A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

(C) 2007 Sony BMG Music Entertainment/Sony Legacy Records and Florentine Films On September 26, 2007, 300 or so Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) member stations in the United States aired A Necessary War, the first episode of Ken Burns’ seven-part   documentary series about the American experience in World War II. A bottom-up story told mainly by the residents – civilians and military veterans – of four quintessentially American towns (Waterbury, CT, Mobile, AL, Luverne, MN, and Sacramento, CA), The War: A Ken Burns Film – unlike British ITV’s The World at War – focuses primarily on personal experiences, with more intimate reminisces about the human experience of war instead of discussions about tactics, grand strategy, and Big Power politics. The War was originally scheduled to air on September 15, 2007, but protests by Latino and Native American advocates about Burns’ emphasis on stories told by white and African American interviewees at the expense of their narrative cause

(C) 2007 Sony BMG Music Entertainment I'm Beginning to See the Light (Original 1945 Recording) On September 11, 2007, Sony BMG Music Entertainment’s Legacy label released The War: I’m Beginning to See the Light – Dance Hits from the Second World War. “Dropped” to precede the premiere broadcast of Ken Burns’ The War: A Ken Burns Film, this 20-track album was one of four Sony soundtrack recordings tied in to Burns’ 14-hour-long World War II documentary. (The other discs were The War: A Film by Ken Burns – Original Soundtrack; Songs Without Words – The War; and The War: Sentimental Journey: Hits from The Second World War ) Culled from several recordings made in the 1930s and 1940s, The War: I’m Beginning to See the Light – Dance Hits from the Second World War showcases some of the best jazz and swing music ever composed. Some of the greats from the Big Band era – Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, Count Basie, Tommy Dorsey, Coleman Hawkins, and Benny Goodman – are hea