Monday, October 5, 2015

Cinema Cycle - Cosmos: Episodes 4 & 5


CINEMA CYCLE
(Cardio Workout And Reviewing Movies At The Same Time)

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DATE VIEWED: 10/5/2015


FORMAT: VHS

TIME RIDDEN / FILM LENGTH: 2 hours 8 minutes

DISTANCE RIDDEN WHILE VIEWING: 30.6 miles

TOTAL CINEMA MILES LOGGED: 2948.6 miles

SYNOPSIS: (from Wikipedia)

4
"Heaven and Hell"
October 19, 1980
Sagan discusses comets and asteroids as planetary impactors, giving recent examples of the Tunguska event and a lunar impact described by Canterbury monks in 1178. It moves to a description of the environment of Venus, from the previous fantastic theories of people such as Immanuel Velikovsky to the information gained by the Venera landers and its implications for Earth's greenhouse effect. The Cosmos Update highlights the connection to global warming.
5
"Blues for a Red Planet"
October 26, 1980
The episode, devoted to the planet Mars, begins with scientific and fictional speculation about the Red Planet during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, Edgar Rice Burroughs' science fiction books, and Percival Lowell's false vision of canals on Mars). It then moves to Robert Goddard's early experiments in rocket-building, inspired by reading science fiction, and the work by Mars probes, including the Viking, searching for life on Mars. The episode ends with the possibility of the terraforming and colonization of Mars and a Cosmos Update on the relevance of Mars' environment to Earth's and the possibility of a manned mission to Mars.


CONCEPT IN RELATION TO THE VIEWER:   The world we perceive is actually much older, more complex and more dynamic than we can ever imagine.  

PROS AND CONS: I have seen most of this series more than once.  It is one of those rare documentaries that gets better with age.  Even with the 2014 version with Neil deGrasse Tyson being more updated and flashy, this older version still has a lot of charm.

While the special effects and animations are good enough, this original series really relies on Carl Sagan and his boyish/adult fascination with the universe and how it works.  

One of the ongoing themes in the Cosmos series is that the universe and our story in it is a long and evolving epoch and there are many things that we are just starting to understand.  Learning about it and understanding the Cosmos is our only true purpose in life.  Hopefully, in a hundred years the stories and parables of Carl Sagan will be the new Bible for future generations.


To read an overview of this project, check out this status posting.  

Clicking on the title will take you to the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) entry for this film. 

This film was viewed while exercising on my recumbent cycle.  A summary of my time spent working out on my journey through movie-land can be found on Strava.com.

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