Comments | selenak: American history and British photographers reviewed :)

selenak

American history and British photographers reviewed :)

Feb 06, 2012 12:17

Following advice, I marathoned the John Adams miniseries starring Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney, based on David McCullough's biography. It's really very well made, both performance and script wise, informative for someone like yours truly who had her information about American history from that era from post school secondary sources. Best of all, ( Read more... )

david bailey, we'll take manhattan, review, john adams

Comments 11

likeadeuce February 6 2012, 15:31:31 UTC

I never got around to the Adams film, but it does sound interesting!

Re: Washington & Jefferson and slavery, it might be that the filmmakers assume an American audience would know that about the Virginians without being told, but I don't know the context in the film.

selenak February 6 2012, 15:46:21 UTC

I think you'd like it a lot.

Well, I can't know about what's self evident for an American audience, but if I hadn't read something dealing with the slavery aspect elsewhere, I wouldn't have known about Washington at all and about Jefferson only in the last episode, not when he, Franklin and Adams were discussing the matter in the second one.

abromeds February 6 2012, 19:53:37 UTC

Washington is introduced during a congress between the representatives of the various then-colonies, so his Virginianness is clearly established and yes, most USians would be aware of the implications -- if for no other reason than the line drawn in the sand between the Yankees and Confederates during the Civil War.

Jefferson, OTOH, very VERY famously (to us) owned slaves. There's ongoing debate and speculation about his relationship with one of them -- Sally Hemings, who no doubt was meant to be recognized as the woman crying beside Jefferson's deathbed.

Personally, I appreciated the way the entire issue was handled in John Adams. It wasn't entirely glossed over, but neither was it retconned into a Big Huge Issue that So Many Nice White People were Ever So Concerned About at the time, you know?

lizbee February 6 2012, 19:57:50 UTC

I've seen the first episode of John Adams, and liked it very much (I had just read Barbara Hambly's pseudonymous series about Abigail Adams FIGHTING CRIME, and realised I had no mental pictures at all for pre-revolutionary America), but my favourite part was the Amazon review complaining about feminist revisionism in the portrayal of Abigail as a woman of intelligence and education.

I mean, really.

selenak February 6 2012, 20:12:56 UTC

Seriously? Clearly, the reviewer should be hit on the head with an edition of her letters, which going by the quotes in the series I must read.

lizbee February 6 2012, 20:25:09 UTC

I reached exactly the same conclusion(s).

abromeds February 6 2012, 20:03:12 UTC

Glad you enjoyed John Adams! I think it's about time for me to watch it again...

Speaking of Americana, have you ever seen any Ken Burns documentaries? They are excellent, so if you're ever in the mood to brush up on the Civil War, the Prohibition era, the founding of the national parks, the roots of jazz music, or baseball, I'd highly recommend them. :)

Re: the Bailey film -- oh, what a fabulous way to end! HA! Yes indeed, deserve it he did. :)

selenak February 6 2012, 20:24:45 UTC

No, I haven't, and so noted.

Re: Bailey, he so did.:) Btw, they were good about the soundtrack - it's really all pre Beatles (other than Love Me Do at the end) and British Invasion but post 50s rock and roll explosion. And as opposed to X-Men: First Class, a film I loved dearly but which is also set in 1962 and lets the miniskirt arrive years before schedule, the fashion also fits.

*threadjumps* innocentsmith February 7 2012, 05:04:43 UTC

Ken Burns' The Civil War is an absolute classic - it had the highest ratings of any miniseries ever presented on U.S. public television, and it's been one of the most influential works of documentary filmmaking ever.

I watched it when it came out in 1990 and I remember being absolutely shattered by it. The use of period photography, the weaving together of quotes, the voice acting, the complexity of the historical argument, the broad focus - not just on the leaders, but on the men and women of all races and classes - and the music. I've actually been rewatching it recently, and I swear, if you can watch the end of episode three, which ends with the Emancipation Proclamation, without being moved...I don't even know.

Jazz and Prohibition are also really excellent, and possibly a bit more fun than the bloodshed and tragedy of the Civil War. (And the soundtrack disks for Jazz are pretty fabulous.) But practically any American kid who's studied U.S. history will have seen at least clips from The Civil War, and will recognize the ( ... )

agent_bob February 7 2012, 05:01:39 UTC

Glad you enjoyed John Adams. I find this period in American history vastly fascinating, if only because the forefathers seem so larger than life...sort of like it's hard to imagine Mozart or Aristotle being real people.

Also, I love Constitutional history, so this is right up my alley, but I've never watched the whole thing. I really, really need to.

selenak February 7 2012, 06:58:40 UTC

Well, I don't know about Aristotle, but it's extremely easy with Mozart if you're German or speak German. Out of this world genius not withstanding, there are the witty, vivid and often vulgar letters which are fairly well known, not least because it's a bit of an actor stock in trade to go on tour with a selection of them. (Klaus Maria Brandauer, for example, did a fabulous version and also recorded the entire edition as an audiobook.) But that's another great example of the cultural divide, because as little as you get on American history of the time here, European history of the same era (and Mozart & Adams were contemporaries) is both a matter of pop knowledge and actual school history ( ... )