A work in constant progress (and occasional regress).
Release Date:
November 4, 1997
Original Title:
Equinox: Black Holes
Alternate Titles:
Black Holes: The Ultimate Abyss
Genres:
Documentary
Ratings / Certifications:
GB: PG-13
Runtime: 55
Documentary on nature's ultimate abyss, the black hole. It is the darkest thing in the universe and its gravity is so powerful that not even light can escape. Most start out as brilliant stars which, after millions of years, eventually collapse forming a bottomless pit from which there is no escape. Narrated by actor John Hurt and directed by award-winning documentary filmmaker Richard Smith, the program is a journey into interstellar space to explore these mysterious "prisons of light", via an imaginary computer-generated space ship. Guides for the journey include Professor Stephen Hawking, Britain's Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees, and Homer Simpson. The program also examines the history surrounding black holes, from the first conception of them in 1859 to the present day.
Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).
Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).
At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.
Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)
While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:
Regarding profile removals and data corrections:
Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).
Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.
Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.