and "Hail Columbia" got it right why did this one miss the boat I wonder?Go see it at an IMAX theatre, but don't bother with the DVD if you are a real space fan. Also the extra material is of such low res graphics it could have been shot with a cell phone camera. It froze up my DVD player and I had to reboot it.
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