textField=	From the giant void of space 205,000 miles away from Earth, Jim Lovell and his crew first made history during the actual heroic events of April 1970... and then again 25 years later, Tom Hanks in his role as Lovell, recreated the intense epic mission when Universal Pictures <i>Apollo 13</i> was released in theatres worldwide. The motion picture starring Tom Hanks, from the remarkable team of producer Brian Grazer and director Ron Howard  last years Academy Award-winning team of Universals A Beautiful Mind  quickly established itself as an important film, both critically and commercially, stunning in its impact and verisimilitude to the real-life events it depicted.  
	This suspenseful drama about the extraordinary courage, faith and ingenuity of three men, and the hundreds more who worked around the clock to bring them back, also starred Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise, Ed Harris and Kathleen Quinlan.  The films executive producer was Todd Hallowell.  The script by William Broyles, Jr. and Al Reinert is based on Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Klugers book, Lost Moon.
	Joining Howard and Grazer in bringing <i>Apollo 13</i> to the screen were director of photography Dean Cundey, production designer Michael Corenblith, editors Michael Hill and Daniel Hanley, composer James Horner, Digital Domain visual effects supervisor Robert Legato and special effects coordinator Matt Sweeney.  <i>Apollo 13</i> was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Ed Harris), Best Supporting Actress (Kathleen Quinlan), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction/Set Decoration and Best Visual Effects and won the Oscars for Best Film Editing and Best Sound.  The film brought Howard the Best Director of the Year award from the Directors Guild of America.  The Producers Guild of America honored Grazer with the Darryl F. Zanuck Motion Picture Producer of the Year award.  The film also won Screen Actors Guild awards for Best Cast and Best Supporting Actor.<br>
	<b>"Failure is Not An Option":</b><br>	<b>The Story of Apollo 13</b><br>	<b>The IMAX Experience</b> 
	Lovells simple but fateful words indicating trouble on board the Apollo 13 command module was the last thing that the engineers, scientists and mathematicians who comprised Mission Control wanted to hear.  The crew of Apollo 13 was almost to the moon, and an explosion in space was causing them to lose oxygen, power and guidance.
	Suddenly, three men faced the prospect of dying as no man had before.  If Jim Lovell, Fred Haise (Bill Paxton) and Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon) did not want to become some horrific, permanent rotating exhibit within the infinite solar system, a daring rescue attempt that defied odds would have to be attempted.  There were only four days to bring them back to Earth.  A stunned and rapt populace watched in silence around the world.
	Back on Earth at NASAs Mission Control, a race was on to save the astronauts from three potentially disastrous situations:  suffocating if the oxygen ran out; freezing to death as a result of insufficient power to heat the spacecraft; or being poisoned by their own carbon dioxide exhalations because of an unusable filtering system.
	Even if they managed to survive, they could still be incinerated upon re-entry into the Earths atmosphere.  Ironically, all the high-tech equipment that got Apollo 13 into space was secondary.  A mission about machines became a mission about character.  While man had walked on the moon less than a year before  one of the defining moments of modern civilization  the truncated voyage of Apollo 13 would arguably turn out to be the finest hour in the history of space travel.
	When Apollo 13 lifted off, it seemed that traveling to the moon and going for a stroll on its lunar surface had prematurely entered the been there, done that category of the American psyche.  Only eight months had passed since Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, yet no world figures attended the launch of Apollo 13, the size of the press corps at Cape Kennedy wasnt impression and internationally the news wasnt any better.  A newspaper in Italy ran its coverage under the headline:  Too Perfect; the Public is Getting Bored.
	As the crew of Apollo 13 made its live television broadcast from space, none of the networks even deemed it newsworthy enough to carry.  But just after the telecast no one saw, a routine procedure of stirring an oxygen tank culminated in a series of small, virtually undetectable mishaps, which caused the oxygen tank to explode.
	Jim Lovell had already logged more hours (572) in space than anyone alive before signing on for what he promised his worried wife, Marilyn (Kathleen Quinlan), was going to be his last mission.  His nervousness over this particular one proved to be prescient, but Jim had been preparing for this trip to the moon since he was a teenager and fired a homemade rocket 80 feet in the air.  He was Neil Armstrongs backup on the historic Apollo 11 mission.  Before Lovell could pack away his space boots, he just had to become the fifth member of the most exclusive club on Earth.  His hazing rite?  A walk on the moon.
	A week before the launch of Apollo 13, command module pilot Ken Mattinglys (Gary Sinise) dream was shattered when he was exposed to the measles and a NASA doctor determined that the astronaut might come down with them in flight.  He was scrubbed from the mission, but one mans loss become anothers gain as Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon), Mattinglys backup, received the call offering him the moon.  Swigert, a bit of a roustabout and very popular with the ladies, came aboard the space mission with only two days of preparation.
	Nonetheless, Lovell and Swigert, with lunar module pilot Haise, lifted off without a hitch at 13:13 military time on April 11, 1970.
	Mattingly, who came so close to going to the moon, was left with nothing to do as Mission Control, led by flight director Gene Kranz (Ed Harris), took over after launch for a smooth 55 hours of flight.  Then came Lovells heart-stopping message from space.
	Suddenly, Mattingly was transformed into the man on the ground with the most knowledge of the crippled capsule.  He furiously set about working in a simulator trying to figure out how the Apollo crew could survive and safely re-enter the atmosphere as Mission Control worked on a problem for which they hadnt the slightest idea of a solution.  Still, the relentless Kranz told his team, Failure is not an option.
	In the cold void of space, the crew of Apollo 13 was shutting down the command module, which also created electrical power, in order to preserve what was left of the oxygen as they moved into Aquarius, the lunar module, in order to use its separate power and oxygen systems.  Unfortunately, Aquarius was constructed for only two people to survive for two days.  It would now have to be used by three people for four days.  It wasnt meant to be hurtling through space, and its engine certainly was not intended to guide anyone home.
	Life inside the Aquarius was trying at best.  Sleep was practically impossible in the near freezing temperatures, there was precious little water to drink and Haise developed a fever from a urinary tract infection.  While space rookies Swigert and Haise and veteran space traveller Jim Lovell passed tantalizingly close to the moons surface, all they could do was ponder what might have been as the crippled spacecraft shot around its dark side.  Lovell, who had dreamt of reaching to the stars since he was a boy, now had a different goal: to get home to Earth.
