For All Mankind Blu-ray delivers stunning video and audio in this exceptional Blu-ray release
In July 1969, the space race ended when Apollo 11 fulfilled President Kennedy’s
challenge of
“landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” No one who
witnessed the
lunar landing will ever forget it. Al Reinert’s documentary For All Mankind is the story of
the
twenty-four men who traveled to the Moon, told in their words, in their voices, using the
images of their experiences. Forty years later, it remains the most radical, visually
dazzling
work of cinema yet made about this earth-shaking event.
Al Reinert's unforgettable "For All Mankind" (1989) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Criterion. The disc contains a newly restored, supervised and approved by the director, high-definition transfer of the film created on a Spirit Datacine from a 35mm interpositive. The original Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack has been remastered at 24-bit from 35mm magnetic tracks. Amongst the supplemental features on the disc is an audio commentary with the director and Apollo 17 commander Eugene A. Cernan, "An Accidental Gift: The Making Of For All Mankind", on-screen interviews with fifteen of the Apollo astronauts, NASA audio highlights and liftoff footage, etc. Region-A "locked".
We choose to go to the Moon!
Al Reinert's For All Mankind is a film that nowadays brings out different kinds of emotions in me. On one hand, it reminds me about a time when America was united behind a group of men who made history. The joy and elation our nation experienced was unprecedented. To this day, I still get emotional when I watch the documentary footage with Neil Armstrong setting foot on the lunar soil. It is a very special scene.
On the other hand, For All Mankind also makes me incredibly sad. It reminds me about a time when the world was on the brink of World War III, divided by political ideologies that nowadays seem so preposterous. The film also reminds me about President Kennedy. Times have changed but we, the human race, have not. We are as divided and as suspicious of each other as we have ever been.
For All Mankind chronicles the history of the Apollo 11 mission and the three astronauts – Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin Aldrin – who landed on the Moon. Throughout the film, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin as well as a number of other people who played an important part in the Apollo 11 mission, including Bill Anders, Stephen Bales, Walter Cunningham, Frank Borman and Charles Conrad amongst others, are heard sharing their thoughts while archival footage from the preparation, initiation and completion of the mission is shown.
It is important to note, however, that none of the men whose voices are heard on the archival footage are identified by their names. Initially, it feels strange, as it takes time to get used to hearing different voices without knowing the persons behind them. Eventually, though, one begins to understand that the voices belong to us, the overwhelmed human race, recognizing an event of historic proportions.
The majority of the archival footage used in For All Mankind looks incredible. Director Reinert and a team of specialists spent hundreds of hours working on the film elements supplied by NASA. Color, contrast, clarity and stability were dramatically improved. As a result, the archival footage from the astronauts' landing on the Moon looks as if it was recorded only a decade ago.
What else is there to say about this film? As cliche as it may sound, one really has to see it to fully understand and grasp the type of atmosphere that surrounded the Apollo 11 mission. Simple words can only go so far in describing what America and the rest of the world felt on July 20, 1969. The event had different significance for different people, and I know that the film will have a different impact on different viewers who will now see it for the first time.
I have seen a number of documentaries during the years. Many of them were well done, focusing on important subjects and debating them convincingly. But I don't remember all of them vividly. I do, however, remember For All Mankind and I know exactly how I felt when I first saw it. I was overwhelmed and filled with pride. It was a very special experience that made me dream impossible dreams. I hope that those of you who are about to see For All Mankind for the first time have a similar experience.
Presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.33:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, Al Reinert's For All Mankind arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Criterion.
I like what Criterion have done here. The transfer reveals solid detail, excellent color reproduction and strong clarity (when compared to the SDVD transfer). More importantly, when blown through a digital projector, For All Mankind remains pleasingly stable. Furthermore, the Blu-ray transfer has enhanced the grain structure of the film quite nicely. As a result, the footage from the Moon looks absolutely fantastic. This being said, this is a newly restored, supervised and approved by the director, high-definition transfer of the film, which was created on a Spirit Datacine from a 35mm interpositive. All in all, I doubt it For All Mankind looked this good when it was first screened. (Note: This is a Region-A "locked" Blu-ray disc. Therefore, unless you have a native Region-A or Region-Free player, you won't be able to playback it).
There is only one audio track on this Blu-ray disc: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1. For the record, Criterion have provided optional English HOH track for the main feature as well as optional intertitles identifying the voices of the men heard throughout the film.
As noted in the booklet offered with this release, the original Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack has been remastered at 24-bit from 35mm magnetic tracks. Clicks, thumps, hiss, and hum have been removed manually using Pro Tools HD. The result is a stable, notably clear and crisp audio data, which sounds terrific encoded as a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track. Brian Eno's atmospheric music score sounds excellent and there are no balance issues that I detected with it.
Audio Commentary – a commentary by filmmaker Al Reinert and astronaut Eugene Cernan recorded exclusively for the Criterion Collection in 1999. A veteran of three missions, including Apollo 17, on which he served as commander, Cernan was the last to set foot on the lunar surface, in 1972.
An Accidental Gift – director Al Reinert mined NASA's film repository at the Johnson Space Center to create For All Mankind. This program explores his commitment and the materials used, with comments by Reinert; Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean; and NASA film editors Don Pickard and Chuck Welch, film vault curator Morris Williams and lead librarian Mike Gentry. (1080p, 32 min).
On Camera – for his film, Al Reinert chose to record audio-only interviews with the Apollo astronauts. Here Reinert presents a compilation of on-camera interviews with fifteen of the astronauts, excerpted from a few of his favorite films about the Apollo missions – Jeff Roth's The Wonder of It All and Mickey Lemle's The Other Side of the Moon and Our Planet Earth -as well as from two events honoring the fortieth anniversaries of Apollo 7 and Apollo 8. (1080i, 21 min).
Paintings from the Moon – Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean was the fourth man to walk on the moon, and he later commanded the Skylab 3 mission, staying a then record fifty-nine days in space. After retiring from NASA, he turned full-time to his other passion, painting. Presented here is a video introduction with Bean and a gallery of his paintings, each work accompanied by commentary from the painter himself. (1080p, 8 min).
NASA Audio Highlights – twenty-one sound bites, collected from the first ten years of the American space program. Clip number one if from Alan Shepard's historic first ride into space, and the last is Eugene Cernan's final words on the Moon during Apollo 17. (1080p, 7 min)
3, 2, 1…Blast Off! – a collection of launch footage showing one example of each of NASA's five rocket boosters (the Mercury-Redstone, Mercury-Atlas, Gemini-Titan, Saturn 1B, and Saturn V), which were the launch vehicles for the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Skylab missions. (1080i, 3 min).
In addition to all of the supplemental features mentioned above, For All Mankind arrives with a lovely 28-page booklet containing Terrence Rafferty's essay "Fantastic Voyage" and Al Reinert's essay "A Trip To The Moon".
Simply put, Al Reinert's For All Mankind is one of the greatest documentaries ever made. Criterion's Blu-ray release contains a newly restored, supervised and approved by the director, transfer of the film. The disc also contains a good amount of supplemental features. Obviously, we Highly Recommend it.
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