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: CBS (1-24-09)
Randall Pinkston profiles the career of legendary photographer Harry Benson, who has captured intimate and surprising moments with many U.S. presidents such as L.B.J., Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
Sunday, January 25, 2009 - 02:33
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SOURCE: Edward Rothstein in the NYT (1-23-09)
The good lady Opinion sits perched in a tree, wearing the weighty towers of the town as her hat, which blinds her eyes. On one of her hands a chameleon sits, doubtless changing its spots to accommodate the surroundings. Held in her other hand is a wand used to shake the tree’s branches, from which leaves fall: leaves of books and papers, which offer not knowledge but libel and foolishness, which “in everie streete, on everie stall you find.”
Such is the cynical vision of the news business put forward by Henry Peacham in 1641 London, as journalism, in its earliest forms, was becoming a major force during some of the most tumultuous decades in England’s history: no wisdom, he finds, just much posturing and gossip.
More than 360 years later, as advance obituaries are being prepared for the very forms of printed journalism born during Peacham’s era, Lady Opinion is on display, along with far more reverential examples of news and opinion, at the Folger Shakespeare...
Such is the cynical vision of the news business put forward by Henry Peacham in 1641 London, as journalism, in its earliest forms, was becoming a major force during some of the most tumultuous decades in England’s history: no wisdom, he finds, just much posturing and gossip.
More than 360 years later, as advance obituaries are being prepared for the very forms of printed journalism born during Peacham’s era, Lady Opinion is on display, along with far more reverential examples of news and opinion, at the Folger Shakespeare...
Saturday, January 24, 2009 - 21:31
SOURCE: David Simon in the New Yorker (1-26-09)
In February of 1963, twenty-four-year-old William Zantzinger, armed with a toy carnival cane and wrecked on whiskey, made a spectacle of himself at the Spinsters’ Ball at the Emerson Hotel in Baltimore. He was a drunken country mouse in the big city, at a time when the notion of racial equality had barely shown itself in the neighborhood of his father’s tobacco farm. When the hotel’s black waitstaff was slow to serve Zantzinger another drink, he yelled racial epithets at Hattie Carroll, a barmaid and a fifty-one-year-old mother of eleven, and he rapped her on the shoulder with his cane. She became upset, then collapsed and died of a stroke.
Bob Dylan read about the case in the newspaper. He wrote the magnificent “Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” with the paper splayed on the table of a Seventh Avenue luncheonette. Zantzinger was then and forever after a master villain.
Twenty-five years later, I tried to interview him for a newspaper story. He was working in a real-...
Bob Dylan read about the case in the newspaper. He wrote the magnificent “Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” with the paper splayed on the table of a Seventh Avenue luncheonette. Zantzinger was then and forever after a master villain.
Twenty-five years later, I tried to interview him for a newspaper story. He was working in a real-...
Friday, January 23, 2009 - 17:11
SOURCE: Fox News (1-22-09)
American researchers are firing back at a Swiss university researcher's report that “politeness” led to the deaths of 225 British passengers aboard the Titanic.
Professor Bruno Frey of the University of Zurich claims that the British passengers on the doomed cruise liner perished in the 1912 disaster because they were polite and willing to stand in line while American passengers pushed their way to the front and were placed in lifeboats.
While “women and children first” was followed as the "unsinkable" cruise ship hit an iceberg and fell to the floor of the Atlantic, Frey claims that many Britons lost their lives because they were courteous, while "uncultured" Americans were more likely to push ahead in line.
"The British were much more aware of the social norms at the time," Frey told the U.K.’s Daily Mail newspaper. "They would have been more likely to stand in a queue and wait their turn for boarding the...
Professor Bruno Frey of the University of Zurich claims that the British passengers on the doomed cruise liner perished in the 1912 disaster because they were polite and willing to stand in line while American passengers pushed their way to the front and were placed in lifeboats.
While “women and children first” was followed as the "unsinkable" cruise ship hit an iceberg and fell to the floor of the Atlantic, Frey claims that many Britons lost their lives because they were courteous, while "uncultured" Americans were more likely to push ahead in line.
"The British were much more aware of the social norms at the time," Frey told the U.K.’s Daily Mail newspaper. "They would have been more likely to stand in a queue and wait their turn for boarding the...
Friday, January 23, 2009 - 13:29
SOURCE: Guardian (UK) (1-23-09)
"Then all unknown, I'll lay with the inglorious dead / forgot and gone," wrote Robert Burns. Scotland's national poet is far from forgotten, however, as the 250th anniversary of his birth approaches. It's funny to imagine the reaction Burns might have had to his immortality, how a Burns supper might have bewitched, bothered and bewildered him.
As a child I went to many Burns suppers. Maisie Hill always did a fabulously dramatic address, her big knife glinting and her face alive with malice as she plunged the blade into the poor haggis: "His knife sae rustic Labour dight / an cut you up wi ready sleight, / Trenching your gushing entrails bright / Like ony ditch; / And then, O what a glorious sight, / Warm-reekin', rich!" Then someone, often my dad, did the immortal memory, talking about his life as a peasant, his politics, his poetry. It's hard to think of another poet who commands the respect and love of generations, never mind one who has his very own...
As a child I went to many Burns suppers. Maisie Hill always did a fabulously dramatic address, her big knife glinting and her face alive with malice as she plunged the blade into the poor haggis: "His knife sae rustic Labour dight / an cut you up wi ready sleight, / Trenching your gushing entrails bright / Like ony ditch; / And then, O what a glorious sight, / Warm-reekin', rich!" Then someone, often my dad, did the immortal memory, talking about his life as a peasant, his politics, his poetry. It's hard to think of another poet who commands the respect and love of generations, never mind one who has his very own...
Friday, January 23, 2009 - 10:36
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (1-23-09)
Few politicians have been represented on screen as often as Richard Nixon. Frank Langella is magnificent in Frost/Nixon (released today), but many other notable actors have also played him: Anthony Hopkins in Oliver Stone's Nixon (1995), Beau Bridges in Kissinger and Nixon (1995), Philip Baker Hall in Robert Altman's Secret Honor (1984), Rip Torn in the 1979 television series Blind Ambition, and even Glenda Jackson in Michael Lindsay-Hogg's Nasty Habits (1977). In Jean Luc Godard's Made In USA - made in 1966! - one of the killers calls himself "Richard Nixon".
The real Nixon was less comfortable appearing on screen. During the presidential debates against John F. Kennedy in 1960, the first of the modern era to be televised, he wore too little make up, sweated profusely under the harsh studio lights, and looked shifty and unconvincing to many viewers.
Compared to Kennedy, or to Reagan (whom he regarded as too much of a performer), yet alone to Clinton, Nixon never...
Friday, January 23, 2009 - 10:17
SOURCE: http://www.allaboutjazz.com (1-19-09)
The documentary asks: How did we get here? It is set against the presidential election.
British historian Simon Schama never expected Barack Obama to so thoroughly wipe out the Democratic competition during primary season. But as he watched history unfold while filming his latest documentary The American Future: A History, Schama prepared for the unexpected.
“This was not going to be an election of business as usual," he said. “Very likely this was going to be an election where Americans would ask themselves, 'How did we get into this sorry mess?' “
Using the elections as a backdrop, Schama set out to answer that very question in his latest project, which airs as a two-part series today and Tuesday on BBC America. The DVD hits stores Tuesday.
The American Future weaves through the nation's interior, exposing conflict and trepidation in a country still fighting to understand itself. Schama traveled the United States over nine months,...
British historian Simon Schama never expected Barack Obama to so thoroughly wipe out the Democratic competition during primary season. But as he watched history unfold while filming his latest documentary The American Future: A History, Schama prepared for the unexpected.
“This was not going to be an election of business as usual," he said. “Very likely this was going to be an election where Americans would ask themselves, 'How did we get into this sorry mess?' “
Using the elections as a backdrop, Schama set out to answer that very question in his latest project, which airs as a two-part series today and Tuesday on BBC America. The DVD hits stores Tuesday.
The American Future weaves through the nation's interior, exposing conflict and trepidation in a country still fighting to understand itself. Schama traveled the United States over nine months,...
Thursday, January 22, 2009 - 21:52
SOURCE: NYT (1-21-09)
Habbo Knoch, who runs the new Bergen-Belsen Memorial at the former concentration camp, invited various scholars and museum directors to a four-day conference here last week called “Witnessing: Sites of Destruction and the Representation of the Holocaust.” He asked a question one evening during a break: “Will people in 20 years look back and say we built a museum that focuses on Nazi genocide while Darfur was happening? Will they ask whether anyone raised this issue?”
Consider it raised.
The new memorial is an immense concrete and glass museum emerging from a copse of trees beside the cemetery of mass graves (there are more than 70,000 bodies buried there), which had been the camp site. The permanent exhibition is a model of its kind, focused on the meticulous and sober reconstruction of the past. From time to time the present literally intrudes with a bang, though, when practice rounds of tank fire from the British military base next door boom over the treetops...
Consider it raised.
The new memorial is an immense concrete and glass museum emerging from a copse of trees beside the cemetery of mass graves (there are more than 70,000 bodies buried there), which had been the camp site. The permanent exhibition is a model of its kind, focused on the meticulous and sober reconstruction of the past. From time to time the present literally intrudes with a bang, though, when practice rounds of tank fire from the British military base next door boom over the treetops...
Thursday, January 22, 2009 - 19:56
SOURCE: Times (UK) (1-22-09)
At the age of 82 Sir David Attenborough is still looking for adventure. So later this year he will pack his thermals and head back to Antarctica to see how places he has visited in the past have been affected by global warming.
He is not as mobile as he was but, as he points out: “I'm not walking there, I tell you. In the polar regions it's a doddle if you've got all the gear. Got all the gear, no problem.” Then, with the immaculate timing that he has developed over decades of yarn-spinning, he adds: “Until something goes wrong. If you are walking around on a glacier near the South Pole and you lose a glove...” pause for effect... “you've probably lost your hand. It's a serious business.” But just in case anyone should think that he is taking his endeavours too seriously, he notes: “If you've got an aged presenter you have a back-up of really tough, hairy-chested, string-vest men. If he drops his glove they've got another one.”
Sir David continues to be the...
He is not as mobile as he was but, as he points out: “I'm not walking there, I tell you. In the polar regions it's a doddle if you've got all the gear. Got all the gear, no problem.” Then, with the immaculate timing that he has developed over decades of yarn-spinning, he adds: “Until something goes wrong. If you are walking around on a glacier near the South Pole and you lose a glove...” pause for effect... “you've probably lost your hand. It's a serious business.” But just in case anyone should think that he is taking his endeavours too seriously, he notes: “If you've got an aged presenter you have a back-up of really tough, hairy-chested, string-vest men. If he drops his glove they've got another one.”
Sir David continues to be the...
Thursday, January 22, 2009 - 13:07
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (1-21-09)
On August 2, 1788, Thomas Gainsborough lay dying. His last words, reportedly, were, "We are all going to heaven and Van Dyck is of the party." Of course, it is hard to know quite what was in the painter's mind as he slipped away from life, but it is evident that he felt a close link with the Flemish artist Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641), who had then been dead for almost a century and a half.
Gainsborough was not the only English artist to take his cue from Van Dyck. Reynolds, Lawrence, and the master of Edwardian swagger John Singer Sargent all painted at least from time to time in a Van Dyckian mode. The Van Dyck touch can be seen too in, for example, the photography of Cecil Beaton. With a change of outfit, Van Dyck's Dorothy, Viscountess Andover and her Sister Elizabeth, Lady Thimbleby (c1637) would be perfectly at home in the pages of Country Life.
It is not too much to claim that Van Dyck invented a certain English look, which you might call the...
Gainsborough was not the only English artist to take his cue from Van Dyck. Reynolds, Lawrence, and the master of Edwardian swagger John Singer Sargent all painted at least from time to time in a Van Dyckian mode. The Van Dyck touch can be seen too in, for example, the photography of Cecil Beaton. With a change of outfit, Van Dyck's Dorothy, Viscountess Andover and her Sister Elizabeth, Lady Thimbleby (c1637) would be perfectly at home in the pages of Country Life.
It is not too much to claim that Van Dyck invented a certain English look, which you might call the...
Thursday, January 22, 2009 - 12:39
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (1-22-09)
Rochus Misch, 91, who still lives in Berlin was at Hitler's side from 1940 to 1945 and was with the Fuhrer in his bunker in the last days of his life.
Screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie interviewed him as part of research for the film Valkyrie.
But Cruise told the Los Angeles Times: "I didn't want to meet him. Evil is still evil, I don't care how old you are."
In the film Cruise plays Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, who led a failed plot to assassinate Hitler in 1944.
At the time of the plot Misch was an Oberscharfuhrer in the SS and worked as a bodyguard, courier and telephone operator for Hitler.
He travelled with Hitler from bunker to bunker during the Second World War.
On January 16, 1945, following the German defeat in the Battle of the Bulge he moved with Hitler into the Fuhrerbunker in Berlin, where he handled all direct communications with the outside world.
He saw Hitler's body after...
Screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie interviewed him as part of research for the film Valkyrie.
But Cruise told the Los Angeles Times: "I didn't want to meet him. Evil is still evil, I don't care how old you are."
In the film Cruise plays Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, who led a failed plot to assassinate Hitler in 1944.
At the time of the plot Misch was an Oberscharfuhrer in the SS and worked as a bodyguard, courier and telephone operator for Hitler.
He travelled with Hitler from bunker to bunker during the Second World War.
On January 16, 1945, following the German defeat in the Battle of the Bulge he moved with Hitler into the Fuhrerbunker in Berlin, where he handled all direct communications with the outside world.
He saw Hitler's body after...
Thursday, January 22, 2009 - 12:36
SOURCE: International Herald Tribune (1-22-09)
Habbo Knoch, who runs the new Bergen-Belsen Memorial at the former concentration camp, invited various scholars and museum directors to a four-day conference here last week called "Witnessing: Sites of Destruction and the Representation of the Holocaust." He asked a question one evening during a break: "Will people in 20 years look back and say we built a museum that focuses on Nazi genocide while Darfur was happening? Will they ask whether anyone raised this issue?"
Consider it raised.
The new memorial is an immense concrete and glass museum emerging from a copse of trees beside the cemetery of mass graves (there are more than 70,000 bodies buried there), which had been the camp site. The permanent exhibition is a model of its kind, focused on the meticulous and sober reconstruction of the past. From time to time the present literally intrudes with a bang, though, when practice rounds of tank fire from the British military base next door...
Consider it raised.
The new memorial is an immense concrete and glass museum emerging from a copse of trees beside the cemetery of mass graves (there are more than 70,000 bodies buried there), which had been the camp site. The permanent exhibition is a model of its kind, focused on the meticulous and sober reconstruction of the past. From time to time the present literally intrudes with a bang, though, when practice rounds of tank fire from the British military base next door...
Thursday, January 22, 2009 - 12:16
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (1-20-09)
The bazaar at Isfahan has not changed much since it was built in the early 17th century. Nor, one would guess, have the wares on sale – a rich mixture of textiles, metalwork, ceramics, spices and Iranian sweets. One warm afternoon last October I was strolling through it with Neil MacGregor, the director of the British Museum, a group of museum staff, and journalists. After a day packed with visits to mosques, museums and monuments, MacGregor was on a mission to buy a carpet – and there are few better places in the world to do that than the Isfahan bazaar.
MacGregor and his museum are also embarked on a far bigger operation: to present the history and culture of Iran to the British public. In 2005, the BM presented Forgotten Empire, a highly successful show devoted to the ancient Persia of Cyrus and Xerxes. This spring it is following that with another, focusing on the late 16th and early 17th century: Shah Abbas: The Remaking of Iran.
In a way it will present...
MacGregor and his museum are also embarked on a far bigger operation: to present the history and culture of Iran to the British public. In 2005, the BM presented Forgotten Empire, a highly successful show devoted to the ancient Persia of Cyrus and Xerxes. This spring it is following that with another, focusing on the late 16th and early 17th century: Shah Abbas: The Remaking of Iran.
In a way it will present...
Wednesday, January 21, 2009 - 05:37
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (1-20-09)
The house, complete with its miniature furniture and dolls, is one lot in a two-day auction of the private collection of antique dealer Roger Warner, whose shop in Burford, Oxfordshire, attracted an impressive list of visitors and customers including Queen Mary, Princess Margaret, Walt Disney, Peter Ustinov, Bruce Chatwin and the Mitford sisters during its 50 years of service between 1936 and 1986.
The Christie's auction, which also features a piece of lace torn from a church altar by Oliver Cromwell and a desk chair used by William Wordsworth, has attracted 150,000 visitors to the online catalogue - the highest ever for a sale.
Arranged inside a cabinet, the George II four-room "baby house" dates back to 1750 but is said to have been redecorated by Bronte during summer 1839 when she worked as a governess for the Sidgwicks, a wealthy family living at Stonegappe in Skipton, Yorkshire.
Mr Warner is thought to have paid around £400 for it in...
The Christie's auction, which also features a piece of lace torn from a church altar by Oliver Cromwell and a desk chair used by William Wordsworth, has attracted 150,000 visitors to the online catalogue - the highest ever for a sale.
Arranged inside a cabinet, the George II four-room "baby house" dates back to 1750 but is said to have been redecorated by Bronte during summer 1839 when she worked as a governess for the Sidgwicks, a wealthy family living at Stonegappe in Skipton, Yorkshire.
Mr Warner is thought to have paid around £400 for it in...
Tuesday, January 20, 2009 - 10:43
SOURCE: Spiegel Online (1-20-09)
The daughter of Count Stauffenberg, the German hero played by Tom Cruise in the film "Valkyrie," has praised the movie and Germany's culture deputy has called it a success. It's a far cry from the country's initial skepticism about the film.
The youngest daughter of Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, the German army colonel who almost killed Adolf Hitler with a briefcase bomb in 1944, has praised the movie "Valkyrie" in which Tom Cruise portrays her father.
Konstanze von Schulthess-Rechberg, 63, who saw the film ahead of its European premiere in Berlin on Tuesday, said it was "subtle" and "respectful" towards the people involved in the plot to blow up Hitler.
"I went into this film ready to criticize it but I have to say I was very positively surprised by it," she told German ZDF television in an interview broadcast on Tuesday evening. "This is not a loud film and I thought it was very subtly...
The youngest daughter of Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, the German army colonel who almost killed Adolf Hitler with a briefcase bomb in 1944, has praised the movie "Valkyrie" in which Tom Cruise portrays her father.
Konstanze von Schulthess-Rechberg, 63, who saw the film ahead of its European premiere in Berlin on Tuesday, said it was "subtle" and "respectful" towards the people involved in the plot to blow up Hitler.
"I went into this film ready to criticize it but I have to say I was very positively surprised by it," she told German ZDF television in an interview broadcast on Tuesday evening. "This is not a loud film and I thought it was very subtly...
Tuesday, January 20, 2009 - 10:28
SOURCE: The Root (1-17-09)
"Am I gonna be a great man, Mammy?"
"You sho' is, youse gwine be president. The book says anybody here can be president."
"Ain't that somethin'!" p —Sammy Davis Jr. and Ethel Waters in Rufus Jones for President
Before anybody had even heard of Barack Obama, before anyone had even considered his presidency a possibility, it was out there, this notion of a brother as commander in chief. Decades before Dennis Haysbert tried to avert bioterrorist threats on 24. Eons before Morgan Freeman comforted a terrified nation about that massive meteor hurtling toward Earth in Deep Impact. Back, back, way back in the day, Hollywood was ahead of the curve, plugging its candidate for the first black president.
Sammy Davis Jr. Specifically, a 7-year-old Sammy Davis Jr. tap dancing, clutching a chicken wing and singing"(I'll Be Glad When You're Dead) You Rascal You," as part of his acceptance speech in Rufus Jones For President.
Well, it was 1933. But still, with that 21-minute...
Monday, January 19, 2009 - 21:29
SOURCE: MSNBC (1-18-09)
“He will appear in the enchanted garden,” Keith Kaufelt, a docent at the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, Va., says with more certainty than should be warranted (seeing as how the person in question has been dead for 160 years). But on Jan. 19 — the bicentennial birthday of Edgar Allan Poe — the museum hopes to bring the master of mystery, king of rhyme-scheme and inventor of the detective-fiction genre back from the dead.
As part of the 24-hour birthday party, Sandi Bergman (aka Madame Sandra) of Haunts of Richmond will host a Victorian séance at 2 a.m. If all goes according to plan, the terrifyingly twisted writer will enter Madame Sandra’s body, a thought that does not faze her. “I think that Poe, while generally misunderstood, was not a malicious character,” she says.
John Astin, the actor best known for playing the doting husband of Morticia Addams on “The Addams Family,” couldn’t agree more. He’ll be paying tribute to Poe at his Baltimore grave on the...
As part of the 24-hour birthday party, Sandi Bergman (aka Madame Sandra) of Haunts of Richmond will host a Victorian séance at 2 a.m. If all goes according to plan, the terrifyingly twisted writer will enter Madame Sandra’s body, a thought that does not faze her. “I think that Poe, while generally misunderstood, was not a malicious character,” she says.
John Astin, the actor best known for playing the doting husband of Morticia Addams on “The Addams Family,” couldn’t agree more. He’ll be paying tribute to Poe at his Baltimore grave on the...
Monday, January 19, 2009 - 20:59
SOURCE: politico.com (1-18-09)
When Barack Obama stepped into the Oval Office with his presidential brethren recently, he had already agreed to take part in one of this exclusive fraternity’s secret traditions: autographing a limited number of copies of the photograph that captured the moment.
The former, current and future presidents’ pact — to create only 250 copies of the photograph with all of their signatures — upped the ante on an image that was a keepsake before it was even taken.
Early estimates value the signed pictures at more than $6,000 apiece, based on the rarity of such a meeting and how few copies of the photograph will be circulated. That value could push higher when collectors factor in Obama’s popularity and historical significance as the first African-American president.
“You’re going to see these valued and collected and sought after in a similar fashion as the previous ones, and when you’re talking about a president that’s very popular at the moment, that has...
The former, current and future presidents’ pact — to create only 250 copies of the photograph with all of their signatures — upped the ante on an image that was a keepsake before it was even taken.
Early estimates value the signed pictures at more than $6,000 apiece, based on the rarity of such a meeting and how few copies of the photograph will be circulated. That value could push higher when collectors factor in Obama’s popularity and historical significance as the first African-American president.
“You’re going to see these valued and collected and sought after in a similar fashion as the previous ones, and when you’re talking about a president that’s very popular at the moment, that has...
Monday, January 19, 2009 - 20:59
SOURCE: NYT (1-16-09)
BARACK OBAMA’S victory in November demonstrated, to the surprise of many Americans and much of the world, that we were ready to see a black man as president. Of course, we had seen several black presidents already, not in the real White House but in the virtual America of movies and television. The presidencies of James Earl Jones in “The Man,” Morgan Freeman in “Deep Impact,” Chris Rock in “Head of State” and Dennis Haysbert in “24” helped us imagine Mr. Obama’s transformative breakthrough before it occurred. In a modest way, they also hastened its arrival.
Make no mistake: Hollywood’s historic refusal to embrace black artists and its insistence on racist caricatures and stereotypes linger to this day. Yet in the past 50 years — or, to be precise, in the 47 years since Mr. Obama was born — black men in the movies have traveled from the ghetto to the boardroom, from supporting roles in kitchens, liveries and social-problem movies to the rarefied summit of the Hollywood A-...
Monday, January 19, 2009 - 13:11
SOURCE: NYT (1-16-09)
THE first movie that Barack Obama should watch in the White House screening room is a 45-year-old television documentary about John F. Kennedy’s showdown with Gov. George C. Wallace over the court-ordered integration of the University of Alabama.
Called “Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment,” the hourlong film — shot over a two-day period in June 1963, broadcast on ABC four months later and now available on DVD — is worth the new president’s time not so much for its subject matter, which is well worn, but rather as a portrait of what shrewd executive power is all about.
It’s a fascinating piece for anyone interested in American politics. The film’s producer, Robert Drew, and his associates — including Richard Leacock and D. A. Pennebaker, who would soon emerge as major documentary filmmakers in their own right — were given an extraordinary, perhaps unprecedented degree of access to White House decision making.
Called “Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment,” the hourlong film — shot over a two-day period in June 1963, broadcast on ABC four months later and now available on DVD — is worth the new president’s time not so much for its subject matter, which is well worn, but rather as a portrait of what shrewd executive power is all about.
It’s a fascinating piece for anyone interested in American politics. The film’s producer, Robert Drew, and his associates — including Richard Leacock and D. A. Pennebaker, who would soon emerge as major documentary filmmakers in their own right — were given an extraordinary, perhaps unprecedented degree of access to White House decision making.
Monday, January 19, 2009 - 13:10
