semifreelife: the saga continues

Thursday, April 16, 2015

the saga continues

Six films in the next two days will round out my SFF experience for 2015. GA is coming down for the closing film and the awards ceremonies. Tonight I saw "The Last Man on the Moon" an interesting documentary about Gene Cernan. It brought back great memories of the days when we could do something like go to the moon. The audience was made up of those of us of a "certain age" and sadly there were virtually no young people there... soon there will be no memory of July of 1969 when we were glued to the TV sets awaiting Neil Armstrong's descent from the lunar landing module on to the surface of the moon.

As wonderful of a story as it is- I felt that Cernan still had the cowboy astronaut thing going and although he said all the expected things about "family being the most important" it really didn't ring true. And that "doth protest too much" was born out in the later part of the film when he talked about the public schedule he keeps and how little time he has for anything but that touring. His temper flared just a bit when his current wife basically called him egotistical...wife number one declared "enough" more than 30 years ago after the publicity touring post walk on the moon in Apollo 17 in 1972.... I guess she thought he would come home after the program was shut down and be a part of the family and he thought being a celebrity was more appealing (and seems to still find it that way.)

I would give this one a slight thumbs up due to the space program content but not really the guy- he just wasn't all that interesting and if he hadn't walked on the moon he'd just be some other old self important coot who thought every one's schedule should revolve around his... IMHO

So on to the next two days - since they are full viewing days I may not be back until the conclusion of the festival... and then I have one more play before I spend my final week here readying the condo for a summer with Steve (the caretaker)-