A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

John Adams (2008) Written by: Kirk Ellis & Michelle Ashford Based on: John Adams, by David McCullough Directed by: Tom Hooper Starring: Paul Giamatti, Laura Linney, Stephen Dillane, David Morse, Danny Huston, Sarah Polley, Tom Wilkinson, Rufus Sewell, Justin Theroux, Guy Henry On June 16, 2009, HBO Home Entertainment released the DVD and Blu-ray Disc (BD) home media editions of its Emmy-winning miniseries John Adams. Produced by Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman ( Band of Brothers ), this HBO Films/Playtone production is an adaptation of historian David McCullough's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of one of America's most influential yet least understood Founding Fathers and the second President of the United States. Written by Kirk Ellis ( Sons of Liberty, Into the West ) and Michelle Ashford ( Masters of Sex, The Pacific ) and directed by Tom Hooper ( The King's Speech, Elizabeth I ), John Adams originally aired on HBO between March 16 and April 20, 2008, and...

© 1977 Simon and Schuster On September 7, 1977, U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Panamanian General Omar Torrijos signed two treaties,  The Treaty Concerning the Permanent Neutrality and Operation of the Panama Canal and The Panama Canal Treaty, in Washington, D.C. Known as the Carter-Torrijos Treaties, these documents guaranteed Panamanian sovereignty over what had been the U.S.-controlled Panama Canal Zone as of 1979 and sole ownership of the Panama Canal as of December 31, 1999. In essence, these agreements - which were highly controversial in American conservative circles before, during, and even after they were negotiated, signed, and ratified by both countries, replaced the 1903 Hay– Bunau-Varilla Treaty, a document which, in essence, ceded the canal and the land adjacent to it (including islands within the canal itself) to the United States.  Earlier in the year, Simon and Schuster of New York published The Path Between the Seas: The...

American Experience - "Battle of the Bulge: The Deadliest B attle of World War II" Written by: Thomas Lennon and Mark Zwonitzer Directed by: Thomas Lennon Narrated by: David McCullough Date of Original Release: November 9, 1994 On November 9, 1994, over 300 member stations of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) aired  Battle of the Bulge: The Deadliest Battle of World War II, a 90-minute long episode of WGBH Boston's American Experience documentary series. Written by Thomas Lennon and Mark Zwonitzer and directed by Lennon, it is a briskly-paced overview of the Ardennes Counter-Offensive, the biggest land battle of the Western Front in World War II and, as Charles B. MacDonald has dubbed it, the greatest single engagement in the history of the U.S. Army. Planned personally by Adolf Hitler in the late summer and early fall of 1944, the Ardennes Counter-Offensive - code-named by the Germans as Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein ("Operation Watch on the Rhine...

This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.- Franklin D. Roosevelt, first Inaugural address, March 4, 1933 On September 14, 2014, producer-director Ken Burns' The Roosevelts: An Intimate History premiered on PBS. Written by Burns' frequent collaborator Geoffrey C. Ward ( Baseball, The Civil War, The War, and Jazz ), thi...

Pros:  Fine (if sometimes inaccurate) script, great narrator, and always-interesting presentation "We have felt the incommunicable experience of war. We felt - we still feel - the passion of life to its top. In our youths our hearts were touched with fire."   - Oliver Wendell Holmes. On September 23, 1990, just as units of the XVIII Airborne Corps were taking up defensive positions in the desert kingdom of Saudi Arabia as part of Operation Desert Shield in the wake of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the Public Broadcasting Service aired "The Cause," the first of nine episodes of director Ken Burns’  The Civil War . It was an odd juxtaposition - as an almost unbelieving nation was sending the vanguard of what eventually became a 350,000-troop force to war against Saddam Hussein, millions of television viewers were watching what was to become the defining documentary about America’s bloodiest conflict. Although Burns wasn’t an unknown filmmaker...