I missed seeing In the Shadow of the Moon, Ron Howard's Apollo documentary, in the theaters. I wanted to see that footage on the big screen. It turns out that there's not too much that I haven't seen a million times already. There's footage of Armstrong going down the ladder, shot from a fixed camera on the LM, it wasn't retransmitted, so the quality is very high. Another sequence shows the command module and LM departing, shot from inside the stage that had housed the LM. I've seen that, but Howard stays with it for a minute, as the departing craft gets tiny; the stage begins to tumble and shows the limb of the Earth.
The surviving moon-trippers (with the exception of Armstrong, as always) talk about what it was like, and that was enjoyable in place of the standard technical details.
As the credits roll, they give their thoughts on the rise in popularity of the moon hoaxer myth. I got the feeling that one of the things Howard was trying to do was respond to that by showing how real and personal it was to the astronauts involved. But I think Buzz Aldrin had the right idea when he punched the guy in the face who called him a liar... they should have ended the movie with that clip!
As an aside, I recently received email from a fellow seeking to show some photos to his friends and try to shake their moon hoax "skepticism." I said that the proper term, in my opinion, was not "skeptic" but "denier". He thought that was too harsh. But as a skeptic, and a great fan of professional skeptics, I don't know what other term would fit. Not accepting anything without evidence is one thing, willfully denying evidence or not examining it in detail is quite another.
