| | I didn't have much time to write Friday because of the hurricane; fortunately we were fine, as the storm veered farther east. Besides Magnificent Desolation I wanted to mention a couple of other 3-D Imax space films I thought were interesting. Imax films seem to linger in theaters for years sometimes, so you might still be able to find one sometime (check the Imax site for what is showing in your area). Of course, videos generally are available, but can't come close to the 3-D Imax experience.
One noteworthy IMAX film is Space Station 3D . The 2-D DVD has recently been released and reviewed by Space.com. I saw the 3-D Imax version when it came out, and it's pretty good, though I mostly liked the Russian coverage.
There was some stuff I'd never seen good shots of, such as at Star City, but by far my favorite part was the Soyuz launch. I saw much of the Soviet hardware years ago, at the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics in Moscow, but the launch amidst Baikonur/Tyuratam's own sort of exquisite desolation was stunning. It sure beat the crummy TV image we got in 1975 (if I remember correctly, the U.S. had to really lean on the Soviets to broadcast that launch live; while it's quite reliable now they did have a number of problems early on with Soyuz).
The other film is L5: First City in Space, which dates back to 1996 but is now finally available on DVD. I don't try too hard to turn my kids into space cadets, but when this film came out I took all but the youngest to go see it, way down at Moody Gardens in Galveston.
For those familiar with Gerard O'Neill's concepts for space colonies, much of it will be familiar, but the film is well-scripted and the graphics are great, especially in 3D if you can find it. Apparently a lot of the graphics were from veteran space artist Pat Rawlings, and quite good, but my favorite is a scene of Saturn and rings, from its moon Enceladus, created by Fujitsu. I wonder if there's a poster of that somewhere.
There's a dramatic part of the film where the hero lands on a comet, which in 3-D looks pretty harrowing, with chunks of ice and snow floating all over and hitting everything. Of course, with the results from the recent Deep Impact mission, scientists now think comets may be more like puffballs or "dirty dustballs" or even "brittle sponges" than "dirty snowballs" with large ice chunks. Nevertheless, water and organic molecules were found on Tempel I. The film was a huge step forward for promoting space awareness; I'm just sad to say there's still nothing else like it. |
| | Posted 9/26/2005 3:07 PM - 95 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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