The Plot…<\/strong><\/p>\nThe time is the late 1960s.\u00a0 Russia and the United States are in a race to be the first to land a man on the moon.<\/p>\n
At NASA astronauts training to be on the first team to land on the moon have their session cut short.\u00a0 The mission commander, Chiz (Duvall) is called to a meeting.\u00a0 The Russians have moved up their timeline.\u00a0 They are launching in just four weeks.\u00a0 There is no way the US squad will be ready, but there was a contingency plan in case something like this happened.<\/p>\n
The US will send up one astronaut to land on the moon.\u00a0 Supplies and a pod will be sent up first.\u00a0 The astronaut will then live there for several months until a properly trained team will be launched to retrieve him.<\/p>\n
Chiz is excited.\u00a0 He will be the first man on the moon!<\/p>\n
Then Chiz learns that Russia, in a political move is sending up civilians to prove that theirs is a nonmilitary operation.\u00a0 The President has decided that NASA must do the same.\u00a0 Because Chiz is an\u00a0Air Force colonel, he is eliminated from the mission.\u00a0 Lee (Caan), a civilian being trained as part of Chiz’s team, will be the one to go.<\/p>\n
Chiz argues that Lee isn’t ready, he doesn’t have the training and will die if he’s sent.\u00a0 When it becomes clear that Lee is the chosen one, Chiz demands to lead the completion of Lee’s training.<\/p>\n
The race is on…<\/p>\n
Thoughts (beware of spoilers)\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\nNASA\u00a0<\/i>gave complete cooperation for filming and it shows!\u00a0 Cape Canaveral was a location.<\/p>\n
Countdown<\/em> was Robert Altman’s return to feature films after directing television projects for ten years.\u00a0 Things did not end well.\u00a0 When Altman had completed shooting, he was fired.\u00a0 Further, he was not welcome on the studio lot.\u00a0 The studio head, Jack Warner, hated that in some scenes Altman had two actors speaking at the same time.<\/p>\nAltman would go on to use overlapping dialogue in his future feature films.\u00a0 Robert Altman was an Academy Award<\/em> nominee as Best Director<\/em> five times (M*A*S*H; Nashville; The Player; Short Cuts<\/em> and Gosford Park<\/em>).<\/p>\nBecause of Altman’s firing, new footage including a more upbeat ending was filmed by William Conrad.\u00a0 Conrad was an Executive Producer on the film as well as the voice of the television announcer.\u00a0 Altman’s ending had James Caan’s character, as his air supply ran out, walking in the wrong direction from the lunar pod.<\/p>\n
Countdown<\/em> was released a year and a half before the Apollo 11 moon landing.<\/p>\nCountdown <\/strong><\/em>(1967) rates 3 of 5 stars.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/stallonezone.com\/zone\/logo\/zview_c.png\")
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Countdown (1967) Director: Robert Altman Screenplay: Loring Mandel based on THE PILGRIM PROJECT by Hank Searles Stars: James Caan, Robert<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17,54,65,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebs","category-movies","category-trivia","category-z-view"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35806"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35807,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35806\/revisions\/35807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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