Film, culture, history
“Economics and reason alone do not rule history.” says Reginald C Stuart in The Halfway Pacifist.
Reginald C. Stuart may present Thomas Jefferson as an idealistic dreamer who is out of touch with human nature, an “Anglophobe” and even a “fatherly” despot, but one gets the feeling that Stuart likes Jefferson despite everything.
Continue reading “Thomas Jefferson seen through Canadian eyes”
When I first saw Kung Fu Panda 2, I was under the impression that it was banned in China. I thoroughly enjoyed watching Po battle the evil peacock, but the “news” affected what I saw on screen.
If you’ve been following show business “news”, you know that China has been accused of banning American films. Continue reading “Kung Fu Panda 2: review”
Back in 1997, when a Balanced Budget amendment was put forth by the US Senate, the Committee on the Judiciary quoted Thomas Jefferson almost from the start.
Towards the top of Senator Orrin Hatch’s report it affirms that “the public debt is one of the greatest dangers to be feared by a republican government.”
On September 3 this year, another politician claimed that Jefferson saw a balanced budget amendment as the solution, and his aids had the quote to prove it.
Continue reading “Did Jefferson support a Balanced Budget amendment?”
On screenjunkies.com, Honora James made a list of the top ten “English historical movies”, whatever that means. Not only did Honora list a flick about a Scot as the top “English movie”, but she left out a few of the treasures that show the Sceptred Isle in its true splendor.
So, I’ve made my own list of great motion pictures that tell us about the history of Britain. Continue reading “Ten great British history films.”
Watching Gods and Generals feels more like a reading a history book than watching a movie. I don’t mean because the film is so long (the version I saw was three and a half hours. *), nor is it because there are so many words thrown across the screen. Continue reading “Gods and Generals: Review”
In the Spongebob Squarepants film, Patrick looks at the icons on his underwear and realizes that he indeed worships the Goofy Goober. He and his friend Spongebob are not only fans of the fictional peanut, they live for him.
The more I read the news, the more I see accusations that we “worship” Jefferson, or at least hold him in too high esteem. One came from British pop-historian who teaches at Columbia. Now, there’s a guy who writes for the Arizona daily star who makes a similar assertion.
Is nationality the fruit of a family tree?
The Cherokee have voted to exclude those who are not on the 1906 Dawes Roll from their tribe. Yahoo News emphasizes the fact that the some descendants of slaves will lose their Cherokee “citizenship.”
Continue reading “What is a Cherokee? (updated 12 September)”
It has been ten years since a small group of men hijacked a few planes and flew themselves into buildings. Their cause appears to have been a religious one.
But we forget that millions of other people with the same religion don’t fly planes into buildings. More significantly than that, other men flew themselves into buildings afterwards, and their cause was not a religious one. Continue reading “Does religion cause war?”
If you had enough money to buy a nice sports car, a small summer home, or to have a second hand language lesson, which would you choose?
Obviously, someone who went to a recent auction chose the language lesson. But that’s not all they bought. Continue reading “Napoleon’s 93,125 Euro (£80,636.90) English lesson”
In film school, we usually learn to shoot without dialogue. Historians nostalgically look back to the silent era. Purists, like Hitchcock, have complained that today’s movies are too talky.
But aren’t we a bit hard on dialogue? Even Eisenstein, the famous Russian formalist known for his silent “montage”, saw it’s uses.