Videos/Plays

Reviews of videos, movies, and plays.

The Passenger

The Passenger, opera in two acts by Mieczyslaw Weinberg. Libretto by Alexander Medvedev. Based on the novel of the same name by Zofia Posmysz. The Passenger, promoted as “a Holocaust-themed opera,” was written in the Soviet Union by Weinberg during the 1960s but, despite enthusiastic support from Dmitri Shostakovich, had to wait until 2010 to…

Tinseltown Goes to War

I’ve just watched for about the third time the 1962 film, The Longest Day, a great action movie on the Allied invasion of Normandy. Among its several pluses: an all-star male cast, including a young Sean Connery, as well as a brief segment starring a seriously good-looking woman bearing a strong resemblance to Sophia Loren….

Orson Welles and the First Holocaust Movie: A Lasting Legacy

If the pinnacle of the Holocaust Movie genre has been reached, it may have happened in 1993, when Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List garnered seven academy awards and untold millions of dollars in royalties for the film magnate who has since declared that the reason he has honored Planet Earth with a personal visit is to…

West of Memphis

Sony Pictures Classics, 2012, 147 mins. West of Memphis is about the discovery in 1993 of the bodies of three local boys about eight years old, hog-tied, beaten and lacerated, in a marsh in Arkansas about 24 hours after they were last seen alive. The incident has become famous in the aftermath of the trial…

‘Copenhagen’: Uncertainty in Life and in Science

Copenhagen by Michael Frayn. New York: Anchor, 2000. 132 pages. Daniel W. Michaels is a Columbia University graduate (Phi Beta Kappa, 1954) and a Fulbright exchange student to Germany (1957). Now retired after 40 years of service with the U.S. Department of Defense, he writes from his home in Washington, DC. Peter Frayn’s play Copenhagen,…

Disney’s $140 Million Dud

Pearl Harbor. (2001) Genre: film (war, drama). Length: 183 minutes. MPAA rating: PG-13. Starring: Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsale, Alec Baldwin, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Mako, Jon Voight. Director: Michael Bay. Producer: Jerry Bruckheimer. Screenplay: Randall Wallace. Released by: Buena Vista. Grade: D. Scott L. Smith holds a B.A. in history from Idaho State University….

D for History, A for Entertainment

Enemy at the Gates. (2001) Genre: film (war, drama). Length: 131 minutes. MPAA rating: R. Starring: Jude Law, Joseph Fiennes, Ed Harris, Rachel Weisz, Ron Perlman, Gabriel Marshall-Thomson, Matthias Habich. Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud. Producers: Jean-Jacques Annaud, John D. Schofield. Released by: Paramount. Grade: B+. Scott Smith holds a B.A. in history from Idaho State University….

Made-for-TV Movie More Fair than the “War Crimes” Trial It Depicts

““Nuremberg”” (television drama miniseries). Based on the book Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial, by Joseph E. Persico. Screenplay by David Rintels. Produced by Alec Baldwin, Jon Cornick, Gerry Abrams, Suzanne Girard, and Peter Sussman. Directed by Yves Simoneau. Turner Network Television (TNT). Actual running time: 180 minutes (four hours with commercials, in two parts). First segment…

Flawed Documentary of Execution Expert

Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. (1999) Genre: Documentary film. Length: 1 hr. 31 min. MPAA Rating: “PG-13” (www. mrdeath. net). Starring: Fred A. Leuchter, Jr., David Irving, James Roth, Shelley Shapiro, Suzanne Tabasky, Robert-Jan Van Pelt, Ernst Zündel. Director: Errol Morris (www.errolmorris.com). Producers: Dorothy Aufiero, David Collins, Michael Williams….

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