LAST night the first half of Ken Burns' latest docs, The Dust Bowl, went up; it concludes this evening.By now, we have a pretty good sense of what a Burns doc will be like. That said, parts of this are quite ravishing. And while it is not exactly a work of polemic, this look back at this man-made disaster, coming so soon after the ravages of the storm Sandy, show us how we're really throwing the … [Read more...]
Oliver Stone’s History Lesson
ABOUT a week ago, I spent some time with Oliver Stone, and his co-writer, the historian Peter Kuznick, talking about their new "Untold History of the United States." The 10-part program, which goes up on Showtime starting tonight, is in a Howard Zinn/Noam Chomsky line in looking at international and domestic issues, starting with World War II.Perhaps the key theme of the series is the idea of … [Read more...]
Ric Burns and the Civil War
IT'S not a pretty picture: The Civil War saw as many people killed as all American wars put together. In some places, the proportion of young men killed was quite high: Parts of the South essentially lost a generation. But the huge number of deaths, and the need to count the fallen, bury them, contact loved ones -- and to make moral/ spiritual sense of it all -- remade this country, says Ric … [Read more...]
The Wreck of the Titanic
THE hype around James Cameron's film, which came out while I was working as a film editor, was so deafening that a lot of us closed our ears when it came to this infamous ship and its demise. I know I did. There didn't seem to be much more to say about the whole mess.But here we are, approaching the 100th anniversary of the Titanic's demise, and there are a ton of new television projects coming, … [Read more...]
New View of General Lee
OKAY, get ready for a deluge of coverage of the Civil War, whose 150th anniversary begins in the new year. One of the first shots fired will be a new documentary on Gen. Robert E. Lee, who emerges as a complex, brilliant, at times tormented, and deeply human character. The doc, which goes up Monday on PBS, avoids the hero-worship of neo-Confederates and a debunking approach that might have been … [Read more...]
"An Edible History of Humanity"
I DON'T think there's a book i've given as a gift more often than "a history of the world in 6 glasses," a brisk and delightful tour, from ancient egypt to 20th century america, in roughly 250 pages. it left me with memorable images : mesopotamians discovering beer, imperial romans swilling wine, coffee being downed in cafes in 18th c. london and edinburgh --where it fueled the age of reason.the … [Read more...]