MOON TONES

With the fortieth anniversary of the first lunar landing nearly upon us (which we’re celebrating at Criterion with new DVD and Blu-ray special editions of the 1989 documentary For All Mankind), the brave men of the Apollo missions are once again making headlines. And as a recentNew York Timesprofile by James C. McKinley Jr. reminds us, few have stood out for their postspace lives like Apollo 12 moon walker Alan L. Bean, who hung up his astro-boots in 1981 (after eighteen years with NASA) to become a full-time painter. The article—written on the occasion of a show of his work in July, during the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum’s anniversary commemoration—looks back at Bean’s artistic aspirations and how they finally coincided with his outer space experiences, and also provides a slide show of his canvasses and images of him at work in his studio. (Our new For All Mankind releases also include a video program about Bean’s artwork, with its own gallery of paintings.)

Also read about another out-of-this-world guy in a short and sweet Q&A with Buzz Aldrin from the New York Times Magazine, in which the second man to walk on the moon chats about the future of NASA and his new memoir, Magnificent Desolation.

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