> Behalf Of Ronn Blankenship > > At 12:09 AM 5/23/01 -0400, John D. Giorgis wrote: > >Among our many achievements, we count perhaps the greatest triumph in the > >history of making - landing a man on the moon. > > > If only we could still do it . . . > > > --Ronn! :) > And I hope you all have gone off to The Dish, a great little movie about the process of getting those fuzzy pictures from Tranquillity Base out to the world. I'd just like to recommend to all of you, if you get the chance to see it, do so. The Dish is about the Apollo XI landing on Monday 21 July 1969, as seen on TV via the radio telescope at Parkes in NSW. The story is set at Parkes, so it has an Aussie view of Apollo, rather than the more usual US one. It is a nice little comedy that captures the time pretty well. The film was made by the same team that did The Castle a few years back. The Dish is not as ... raucous?? ... as The Castle, with a milder sense of humour. Still Aussie, but. Not an action movie, but one I really like. It has some really nice touches. Frex, at the start, as an explanatory piece we have a primary school class - about 9-11 year olds, purportedly in Sydney but really in Victoria - showing off their Apollo projects. The boys have alfoil covered footballs as The Moon. As schoolkids we'd read for years British explanations of the Moon as like a football, but being Australia, the only footballs available are ovoid, not spheres. Ooops. Somewhere at home I have my school project on Apollo, done by Brett, age 10. No football was harmed in its making. Sam Neill gives one of his good understated performances, and Kevin Harrington and Tom Long - you'll hopefully seen them in "Seachange" on TV - provide the rest of the Aussie crew at the Parkes dish. Patrick Warburton, a sometime regular on Seinfield - plays the American innocent sent by NASA to the outback. Oh, and there's a mad security guard who, by NASA requirement, is given a gun and walkie talkie. Scary stuff. Hope you enjoy it. Brett Coster Technical writer at IFE-Tebel Australia Ph: 0417 036 310
