Sundance. In the Shadow of the Moon.

"David Sington's In the Shadow of the Moon is an awe-inspiring film about an unbelievable accomplishment," writes James Israel. "One particularly ironic shot [is] of a modest sign that NASA displays after landing on the moon that simply states, 'Task Accomplished.' It is obviously reminiscent of a recent display of misguided bravado that makes one yearn for the 1969 America where racial and social lines were being redrawn, people weren't afraid to speak out against a unjust war, and men dared to dream of the impossible."

Updated through 1/29.

But Michael Lerman, writing at indieWIRE, finds it "overly nostalgic, dripping with sentimentality from every pore, and putting the old TV footage to triumphant music seems like a forced miscalculation."

A "surprisingly fresh take on familiar material," writes Jamie Tipps at Film Threat. "The success of this movie is twofold. First, Sington treats the topic with a combination of wonder and awe... Second, lest he fall into over sentimentality, the director balances his reverence with the interviews of the astronauts, a technique which effectively anchors the grand abstractness of the subject in the wonderfully human details."

Jennifer Hillner at Wired News: "I sat down with Apollo 11 vet Buzz Aldrin two days after his seventy-seventh birthday to talk about the movie, his views on the space program today, and what the future holds."

IndieWIRE interviews Sington.

Update, 1/26: Picked up by ThinkFilm for $2.5 million. (Variety).

Update, 1/29: Tom Hall: "There is a clear dedication in In the Shadow of the Moon to the power of our collective will to realize the fullest of human potential, and in the face of so many films highlighting the depths of human behavior, Sington's movie was a true breath of much needed (and highly enlightened) fresh air."

Coverage of the coverage: The Park City Index.

Posted by dwhudson at January 25, 2007 12:34 AM