April 22, 2001

7:38 PM

The Dish [official site/trailer] is the thoroughly charming, (mostly) true story of the crew at Australia's Parkes Observatory and their unique role in relaying telemetry, biometrics and -- most importantly for posterity -- television pictures from the Moon during the Apollo 11 mission. [more inside]
posted by bradlands (9 comments total)

The relay nearly didn't happen [full story here], and the movie is a warmly funny recollection of why. The overwhelming impression with which I left the theatre, though, was in how genuinely pleased and proud the characters seemed at being "part of the team" that made the moon shot a success, even if the aggrandizement for their particular effort was modest if any at all.

In an age of "what's in it for us?" and the efforts of the one venerated above the toil of the team, where are the inspiring stories of cooperation, of small efforts combining to create a larger good? Did you contribute in some minor way to a larger collaboration of which you're particularly proud?

Links and stories, please. There may be no "I" in "TEAM", but surely we can fit an "HREF" in there!
posted by bradlands at 7:39 PM on April 22, 2001

Don't forget, this is MeFi! We have to have a long thread complaining about the use of Flash on the official website!
posted by Potsy at 1:01 AM on April 23, 2001

Ebert and Roeper both liked this a few weeks ago.
posted by kindall at 4:57 AM on April 23, 2001

I managed to see this one last September at the Toronto Film Festival. It was a great story that was very well told, and I highly recommend seeing it.
posted by websavvy at 7:19 AM on April 23, 2001

Potsy, if you don't have Flash installed, the site defaults to an HTML version. No complaints on either count from this quarter. ;-)
posted by bradlands at 8:02 AM on April 23, 2001

I saw this film at Sundance. It wa a charming little film in the Austrailian "Look at our locals, what characters they are" tradition. Go see it.
posted by captaincursor at 9:53 AM on April 23, 2001

Sitch's The Castle is a wonderful film and should be available at most rental places. It's definitely in the same tradition that Taylor mentions.
posted by heather at 1:49 PM on April 23, 2001

Agreed, The Castle was just delightful and so much more...well, Australian than The Dish. I'm looking forward to seeing more from Sitch and other d generation alums.
posted by bradlands at 2:23 PM on April 23, 2001

Okay, so it's just required Flash that gets people's dander up. Got it.

Getting back to the subject of the movie itself, one of the most enjoyable surprises for me was to find that Patrick Waburton (aka "Puddy" from Seinfeld) is in it! He plays the ultra-stiff, by-the-book NASA man. He's a lot of fun to watch.
posted by Potsy at 2:06 AM on April 24, 2001