Apollo 18 -- The Verdict

(On 16 Apr 2011, 15:46, I originally posted this as "There is a REASON why ...")

... I'll very likely check out the new Apollo 18 movie when it eventually comes out.

And, here is that reason ...

Poster downloaded from http://apollo18movie.net/ ages ago.

The release date on it is no longer valid - see below.

Click on it for larger image.

Produced by Russian-Kazakh film director Timur Bekmambetov (best known for the vampire franchise Night Watch and Day Watch ), this promises to be at least interesting and different (as opposed to the Jerry Bruckheimer/Michael Bay film school of "blow 'em up real good". :-)

One year ago today, I posted Adventure of a Lifetime, about my odyssey to the Cape to watch the liftoff of Apollo 16 which went up on the afternoon of 16 Apr 1972.

A couple of months ago (mid February) that post started getting an awful lot of hits.

I learned from one of the commenters that it was due to a comment I had put on the IMDB page about the movie. The movie is supposed to be about a secret mission, and a commenter there asked, in effect, "How in Hell do you manage a clandestine launch of a Saturn V?!!!"

I replied that I could personally attest that such an event is a bit conspicuous, and I included links to "Adventure" and also to its follow-up, The Adventure - Continued.

I started to put much of this in a further addendum to "Adventure", but decided that doing so would only change the focus of that post.

That poster shows an 04 Mar 2011 release date. By the time all the comments hit my post, it had changed to 22 Apr 2011, and the imminent arrival triggered an avalanche of visits to the IMDB page, and subsequently to my post. As of today, it now appears that it will be 06 Jan 2012 when it hits the theaters.

Update - 29 Jun 2011 - It now appears it will be released on Friday, 02 Sep 2011.

I have many times breathlessly anticipated upcoming movies, only to have my hopes dashed when I finally saw them.

The business of bringing a movie to life is such a combination of art (hopefully), decision by committee, pure dumb luck and often mind-boggling stupidity (Pauline Kael once described movies as "an art form, run by businessmen") that Lewis Carroll would be hard put to render it justice.

Harlan Ellison has managed it on occasion, in some of his essays, and the process ain't pretty. In truth, the fact that sometimes, something really good actually emerges from all this is a true miracle.

So, I fully realize that chances of what I'm looking forward to turning out to be indescribable dreck are fairly high.

But, honestly now, hasn't that poster piqued your curiosity, at least a little bit?

02 Sep 2011 - The Verdict - I've satisfied my curiosity today.  Is it dreck?  No.

It's sort of a "The Blair Witch Project (1999)" version of a lunar mission, and is actually quite chilling and effective in places.  In fact, if it was a Saturday night offering on The Syfy Channel, I'd consider it well above average for that venue. (Yes, that is damning with faint praise.)

I doubt that you'll be wailing about an hour and a half of your life that you'll never get back.  On the other hand, you probably wont go back for a second helping.

Now that that is out of my system, only three more weeks to go ('til September 23) to check out yet another movie I'm very curious about (see Possibly a good movie ... ).
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