JFK (any good?) (1 Viewer)

[Josh_Hill]

Get this movie! One of the best ever made IMHO. Great disc too. Who da thought a 3 1/2hr. commentary would be interesting!

 

[Adam_WM]

My only beef withthe 2 disk set is that it lacked the Scotish Snare Drums playing over the opening sequence like the theatrical version and original VHS and DVD release had. But, it may bother me only because I am a percussionist and enjoyed that original sequence very much.

Mine has the drums?

 

[Bill J]

I think mine has the drums too.

 

[Eric Huffstutler]

I believe one of my main concerns if REALISM.
Do the actors look like the people they portray? Are the sets authentic looking? I know that in 13 days the sets were painstakingly recreated to every detail but the actors "sorta" looked like the real people but not quite. Needed a little more corrective makeup.

 

[Michael Reuben]

There are different kinds of realism. In Nixon, for example, they experimented with different make-up to bring Anthony Hopkins' appearance closer to that of Richard Nixon. In the end, they scrapped most of it, and let Hopkins do it with gesture, voice and demeanor. He may not have looked like Nixon, but I found the recreation so good that it was spooky. Dan Hedaya did an equally good job -- without makeup -- in Dick.
I think it's easy to go way overboard with make-up in an attempt to simulate a historical character. You risk ending up with the wax dummy look. Jon Voight seems to get stuck in this a lot. Both his F.D.R. in Pearl Harbor and his Howard Cosell in Ali looked too artificial to be believable. Took me right out of the movie.
One interesting thing about J.F.K. is that there's relatively little historical footage. Instead, contemporary footage was painstakingly recreated to look like the real thing, but using the actors cast to play the parts. So, for example, the footage of Oswald's death (which I remember seeing live on TV and will remember forever) looks exactly right -- but it uses Gary Oldman. Robert Richardson deservedly won an Oscar for all that tricky photography.
M.

 

[Jeff_HR]

You should check out the newly released "The Men Who Killed Kennedy". It fits in nicely with Stone's "JFK".

 

[David Von Pein]

Just watched this again the other day, and the quality is very good indeed.
I put the 2nd disc in one of these sleeves (sturdier than the paper one provided) .......
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...227835-1361529

 

[Eric Paddon]

After Hours has a lengthy thread about the details of this movie that so deviate from the historical record but all I will say here is read the book "False Witness" by Patricia Lambert if you want the truth about Jim Garrison instead of the bizarre fiction served up by Oliver Stone.

 

[Steve Enemark]

Sorry, but I don't watch movies for history. That's what books are for.
Historical inaccuracies aside, JFK is one of my favorite movies and best DVD's around.

 

[Matt Stone]

Same here...great film.

 

[Eric Paddon]

"Sorry, but I don't watch movies for history. That's what books are for."

When a movie is made that is purportedly about a real historical event, and is intended to push a view of how an actual event happened, and then goes to the trouble of defaming a large number of people through flagrant distortions and deliberate lies about the historical record (Stone committs so many whoppers in this film that can not be chalked up to "dramatic license" but rather to fudging the record in order to keep people from laughing his wacko theories off the screen), then it becomes something that can not be easily dismissed. And what a sad and pathetic comment it is that a movie can defame soo many people through its agenda pushing and it can only get a "so what?" from so many people as though the fact that it made a hero of a man (Garrison) who abused his power as a prosecutor to frame an innocent man (Clay Shaw) of a murder charge is somehow irrelevant just because "it's only a movie." The only problem though is that those of us who know what the truth is about the real Garrison, don't have the power to get a studio to committ $50 million dollars to a movie that can set the record straight.

 

[Frank]

Great movie and all too accurate.

The quality of the new DVD is exceptional.

The best book I've read about the event is:

"Deep Politics and the death of JFK" by Peter Dale Scott.

Frank

 

[Eric Paddon]

The only thing accurate about the movie is that it got the date of JFK's assassination correct. Apart from that, everything else that appears in it bears no relation to reality, especially the Shaw trial.

If Stone really wanted to show some courage he'd allow an alternate commentary from those who would set the record straight, but since he's so hyper to criticism he won't allow any footage to be used in critical documentaries or news stories, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that.

 

[HenrikTull]

But wasn't Oliver Stone's point, not to be historically accurate, but to kinda sum up his and America's feelings about the assassination and John F. Kennedy?

I don't know... indulge me.

I think JFK is a fantastic film by the way. I don't look at it as a fact, however as a drama, and it is here that the film exceeds on every level.

The 2 - disc DVD is fantastic by the way, and I for one enjoyed the commentary very much.

 

[Eric Paddon]

"But wasn't Oliver Stone's point, not to be historically accurate, but to kinda sum up his and America's feelings about the assassination and John F. Kennedy?"

In a word, no. His point was to push a theory about the assassination that is patently false on all levels. And America's feelings about the assassination never included any belief that Jim Garrison was a hero.

Stone has used his movie as a vehicle for what he thinks students should use to learn about history. This has included study guides for classrooms, and a published screenplay replete with academic looking footnotes to justify what he depicted. As such, he has made himself fair game to be scrutinized the same way that all historians are so judged when they present a theory about what happened, and that is why "JFK" can not IMO ever be reviewed or analyzed in a manner in which historical accuracy can be separated from the film's technical merits. People as a general rule do not walk away from this film bowled over by the acting, editing, score etc. or the film's other technical points, they get bowled over by what they wrongly assume to be a reasonably accurate depiction of how these events happened in the way that a movie like "Patton" or "Apollo 13" depicts events. The problem with "JFK" (which frankly I have always regarded as a misleading title. It should have been called "Garrison") is that without its lies and falsehoods, Stone has no movie.

 

[Steve Enemark]

I agree with Henrik. JFK is a left-wing fantasy, intended to counterbalance the right-wing fantasy that many people believe the Warren Commission to be. Whether or not Oliver Stone intended it that way is irrelevant to me, that's how I choose to interpret the film.

 

[Eric Paddon]

"JFK is a left-wing fantasy, intended to counterbalance the right-wing fantasy that many people believe the Warren Commission to be"

That's an amusing little soundbite but the problem is that it is totally devoid of reality. The Warren Commission was created by a liberal president (Lyndon Johnson, he who gave us the Civil Rights Act and the Great Society), was headed by the most liberal Supreme Court Chief Justice of the 20th Century (Earl Warren, he who gave us Brown vs. Board of Education, and then decisions on criminal justice like Miranda that left most people of the right and center outraged), and its membership consisted of only two men who could arguably be called "conservative" in any sense. To call the Warren Report "right wing" is ridiculous and reflects a total ignorance of just who was in power at the time.

The Warren Report's conclusions, have since been revalidated by the Rockefeller Commission and the House Select Committee On Assassinations as to (1) the guilt of Lee Harvey Oswald (2) Oswald as the sole assassin and (3) Oswald as the killer of Officer J.D. Tippit. And in each instance it wasn't politics that colored the judgments it was cold, hard scientific FACTS that determined it based on actual physical evidence and analysis of same. There was no empty headed speculating of the kind Stone did, and none of the outright lying that Stone had to do in order to create him movie (the most outrageous lie of which was that Jim Garrison, an unethical prosecutor who bribed witnesses and abused his power with manufactured evidence to frame an innocent man, was a hero).

 

[Brian W.]

Eric, I agree with much of what you said, but you're simply incorrect about the conclusions of the House Select Committee on Assasinations. They did NOT find that Oswald was the sole gunman. In fact, their report, which can be found online here...
http://www.geocities.com/jfkinfo/hscareport.htm
...clearly states on page 1 of its findings:

C. The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The committee is unable to identify the other gunman or the extent of the conspiracy.

The scientific acoustical evidence they're referring to is an audio tape of a police officer's call made during the shooting. At the time the film JFK was released, they played this tape on a television program (I think it was Evening Magazine). You can clearly hear 4 shots on the tape. Some theorize that one of the shots is an echo -- but if they were all made from the book depository, why would only one of the shots echo? Wouldn't they all echo?
Apparently the House Select Committee on Assasinations thought so. Their full report can be found online here:
http://www.geocities.com/m_j_russ/hsc.htm

 

[David Von Pein]

Regarding the acoustics evidence referred to above......

Wasn't it later proven (by a drummer in Ohio) that this "evidence" of a conspiracy was bogus? I believe it was discovered that the so-called "4th shot" on the dictabelt recording was, in fact, recorded a full TWO MINUTES after the assassination! Therefore, it could NOT have been a 4th shot at the time of JFK's murder.

 

[Brian W.]

I don't know. Can you provide me with a link? I'd love to read about it, if that's true. I was just pointing out that Eric was mistaken about the House Select Committee's conclusion.