Among all the accolades one could throw Richard Linklater’s way, perhaps the most oft-forgotten is “incredible director of imaginative animated films.” When you’ve defined most of your career through romantic realism, stoner comedy, and genuinely impressive feats of long-term filmmaking, it’s understandable that one could overlook wonderful films like A Scanner Darkly and Waking Life, both of which are glorious in just how wonderfully they use their medium to create truly fantastic and unbelievable aesthetics. What they are, however, is adult, given that Waking Life features Alex Jones screeching at people on the street and A Scanner Darkly is basically just a loosely fictionalized personal history of Philip K. Dick’s own experience with drugs.
Now, Linklater’s back with a project that might just appeal to families everywhere: Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood, which is about a kid’s experience of the Moon Landing in 1969. Netflix dropped a trailer for the project on Monday in advance of its premiere at SXSW, and it looks really cool.
Peep it:
Here’s a synopsis straight from the SXSW program:
“‘Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood’ tells the story of the first moon landing in the summer of 1969 from two interwoven perspectives — the astronaut and mission control view of the triumphant moment, and through the eyes of a kid growing up in Houston, Texas who has intergalactic dreams of his own. Taking inspiration from Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Richard Linklater’s own life, ‘Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood’ is a snapshot of American life in the 1960s that is part coming of age, part societal commentary, and part out-of-this-world adventure.”
Apollo 10 1/2 will have one small step — its world premiere this weekend at SXSW — before it makes one giant leap into the queues of all Netflix subscribers on April 1.