Word: apollo
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Which helps explain why, by Apollo 13--just the third moonwalk flight, nine months after the Eagle had landed--Americans were already sated with their star-cruising stars. Jim Lovell's little TV show on the third night of the mission, intended for the whole country's viewing pleasure, was not carried by the networks; it was a rerun of a rerun. Fly me to the moon? Yawn--no thanks. A vicarious lunar trip was now no more exciting than a seaside vacation with the kids...
...fashioned realistic special effects, which convince viewers not that they are in a cartoon but that they are inside a real rocket with real people who really might die. The result is that rare Hollywood achievement, an adventure of the intelligent spirit. From lift-off to splashdown, Apollo 13 gives one hell of a ride...
...Howard splashed his vision on a huge canvas and peopled it with a sprawling cast. His problem was that in pushing a zillion buttons on the plot console, he often pushed too hard. Perhaps fearful of losing his audience, Howard would let his films get shrill or dewy. In Apollo 13, though, he has only a few dips into bathos (a too-cute child's face here, a dotty grandma there). Mostly, he makes viewers partners, trusting them to keep track of all the techno-talk, to take on faith what they don't immediately grasp...
...newspapers and magazines, the Apollo astronauts were portrayed as heroes in the old mold: God-fearin', jut-jawed, steely-eyed missilemen, gazing into the skies they would soon conquer. These brainy jocks with their laconic C.B. chatter and their diplomas from M.I.T., Princeton, Caltech and Harvard were icons of stability in a most fractious decade. Americans looked across the Pacific and saw defeat. They looked at their campuses and saw revolt; at their inner cities and saw flames. For inspiration there was nowhere to look...
...what was there to see inside the techie Trekkies of Apollo? They seemed defiantly bland: all sinew, not much soul. They were the country-club Republican answer to '60s radicals. Instead of growing beards and dropping out, they kept their haircuts short and their rebellion in check. The most privileged among them played golf on the moon...