The Space Exploration Series continues today with From the Earth to the Moon, which even fifteen years after its premiere is one of the most amazing American television productions of all time. After the success of Apollo 13, Tom Hanks, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer had joined forces again to tell the story of the moon race in twelve hour-long movies, which felt more like cinema and less than just television. Treading confidently in the footsteps of Philip Kaufman’s The Right Stuff, the series brilliantly covers almost everything about the Moon race, bringing wonderful actors, great scripts and a first-class production with real enthusiasm together. Today’s post is a translated and heavily expanded review of my original German article from a couple of years ago about the American DVD re-release from 2005.

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Today DVDLog is coming back from the summer break with a continuation of the Spaceflight Series, which I had started a few weeks back with The Dish and Space Cowboys. While these were more of a fictional kind, for today I have translated and extensively rewritten my earlier review of Philip Kaufman’s The Right Stuff, the seminal movie about the early days of American spaceflight. In spite of its title, the film is actually not a painfully patriotic story, but a surprisingly realistic, exciting and sometimes even funny depiction of the early space race from an American perspective. Today, the movie is already thirty years old and the DVD I reviewed in this extensive article ten years, but they are both highly recommended.

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Since the weather is absolutely not cooperating and the heat makes coherent writing really difficult, I’m putting DVDLog on a summer hiatus. I have occasionally done this before and this doesn’t mean I am going to abandon the website, just that I won’t be writing any major long reviews at the moment. The occasional shorter post may appear, but for now I will keep my activities very limited here. But you can always follow me on Google+ or Facebook and see what I’m up to on all my websites, although I’m only really active over on my photography blog at the moment. Here on DVDLog I’ll be fully back when I have re-acquired my writing groove after the warm weather.

Two years ago there was the astonishing announcement that Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, one of the most amazing science television series, is going to be remade with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson as the new host. Yesterday, the first trailer surfaced at ComicCon and while it doesn’t provide any dialogueyet , the visuals are breathtaking and look like the original series reborn with current technology. So, in lieu of a new article, which I have to postpone because of the hot weather, here’s just this amazing trailer this week.

Note: the trailer originally posted yesterday was taken down for unknown reasons, the above is a copy from another source. There’s another trailer on the Fox Youtube channel, but it’s shorter and edited differently.

As a huge fan of all things clay from Bristol, I have written about nearly everything coming from Aardman Animation – with one exception: somehow I never got around to write about a certain flock of animals. This is going to change now, because today’s review, the first completely fresh one in months, is the first series of Shaun the Sheep! The spin-off from Wallace & Gromit has only been around since six years, but Shaun has already become almost almost as popular as every other Aardman star and in spite of its target audience, the series is not just interesting for children. Because it’s a bit difficult to watch the series on television, there’s only one option: getting the DVDs, which, at least in the case of the british releases, are highly recommended and not expensive at all.

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After reviewing The Dish recently, I actually wanted to start a series of space-themed reviews, but this got a bit derailed because I should have posted the predecessor The Castle first. But today, the series literally gets of the ground with Clint Eastwood’s Space Cowboys, one of the most enjoyable and unusual spaceflight movies ever made. Far from being just a simple geriatrics in space comedy, it’s actually a surprisingly good homage to the now long-gone era of the Space Shuttle with an amazing cast, a well-written script and breathtaking special-effects. Most of all, the movie is just plain fun, but far from dumb popcorn entertainment. Warner’s DVD is now over a decade old, but still nearly perfect – I reviewed this in German before, but as usual this English translation is a partly rewritten and expanded version.

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After recently posting the newly renovated and translated article about The Dish, there is only one possible follow-up: Working Dog’s previous movie and cinema debut The Castle. This jewel of a film about the fight of an ordinary Australian family for their home was a huge hit in its home country, but it is relatively unknown in the rest of the world. With its likable cast of characters and a well-written script, the ultra-low budget does not matter at all, making The Castle a perfect little movie of its very own genre – it’s neither a complete comedy or a full drama, but very funny and thoughtful nevertheless. While I have only the older Region 1 DVD with the slightly modified American version in my archives, today’s post is more an article about the film itself than about the DVD. This review is again based on an older German version, but it’s a substantially expanded rewrite and not only a straight translation.

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I usually don’t post many videos here, but this one is an exception: John Hess from the amazing website Filmmaker IQ talks the viewer through the History of Aspect Ratios from the beginning to end. It’s actually the first of a two-part course called Everything you need to know about Aspect Ratios, the second video is called Composition Techniques for Widescreen Aspect Ratios. This ties in wonderfully to the Film Format Guide and should be required viewing for everyone interested in how movies are made.

I’ve often written about Time Team here, so this is the right place for the incredibly sad news that archaeologist Mick Aston, one of the founders of the series, had died yesterday unexpectedly. He was a true original and the real heart of Time Team, not only with his vast archaeological knowledge, but also his unique enthusiasm for his profession and, of course, his trademark appearance with his colourful striped jumpers. But Mick Aston was much more than the funny-looking professor – he was a great communicator who wanted to tell the world that archaeology and history does not have to be stuffy and boring – and in this he has really succeeded. Time Team is his greatest legacy for which he will never be forgotten.

The Guardian has a short article, tributes and condolences are flowing in on the Time Team Facebook page and his colleague and friend Francis Pryor has also written a short tribute.

Also yesterday came the equally sad news that science-fiction author Richard Matheson has died – he was one of the really great minds next to Isaac Asimov, Richard Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke.

It has been very slow going here on DVDLog because of the hot weather and I haven’t managed to write anything new yet. But why not write about someone else’s work for a change? There is somebody who I would really like to introduce properly, because he has been so generous to mention me on his site very often: Glenn Erickson, better known as DVD Savant, who is not only a world-class movie, dvd and blu-ray reviewer, but also a film editor with an amazing history.

Glenn has been writing on the web for now more than fifteen years, starting as the MGM Video Savant before becoming DVD Savant first at the now unfortunately vanised DVD Resources and later moving to DVDTalk – and he also writes for Turner Classic Movies. His output rate is amazing, he usually updates twice a week with three reviews each, and every of his words is worth reading. Glenn specializes in classic movies with a penchant for the obscure and virtually unknown, but sometimes also writes about current releases. He has an encyclopaedic knowledge about film classics and his articles often contain exhaustive original research, making them much more than simple reviews. They are always fascinating and interesting to read, even if you know nothing about the movie in the first place, because this is Glenn Erickson’s goal: to get his readers interested in the movies he cares about.

Glenn Erickson has also published two books with his reviews: the first, simply titled DVD Savant in 2004, followed by Sci-Fi Savant in 2011 – which, I must unfortunately admit, have still not bought yet for budget reasons. But all his reviews, hundreds of them, are archived on his website and I can only urge you to go over there and dive into Glenn’s brilliant world of film history. He is a huge inspiration for me and one of the reasons I still keep on writing – so, thank you, Glenn, for letting us take part in your continuing adventures in the land of movie history!