An intriguing documentary has caught my eye with its slick teaser trailer.
We like the moon. Because it is close to us.
I can’t wait to see this doc when it’s out. I’ve had a long-standing love affair with the moon and its effects on our planet. I’ve posted quite a bit about it in the past, a number of times in fact.
Apparently, Cosmic Journeys has a number of such documentaries online, each about half an hour minus commercial time, making it ripe for syndication to a real network. Why nobody’s picked this up to fill a time slot somewhere is completely beyond me. They’re slickly produced, engaging, have an excellent narrator, and are completely free. And they’re about one of the most engaging and important topics we as humans could ever study: the universe itself, on a macroscopic scale far beyond our transient and provincial lives.
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Brownian
February 3, 2012 at 12:06 pm CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Really? I take it you haven’t seen all the ads for Garage Sale Cake Bake Wars: Kim Kardashian vs. Flavor Flav Edition then.
Jason Thibeault
February 3, 2012 at 12:13 pm CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
It appears my faith in the fundamental worth of humanity has once again been proven unfounded.
F
February 3, 2012 at 1:04 pm CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Have you watched anything else over the last ten years or so about this? Most presentations are pretty decent, a few are programs dedicated to the topic. Very cool.
Francisco Bacopa
February 3, 2012 at 5:04 pm CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I once had a co-worker who insisted that the moon was never out in the daytime. Upon further questioning she cited Genesis, the “lesser light for the night” passage.
I checked the phase of the moon and waited a week until I knew almost quarter moon would be pretty high in the sky in the afternoon and hoped it wasn’t a cloudy day. We went over to the window and I pointed out something and asked her what it was.
At least she did admit it was the moon. I can’t imagine having lived thirty years and never seeing the moon in the daytime.
24fps
February 5, 2012 at 12:57 am CDT (UTC -5) Link to this comment
It’s fairly good quality, but it doesn’t look too recent. I looked up the producer and it was made by Thomas Lucas Productions, who’ve worked with Nat Geo, ZDF (German public broadcaster), Discovery and PBS, so this series was likely made as a pre-licensed commission for a broadcaster and has now come out of the license period. I would be willing to bet it did have a run on a television network at some time.
Most science programming is working with hour slots these days – half hours are more labour intensive to program be cause you need more than one show to fill an hour slot. Works okay for big networks programming sitcoms, but not so much for a lot of factual programming on cable channels.
And while yes, there is some truly horrible reality tv out there, there are still some places for good science programs. They’re just on different channels, although it would be nice if there were more places for it. History programming, too. American Pickers is like being served a bowl of bits ‘n’ bites instead of a meal.