The Dish
- Sam Neill as Cliff Buxton
- Kevin Harrington as Ross ' Mitch' Mitchell
- Tom Long as Glenn Latham
- Patrick Warburton as Al Burnett
- Genevieve Mooy as May McIntyre
- Tayler Kane as Rudi Kellerman
The Dish (also The Dish - Lost in Space ) is a historical comedy from director Rob Sitch in 2000, the very strong in Australia, in Germany reached only moderate awareness. The film is based on true events.
Action
In July 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first man to the moon and millions of people on earth could this event to witness live. But put NASA out a global network of radio telescopes, one of which, the Parkes Observatory, in the middle is on a sheep paddock in Australia.
Cliff Buxton and his team monitored this radio telescope and were commissioned by NASA, maintain contact with Apollo 11, when the moon and the Apollo spacecraft from the stations in the U.S. due to the Earth's rotation can not be paged directly.
But a power failure and the resulting deletion in the memory of the computer to align the telescope makes the thing a spanner in the works. To save face, because they had forgotten to fill the fuel tank of their emergency generator, they are lying to NASA and try to Apollo 11 to find what they also succeed after a few hours.
Finally the day of the first moon landing is imminent: But on this day occurs strong wind, which is actually too strong to continue to operate the radio telescope and point it at the spaceship. But with courage and Australian insolence they dare and ask the right moment the connection to send the crucial words of Neil Armstrong: One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
Further action
Although the first moon landing is the storyline for the film, this also offers a number of subplots. The film is set to with a good dose of self-irony in scene showing the life in the Australian town of Parkes as well as the inhabitants of a very amusing side.
The plot is built around three fictitious engineer and a NASA employee who has taken over the management of the station for this mission. Of course, the three technicians have initial problems with the NASA methods, which is why they also decide the NASA to lie when they lose contact with the Apollo spacecraft. As a NASA employee confirms the lie, he is finally accepted by the technicians.
Film and reality
Although the film is loosely based on the real story, however, has little to do with the real events. For the moon landing, there were initially three receiving stations: Goldstone in California for the Northern Hemisphere, as well as a station near Canberra and those in Parkes (Parkes Observatory ), each in Australia. All three stations were able to receive television and sound signals from the moon or the space shuttle, but those in Parkes was the strongest, and therefore was set from the beginning to this signal. The Australian prime minister was not in the park on site, but in Canberra.
Right in the film is that the station actually was very exposed to strong winds during transmission and they had to handle these problems.
The film was shot partly in the Australian town of Forbes, about 33 kilometers from Parkes.
Reviews
"If you wanted to describe the film THE DISH in a word, then probably remain only the designation as flashy. [ ... The ] skilful timing and the lively, lovable even when sketching the people can not succeed, of course, only with correspondingly good actors. [ ... ] The result is doing a comedy that proves that Australia in this area by no means the end of the world [ ... ] "
" Lovingly developed comedy with melodramatic overtones, which is characterized by its casual narrative style as well as by a series of optical and acoustic gags. A short film that offers great cinema in all respects. "