Gene Krantz is himself a very entertaining crotchety old fart.

Which makes his telling of the return of Apollo 13 to Earth even more touching. In a documentary that was packaged with the Apollo 13 vhs tape, he starts to cry as he's talking about his relief in seeing the capsule's parachutes on the monitor in Houston. Seeing that crusty codger tear up...well, it's incredibly moving.

Speaking of Apollo dramatizations, last night the Science Channel's episode of From the Earth to the Moon was my favorite one, the Apollo 12 ep with Dave Foley as Al Bean (the one moon-walker I've met in person, btw). I was afraid they would completely delete the scenes with Pete and Al floating past their fellow astronaut completely naked, but all they did was fuzz out the bare asses, and bleep the stronger language (the scene where Pete Conrad goes on an expletive-laden rant in front of a grade school tour group is hilarious!). I have the series on DVD, but I can't help but stay and watch it, even in its edited and bleeped version.

That's my favorite episode in the series too, Kath.

CBS is showing AFI's 100 Greatest American Movies right now. I'm such a sucker for these shows.

CBS is showing AFI's 100 Greatest American Movies right now. I'm such a sucker for these shows.

Me too, and I totally forgot it was on. Thanks for posting about it!

I'm not even a fan of space stuff, and don't get me started on my Tom Hanks rant, but From the Earth to the Moon is some of the very best television of all time.

From the Earth to the Moon was one of my first DVD purchases, and is still the most I've spent on a DVD set to date (I keep looking longingly at the I, Claudius set, though...). I remember seeing the "1968" episode in its first run at my dad's (he had HBO) and enjoying it, but bought the set just because I'd heard how good the entire series was, and I was right to do so.

The weakest eps (for me) are the ones on Apollo 7, Apollo 13 (although concentrating on the media was an interesting approach, it didn't really fit in with the rest of the series), and Apollo 16 (even though the wives did deserve their own episode, I just don't go back and rewatch it at all). My favorites are Apollo 12, the LEM ep, Apollo 15 (for the sheer scientific geekery of it all), and the gut-wrenching Apollo 1.

the LEM ep

SPIDER!!!

"What you did was good. Not this...this is bad."

Love that series. Like woah I love that series. Except the final episode.

I *LOVE* the final episode.

So there.

What exactly is the premise of this AFI 100? Just the greatest films? I love to disagree with these (though I can't fault a large number of choices, except maybe as top 100), but they aren't giving me any context (especially when they flashed back to the last decade of AFI topics).

I always liked the stuff happening in Houston

What I liked about that part of the film was that those characters most of them didn't even have last names (if they even had first names), but they were well-cast and distinctive and looked like real people and plausibly geeky. (Also, Loren Dean puts on a Chicago accent for no explicit reason, and hearing geeks talk nasal-Chicago is twice as funny.)