A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Moon (2001) - Review

"A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Moon" is the 2001 documentary written, produced and directed by Bart Sibrel. You can see the film on begging the question. Needless to say, I was not convinced by this film at all.

The film starts off with biblical references, specifically to the story of the Tower of Babel. It then goes on to talk about the Titanic and how the ship sunk on its maiden voyage, a story all people know all too well. The goal here seems to be to paint a dire picture where man attempts some action that is "too hard" and is punished by the Judeo-Xtian god for their hubris. But it, of course, ignores all of the many other achievements that came without such catastrophic results. It instead attempts to plead to the emotions of the viewer in order to set a tone where they'll accept the claims of the story without question.

Why else would the film spend over 20% of its time showing footage completely unrelated to the central claim that the moon landings were faked? Why is the last 5 minutes of a 47 minute video devoted to showing the Zapruder film of Kennedy's assassination if not to create some sort of guilt by association, given the widely held belief that Kennedy's assassination was a conspiracy? Or spend the first 10 minutes of the film showing failed rocket launches interspersed with scenes of death and destruction from Viet Nam, starving children in Africa and growing unrest in the United States and protests of the war effort?

It's suggested through that this was all a ploy done by the US Government to 1) spread the belief that the United States had caught up with and then surpassed the Soviet Union in space technology, 2) distract the citizens from their anger towards the war movement and 3) to funnel billions of dollars into the pockets of the politicians' cronies in business. But, does this "documentary" prove this?

No. It's not even compelling or even original.

The "documentary" doesn't break any new ground, but instead repeats a lot of debunked claims that supposedly indicate that landing was staged. It uses single sentence audio clips, with no context except for the narrator's suggestions of what supposedly happened, that are supposed to suggest a director staging events. For example, in one clip we're supposed to believe that someone saying "Talk" was a director chastising an astronaut for not hitting his cue.

Other claims are very obviously false or mistaken to the viewer. For example, in one scene where we see an astronaut holding the pole with an American flag on it, we can clearly see the astronaut is turning the pole back and forth for some reason. Yet Sibrel claims that the flag's movement is actually the result of large fans blowing on the "set" in order to keep the "actors" cool. But, if that were the case, then why aren't those fans blowing the "moon dust" around as well?

Or another piece of footage where shadows appear to be coming from different angles, supposedly suggesting multiple light sources (and therefore a staged set and not the surface of the Moon) are more easily explained by (possibly intentional) misinterpretation by Sibrel. In one shot we have the shadow of an antenna along side the shadow of an astronaut.

The shadows are not parallel!

So, of course, that means there was a secondary light, doesn't it? And by that we have proof of a sound stage. Right?

No.

Sibrel shows a shot of two telephone poles on Earth casting long shadows as a result of the rising or setting sun. And, yes, those are parallel due to a single light source and the fact that the poles are more or less parallel. But since we can't see the astronaut or the antenna that are the source of the shadow, how do we know they are both parallel? How do we know the antenna wasn't at an angle to the ground? You need to first show that to be the case (the two sources being parallel) before you can look to the shadow's converging and claim it to be an indication of something else.

And it's similarly flawed claims that make up the bulk of the conjecture. Poorly thought out arguments that are more about propping up the beliefs of people who already want to believe the landings were a hoax than being convincing to those with even a modicum of skeptical thinking. All of the breathless suggestions of a cover up and the exaggerated claims of how many people were involved in the Manhattan Project don't make up for the poor logic and lack of thought put into the claims presented here.


Really, I covered a lot of the claims made here when I reviewed way back in episode 35. And I still say that you're better off watching that film, which I rated a buy, than this "documentary". Because, quite frankly, it attempts to present itself as some sort of informed, authoritative investigation of the moon landings. But really it's just a bunch of half truths and presumptions wrapped in an appeal to emotion and to fear that's ultimately a waste of your time.

Review: Chronicle (2012)

Review by Ben Pierce.

9.75 out of 10

Chronicle starts out with a kid, Andrew, starting up a camera he bought and says that he is going to start filming everything, as his dad bangs on his locked door, threatening him to open it. He films everything around him, from the neighborhood 'Douche-bags' to where he eats lunch, to the school bully, to his sick mother.

Andrew is kind of a loner, without any friends at school. His cousin, Matt, invites him to a party at an abandoned store by a forest. Andrew declines, but as the time for the party rolls around, his father yells at him, angering Andrew, which makes him change his mind about the party. Matt picks him up and they head to the party.

At the party, Andrew films the place, and douche comes up and yells at him for 'filming his girlfriend'. Andrew goes outside and cries, depressed about all of this. One of the popular kids from school comes up, Steve, and asks why he is crying. He invites him to come with him to a 'cool thing' they found.

Andrew follows Steve into the forest, where Matt is hovering over a hole in the ground. Steve hops into the hole, followed by Matt, to which Andrew is left with no choice but to follow them. About 20 yards through a dark damp tunnel, they find a strange thing, of which messes with Andrew's camera, not allowing it to film it well. Their noses starts bleeding, and they pass out.

What made this movie as good as it is, is that it didn't bother dabbling in the exposition, or how they got their powers. Chronicle also had very realistic characters, and a realistic setting. They weren't good or bad. And not only that, but it never stuck to just one mood. It had lots of laughs at the beginning, and was very cool, and even sad at the end.

I definitely say watch it while it is still in theaters, and when it comes out, buy it and frame it on the wall.

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soJSsq8GHEA&feature=relmfu
Clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVUa1VZqsU8&feature=relmfu

Review: Hulk Vs. Thor (2009)

Cover art for "Hulk Vs. Thor".

"Hulk Vs. Thor" is an animated film that followed on after 2008's "The Incredible Hulk" (which I review in episode 134). The premise of the plot, or at least the promise, was that by some means the Hulk and Thor, the Norse god of thunder, would do epic battle.

What we got was a weakly based story of Loki, Thor's step-brother, teaming up with Amora, the Enchantress, and turning the Hulk into a remote controlled beast with Loki driving. The Enchantress uses her magic to extract Bruce Banner from the Hulk, turning the Big Guy into a mindless automaton that Loki then drives to the gates of Asgard to beat up his brother.

Now on that point (about Banner's extraction) the story was....okay. I liked that the art tried to make Banner look like Edward Norton, so it had some continuity to it with the big screen film.

But what I hated about that is they then kill off Banner and, since he's in Asgard, his soul is condemned to Hel, the land where those who die an unheroic death spend eternity. And in that land Banner exists in a wish-filled world where, like Picard in the Nexus from "Star Trek: Generations" (which is another podcast), he's married to Betty Ross and has a son named Bruce, Jr.

YAWN!

Hulk and Thor battle in the forests of Asgard.

I was just very unimpressed with the story. The Hulk, once breaking free of Loki, just goes about smashing anything in his way. But somehow he manages to head straight towards Odin's chamber where the Alfather is taking his annual power nap. And it takes the re-merging of Banner's soul (and not the physical body that the Enchantress extracted) with the Hulk for this rampage to end.

All in all this was a waste of nearly an hour on a story that, in the end, was cheap and felt like it was only there to bring a pre-existing movie franchise together with one that was to come in two years. And on our buy it, borrow it or don't bother scale, I'm going to rate "Hulk Vs. Thor" a don't bother. There's really nothing new or interesting to see here, and the path to the ending was pretty boring.

Review: X-Men: First Class (2011)

"X-Men: First Class" is the 2011 super hero action film written by Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz, with Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn, directed by Vaughn, and distributed by 20^th Century Fox. It stars James MacAvoy as Charles Xavier, Michael Fassbender as Erik Lensherr, Kevin Bacon as Sebastian Shaw, and Jennifer Lawrence as Raven/Mystique, among other very talented actors. The film was produced on a budget of about $160 million USD and brought in around $353 million USD. The tagline for the film is "The story begins". And IMDb gives the film 7.9 out of 10 stars based on 139,754 votes as of today.

This film spans a period from 1944 through 1962 and introduces us not only to the first class of mutants trained by Charles Xavier, but also shows us how he and Erik Lensherr, enemies in the original X-Men film back in 2000, met and became friends. We get to see how they connected and how they worked together, at least initially. We see how it was mutants who ultimately helped to prevent the Cuban Missile Crisis from turning into global thermonuclear war.

We also see how it was mutants who also almost caused that to occur.

And in the process we meet several mutants anybody who has read the comics would know, and some that either were created for this film or else came about after I had stopped reading Marvel Comics back in the day.

Of the mutants we meet, the one I was happy to see but who also didn't make sense to me was Alex Summers, whose codename is Havok. In the comics, Alex is the younger brother of Scott Summers, who is known as Cyclops and whom we see in the original three films. If Alex is around in 1962 AND he's an adult, how can he be the younger brother of a guy who's at MOST about 25 in the original film? I don't remember where, but I seem to recall that for the films the character was ultimately planned to be Scott's father rather than his brother.

The one that I was least impressed with, and who felt weak was....well, I can split it between three: Angel, Riptide and Darwin.

Wasp, from the Marvel comics

I thought originally that Angel was going to be Wasp, who in the Marvel Ultimates universe is a mutant (unlike in the mainstream universe where she was a human who had been augmented by her husband's biogenetic changes and not a TRUE mutant). But in the film she was just a throwaway good-guy-goes-bad-when-things-get-rough.

Riptide was...well, lame. He can create spinning air...yay.

And Darwin had potential, but (SPOILER ALERT) he gets killed off way too soon.

With all of the mutants that Xavier finds, I'm not sure why he chose the ones he did specifically to make a team to face off against Sebastian Shaw and his Hellfire Club.

Sebastian Shaw, Kevin Bacon

Now, let's talk about that character: Kevin Bacon is a fantastic actor, and I was glad to see him in this film. And I liked the level of malice and Machiavellian manipulation he brings to the character. But I wasn't that thrilled with how they altered his abilities.

In the comics, Shaw's mutant ability is that he can absorb energy in any form and use it to increase his strength, endurance and healing abilities. Basically, anything that hits him super charges his batteries.

But in the movie Shaw's ability is to absorb power and then project it in a more controlled manner but still the same as Havok. While it was interesting, I just didn't buy it. Shaw's ability is that he can absorb power and then turn it into a pure physical and direct attack. I guess for a film that's more interesting than just having him punch a hole through metal or similar attack, so I can overlook it in that regard.

Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique

But what I can't overlook was the unnecessary teenybopper love story between Raven and Hank McCoy, and the completely forgotten sexual tension between Raven and Charles. The latter specifically since it was so explicit at the beginning and then it was just....forgotten. They could have at least brought it up later in the story when she defects (you know that's coming) and leaves Charles for Erik.

And the attraction between her and Hank made very little sense. Unless she's attracted to men with intellect (in which case, I'd like to give her my number) it made very little sense for her to go after him just because he has freaky feet.

And when he turns into the hairy beast later, well, I would have liked that to have been done by Raven slipping a little something into his injection to, maybe, teach him a lesson about what is and isn't beautiful. Because, quite frankly, I think that when Hank told her that her blue appearances wasn't "beautiful" that I would have been on HER side in teaching him a lesson.

Because, quite frankly, she was GORGEOUS in blue.

On the acting side of things, everybody turned in good performances. Fassbender sometimes went a LITTLE over the top while exercising his powers. And why did Xavier have to keep touching his temple? In the comics he never does that. My buddy, Lon, posted this to me on Facebook about that:

Hint : The dude constantly putting his fingers to his temple is the telepath. He may have done his method research on Cyclops by mistake and thinks Prof X has a button on the side of his head.

 That completely cracked me up. But I'll give him a pass, since Tony Shalhoub, James Roday and Simon Baker also do the same move when they're exercising THEIR mental powers (and Simon Baker IS "The Mentalist").

Also, I'd be remiss if I left out mentioning the well-placed and amusing nod to "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" in the film. That scene made me laugh out loud. Which was another aspect of the film I enjoyed: the sense of humor. References to Xavier's future baldness, for example, permeated the film without beating us over the head. Little quips between characters that were there for people familiar with the comics was nice.


All in all this was a very well-done film. Sure there were some weak parts in the second half, and some of the timelines don't quite match up. But still, on our buy it, borrow it or don't bother scale, I'm going to rate "X-Men: First Class" a buy for super hero movie fans and fans of Marvel Comics, and a borrow for action film fans and for people who enjoy a super hero film in general.