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Chernabog posted:I started watching the "Nova: Science now" documentaries with Neil deGrasse on Netflix. They are a little cheesy but there's some cool stuff in them, and they are pretty recent. So far I have seen the one about the future and the one about extending human life. Big fan of Neil myself. He did a pretty good job with The Pluto Files which explores a bit of the discussion around whether or not Pluto ought to be considered a planet within our solar system.
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Jun 18, 2011 03:47
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mobby_6kl posted:I'd like to point out that Fog of War is also available on youtube and is one of the best things ever: I found this utterly fascinating. It's well produced, and Robert McNamara seems pretty candid about his experiences and his motivations. I think it's easy to look through the lens of a history book and lose the humanity of the people involved, with all the fallibility and the contradictions and the mistakes and the intentions that go with it; this definitely makes me look at McNamara more as a person than as a figurehead in relation to the world around him at the time. It also makes me think LBJ was a son of a bitch and it's an utter tragedy we lost JFK.
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Aug 10, 2014 20:55
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"The Vietnam War" by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick premieres tonight, Sept. 17th on PBS with a new episode every night. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWFzaUlZz-k&hd=1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XS811-ZDB8&hd=1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPTKLuMWijU&hd=1 ---------------------------------------- TONIGHT: Episode 1: Deja Vu (1858 - 1961) The first installment of a 10-part, 18-hour history of the Vietnam War. After a long and brutal war, Vietnamese revolutionaries led by Ho Chi Minh end nearly a century of French colonial occupation. With the Cold War intensifying, Vietnam is divided in two at Geneva. Communists in the north aim to reunify the country, while America supports Ngo Dinh Diem's untested regime in the south. ---------------------------------------- Looking forward to this; I haven't focused much on the Vietnam War since I took a college course on it over a decade ago, so this should be an interesting watch; may need it's own thread to handle discussion. Reviews seem pretty positive: Vox: The brilliant, infuriating, boring, hypnotic Ken Burns documentary The Vietnam War - The documentarian’s latest miniseries for PBS is a staggering achievement — and maybe his best work. Washington Post: Yes, America, PBS’s ‘The Vietnam War’ is required viewing — all 18 hours of it
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Sep 17, 2017 16:48
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MonsieurChoc posted:Is there a way to watch it online for us canadians? PBS suggests some options will be available; I checked Amazon (Prime user) and was able to pre-order Episode 101 for $0.00 currently, with similar options showing on the other sites. Not sure if just the first EP will be free or the whole thing, but I imagine it'll be a good way to figure out if you'd want to put up cash for it. I watch Civil War about once a year it feels like so I've definitely gotten my money's worth there. Mo_Steel fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Sep 17, 2017 |
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Sep 17, 2017 19:18
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I thought this first episode was good; it makes me hate basically every leader involved from the French to the Communists to the U.S. to the various Vietnamese leaders. To me the whole leadup rings of the saying that "everyone is the hero of their own story". The French leaders probably thought they were right to try and re-establish their colony so they could fund reconstructing their own war torn nation and after all other nations still had colonies; Ho Chi Minh clearly felt he was in the right in fighting for the independence of his nation, and amazingly I found a lot of sympathy for him. The Communists saw their struggle as a push back on the colonialism and exploitation of capitalism; the U.S. saw itself as defending freedom and protecting it's allies. They all seem to have been so sure they were in the right. Actual history aside: I thought the production was well done, but I hope they stop with the stereotypical vietnam war scream thing. They played it at least 6 times there, and it was pulling me out of the film.
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Sep 18, 2017 02:44
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Ho Chi Minh was right, though. I'm inclined to agree; his country should've been independent of the French colonial powers. I think that's easier to see now than it was then however; a lot of bloodshed could've been avoided if the U.S. had supported his push against the French instead of being so afraid of Communism, but that's easy to say now when we know the outcome is that "scary Communism" isn't going to take over the world. gently caress Domino Theory forever though good lord what a lovely foreign policy doctrine.
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Sep 18, 2017 02:48
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Yeah Civil War is maybe one of the most moving things I've ever watched. The primary narrator's voice (and all the other narrators really) is basically perfect at sending shivers down my spine with the gravity of the events being described; at times romantic about valor, tragic about wholesale grotesque slaughter, the series does a good job of also focusing on more common individuals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0C-euAyCTU Mo_Steel fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Sep 18, 2017 |
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Sep 18, 2017 03:57
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Mahoning posted:Uhhhhh, so PBS dropped ALL of the episodes of The Vietnam War on the PBS app. You can watch the entire series right now. drat. Going to stick with one a night myself, that's way too much to marathon and appreciate.
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Sep 18, 2017 18:20
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I started the episode a bit early tonight: THE VIETNAM WAR EPISODE 2: “Riding the Tiger” (1961-1963) - Watch it here "As a communist insurgency gains strength, JFK wrestles with American involvement in South Vietnam."  ------------ As this episode moved along, the feeling I got was of a pot of water on a stove: that moment when you start to see bubbles start to stream up around the edges, slowly and then faster and faster. The story right at the start is a good gut punch to get you settled in for over an hour of basically misery. I'm glad they included details about the civil rights movement and the Cuban Missile crisis because it helps demonstrate how these things don't happen in a vacuum. I can also see pretty clearly why people drew parallels between Iraq / Afghanistan and Vietnam and drat there was some real wishful thinking about how things were going with respect to "pacification" and training their fighters and it'll be over in 6 months. Nhu's wife's statements about the Buddhists made my jaw drop god drat. The sound and music direction has been really on point, with the foreboding tracks overlaying some of the scenes really accentuating the events: the music as they laid out Ap Bac was foreboding, and it's clear it marked a turn in how things were going that some didn't want to see.
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Sep 19, 2017 01:37
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It's Tuesday and we're in Vietnam... THE VIETNAM WAR EPISODE 3: “The River Styx” (January 1964-December 1965) - Watch it here "With South Vietnam near collapse, LBJ begins bombing the North and sends US troops to the South." Rather than the picture they included of the LBJ administration thinking about Vietnam, I will be submitting this image:  ------------ I appreciate how much they're focusing on soldiers and civilians from both sides of the war; it's something I always really liked about the Civil War documentary because it helped anchor the war as something real and tangible and impactful instead of abstracts about just place names and dates and winners and losers. The French now arguing to get out of it seemed real loving rich all things considered. The rapidity of the escalation, and the lying about it to the American people is really disheartening to watch unfold. LBJ reasoning that he couldn't back out seems to me is bullshit to protect his pride: they lied about how easy it would be to win and how things were going, and now caught in that lie decided feeding tens of thousands more into the war was easier than admitting they had lied. gently caress his complaining about reporters telling the truth. Not to tie too closely to today (because I hope desperately that America as a country is more skeptical of it's leaders now) but it makes me worry about the rhetoric and tone and our stance with North Korea. The story of Jim Nakayama is bone chilling.  gently caress. Just... gently caress.
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Sep 20, 2017 03:03
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"War is hell, but Contact is a mother fucker." - --- .-. - ..- .-. . THE VIETNAM WAR EPISODE 4: “Resolve (January 1966-June 1967) - Watch it here "Defying American airpower, North Vietnamese troops and materiel stream down the Ho Chi Minh Trail into the south, while Saigon struggles to “pacify the countryside.” As an antiwar movement builds back home, hundreds of thousands of soldiers and Marines discover that the war they are being asked to fight in Vietnam is nothing like their fathers’ war." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zLfCnGVeL4 ------------ Tonight we continued to feed meat into a grinder, escalating the war. The lack of clear objectives turning to a focus on kill count is grim, and the fact that South Vietnam continued fighting amongst itself while the U.S. stepped up the war effort casts it all quite dismally. With no goal or aim for victory but slaughter and seemingly no real allies it's astounding that Westmoreland felt all he needed was more men, bombs and years. The prevailing echo in South Vietnam seems to be that Buddhists get right hosed for actually being on the right side of things as simple as wanting representation. The coverage of how just dropping bombs without ground forces to follow up did little to impede North Vietnam and in fact probably just pushed more people to their cause is sobering, and ought be remember forever. Dr. Ben Spock echoed my sentiments from last episode that this poo poo sandwich seems to be a lot of lives thrown away to spare the dignity of leaders making lovely decisions. Less focus on the aspects of North Vietnamese leadership this episode; whether that's from a lack of knowledge about the inner workings at this moment or a desire to focus more on the American ramp up I'm unsure. I feel like more pain is still to come for Mogie's family, as the country itself splits more over the war to come. 
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Sep 21, 2017 02:46
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Thanks for ruining a sweet rear end name like "Tiger Force"... THE VIETNAM WAR EPISODE 5: ““This Is What We Do” (July 1967-December 1967) - Watch it here "American casualties and enemy body counts mount as Marines face deadly North Vietnamese ambushes and artillery south of the DMZ and Army units chase an elusive enemy in the central highlands. Hanoi lays plans for a massive surprise offensive, and the Johnson Administration reassures the American public that victory is in sight."  ------------ Lot of hard stories to listen to tonight. Musgrave saying in order to be prisoners the Vietnamese soldiers had to make it to the back, and him struggling to find a way to explain it so that it "makes sense" was hard to watch, because even as I feel like I'm understanding more each episode about what a lovely experience it was I can see that without having been there maybe no words or pictures would be enough to really put me in that place or time, to really understand. Maybe even to Musgrave at the time it didn't "make sense"; maybe there was no sense about it. Listening to him being pulled out by his fellow soldiers and then repeatedly passed over as basically a dead man was harrowing. The antiwar movement starts pressing; I don't remember hearing about the march on the Pentagon but that must've been something amazing to see. I'll be curious to see if they interviewed John McCain for this series, as we saw video of him post-capture tonight. And of course, the NV make ready a huge move for the Tet Offensive. Episode 6 will play on the 24th, so if you haven't been hammering these nightly you've got a chance to catch up now. We're halfway through and I would highly recommend the series thus far; difficult, troubling, but important and well produced.
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Sep 22, 2017 01:13
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"Living is the difficult thing." THE VIETNAM WAR EPISODE 6: “Things Fall Apart” (January 1968-July 1968) - Watch it here "On the eve of the Tet holiday, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launch surprise attacks on cities and military bases throughout the south, suffering devastating losses but casting grave doubt on Johnson’s promise that there is “light at the end of the tunnel.” The president decides not to run again and the country is staggered by assassinations and unrest." The image they chose for this episode was alright, but given that this is one of the most famous images of the war and came up tonight I'm going with this one; the video clip shown tonight was about a thousand times more brutal, be forewarned:  Execution of Nguyễn Văn Lém------------ The Tet Offensive must surely have been hell on earth for all involved; listening to Bill talk about what he did in Hue, the fighting in Saigon, all of it sounded just terrifying. I had a particularly hard time listening to the elderly woman talk about how she shot a U.S. soldier with her AK; this is a woman who at the time was probably quite young, and now resembles my grandmother. The massacre by retreating VC and NVA was equally disturbing, whether planned or just panic, 2800 "hooligans and reactionaries" essentially slaughtered. LBJ not seeking re-election was probably astounding; I can scarcely imagine it happening today. The deaths of MLK and Robert Kennedy were loving tragedies for this nation. The narrator echoed my feeling: between the wars, and the nuclear arms race, and civil unrest, and assassinations; for people living at the time it must've surely felt the world was going to spin itself into a billion pieces. This was Episode 6, and by the end of it I felt like "well good people are awake now so we can wrap up this stupidity. and senseless loss of life." Seven more years to go. Mo_Steel fucked around with this message at 03:53 on Sep 25, 2017 |
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Sep 25, 2017 03:51
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"Knowing you're going to die... is liberating." THE VIETNAM WAR EPISODE 7: “The Veneer of Civilization” (June 1968-May 1969) - Watch it here "Public support for the war declines, and American men of draft age face difficult decisions and wrenching moral choices. After police battle with demonstrators in the streets of Chicago, Richard Nixon wins the presidency, promising law and order at home and peace overseas. In Vietnam, the war goes on and soldiers on all sides witness terrible savagery and unflinching courage."  ------------ Tonight's episode reminds me in many ways of a maxim from the Civil War: "Rich man's war; poor man's fight." Repeated stories of soldiers and individuals on both sides who had little or nothing to gain from the war, who nevertheless found themselves pressed into it by drafts, social pressure, or lack of alternatives. More failed offensives from the North, more missions in the South by the U.S. to take or destroy an area and then leave with nothing to show for it. I wasn't familiar with the Phoenix Program, but that was pretty messed up. I recognized Tim O'Brien from the Vietnam War era history course I took over a decade ago in college, and his book "The Things They Carried" was a good read. Watching the Democratic Convention, and the police clubbing protesters was rough. Glad the Soviet Union resolved the 10 week dispute over seating arrangements at a table. 37,563 Americans dead now; I can only imagine the death toll for Vietnamese. We've had a lot of stories thus far of inhumane treatment, executions, mass graves, torture, and awful violence; of how cruel soldiers could be and were to their enemies. That poo poo is wrong to do, but a part of me understands that put in a terrible situation people can become desensitized and do those sorts of things when not kept in check. I haven't experienced those situations but I can imagine it and have some empathy for people who did wrong like that. I don't understand how Richard Nixon could have done what he did in secretly telling South Vietnam to avoid peace talks so he could have better odds to win the election; intentionally prolonging the war behind the backs of his own country so he could improve his chances at being President for a few years. It's been a long time since I feel like I've lacked words to express how angry I am about a subject. All that rises up is gently caress you, Richard Nixon over and over again.
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Sep 26, 2017 02:11
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"Tin soldiers and Nixon coming, We're finally on our own. This summer I hear the drumming, Four dead in Ohio." THE VIETNAM WAR EPISODE 8: “The History of the World” (April 1969-May 1970) - Watch it here "With morale plummeting in Vietnam, President Nixon begins withdrawing American troops. As news breaks of an unthinkable massacre committed by American soldiers, the public debates the rectitude of the war, while an incursion into Cambodia reignites antiwar protests with tragic consequences."  ------------ Tonight was another hard watch. In many ways I expected that this series would be harder to view than The Civil War; after all most people know that there were horrible things in the Vietnam War. But hearing it in the voices of the people who actually lived it amplifies it way beyond that. I sort of had this notion that people were rear end backwards back in the Civil War since it was over a hundred years ago, so obviously they could do stupid poo poo like war to protect slavery. The people involved in the Vietnam War aren't that far removed from us today, and certainly less removed by this point in the series; their naivete unraveling into a cynicism and distrust of militarism I more readily recognize now as part of the modern era. A lot happened tonight; Joan Fury's story about the man she tried to save who was marked as "expected" was a fresh new horror, and a term I was not familiar with. Hamburger Hill, abandoned a week after taking it; Woodstock and Ho Chi Minh's death. The Weathermen (  ) and 4 Days of Rage. There were brighter spots: the story of the POW who memorized 200 of his fellow POWs names to the tune of Old MacDonald almost brought me to tears, and the peaceful moratorium rallies against the war; and there were some real dark spots, about racism in the military, fragging of officers, the My Lai Massacre and the invasion of Cambodia (again, gently caress you Richard Nixon). Musgrave talking about the night he almost killed himself, and how he stumbled saying it aloud on camera, and that the only thing that stopped him was his dogs wanting to be let back in did actually bring me to tears. And of course, Kent State and the shooting of student protestors there and on other campuses afterwards.
Mo_Steel fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Sep 27, 2017 |
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Sep 27, 2017 02:15
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"Just don't die, 'cause you're not gonna win." THE VIETNAM WAR EPISODE 9: “A Disrespectful Loyalty” (May 1970-March 1973) - Watch it here "South Vietnamese forces fighting on their own in Laos suffer a terrible defeat. Massive U.S. airpower makes the difference in halting an unprecedented North Vietnamese offensive. After being re-elected in a landslide, Nixon announces Hanoi has agreed to a peace deal. American prisoners of war will finally come home – to a bitterly divided country."  ------------ Still more conflict as the U.S. involvement winds down; more bombing campaigns, more failed offensives from the North, and back home the U.S. continues to fray at the edges. Vietnam vets against the war throwing their medals back was pretty moving, and the Pentagon Papers leak. Yet another historic photo of misery in the photo of the napalm strike on civilians; glad to hear she survived. Nixon continues to be a motherfucker, paranoid of everyone because he knows he's a motherfucker and doesn't want everyone else to know it, leading to Watergate; despite it all he trounces McGovern who it appears would also have been a fucker except he was too incompetent to pull it off. Finally, mercifully at the end of this episode, the U.S. returns POWs home and the military leaves; seeing the POWs come home was very bittersweet given the death toll though. March 29, 1973: 58,126 Americans killed; over 2 Million Vietnamese killed. We've got one more episode to go, and given that this era has been full of mistakes and bad decisions (and innocent people suffering for it) I am sure more are on the way.
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Sep 28, 2017 04:11
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"Saigon signing off." THE VIETNAM WAR EPISODE 10: “The Weight of Memory” (March 1973-Onward) - Watch it here "While the Watergate scandal rivets Americans’ attention and forces President Nixon to resign, the Vietnamese continue to savage one another in a brutal civil war. When hundreds of thousands of North Vietnamese troops pour into the south, Saigon descends rapidly into chaos and collapses. For the next 40 years, Americans and Vietnamese from all sides search for healing and reconciliation." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_a46WJ1viA ------------ The Vietnam War is finally over. But in so many ways, and for so many people, it's not over; the impacts of it ripple through communities and lives and on into the future. I think the final episode left me feeling hopeful; despite the tragedy of it all, the destruction, the lost lives, the division, the suffering and all the negative impacts that still show up today; that many people it seems did learn lessons from the war that they are trying to pass on. In hundreds of years that sort of direct impact will fade, but hopefully the lessons learned will lead to a more peaceful world. I really want to visit the memorial now. Taking the series as a whole, The Vietnam War is a large undertaking just to watch. Many nights these past two weeks I settled in knowing two hours would amount to a lot of my free time that night. It covers such a broad swath of recent history from so many perspectives that it would've been easy to have 18 hours feel bogged down. Instead it leaves me wanting to know more still, which I think is quite a feat. My only qualms with the production were with some overused audio through the series, but that's such a minor nitpick for what is otherwise a remarkable documentary. Dedicate time to watch this, alone if you must but with others if you can. One or two episodes a week would probably be really good pacing because it is a lot to take in, and even more to discuss. Turn off your phone, block out the time, and just take it all in. It's worth it.
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Sep 29, 2017 02:13
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Sierra Nevadan posted:Just starting KB's Vietnam. I don't remember a Whilhelm scream; are you thinking of the right scream? Because they overused the "vietnam flashback" scream that first episode a bit.
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Oct 16, 2017 00:51
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