 | |
List Price: $19.95 | | Label: VCE, Inc.
Salesrank: 100168
Released: October 3, 2000 |
| Our Price: $4.66 |
| Used Price: $4.62 |
|
MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD |
|
Editorial Review:
Four decades ago, feeling a rumble beneath your feet and seeing the lights flicker may not have been a passing train or mild earthquake, but something more powerful...an atomic detonation a few hundred miles from your home. This is the secret the government kept for years: atomic weapons testing were being conducted across the country, and few people know about it. Atomic bombs were literally being dropped in our backyards - witness actual newsreel footage of an unarmed nuke that was accidentally dropped on a South Carolina town. Many of the tests were art of the Atomic Energy Commission's attempt to explore the use of these weapons for "peaceful purposes," such as building new canals and harbors and increasing output from natural gas wells. However, the Commission was also testing the detection-and concealment-of seismic signals from nuclear explosions. Peter Kuran, the award-winning creator of "Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie," brings you to ten former testing sites from Alaska to Mississippi, including the Nevada Test Site, "the most bombed place on earth", where more than 900 bombs were detonated. The United States wasn't the only nation performing such tests - Atomic Journeys will also take you on an atomic slide show tour of test sites used by France, England, and the Soviet Union. Atomic Journeys: Welcome to Ground Zero's presentation of spectacular, never-before-seen footage will shock and astound you. A powerful original score from the Moscow Symphony Orchestra and Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound raise your viewing experience to a new level, helping to bring home the stark realities of the atomic era.
Description of Atomic Journeys - Welcome to Ground Zero:
Our atomic heritage resides in sites all over the country--from the Trinity test area to natural-gas wells in Colorado--and many of them are open to the public. Plan your vacation with Atomic Journeys: Welcome to Ground Zero, a blast through memory lane narrated by the perfectly suited William Shatner. Never-before-seen footage of test explosions and top-secret and work labs explores the history of America's nuclear programs, and interviews with current and former atomic scientists and engineers give depth to sights such as "the most bombed place on Earth" in Nevada. Learn about nonmilitary uses of nuclear weapons, the rationales behind the different programs, and where you can find these strange places. The musical score is a special bonus, performed by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra in a goodwill gesture of post-cold-war cooperation. --Rob Lightner
Atomic Journeys - Welcome to Ground Zero Reviews:
Excellent documentary/timeline on U.S. nuke tests! 
2009-03-01 - This is an excellent timeline newsreel documentary on some of the major U.S. secret nuke tests that took place across the U.S., unbeknownst to the public. In fact, more than 900 nuclear bombs were detonated, many of them underground. The impressive footage is excellent, and William Shatner's commentary compelling. There are even closeups of the various historic plaques that were placed at these sites to mark their occurence (you need to pause your DVD player to read them though). There are also some 'extras' footage of some of the atomic tests conducted by France, England, and The Soviet Union. This is a great DVD, that would make an excellent addition to anyone's collection of historic documentary films.
Some yesterday docos 
2008-10-23 - Just a set of docos about a very dawn of a nuclear weaponry, it is interesting for depicting the areas nuke tests had initially been conducted at.
Perhaps, DVD extras are even more educative than 53 min run of a movie itself but the Soviet exercising in deploying the blasts for the water channel erecting is hardly understandable in a context of this work.
Nothing of Chinese, Israeli and Indo-Pakistani endeavours might hardy be explained with secrecy surrounding these programs until realise of this documentary in 2006.
Not speaking of North Korean, Iraqi and Iranian developments in a nuclear field till 2006.
Film Review
2007-01-17 - This was an okay film, but it was too long and too repetitive.
Relive "Duck & Cover" in living color. 
2005-09-03 - A documentary that uses previously classified B&W and color footage and powerful symphonic music to fully express the forbidding destructive power of nuclear weapons, Welcome To Ground Zero is the second of four DVD's (that I'm aware of) dedicated to exposing the visual truth behind the testing of nuclear weapons from the mid-1940's through their banishment in the 1970's. Ground Zero concentrates on below ground nuclear tests, and the sight of entire islands rising 25 feet or more into the air and falling back to their foundations in a godlike thud can be quite sobering. This is not an anti-nuclear diatribe, nor is it pro nuclear power. Rather, it simply observes and describes what took place in the infancy of our nuclear life, leaving you to determine which end of the scale this branch of science rests: outrageously dangerous or benignly beneficial. Well worth the price of admission - and one way to prove to your friends how useless "Duck & Cover" would have been in a real nuclear blast.
An Atomic Dud 
2003-12-12 - Greatly disappointed by this purchase, and certainly would never call this a documentary. Instead, it is a collection of footage with no timeline, context, nor reason. The producer seems content to move from test to test, providing absolutely no understanding of the public, US political, or international forces leading to these amazing tests; there is no attempt to understand how these tests shaped any US or international policies. Instead, it appears the US atomic testing program was conducted by a bunch of curious, "Gee, let's try this, Verne" nuclear hackers with no accountability to anyone but themselves.
Sorry - maybe I've been spoiled by BBC and PBS quality documentaries. But "Atomic Journeys" is no journey at all. More like a childish merry-go-round.
