Tag Archives: movies

To Appomattox – Our Cast

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There’s a Civil War mini series coming in 2015.  Given how amateurish the website is, my expectations are pretty low, but the cast list makes me think it’ll be fantastically acted, at the very least!  There are a lot of Band of Brothers vets here, including the swoonworthy ginger Damian Lewis playing swoonworthy ginger Tecumseh Sherman.  And Neal McDonough’s the perfect choice for casting Joe Hooker’s ice blue eyes.

Band of Brothers, for those who haven’t seen it, tells the tale of the 101st Airborne in WWII.  It is the best historical TV I’ve ever seen, and the cast (then all unknowns, now huge names) was absolutely stellar.  If you feel like straying from the Civil War path for entertainment, this warrants repeated viewings.

To Appomattox – Our Cast.

A Non-Movie Announcement

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I came across an old article that mentioned a movie about the Andrews Raid (aka The Great Locomotive Chase) in the planning stages. It was to be helmed by an up-and-coming director named Cary Fukunaga.  My excitement was snuffed when I found this follow-up article from this past summer:

“I took myself off that project, in the fall of 2011. It’s funny because the project is still out there, I love the story, because I’m really obsessed with the American Civil War. I’ve studied it for many years and I’ve always wanted to do an American Civil War story,” he explained. “I saw an opportunity there to tell an amazing story of The Andrews Raid and the Confederacy, but I think the producer wanted to tell a much more ‘Inglourious Basterds’ complete reinterpretation of history which I didn’t feel comfortable with. I think the history alone was captivating, we didn’t need to invent action scenes.”

Whatever topic he chooses and whenever the film comes out, sign me up for an opening day ticket.

via \\\\\\\’Jane Eyre\\\\\\\’ Director Cary Fukunaga Concerned About “Irreverence For History” & Inaccuracies In \\\\\\\’Django Unchained\\\\\\\’ | The Playlist.

Rivers & Rails, Tonight at 9PM

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Rivers & Rails: Daggers of the Civil War airs on Thursday, December 12th at 9:00 p.m.

I noticed this TV show announcement a few weeks ago; it looks interesting. Hopefully the PBS networks all share broadcast times, as this one was for New Mexico.

…in 1861, those same rivers and rails that had transported prosperity to Tennessee and the South became lifelines for moving men, ammunition and supplies in a war that split the nation. Ultimately whoever controls the rivers and the rails in the Civil War wins the war. This explains why most of the battles in Tennessee took place near the state’s rivers and railways.

 

via Rivers & Rails: Daggers of the Civil War airs on Thursday, the 12th at 9 pm | KENW.

How the “Lincoln” Movie Reconstructed Thaddeus Stevens

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I wasn’t much of a fan of Lincoln, but thoroughly enjoyed Tommy Lee Jones in it. His portrayal of Thaddeus Stevens stole the (dull) show, but this article suggests Stevens’ influence in the Amendment talks was nowhere near as great as the film would have us believe.

For the sake of simplicity, the film also makes Thaddeus Stevens the central radical figure organizing the amendment’s passage, even more so than the measure’s sponsor, Ashley.  This is not how many historians characterize Stevens’s role.  He was an important figure, but probably not the central one in securing passage of the Thirteenth Amendment.  Stevens had only four index entries in Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals (2005), a nearly 800-page book from which the screenplay was adapted.  Stevens plays a somewhat larger role in Michael Vorenberg’s more compact Final Freedom (2001) with seven index entries but even there he is clearly superseded by other figures such as Ashley and Senator Lyman Trumbull (R, IL), who is not even mentioned in the film.  The latest and most comprehensive study of wartime abolition policies –James Oakes’s Freedom National (2012)– contains a mere six index entries for Stevens.

By contrast, Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones) has about 45 speaking parts in the Spielberg film, apparently second only to Abraham Lincoln(Scene 17).  He looms large as a counter-weight to the president  –Lincoln’s near opposite in both style and policy.  Their confrontation in the White House kitchen is one of the movie’s most pivotal scenes and also arguably one of its most historically implausible.  Besides the unlikely setting, scriptwriter Tony Kushner seems to be investing many older –and quite hostile– ideas about Stevens into this conversation which contrasts Lincoln’s calculated, pragmatic approach to Stevens’s rigid, ideological worldview.  He actually has Stevens / Jones saying at one point, in defense of his sweeping plans for revolutionizing the South,  ”Ah, shit on the people and what they want and what they are ready for!  I don’t give a goddamn about the people and what they want!  This is the face of someone who has fought long and hard for the good of the people without caring much for any of ‘em.”

via Blog Divided » Post Topic » How the “Lincoln” Movie Reconstructed Thaddeus Stevens.

To Appomattox

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12 Years a Slave, I’d forgotten about.  To Appomattox, I didn’t even know existed.  My initial happy surprise faded fast when I looked at the cast list.  Rob Lowe as Grant?  Really?  And Noah Wyle (a Civil War buff!) wasted as Pickett?  I love it when movies cast actors who bear a resemblance to the historical figures, but given the casting here, half this production’s costs will be on makeup and prosthetics.

To Appomattox is an upcoming American television eight-hour miniseries centering around the military service of General Ulysses S. Grant, leading up to the surrender of General Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox, which effectively ended the American Civil War in the East. The series begins with Grant as a young boy, then follows his years as a cadet at the United States Military Academy at West Point along with future Civil War officers, the Mexican War, the Civil War years, then the decades following.

via To Appomattox – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Lincoln at Last

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Finally got around to watching Lincoln.  Not quite as engaging as I’d hoped; Day-Lewis’ voice was a treat, but I felt he missed Lincoln’s physicality – every picture of him shows a man with good posture and a strong chest, not a caving-in, slump-shouldered man.  Tommy Lee Jones, though, stole every scene he was in.  I suggest a sequel (or prequel – I’m not fussy) called Stevens.

 

via Lincoln 2012 – Trivia – IMDb.

Making a Tintype

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This video is totally silent, totally modern, and has nothing to do with the Civil War, but it’s still very relevant: This is a start-to-finish, real-time demonstration of how to make a tintype photo, which along with ambrotyping were the main photographic processes during the 1860s.  Fascinating to watch, it makes you realize why there were no action shots taken during the war, and also makes you appreciate how many existing, perfect photos from the period exist.

Making a tintype- First-person point of view using a GoPro – YouTube.

Gettysburg Documentary

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I stumbled across an article that mentioned an Oscar-winning Gettysburg documentary.  Turns out, it’s included as an extra on the decided Oscar-unwinning Gettysburg DVD.  Because the Internet is awesome, you can view the entire thing on YouTube without having to suffer through Tom Berenger and all those fake beards.  It’s narrated by the late, great Leslie Nielsen (who has adopted a strange New England-ish accent for the task) and it’s almost Ken Burns-like in its editing, but with Gettysburg monuments instead of period photographs providing the illustration.

Old Battle of Gettysburg Documentary 1/3 – YouTube.

Thaddeus Stevens on Screen

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Thaddeus Stevens is one of those names of which I know a fair bit, but whose image is always a surprise to me. I wouldn’t be able to pick him out of a lineup, but his onscreen portrayer, Tommy Lee Jones’ wig anecdote might help in future.

“All I knew of Thaddeus Stevens was what an attentive student of American history would have learned in high school or college,” he said. “He was a radical Republican abolitionist with a very severe outlook on Reconstruction,” arguing that the postwar South should be punished like conquered provinces where constitutional restraints would not apply.

What Jones didn’t know was that Stevens had a club foot, lost all his hair and wore a wig cut the same way all around so he wouldn’t have to waste time locating the front. Jones called wearing his impressive toupee just “one of the vicissitudes of acting.”

via In ‘Lincoln,’ Jones found full package.