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Eoraptor1
November 3rd, 2012, 07:07
Is anyone planning to see this? I'm curious as to how Mr. Spielberg will approach the history.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJVuqYkI2jQ

JAMES

PS I'm having trouble linking the video. Has the procedure changed?

brad kaste
November 3rd, 2012, 07:24
I plan to for sure. From what I understand,...the feature movie is based on the book written by Doris Kearns Goodwin "TEAM of RIVALS: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln."

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2199.Team_of_Rivals

arfyhun
November 3rd, 2012, 10:46
James, you tube link works O.K.

Graham.

Dain Arns
November 3rd, 2012, 13:29
PS I'm having trouble linking the video. Has the procedure changed?

Just click the 'Share' button beneath the YT Video you want to share, then the 'Embed' button on the drop down menu that appears.
Copy that code instead, and paste here instead of trying use the forum's YT link feature.
Works better....
(This info is being provided for every one who wants to directly post a YT video to this forum)



<iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/KJVuqYkI2jQ?rel=0" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe>

beana51
November 3rd, 2012, 16:31
I have seen a lot of Lincolns over the years,on stage,in flim,and on TV.All do a good job. most times the Lincoln portrayed are flavored to fit a popular theme of that day. While facts are Facts,an actor or a writer can do things to history!,,Never the less Lincoln was and is a man of the day.Having grown up with the Actor Raymond Massey,who did Lincoln more than anybody else...I settled on that he is my version of the Great Man...Like he is tall;,and homely...no pretty face buried in make up...Massey was the real thing.....When I see or hear him??? Yep! Thats Lincoln......<label for="rb_iconid_7">http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/images/icons/icon7.png</label>


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryYZwg0IbBk&feature=related

glh
November 3rd, 2012, 18:46
I got a copy of the book a few years back at a library book sale and enjoyed the read. Doris Kearns Goodwin is an excellent writer and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Spielberg will do a really good job but I doubt he can cover the complexities of the ambition and desires of all the politicians in 2 hours of a movie.

If you can, read the book. You won't be disappointed if you are a history fan.

EasyEd
November 3rd, 2012, 18:58
Hey All,

I don't go to many movies since the Duke died. I will go see this one.

What we (America) need is another detailing the life and times of the only other President who stands shoulder to shoulder with Washington and Lincoln - Franklin Delano Rooseveldt.

-Ed-

TARPSBird
November 3rd, 2012, 22:11
I definitely plan to see this while it's in the theater.

TeaSea
November 4th, 2012, 04:41
Beana51 makes a very valid point. It is difficult to portray historical figures without being influenced by subsequent events. As a result, many historical persons will be displayed through the prism of the times in which the book, movie, or play is being presented. Lincoln is a good example. Custer is another more easily understood example. He's either displayed as a hero or a martinet depending upon the political and cultural sensitivities of the time of the production. Neither depiction of him will be accurate.

brad kaste
November 4th, 2012, 05:05
A few years back I visited the Lincoln Museum in Springfield, Illinois. Well worth the trip to see if you're in the area. However,...what stunned me was at the end of the tour we stopped off at the gift shop. Shelf after shelf were displayed about the life and times of Abe Lincoln. All by different authors. All for sale. I'm sure a small library could be made from the books written about Lincoln then and now. However,...most of these books were written from information gathered in PREVIOUS books about Lincoln. So yes,.....every and any author can slant things a bit this way or that way if given to do so.

OBIO
November 4th, 2012, 05:42
One thing I read about Lincoln, from a letter written the day he gave the Gettysburg Address by a man who was there, was that he had a small, higher pitched voice and that his voice did not carry very far into the crowd/audience. I always pictured Abe with a big booming voice fitting his physical stature.....but that apparently was not the case.

Tim

Eoraptor1
November 4th, 2012, 07:49
I plan to for sure. From what I understand,...the feature movie is based on the book written by Doris Kearns Goodwin "TEAM of RIVALS: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln."

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2199.Team_of_Rivals


I've read this book as well. I had it on audiobook, but gave it to my dentist, who's a serious American History person. Sometimes we swap audiobooks. He drives long distances, and I don't like the music on the radio. The only talk radio I find listenable is NPR Science Friday, otherwise I can't listen to them for long either, so, I end up "listening" to as many books as I read. I hear a lot about the dumbing-down of America, but I know some really smart people. My doctor is insanely smart, and I had a boss who vacations by digging up pyramids. When business was slow, we'd talk about the Mayans.

There's a huge Lincoln "Industry" for lack of a better word, and I'm curious as to how "reverent" also for lack of a better word, Spielberg's screenplay will be. I remember when some of (Abe's law partner) William Herndon's comments on Lincoln were being cataloged in the 90s, and some controversial allegations were made by Herndon, who literally saw him every work day, and the Lincoln establishment went crazy. I wasn't bothered by them, because I don't believe in worshipping Chief Executives in the first place, but a lot people are still very touchy about Honest Abe, for lots of different reasons.

JAMES

ATTN: Dain Arns,

Thanks, Dain, for that help. You know when The Hobbit comes out nerds are going start calling you Ironfoot, don't you?

Dain Arns
November 5th, 2012, 11:20
ATTN: Dain Arns,

Thanks, Dain, for that help. You know when The Hobbit comes out nerds are going start calling you Ironfoot, don't you?

But I am the King of Erebor.
And happy Billy Connolly is portraying me in film. :icon_lol:

But seriously, I am wondering how much will see of Dain, as he was from the first Appendix in LOTR mainly.
And yes I am looking forward to "The Hobbit".
Dwarves + Hobbit Burglar + Substance Abusing Wizard + Fighting treasure guarding Dragon = Great time had by all.
Adventure!

brad kaste
November 5th, 2012, 15:24
One thing I read about Lincoln, from a letter written the day he gave the Gettysburg Address by a man who was there, was that he had a small, higher pitched voice and that his voice did not carry very far into the crowd/audience. I always pictured Abe with a big booming voice fitting his physical stature.....but that apparently was not the case.

Tim


General Geo. Patton also had a high pitched voice,....like Lincoln. Never underestimate men who have high pitched voices.

Eoraptor1
November 7th, 2012, 06:33
But I am the King of Erebor.
And happy Billy Connolly is portraying me in film. :icon_lol:

But seriously, I am wondering how much will see of Dain, as he was from the first Appendix in LOTR mainly.
And yes I am looking forward to "The Hobbit".
Dwarves + Hobbit Burglar + Substance Abusing Wizard + Fighting treasure guarding Dragon = Great time had by all.
Adventure!

I'm glad to have pleased you, Oh, King Under the Mountain.

JAMES

Dain Arns
November 7th, 2012, 10:46
General Geo. Patton also had a high pitched voice,....like Lincoln. Never underestimate men who have high pitched voices.

Well, General George Armstrong Custer was said to have a shrill and high pitched voice too.
But in his case he underestimated the amount of his "combatants" that were in their camps, and overestimated himself at the Little Big Horn. :isadizzy:

(What? Too soon?) :icon_lol:

Eoraptor1
November 7th, 2012, 18:53
Well, General George Armstrong Custer was said to have a shrill and high pitched voice too.
But in his case he underestimated the amount of his "combatants" that were in their camps, and overestimated himself at the Little Big Horn. :isadizzy:

(What? Too soon?) :icon_lol:

He also divided his force in the face of an enemy whose disposition was unknown, or at least whose disposition he refused to believe. If I have him right, his big worry was that they'd scatter and deny him a decisive engagement, as they had done over and over. If my view of the engagement's timeline is correct, by the time Custer made his advance, Reno and Benteen's commands were already in disarray. He was several kinds of screwed.

I think something that's easy for us to forget with our cellphones is that back in the day there was nothing like modern command and control. Also, and this plays into Custer's decision making, the limited number of officers who got promotion post-Civil War, were the ones who aggressively engaged the "hostiles" in the field, so from Custer's point of view, he couldn't have done other than he did. Crazy Horse thought differently.

JAMES

RedGreen
November 7th, 2012, 20:01
Ah, General George Custer, one of Michigan's most famous men. If only he was less known for Little Big Horn and more known for preventing a Confederate flanking maneuver on the third day at Gettysburg. :salute:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gettysburg,_Third_Day_cavalry_battles

Eoraptor1
November 16th, 2012, 09:48
Okay. I did go to see the movie today at a matinee using the free pass I got last week. There was a good crowd there, too. Very polite. Twenty minutes into the film, however, the digital projector broke down and we all ended up filing out to the ticket office to get refunds and/or free movies passes. So I still haven't seen Lincoln, and definitely won't get to see it before next week. I hope I can go Monday, but that's still up in the air. What I did see of the movie reminded me very much of the opening of Saving Private Ryan, or even Kenneth Brannagh's Battle of Agincourt from Henry V. I can say no more, other than the film runs two hours and forty minutes, so drink your fluids accordingly.

JAMES

Eoraptor1
November 20th, 2012, 11:36
Alright. I finally saw it. Note: there were a full half-hour of previews before the feature began, and mean a full 30 min. I was wearing my indiglo Timex watch.

I'll stay clear of any major revelations for members who might still see the movie, but this the SOH membership, so I feel I can safely assume the majority of you will know the basic facts surrounding the US Civil War. The official government name for the conflict is The War of the Rebellion. President Lincoln was an lawyer by trade, and part of the way he justified his assumption of truly imperial war powers is by denying to existence of the Confederate States of America as a legal entity. That way, he could point to "inherent" powers of the Chief Executive in times of "insurrection or rebellion". In the South (even now) the war was called The War for Southern Independence, or The War of Northern Aggression. This is important in the film, as it was in history. Mr. Speilberg does not (to his credit) try to film the entirety of Doris Kearns Goodwin's rather long book, Team of Rivals. Instead, the film begins after Lincoln has won his second term as President, and the Federal Army is mustering for its assault on Wilmington. In a single sentence, the film is about how President Lincoln, with the aid of a cabinet whose every memeber believed they would make a better president than he, forged the coalition to push the 13th Amendment through a factious lame-duck Congress.

Daniel Day Lewis' portrayal of Abraham Lincoln is different than any I've seen before, and I've seen lots, including the Hall of Presidents at Walt Disney World. I'd say the closest would be Sam Waterston's portrayal in the TV movie based on Gore Vidal's Lincoln. The stentorian voice we see in almost ever movie on this subject is gone, replaced by a (yes) higher-pitched midwestern twang. His movements are (there's no other word for it) gangly, a folksy version of Ichabod Crane. I saw Doris Kearns Goodwin on television over the weekend, and she maintains that this was him, according to every eyewitness description. Lincoln is also portrayed as very funny. I laughed out loud on more than one occassion, as did everyone else in the audience. What really surprised me was how funny Tommy Lee Jones' portrayal of "radical" abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens was. I had always pictured Mr. Stevens as a very severe fire-breathing type, which is sometimes, in the movie, but he's just as often laugh-out-loud funny. I would suppose these men would have to develop a very strong sense of humor just to handle what they were dealing with. There's a brutal hand-to-hand combat scene at the begining of the movie, followed by a very clever recitation of the Gettysburg Address by federal soldiers. There's also a limb dump outside an Army hospital being visited by President Lincoln and his oldest son Robert - not a body dump - a mass grave just for severed limbs. This film will be nominated for Academy Awards in Production Design, Costumes, and Cinematography, but I have no idea as to what it will win.

I don't see how the film, witihin its time constraints, could have been any more comprehensive. As it was, it ran two hours and forty minutes, but I do have my quibbles. This doesn't particularly bother me; picking nits is part of the enjoyment for me. IMO the film does a good job of portraying the interests of the various members of Congress who have to be wooed, bribed, or intimidated into making Emancipation. It does an especially good job in capturing the panic experienced by certain of the participants at the prospect of ex-slaves obtaining the vote, which they view as a thin-entering-wedge ending in all sorts of ungodly, anarchistic nonsense, like suffrage for women. Not trying to be funny here. See the movie; this is what they say. One scene that doesn't appear that I'd have liked to have seen is "Why did John Wilkes Booth kill Abraham Lincoln?" That is not a rhetorical question. One of my quibbles is how Lincoln is repeatedly told how much and how deeply he is "loved" by the people, when the truth was he was loved by some of the people, and just as equally despised by others, and I'm talking about Northerners here.

Sally Fields' Mary Todd Lincoln is perhaps the most sympathetic protrayal of this very troubled person I've seen in a movie. She had several very serious problems, such as blinding migraine headaches, dizzying mood swings, bouts of depression (as did Lincoln) and appears to have been what today would be called a "shopaholic" which any of you who've ever met one know is a very serious disorder in and of itself. One year I heard a very persuasive argument on C-SPAN2 that Mrs. Lincoln was suffering from a particular form of diabetes that was poorly understood at the time. I took care of a cancer survivor who was also diabetic and who became more and more demented as she aged, so I was paying very close attention, but a whole slew of my relatives picked that moment to drop by, so I never got the name of the author.

I think that's enough, until more members have had a chance to see the movie.

JAMES


PS Another note: at my local multiplex, Lincoln was playing on a single screen, while Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Part 2 was playing on four. I don't know what that means, if anything.

Odie
November 20th, 2012, 13:15
"PS Another note: at my local multiplex, Lincoln was playing on a single screen, while Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Part 2 was playing on four. I don't know what that means, if anything. "

I can only speak for my wife and myself, but History, as a subject matter about anything, never appealed to either of us until we got into our late 40's and early 50's (age-wise). Suddenly,
the past was interesting and no matter what the subject matter (WW1 & 2, Civil War, Industrial age, etc.) we found ourselves reading and watching more of that programming than
anything else. It may be an age thing, because when we were younger, we were too busy working, raising a family, and doing life-chores that we were more concerned with getting a good
night's sleep and getting to work the next day than finding out about the past.

My son is 28 years old, married, and has a new addition on the way and I see and hear in his conversations with me, a lot of how my wife and I must've been when we were that age.

Thanks for the review of the film...it's on the list to see.

Eoraptor1
November 20th, 2012, 17:49
"PS Another note: at my local multiplex, Lincoln was playing on a single screen, while Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Part 2 was playing on four. I don't know what that means, if anything. "

I can only speak for my wife and myself, but History, as a subject matter about anything, never appealed to either of us until we got into our late 40's and early 50's (age-wise). Suddenly,
the past was interesting and no matter what the subject matter (WW1 & 2, Civil War, Industrial age, etc.) we found ourselves reading and watching more of that programming than
anything else. It may be an age thing, because when we were younger, we were too busy working, raising a family, and doing life-chores that we were more concerned with getting a good
night's sleep and getting to work the next day than finding out about the past.

My son is 28 years old, married, and has a new addition on the way and I see and hear in his conversations with me, a lot of how my wife and I must've been when we were that age.

Thanks for the review of the film...it's on the list to see.

In my family some of our young people are very interested in history, and others are more interested in texting their friends about Basketball Wives. We also have quite a few people working in education, as well as a good number of veterans. For most of my life, if I wanted to know what the Pacific War against Japan was like, I could just ask one of my uncles who was there. My father spoke Japanese, fluently. I'm not lying when I say "Why did Gen. Lee launch that attack on the third day at Gettysburg?" was regular dinner conversation for me growing up. So, maybe I'm not the most representative example; I really don't know. I just think it's dangerous for young people to come up thinking ahistorically, and especially bad in a democracy. I do hear what you're saying, however. I have friends who spend 2-3 hours a day just getting to work and back. This doesn't leave a lot of time for comparing and contrasting first-person historical narratives if you've got to get up in the morning and get the kids off to school. I listen to a lot of audiobooks. I don't like a lot of what's on the radio anyway so that really works for me. Anyway, now I'm starting to ramble, so I thank you for your sentiments. If you have the time, please post your impressions of the film. I'd be interested in hearing what you thought.

JAMES