the leading man is my tpye

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Certainly, the accomplishments of the space program make Americans very proud. But a TV mini-series devoted to the subject didn't need endless flag-waving and a soundtrack that sounds like a slanted World War II movie from the 1950's and early 1960's to make its point. (One episode actually uses the theme music from "The Great Escape"!) "From the Earth to the Moon" is a bit over-the-top in the patriotic department and a little under-done in the real behind-the-scenes drama department. The United States' project to send a man to the moon and return him to the earth, which was originally proposed by John F. Kennedy, was full of glitches, setbacks, wrong-turns, conflicts, and clashes. A few these behind-the-scenes darker aspects were portrayed but not nearly as many as actually occurred. Unfortunately, the filmmakers glossed up the positive aspects and left out a lot of the darker albeit more interesting aspects of this incredible venture.The made-for-television mini-series comes off more like a NASA press conference or a tour for fifth-graders at a museum than a stark honest depiction of the actual events leading up to the first moon missions. "From the Earth to the Moon" depicted very little conflict between any of the personalities, the technological setbacks, the political controversies, and the many mishaps that are inevitable from such an undertaking. Some were hinted at, such as the decision concerning who would be the first man to walk on the moon but I wanted to see more of the arguments, the setbacks, the conflicts. These more negative aspects were part of the history of the missions but a lot of this was glossed over in favor of how wonderful the resulting accomplishments were and how great everyone got along with each other. The film "The Right Stuff" did a far superior job of showing the craziness, the absurdity, and some of the foolishness that comes along with these kinds of projects that involve millions of dollars and 1000's of people.Probably the strongest and most informative episodes were the following: "Spider", the episode that chronicles the design of the LEM, aka the lunar module, "Galileo Was Right" which depicts one of the later missions in which the astronauts train to become like geologists, and "Le Voyage dans la Lune" concerning the early 20th-century silent film of a voyage to the moon, which was made in France.The most disappointing of the series has to be the first landing, "Mare Tranquilitatis". Apparently, there were many unexpected hurdles and unforeseen setbacks that almost prevented the first landing and the famous moon walk of Neil Armstrong from taking place. Many of these twists and turns were absent in favor of a patriotic outcome replete with glorious brass choirs. An issue about who would be the first man to walk on the moon and when Armstrong missed the intended landing target were the only stumbling blocks that were developed during the episode. I caught the tail end of a documentary about the subject in which Armstrong related many of the hurdles that had to be overcome to accomplish the mission which were glaringly absent from the television portrayal.Patrotism is not born of flag-waving or music. It's born from admiring the struggles of our American heroes. Only when we see how much these people had to fight and struggle can we truly admire them. But if their struggles are softened, the true point of their heroism becomes lost, and I think that's what was missing from this series. If I had seen more of the "tear your hair out" hurdles that had to be overcome, I probably would have felt more patriotic towards these people and what they did. Instead I think I came away feeling like it was no big deal.

In searching my memory banks for a movie or miniseries of this much 'scope and hope,' the only thing that comes to mind is another Tom Hanks' production, John Adams, reviewed on these pages several weeks ago. As in that more recent tour de force, From the Earth to the Moon features superbly acted episodes of extraordinary depth and nuance about an era that came to signify what it means to be American (and human)... at least for a significant minority of individual strivers and would-be strivers inhabiting the planet at the time....For my complete review of this movie and for other movie and book reviews, please visit my site TheCoffeeCoaster.com.Brian Wright Copyright 2008

As someone born in 1959, I grew up with the space program. I was a bit too young for Mercury but I a handful of truly vivid memories from my lifetime. One of those was Apollo 1 and another, of course, was sitting in my living room with my parents on a hot July evening in New York watching, as man first landed and then walked on the moon.As the parent of a teenager, who has had the good fortune to be fairly well traveled, I have had the opportunity to visit a number of NASA facilities over the years with my son. We've even been to the Cape for a number of shuttle launches and landings. So I have naturally discussed what the this time period was like and the impact the Moon landings had on the US and the world. However I don't think he really had a grasp of what I was talking about until he watched this series when it originally aired on HBO.Of course, we added the DVD Set to our collection the day it was released and it has had a workout ever since. I consider this a must for anyone with children. Not only does it do an outstanding job of giving a fairly factual account of the of the events surrounding mans voyage from the Earth to the Moon, but it also gives those who were not alive to witness it first hand a sense of the excitement, wonder, awe and worry a great portion of the world experienced in the 4 years between December 1968 and December 1972.Unfortunately, events such as those depicted in this series are not ones we are not likely to see again in our lifetimes. Hopefully our children will. They will experience it when man finally sets foot on Mars. Perhaps this series will inspire tomorrow's engineers and astronauts to see to it that we do!

"From the Earth to the Moon" reveals an American spirit that is seemingly lacking in our current leadership. The explosion of ideas and research from the space program have been seen in no other endeavor except possibly war. Instead of putting our resources into exploration of our Universe, we spend money on military exploits that will provide us with few benefits in the short or long run. When will we understand that this little planet cannot hold us all forever, and that exploration of other worlds for raw materials to improve our lives will be necessary in the near future. We will never achieve harmony with everyone on this planet, to think so is shear fantasy. We must move ahead in concert with those who believe that we must explore beyond this world and look for material benefits from those explorations. We can't wait for everyone on the planet to catch up, we need to move now. It's seemingly like the minor dilemma in buying a new digital camera, do we wait for the new technology next year, or go ahead and take the plunge and buy one now? It will never be any cheaper than it was this year, prices always seem to go up. So lets get going, we will have no problem finding those men and women who share the dream and are willing to take the risk. The question is do we have leaders who understand those dreams, the risks, and the need for man to explore and push the envelop. "We choose to go to the moon and do the other things this decade, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." JFK, Rice University Speech 1961.