Product Description

Nominated for nine Academy Awards®, including Best Picture, Apollo 13 blasts off onto Blu-ray™ Hi-Def for the first time ever with Blu-ray™ exclusive bonus features. Produced by Academy Award® winner Brian Grazer and directed by Oscar® winner Ron Howard, Apollo 13 stars two-time Academy Award® winner Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise and Ed Harris in the inspiring and riveting story of the real-life space flight that gripped a nation and changed the world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6456 in DVD
• Brand: Universal
• Released on: 2010-04-13
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Dubbed, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Czech, Danish, English, French, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish
• Dubbed in: Czech, French, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 140 minutes

Amazon.com
NASA's worst nightmare turned into one of the space agency's most heroic moments in 1970, when the Apollo 13 crew was forced to hobble home in a disabled capsule after an explosion seriously damaged the moon-bound spacecraft. Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, and Bill Paxton play (respectively) astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise in director Ron Howard's intense, painstakingly authentic docudrama. The Apollo 13 crew and Houston-based mission controllers race against time and heavy odds to return the damaged spacecraft safely to Earth from a distance of 205,500 miles. Using state-of-the-art special effects and ingenious filmmaking techniques, Howard and his stellar cast and crew build nail-biting tension while maintaining close fidelity to the facts. The result is a fitting tribute to the Apollo 13 mission and one of the biggest box-office hits of 1995. --Jeff Shannon

From The New Yorker
Ron Howard's movie is the true story of the manned lunar mission in which almost everything went wrong-so wrong that there was a real possibility that the spacecraft wouldn't make it back to Earth. The movie, like the 1970 mission itself, gets home safely only by the skin of its teeth. Dean Cundey's cinematography is drab, James Horner's score is unbearable, and Howard retards the momentum with frequent cutaways to the astronauts' families, who are, unsurprisingly, mighty worried. But the acting-especially by Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, and Bill Paxton (as the imperilled astronauts), and Ed Harris (as a fiercely determined NASA flight controller in Houston)-is sharp and persuasive. And the screenplay, by William Broyles, Jr., and Al Reinert, makes the scientific details both comprehensible and exciting. The film, despite its raggedness, is stirring. In the end, this failed mission seems like the most impressive achievement of the entire space program: a triumph not of planning but of inspired improvisation. Also with Gary Sinise and Kathleen Quinlan. -Terrence Rafferty
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker