This year is the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11’s flight, landing, and return from the moon. In celebration and in partnership with NASA a new documentary is currently playing in theaters nationwide.

Apollo 11, using footage that has never before been exhibited, chronicles the historic voyage to our nearest celestial neighbor. Omitting present day narration and interviews the film utilizes 65mm footage shot by MGM Studios for a proposed film that was never realized, 35 and 16 mm footage shot by NASA and the Apollo 11 astronauts respectively, and original audio recoding for Mission Control, Apollo 11 transmissions, and national news coverage, to create the sensation of witnessing the fantastic venture. Aside from digital process in the film restoration and brilliant on-screen titling, the only modern feature of the documentary is the music, while created on period electronics is all original composition.

I am a space nerd. I was eight when Armstrong and Aldrin walked the surface of the moon as Collins orbited overhead.  I could not begin to count the number of documentaries about the space race, Apollo, and the planets I have watched and this one is the most impact, the most emotional, and the most thrilling. Seeing this massive endeavor on an Imax screen with belly rumbling bass was an unmatched experience. Sadly if you want to see it in Imax also you will need to hurry. It plays in these large format theaters this week only and will be replace by the MCU’s next entry, Captain Marvel.

This movie is fantastic and the landing sequence surprisingly suspenseful for an event that not only happened in out lifetimes but that we witnessed live.

Over the weekend I have seen reports that some senior member of the MPAA are planning to introduce new rules that they hope will stop companies such as Netflix from competing in the Oscars.

To be eligible for an Oscar nomination a film, among other factors and there are many, is that the film must play for seven consecutive days at a commercial theater in Los Angeles and the film must not have been broadcast or available via home video or pay per view prior to that L.A. exhibition.

Netflix, having moved solidly into the film production as well as the exhibition business and looking for the validation that serious awards grant gamed the system to get its movie Roma  into Oscar consideration for the 2018 awards. It lost Best Picture to Green Book,  a film that upset many people and it likely to be one of the lesser-remembered Best Picture winners, however Roma’s near victory has unsettled those with a more traditionalist view of the motion picture industry, fueling this charge to change the rules.

Frankly, I am not concerned.

The distinction between television and feature films has been vanishing for decades. Movie theater attendance never recovered from the blow that was the adoption of television and now with more movies being made than ever most people get their experiences in such diverse environments as state of the art theaters with massive sound system to ear buds while sitting on a moving mass transit bus. Trying to hold to an outdated model first constructed at the start of the last century is a fool’s errand. What matters, and what has always mattered more than anything else, is that people see the features.

Art without an audience is worthless. A book has value only when it is read, a song when it is heard, a movie when it is watched.

I prefer seeing films in theaters, I love that experience but I see far more films for the first time on my television. It is the point of discovery where I learn about new voices that speak to my own.

The olds ways are dying; let them.