Roundup: Pop Culture & the Arts ...
Movies, Documentaries and Museum Exhibits
This page features links to reviews of movies, documentaries and exhibits with a historical theme. Listings are in reverse chronological order. Descriptions are taken directly from the linked publication. If you have articles you think should be listed on the Pop Culture page, please send them to the editor editor@historynewsnetwork.org.
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (10-30-06)
The Profumo scandal, involving a Cabinet minister, a showgirl and a Soviet naval attaché, which shook the political establishment 50 years ago, is to be turned into a stage musical.
The show, complete with nude romps and new theories about conspiracies and cover-ups, will be built around Christine Keeler.
Keeler was a 19-year-old model and topless dancer whose affair with John Profumo, the Tory War Secretary, led to his resignation in 1963 after he lied about it in Parliament.
Richard Alexander, the creator of the show, to be called A Model Girl, claims to have unearthed new evidence behind the scandal, though he refuses to disclose it until the curtain goes up.
The show, complete with nude romps and new theories about conspiracies and cover-ups, will be built around Christine Keeler.
Keeler was a 19-year-old model and topless dancer whose affair with John Profumo, the Tory War Secretary, led to his resignation in 1963 after he lied about it in Parliament.
Richard Alexander, the creator of the show, to be called A Model Girl, claims to have unearthed new evidence behind the scandal, though he refuses to disclose it until the curtain goes up.
Tuesday, October 31, 2006 - 20:09
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SOURCE: Reuters (10-30-06)
It seems to happen every decade or so.
In 1979, eight years after the death of the Doors' magnetic frontman Jim Morrison, the band's song"The End" seared the psyche of moviegoers during the opening scene of Francis Ford Coppola's landmark Vietnam epic,"Apocalypse Now."
Then in 1991, Oliver Stone's Doors biopic relit the fire of interest in the band, recalls manager Jeff Jampol, commenting on the Doors' enduring and cyclical popularity.
Now, the band's surviving members -- keyboardist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger and drummer John Densmore -- are preparing to celebrate the 40th anniversary of their 1967 self-titled debut album with a wealth of activities to spark interest in the band among a new generation.
On tap: a new boxed set, the band's first authorized biography and a push into areas ranging from ringtones to a theatrical production in Las Vegas that will feature the group's music.
Tuesday, October 31, 2006 - 17:51
SOURCE: Reuters (10-30-06)
Iranian artist Shirin Neshat plans to shoot a film
about the United States overthrowing a democratically-elected government
in Iran to gain control of the nation's vast oil supplies.
Ripped from today's headlines? Not quite.
The project is not based on the West's ongoing standoff over Tehran's nuclear program but rather on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's first overthrow of a foreign government, 53 years ago.
But while the movie is set in the past, Neshat hopes it will reverberate in the present, showing Westerners how their role in history is partly responsible for the current state of affairs.
"I am drawn to this project because I feel so strongly about the need for Westerners to look back in history," she said in an interview with Reuters.
"Most Westerners have amnesia beyond the Islamic revolution. They have very little concept of the foundation of the problems that we have between Islam and America, and Islam and the West."
The movie is set in 1953,...
Tuesday, October 31, 2006 - 17:48
SOURCE: Independent Institute (10-25-06)
[Alvaro Vargas Llosa is director of The Center on Global Prosperity at The Independent Institute. He is a native of Peru and received his B.S.C. in international history from the London School of Economics.]
Most of the reviews of Clint Eastwood’s “Flags of Our Fathers” salute the movie as a powerful work of art whose message is that war, whether of choice or necessity, is always horrific.
Actually, it does a lot more than that. It tells us that war tends to involve a double act of predation: the one each warring side inflicts on the other and the one the government—and that vast latticework of interests hidden under the guise of patriotism—inflicts on those who do the fighting and on the rest of society back home.
The first kind of predation is blatant and easily understood, even if it means a country is ready to pay a high price in order to achieve a worthy goal. The other type is more subtle: It is not measured in corpses, it does not take place...
Most of the reviews of Clint Eastwood’s “Flags of Our Fathers” salute the movie as a powerful work of art whose message is that war, whether of choice or necessity, is always horrific.
Actually, it does a lot more than that. It tells us that war tends to involve a double act of predation: the one each warring side inflicts on the other and the one the government—and that vast latticework of interests hidden under the guise of patriotism—inflicts on those who do the fighting and on the rest of society back home.
The first kind of predation is blatant and easily understood, even if it means a country is ready to pay a high price in order to achieve a worthy goal. The other type is more subtle: It is not measured in corpses, it does not take place...
Monday, October 30, 2006 - 22:37
SOURCE: David Forsmark at FrontpageMag.com (10-30-06)
Any movie that deals with the battle of Iwo Jima is doing so under the long, tall shadow of John Wayne and his portrayal of Stryker in Sands of Iwo Jima. Thematically, however, Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers film has more in common with another Wayne movie -- John Ford’s final masterpiece, The Man who Shot Liberty Valance, in which Edmund O’Brien’s soused newspaperman declares, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
Flags of our Fathers is faithfully based on the great book by James Bradley, son of Navy Corpsman John Bradley, one of the men who raised the hugely symbolic American flag over Mount Suribachi early in the Battle of Iwo Jima. It tells the real story of the most reproduced photograph of all time, the raising of the flag — actually, “raisings” would be the appropriate word, given the fact that there was a less dramatic one before the iconic shot was taken — and how becoming something close to cult figures for what they felt was a routine act as...
Flags of our Fathers is faithfully based on the great book by James Bradley, son of Navy Corpsman John Bradley, one of the men who raised the hugely symbolic American flag over Mount Suribachi early in the Battle of Iwo Jima. It tells the real story of the most reproduced photograph of all time, the raising of the flag — actually, “raisings” would be the appropriate word, given the fact that there was a less dramatic one before the iconic shot was taken — and how becoming something close to cult figures for what they felt was a routine act as...
Monday, October 30, 2006 - 22:17
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (10-30-06)
Once they were the pride of ancient civilisations: mighty cities, fortresses, temples and ziggurats. But time, weather and man have left them in ruins.
Now their glory can be seen in aerial photographs which go on display at the British Museum next month.
The show, The Past from Above, demonstrates, like Shelley's poem Ozymandias ? "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains" ? the impermanence of man's labour. The damage caused by nature, dams, treasure-hunters, farming, mass tourism and wreckers is evident in many of the images, says Lesley Fitton, co-curator of the exhibition.
The photographs of sites in Iraq, such as the Temple of Gareus, the ziggurat at Ur and the 11th century fortress Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta, may be the last, most complete views of the ruins. Archaeologists fear bombing or looting may have caused serious damage.
A photograph taken in 1973 of the huts of marsh dwellers in Iraq is an...
Now their glory can be seen in aerial photographs which go on display at the British Museum next month.
The show, The Past from Above, demonstrates, like Shelley's poem Ozymandias ? "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains" ? the impermanence of man's labour. The damage caused by nature, dams, treasure-hunters, farming, mass tourism and wreckers is evident in many of the images, says Lesley Fitton, co-curator of the exhibition.
The photographs of sites in Iraq, such as the Temple of Gareus, the ziggurat at Ur and the 11th century fortress Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta, may be the last, most complete views of the ruins. Archaeologists fear bombing or looting may have caused serious damage.
A photograph taken in 1973 of the huts of marsh dwellers in Iraq is an...
Monday, October 30, 2006 - 22:03
SOURCE: Independent (UK) (10-27-06)
One is a doctor who fled Saddam Hussein's Iraq and now runs a £1m felafel business. Another is a young Polish Roma woman who captains a boys' football team while another is a Kurdish separatist with a flourishing acting career.
The courage of Britain's refugees and their contribution to their adoptive nation were yesterday highlighted in a new exhibition designed to refute the image of asylum-seekers as a social and financial burden.
The show at the Museum of London, entitled Belonging, took two years to produce and is the first major exhibition in Britain focused on refugees. It tells the stories of 150 refugees who arrived in the UK in the past 50 years from countries including Germany, Bosnia, Chile and Eritrea.
Organisers said it was an attempt to redress the balance against the portrayal of refugees as "swamping" Britain in search of a lifestyle unavailable in their native countries.
The exhibition, which includes a...
The courage of Britain's refugees and their contribution to their adoptive nation were yesterday highlighted in a new exhibition designed to refute the image of asylum-seekers as a social and financial burden.
The show at the Museum of London, entitled Belonging, took two years to produce and is the first major exhibition in Britain focused on refugees. It tells the stories of 150 refugees who arrived in the UK in the past 50 years from countries including Germany, Bosnia, Chile and Eritrea.
Organisers said it was an attempt to redress the balance against the portrayal of refugees as "swamping" Britain in search of a lifestyle unavailable in their native countries.
The exhibition, which includes a...
Sunday, October 29, 2006 - 18:10
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (10-27-06)
A film made by Nazi officers showing them laughing and joking on a verandah, enjoying coffee and cake with female companions, has been found in the storeroom of a church in rural Devon.
The SS officers, who were running a forced labour regime in southern Russian during the Second World War, are seen relaxing while troops make prisoners work.
Historians said the footage was highly unusual because it was taken in Russia, and shows informal scenes as opposed to the carefully-shot Nazi propaganda films.
The 10-minute black and white film has been stored at Cullompton Baptist Church for 20 years.
It was part of a collection of films left to the church by a worshipper, Reg Whitton, who died in the 1980s. Mr Whitton ran a foundry and a transport firm and employed several emigres and former German prisoners of war. Church members who remember him said he was probably given the film by one of them.
The SS officers, who were running a forced labour regime in southern Russian during the Second World War, are seen relaxing while troops make prisoners work.
Historians said the footage was highly unusual because it was taken in Russia, and shows informal scenes as opposed to the carefully-shot Nazi propaganda films.
The 10-minute black and white film has been stored at Cullompton Baptist Church for 20 years.
It was part of a collection of films left to the church by a worshipper, Reg Whitton, who died in the 1980s. Mr Whitton ran a foundry and a transport firm and employed several emigres and former German prisoners of war. Church members who remember him said he was probably given the film by one of them.
Sunday, October 29, 2006 - 18:01
SOURCE: NYT (10-29-06)
WHEN Peter Bardazzi, a film professor, took his students at the Fashion Institute of Technology to see “Flags of Our Fathers” last Sunday, they were surrounded in the theater by gray- and white-haired people who seemed genuinely touched by the movie’s depiction of the marines who took Iwo Jima. But the young men and women with Mr. Bardazzi, he said, found it tough to sit through.
One, Shirlyn Wong, 23, said she had barely learned about Hiroshima growing up, let alone about the bloody battle for Iwo Jima, and World War II just didn’t seem all that relevant now. Iraq is where it’s at, she said, and the images of carnage that she’s drawn to are the videos popping up on YouTube, despite what she and her friends see as the best efforts of the government and news media to suppress them.
“As soon as you hear something on CNN about a beheading, or a sniper video, the first thing we do is check on the Internet for it,” Ms. Wong said.
It’s been a long eight...
One, Shirlyn Wong, 23, said she had barely learned about Hiroshima growing up, let alone about the bloody battle for Iwo Jima, and World War II just didn’t seem all that relevant now. Iraq is where it’s at, she said, and the images of carnage that she’s drawn to are the videos popping up on YouTube, despite what she and her friends see as the best efforts of the government and news media to suppress them.
“As soon as you hear something on CNN about a beheading, or a sniper video, the first thing we do is check on the Internet for it,” Ms. Wong said.
It’s been a long eight...
Sunday, October 29, 2006 - 14:19
SOURCE: Edward Rothstein in the NYT (10-27-06)
There is a mystery at the heart of Mount Vernon, the estate to which George Washington retired during intervals between accomplishments as a founding father. That mystery might have been less evident before the estate’s owners, the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, spent more than $60 million to build two exhibition halls opening Friday that will transform the nature of the pilgrimage made by a million visitors a year to these rolling acres overlooking the Potomac.
Now there is no avoiding that mystery because these buildings — the Ford Orientation Center and the Donald W. Reynolds Museum and Education Center — were partly built to address it: what was Washington like, this most publicly celebrated and privately guarded of the founding fathers, and what is the scope of his accomplishment? In trying to answer those questions George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens must now engage in a delicate balance, combining its old tradition of historical curatorship with...
Now there is no avoiding that mystery because these buildings — the Ford Orientation Center and the Donald W. Reynolds Museum and Education Center — were partly built to address it: what was Washington like, this most publicly celebrated and privately guarded of the founding fathers, and what is the scope of his accomplishment? In trying to answer those questions George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens must now engage in a delicate balance, combining its old tradition of historical curatorship with...
Friday, October 27, 2006 - 14:33
SOURCE: Newsweek (10-30-06)
It has driven nations to war, civilizations to the pinnacles of prosperity and desperate explorers to their demise. And when it comes to driving wide-eyed crowds to museum halls, the allure of gold is no less potent.
Next month, New York's American Museum of Natural History's aptly named exhibit "Gold" will offer a comprehensive review of how different cultures have used the lustrous, malleable element and will feature artifacts that stretch from ancient times to modernity. Their common thread? Rank and privilege. "Societies that used gold as ornamentation, money ... were societies that had social stratification," says Charles Spencer, chairman of the museum's anthropology division. "Even in our own culture, that's how gold operates ... I think that may be the draw."
A draw indeed. At the Field Museum in Chicago, a largely golden collection of King Tut artifacts has sold nearly 800,000 tickets since May. The display is expected to...
Next month, New York's American Museum of Natural History's aptly named exhibit "Gold" will offer a comprehensive review of how different cultures have used the lustrous, malleable element and will feature artifacts that stretch from ancient times to modernity. Their common thread? Rank and privilege. "Societies that used gold as ornamentation, money ... were societies that had social stratification," says Charles Spencer, chairman of the museum's anthropology division. "Even in our own culture, that's how gold operates ... I think that may be the draw."
A draw indeed. At the Field Museum in Chicago, a largely golden collection of King Tut artifacts has sold nearly 800,000 tickets since May. The display is expected to...
Friday, October 27, 2006 - 14:22
SOURCE: A.O. Scott in the NYT (10-27-06)
Since it was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival last month, “The Death of a President,” a formally clever fake-umentary directed by Gabriel Range, has attracted some fairly predictable controversy. Since the president in question is George W. Bush and the death is the result of an assassination, the film has become a lightning rod for the usual forms of self-righteousness that often masquerade as political discussion. On one side, howls of “How dare you?” and on the other, ringing endorsements of free expression and artistic courage.
But “The Death of a President” doesn’t really deserve either response, even though its makers and distributors will no doubt be happy to exploit the brouhaha. The best that can be said about Mr. Range’s opportunistic little picture is that, at least in its first half, it faithfully recreates the tone and rhythm of a second-rate American television program.
For a while, this is actually pretty riveting. The film...
But “The Death of a President” doesn’t really deserve either response, even though its makers and distributors will no doubt be happy to exploit the brouhaha. The best that can be said about Mr. Range’s opportunistic little picture is that, at least in its first half, it faithfully recreates the tone and rhythm of a second-rate American television program.
For a while, this is actually pretty riveting. The film...
Friday, October 27, 2006 - 14:08
SOURCE: National Post (Canada) (10-27-06)
The 900-page fictional memoirs of a Nazi, written in French by an American descendant of Polish Jews, solidified its place yesterday as the European literary sensation of the year, when it was awarded the Grand Prix du Roman from the Academie Francaise.
Les Bienveillantes, whose Canadian publishing rights were won late Wednesday by an "extremely strong" bid from McClelland & Stewart, has sold almost a quarter million copies since its French release in August, and already its author, Jonathan Littell, 39, is being spoken of in the same breath as Tolstoy and Flaubert.
Although there has been controversy over the subject matter -- Second World War French historian Peter Schoettler called it a "strange, monstrous book," and explicit to the point of "pornography" -- it has been roundly lauded as a deeply researched and humane treatment of a monstrous subject.
French newspaper Le Monde called it "a stunning...
Friday, October 27, 2006 - 13:58
SOURCE: CBS (10-25-06)
Anyone who ever pretended to be Paul McCartney making the girls faint, or Dick Clark setting up the hits on "American Bandstand" or ushering in the years in Times Square, is in luck: their props are up for auction.
Clark is going to auction off years of memorabilia from "American Bandstand," "New Year's Rockin' Eve" and his other shows.
Among the items to be sold by Guernsey's is Clark's microphone that he used as host of "American Bandstand." Also up for sale is a bass guitar that Paul McCartney played when he was a Beatle.
The auction will be held December fifth and sixth at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center, in Manhattan's Time Warner Center.
There will be no reserve set for the items, so they will all be sold to the highest bidder.
Thursday, October 26, 2006 - 12:48
SOURCE: NYT (10-25-06)
SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina — In all the time that Radovan Karadzic has been on the run, numerous tales about his whereabouts have emerged. After being indicted by United Nations prosecutors as a war crimes suspect 11 years ago, Mr. Karadzic, the former leader of Bosnia’s Serbs, has supposedly been sighted disguised as a monk, spotted in a police car escaping from pursuing soldiers and even slipping into Sarajevo, Bosnia’s capital, to sip coffee under the noses of international officials responsible for his arrest.
Now a film starring Richard Gere as a journalist and partly shot in this city aims to tell a small chapter in one of those tales.
“Spring Break in Bosnia” is a black comedy loosely based on an actual attempt by a group of journalists to track down Mr. Karadzic. The filmmakers say they hope the movie, due out next year, will shame the international community into making his arrest a higher priority, so that he will finally go on trial at the...
Now a film starring Richard Gere as a journalist and partly shot in this city aims to tell a small chapter in one of those tales.
“Spring Break in Bosnia” is a black comedy loosely based on an actual attempt by a group of journalists to track down Mr. Karadzic. The filmmakers say they hope the movie, due out next year, will shame the international community into making his arrest a higher priority, so that he will finally go on trial at the...
Wednesday, October 25, 2006 - 13:29
SOURCE: CBS News (Canada) (10-24-06)
A new documentary about Arctic explorer John Rae will push the case that he discovered the Northwest Passage, filmmaker John Walker says.
The work by the Nova Scotia-based filmmaker is based mainly on Ken McGoogan's book Fatal Passage: The Untold Story of John Rae, the Arctic Adventurer Who Discovered the Fate of Franklin.
McGoogan credits Rae with, in 1854, finding evidence of a famous mystery — the disappearance of the British explorer Sir John Franklin and his 128 crew members.
But the writer also argues that Rae unlocked the last piece of the Northwest Passage puzzle, by discovering that King William Land was an island separated from the mainland by a navigable strait.
However, Rae's Arctic exploration efforts were dismissed because he reported the unpopular notion that Franklin's men had taken part in cannibalism to try to survive.
But the two-hour documentary will go beyond McGoogan's story, relying more on local...
The work by the Nova Scotia-based filmmaker is based mainly on Ken McGoogan's book Fatal Passage: The Untold Story of John Rae, the Arctic Adventurer Who Discovered the Fate of Franklin.
McGoogan credits Rae with, in 1854, finding evidence of a famous mystery — the disappearance of the British explorer Sir John Franklin and his 128 crew members.
But the writer also argues that Rae unlocked the last piece of the Northwest Passage puzzle, by discovering that King William Land was an island separated from the mainland by a navigable strait.
However, Rae's Arctic exploration efforts were dismissed because he reported the unpopular notion that Franklin's men had taken part in cannibalism to try to survive.
But the two-hour documentary will go beyond McGoogan's story, relying more on local...
Tuesday, October 24, 2006 - 21:54
SOURCE: NYT (10-23-06)
More people speak Portuguese as their native language than French, German, Italian or Japanese. So it can rankle the 230 million Portuguese speakers that the rest of the world often views their mother tongue as a minor language and that their novelists, poets and songwriters tend to be overlooked.
An effort is being made here in the largest city in the world’s largest Portuguese-speaking country to remedy that situation. The Museum of the Portuguese Language, with multimedia displays and interactive technology, recently opened here, dedicated to the proposition that Portuguese speakers and their language can benefit from a bit of self-affirmation and self-advertisement.
“We hope this museum is the first step to showing ourselves, our culture and its importance to the world,” said Antônio Carlos Sartini, the museum director. “A strategy to promote the Portuguese language has always been lacking, but from now on, maybe things can take another path.”
...
An effort is being made here in the largest city in the world’s largest Portuguese-speaking country to remedy that situation. The Museum of the Portuguese Language, with multimedia displays and interactive technology, recently opened here, dedicated to the proposition that Portuguese speakers and their language can benefit from a bit of self-affirmation and self-advertisement.
“We hope this museum is the first step to showing ourselves, our culture and its importance to the world,” said Antônio Carlos Sartini, the museum director. “A strategy to promote the Portuguese language has always been lacking, but from now on, maybe things can take another path.”
...
Tuesday, October 24, 2006 - 19:11
SOURCE: NYT (10-24-06)
Clint Eastwood’s World War II movie “Flags of Our Fathers” lumbered ashore this weekend weighted with the expectations of a studio needing to win big. Looking for Oscars and a payoff on the film’s $90 million budget, Paramount, its distributor, put the film in nearly 1,900 theaters, and still plans to add hundreds more as early as this week.
By Monday morning, however, the studio and its partners found themselves facing a costly fight to save their showcase awards entry, as “Flags” took in just $10.2 million at the box office — a relatively tiny beachhead that did not match expectations or its mostly strong reviews. The picture had failed to excite enough older viewers who could remember, readily identify or relate to its subject, the bloody battle for Iwo Jima, to make up for its lack of appeal to younger audiences and paucity of recognizable stars.
For Paramount, which inherited the movie when it bought DreamWorks last year, the combination of a weak opening...
By Monday morning, however, the studio and its partners found themselves facing a costly fight to save their showcase awards entry, as “Flags” took in just $10.2 million at the box office — a relatively tiny beachhead that did not match expectations or its mostly strong reviews. The picture had failed to excite enough older viewers who could remember, readily identify or relate to its subject, the bloody battle for Iwo Jima, to make up for its lack of appeal to younger audiences and paucity of recognizable stars.
For Paramount, which inherited the movie when it bought DreamWorks last year, the combination of a weak opening...
Tuesday, October 24, 2006 - 19:06
SOURCE: Observer (10-22-06)
A biopic based on the early years of Antonio Vivaldi's life is set to do for the baroque composer what Milos Forman's Amadeus achieved for Mozart more than two decades ago. Joseph Fiennes plays the lead in Vivaldi, which starts filming next April, alongside Gerard Depardieu, Jacqueline Bisset and Malcolm McDowell. Its makers hope to reprise the success of Forman's 1984 epic, which won a multitude of Oscars, revitalising interest in Mozart and his works.
The new project will chart the composer of The Four Seasons' ordination as a priest and his life at a school in Venice, where he becomes a music teacher. 'We are setting out to make something that will last for generations,' said the film's director, Boris Damast. 'Amadeus is what we are going for. They set the template for this form, and there's been not much between then and now. That was a wonderful film. We want to make a film of that calibre. Maybe better.'
Vivaldi's plot begins with the composer entering...
The new project will chart the composer of The Four Seasons' ordination as a priest and his life at a school in Venice, where he becomes a music teacher. 'We are setting out to make something that will last for generations,' said the film's director, Boris Damast. 'Amadeus is what we are going for. They set the template for this form, and there's been not much between then and now. That was a wonderful film. We want to make a film of that calibre. Maybe better.'
Vivaldi's plot begins with the composer entering...
Monday, October 23, 2006 - 19:42
SOURCE: Guardian (10-21-06)
On February 19 1945 Thomas McPhatter found himself on a landing craft heading toward the beach on Iwo Jima.
"There were bodies bobbing up all around, all these dead men," said the former US marine, now 83 and living in San Diego. "Then we were crawling on our bellies and moving up the beach. I jumped in a foxhole and there was a young white marine holding his family pictures. He had been hit by shrapnel, he was bleeding from the ears, nose and mouth. It frightened me. The only thing I could do was lie there and repeat the Lord's prayer, over and over and over."
Sadly, Sgt McPhatter's experience is not mirrored in Flags of Our Fathers, Clint Eastwood's big-budget, Oscar-tipped film of the battle for the Japanese island that opened on Friday in the US. While the film's battle scenes show scores of young soldiers in combat, none of them are African-American. Yet almost 900 African-American troops took part in the battle of Iwo Jima,...
"There were bodies bobbing up all around, all these dead men," said the former US marine, now 83 and living in San Diego. "Then we were crawling on our bellies and moving up the beach. I jumped in a foxhole and there was a young white marine holding his family pictures. He had been hit by shrapnel, he was bleeding from the ears, nose and mouth. It frightened me. The only thing I could do was lie there and repeat the Lord's prayer, over and over and over."
Sadly, Sgt McPhatter's experience is not mirrored in Flags of Our Fathers, Clint Eastwood's big-budget, Oscar-tipped film of the battle for the Japanese island that opened on Friday in the US. While the film's battle scenes show scores of young soldiers in combat, none of them are African-American. Yet almost 900 African-American troops took part in the battle of Iwo Jima,...
Monday, October 23, 2006 - 19:28
