Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		3.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		4.0

From the Earth to the Moon Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 20, 2019

December 7, 1941.

November 22, 1963.

September 11, 2001.

So many dates have been etched in the memories of Americans so firmly that answers to questions of “where were you when [fill in the event]” are typically immediate and often quite visceral. The three examples listed above are sadly part of what is probably the better remembered (in more ways than one) category of tragedies that have afflicted our nation, but for a brief shining moment of an example of a thrilling, celebratory date, here’s one:

July 20, 1969.

For any of you reading this who were alive on that date, and old enough to remember, it was a rare day of almost cosmic unity, where the entire planet seemed to exult in the fact that men — in this case, American men — had managed to travel through the void of space to our nearest celestial neighbor, and had actually managed to land their craft safely there and then, incredibly, disembark to frolic on the devastated looking lunar surface. It was an amazing day in and of itself, but looking back now from the vantage point of fifty (!) years, it seems all the more incredible simply when taking the now "archaic" technologies of the sixties into account. From the Earth to the Moon was an acclaimed quasi-docudrama that HBO produced in the late nineties, and it has long been a "wish list" item for fans of high definition presentations. The miniseries itself has held up remarkably well, but this release may ironically fall under the category of, "Hey, we put a man on the moon, why can't [fill in the complaining blank here]", as will be discussed below in the video presentation section of the review.

A rather starry aggregation of talent, both on screen and behind the scenes, was assembled to make From the Earth to the Moon. The on screen stars include a retinue of better known names (Bryan Cranston, Sally Field, et al.) along with a rather interesting assortment of what might be termed for this production character actors (Stephen Root, Chris Isaak, Rita Wilson, et al.), some of whom are consigned to what amounts to walk on roles in a piece that offers a perhaps ungainly amount of cast members. The behind the scenes names include executive producer Tom Hanks (who also directed an episode, and also appears as a host of sorts), and co-producers Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. (In the trivia department, Sally Field also directed an episode.) The result is surprisingly homogeneous, given the vast array of both content and talent involved, especially since the structure of the piece is not strictly chronological and therefore requires arguably a bit more viewer involvement, or at least attention, than can tend to be the case with supposed “recreations” of actual events.

While From the Earth to the Moon of course delivers in spades in terms of giving a brilliant overview of NASA’s “team effort” to get to the moon, the miniseries arguably has some kind of weird elements as well. There’s a recurring newscaster character played by Lane Smith whose involvement in the story may strike some as a distraction (it seems especially odd given that real newcasts, including by the venerable Walter Cronkite, are also offered, at least in snippets), and the final episode takes a rather bizarre if nonetheless fascinating detour into Georges Méliès territory and the production of A Trip to the Moon. But it’s the focus on the men — and women — at the core of the story who provide the real emotional tether here. And it’s one of From the Earth to the Moon’s signal achievements that despite its emphasis on the “bells and whistles” of machinery and what was deemed “high tech” in those days that there is a very real, and often very moving, emotional component to the miniseries.

From the Earth to the Moon Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

From the Earth to the Moon is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of HBO with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. And it's that "widescreen" aspect ratio that may be the first of at least a few stumbling blocks for longtime fans of this piece. From the Earth to the Moon was of course originally broadcast in 4:3, but like at least some other "vintage" documentaries (The World at War springs instantly to mind) the powers that be have decided that for future revenue streams the miniseries needed to be reformatted in the wider aspect ratio. While some of the framings are arguably a bit too tight, I personally wasn't overly bothered by this aspect of the presentation. What did strike my eye repeatedly was the almost random application of DNR and (conversely) sharpening to various moments, as well as the probably unavoidable but still controversial replacement of SFX which were originally rendered in standard definition and which had to be redone for this version. Some of these look fine in my estimation, but others look like they were tossed off by some CGI student trying to quickly graduate from some entry level course. The "remastering" featurette gets into the whys and wherefores of some of these decisions, as well as addressing (albeit briefly) things like color timing. And in fact the palette here is rather vivid and abundantly saturated, especially when compared to the DVD. (As can be gleaned in several of the screenshots accompanying this review, there are long swaths that are in black in white, and those typically feature excellent contrast and nice detail levels. There are also a number of moments that have been intentionally "distressed" to resemble older video, and detail levels understandably lessen in those elements.) Grain comes and goes, as mentioned above, and there are occasional other anomalies like banding, as well as a number of perhaps more understandable "baked in" elements on archival video like ghosting. What does this all add up to? Well, for me personally, there were moments when I just couldn't help but ask "why?" as I made my way through various episodes, but on the whole, I found this a definite if more than occasionally problematic upgrade. The original filmed elements obviously benefit the most from the higher resolution of the Blu-ray presentation, and I was repeatedly struck (in a good way this time) by the obvious uptick in fine detail and the overall clarity of much of this material. My hunch is this is going to be a pretty controversial release, probably more so for longtime fans of the miniseries, and it may simply boil down to whether you feel the upgrade to the filmed sections outweighs some of the reframing and/or the SFX and occasional compression anomalies.

Note: I say this with tongue slightly in cheek, but maybe my standalone players were trying to tell me something about this release, because I had a devil of a time getting Disc One of this set to load properly. The first time, it kind of "partially" loaded, going to a screen that offered the Menu in the lower left side but no backing image (see screenshot 20 for what's supposed to be there). Pressing Play did nothing. On two more attempts I got either an "invalid disc" or "video cannot be played" warning on more than one player. I did ultimately get it to play (without doing anything like cleaning, I simply kept trying), and Discs Two and Three had no similar problems.

From the Earth to the Moon Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The one clear upgrade on this release is the boisterous and incredibly immersive Dolby Atmos track. There are a glut of well done effects that benefit from the engagement of the Atmos channels, many obviously dealing with flight and the sounds of things like liftoff, but the consistent use of the side and rear channels is obvious in any number of moments, not necessarily the "big" scenes of actual space travel. The cacophony of mission headquarters is notable, and even some of the non-NASA material dealing with more personal elements of the astronauts and their families offer really good and realistic placement of ambient environmental effects. The wonderful score (by a coterie of great names) also resides quite winningly in the surround channels. Dialogue is routinely delivered cleanly and clearly throughout all episodes.

From the Earth to the Moon Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Behind the Scenes: Making of From the Earth to the Moon (1080i; 29:34) features some good interviews and behind the scenes production footage, as well as some interesting archival video.


• Inside the Remastering Process (1080p; 11:09) may answer at least some of the questions fans of this miniseries may have about this presentation. There's some kind of interesting subtext here, at least for those who may consider aspects of this release "botched", insofar as most of the people involved who are interviewed are extremely enthusiastic about the restoration, and some talk explicitly about how much care was taken to offer this in high definition.

Both of these supplements are found on Disc 3 of this three disc set.

From the Earth to the Moon Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I try not to read too much into various studios' and/or labels' decisions on what or what not to provide to members of the press for review purposes (case in point: Lionsgate, which seems eager to rush every straight to video title to my doorstep, but which occasionally fails to provide review copies of some fairly high interest titles), but it struck me as immediately a little odd that HBO was not offering this title to reviewers. That may have been because some "wise" sort somewhere knew instinctively this release might be controversial, for more than one reason. The miniseries itself is a moving, exciting tribute to one of the most spectacular technological feats in the entire history of Mankind; its technical presentation here from a video standpoint is probably going to be problematic for some, maybe even many. The audio is aces, and may help to balance the "technical merits scale" at least somewhat. This is a release that will most likely engender some pretty variant reactions. For me personally, I found the "glass half full" aspects of this presentation (probably?) outweigh the "glass half empty" aspects, and so with perhaps major caveats kept in mind, From the Earth to the Moon comes Recommended.