Here, in its entirety, is a short documentary film from the Civil Defense Agency that figured very prominently in my childhood. That's primarily because I lived through the Huntsville, Alabama portion of it. The quality of the film is not great (it wasn't even by 1970s standards!) and some of the re-enactments using the acutal participants are unintentionally humorous but the event it records - the 1974 Super Outbreak - was dreadfully serious. 148 tornadoes (the most ever in a single weather event) struck the Ohio and Tennessee River valleys in a single day, killing 330 people.
This next section includes the town of Xenia, Ohio, which was virtuallly erased by an F-5 tornado that day. It concludes with extensive actual footage from the Huntsville area.
The Huntsville material - and the film - concludes here:
More detailed information on the Super Outbreak is available at http://www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov/storms/
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Preview - The War (A+)
If you know much about me, you know I take documentary film fairly seriously. I plan to take this one very seriously.
Director and producer Ken Burns is the gold standard for documentary filmmaking for innumerable reasons. But the greatest, I believe, is his ability to blend the overtly empathetic and endlessly analytical halves of his nature and his approach to history into a balanced whole. It's the reason I admire him (and "admire" is a word I rarely use).
Burns has taken a departure in making this 14-hour film, one that has created much anticipation. The War uses only firsthand participants as interview subjects. There are no professional talking heads, no historians providing Monday morning quarterbacking, and no celebrity generals on-screen. Burns says, "You either had to be fighting in the war or waiting for someone you loved to come home from the war to make it into this film."
Much as he followed the lives of several "regular" people in his The Civil War and sprinkled the film with quotes from their memoirs, Burns here picked four cities from four corners of the U.S. in which to find common folk and highlights the telling of the war with their perspectives. It should be fascinating to see how a handful of American GIs and their loved ones - from Mobile, AL; Luverne, MN; Westbury, CT; and Sacramento, CA - touched every aspect and theater of the war, both at home and afar.
The team behind this film distilled thousands of hours of footage into this product. Most of it has never been seen before. Some of it was kept hidden because it was considered too frightening and graphic in those times and because it didn't portray flawless American prosecution of the fighting. But it conveys a reality that does more to honor the memories of the combatants than any sanitized movie from the 1940s ever did. Virtually all the veterans in this project say that, finally, someone's "got it right."
Here is a half-hour preview/behind-the-scenes featurette from PBS.
Just the concept of the project strikes a chord in me and I've gotten a bit emotional at the thought of it.
Please make every effort to watch The War beginning Sunday, September 23 and ending Tuesday, October 2 on all PBS stations. If you can't make it that week, most markets will be running it again beginning October 3.
Here is the Alabama Public Television schedule for The War.
Director and producer Ken Burns is the gold standard for documentary filmmaking for innumerable reasons. But the greatest, I believe, is his ability to blend the overtly empathetic and endlessly analytical halves of his nature and his approach to history into a balanced whole. It's the reason I admire him (and "admire" is a word I rarely use).
Burns has taken a departure in making this 14-hour film, one that has created much anticipation. The War uses only firsthand participants as interview subjects. There are no professional talking heads, no historians providing Monday morning quarterbacking, and no celebrity generals on-screen. Burns says, "You either had to be fighting in the war or waiting for someone you loved to come home from the war to make it into this film."
Much as he followed the lives of several "regular" people in his The Civil War and sprinkled the film with quotes from their memoirs, Burns here picked four cities from four corners of the U.S. in which to find common folk and highlights the telling of the war with their perspectives. It should be fascinating to see how a handful of American GIs and their loved ones - from Mobile, AL; Luverne, MN; Westbury, CT; and Sacramento, CA - touched every aspect and theater of the war, both at home and afar.
The team behind this film distilled thousands of hours of footage into this product. Most of it has never been seen before. Some of it was kept hidden because it was considered too frightening and graphic in those times and because it didn't portray flawless American prosecution of the fighting. But it conveys a reality that does more to honor the memories of the combatants than any sanitized movie from the 1940s ever did. Virtually all the veterans in this project say that, finally, someone's "got it right."
Here is a half-hour preview/behind-the-scenes featurette from PBS.
Just the concept of the project strikes a chord in me and I've gotten a bit emotional at the thought of it.
Please make every effort to watch The War beginning Sunday, September 23 and ending Tuesday, October 2 on all PBS stations. If you can't make it that week, most markets will be running it again beginning October 3.
Here is the Alabama Public Television schedule for The War.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Book - Robert E. Lee: A Biography (A-)
Author: Emory M. Thomas
Thomas is ambitious but ultimately correct in proclaiming his compelling Lee biography a post-revisionist portrait. He attempts (with admirable success) to balance his respect for Lee's character and ability (without Douglas Freeman's blatant worship and apocryphal stories) with honest accounts of his faults and contradictions (minus the carping of Connelly's 'The Marble Man' and Nolan's 'Lee Considered'). In the process, Thomas has captured as much as any writer is able the humanness of Lee.
I was struck throughout the book by events and words that mirror my own aspirations and failures. I think the highest praise I can offer Thomas's book is that this avid Lee fan and Civil War buff felt like he had met Robert E. Lee for the first time.
Final score: A-
Thomas is ambitious but ultimately correct in proclaiming his compelling Lee biography a post-revisionist portrait. He attempts (with admirable success) to balance his respect for Lee's character and ability (without Douglas Freeman's blatant worship and apocryphal stories) with honest accounts of his faults and contradictions (minus the carping of Connelly's 'The Marble Man' and Nolan's 'Lee Considered'). In the process, Thomas has captured as much as any writer is able the humanness of Lee.
I was struck throughout the book by events and words that mirror my own aspirations and failures. I think the highest praise I can offer Thomas's book is that this avid Lee fan and Civil War buff felt like he had met Robert E. Lee for the first time.
Final score: A-
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