Product: For All Mankind [VHS] (1989)
Rating: 4.0
amazing NASA footage spliced together
Director Al Reinert came up with a brilliant idea. He took the footage shot by NASA of all the Apollo moon missions and spliced parts of them together in such a way as to create a film documenting what a single mission to the moon was like. This may sound odd but it does work. (NOTE: He does splice in a Gemini space walk for dramatic effect which is simply spectacular to look at).The voiceover narration (no talking heads) is done by the astronauts themselves but we never know who the astronaut is that is talking and whether than correlates to the astronaut we see on screen let alone the mission. You'd think that would matter. It doesn't.The only part I found dragged was the footage on the moon. After you've seen one crater or moon walk you pretty much have seen them all.The extras are really good with now some talking heads interview outtakes with 15 of the astronauts. Other extras are on Astronaut Alan Bean's moon artwork, a collection of classic NASA audio clips ("Houston, the Eagle has landed," etc.), a series of video on various NASA rocket launches plus you get a nice glossy booklet with the whole thing.Now, if you are looking for a DVD that covers each Apollo mission chronologically, this is not it. This is an actual feature film type presentation.