Space & stuff

[stephbg]

In lieu of knocking off the last two Star Trek movies (for which the completist in me is itching) tonight we watched Marooned (1969), a classic lifeboat thriller, set in space. There are three men, but probably only enough oxygen for two... That wasn't a spoiler, merely a very very accurate guess in the opening credits.



Despite the big name casting of Gregory Peck the 2 hour film was a commercial failure. I blame the excessive application of reality. Although proper space geeks have dissected the sets and props in frightening detail, the whole thing was very well dressed, as far as I could tell. I particularly liked the sound design choice that included all the breathy scratchy noises in the radio dialogue. The mission control scenes churned through all the checklists my little heart could wish for.

The film suffered from a distressing absence of reasons for me to shout at it. Except perhaps the dramatic high point of launching the rescue mission through the eye of a hurricane. Apart from that the tension was mostly realistic i.e. not nearly dramatic enough for the moofies.

I liked it.

Stuff

Earlier this evening I was annoyed at my lack of spoons to make it down the road to russellbfarr's bon voyage party. Poo.

MIL is in hospital and will be moved to a nursing home :-(

My e-mail broke again :-(

And now, Husband is watching a disturbing thing called Expresso Bongo (1959) starring a very very young Cliff Richard, and some very very tawdry burlesque *shudder*. Not in the same scenes I might add.

I have eaten too much cheese on too many crumpets. Fun while it lasted :-)

Comments

[purrdence.livejournal.com]

watching a disturbing thing called Expresso Bongo (1959) starring a very very young Cliff Richard

Well that says it all, really.

[rdmasters.livejournal.com]

It remains one of my favourite depictions of space exploration.

A badly re-edited version was Mystied - which it deeply deserved for what it did to a perfectly good movie.

[stephen-dedman.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing that Marooned failed at the box office because too many people had already lost interest in the space program by the end of 1969. It wasn't released here until after the Apollo 13 mission: I remember seeing the trailers for it in a cinema here and thinking it was about Apollo 13! (I finally saw it on TV years later, probably after Skylab had come down, and remember quite liking it.)