List Price: $26.96 Our Price: $14.97YOU SAVE $11.99!
Buy it
DVD The Fog of War - Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara
The Fog of War, the movie that finally won Errol Morris the best documentary Oscar, is a spellbinder. Morris interviews Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and finds a uniquely unsettling viewpoint on much of 20th-century American history. Employing a ton of archival material, including LBJ's fascinating taped conversations from the Oval Office, Morris probes the reasons behind the U.S. commitment to the Vietnam War--and finds a depressingly inconsistent policy. McNamara himself emerges as--well, not exactly apologetic, but clearly haunted by the what-ifs of Vietnam. He also mulls the bombing of Japan in World War II and the Cuban Missile Crisis, raising more questions than he answers. The Fog of War has the usual inexorable Morris momentum, aided by an uneasy Philip Glass score. This movie provides a glimpse inside government. It also encourages skepticism about same. --Robert Horton
Review(s): DVD The Fog of War - Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara
Mac The Knife ; a pathetic human being..
I thought McNamara came across in the this film basically the way I had always thought him to be; a pathetic person with no moral back bone at all. If he indeed had opposed the war in Vietnam I don't understand why he didn't resign, and the answer is that he didn't oppose the war.
Everyone claims McNamara was so bright, but even when he went to Vietnam in 1995 he had to have it explained to him that the Vietnamese were fighting for their independence. Why didn't he know that? I was 25 years old in 1966 and I knew that.
Ho Chi Minh was a young student in Paris at the end of WWI. When President Wilson came to Paris, Minh sent letter to Wilson asking him to help free his country from the French. They wanted their independence. Wilson never replied. Why didn't McNamara know that.
As for McNamara's eleven lessons from his life; no brainers each one. Stuff that one learns the first week in a business education class in high school.
The film added nothing to our knowledge of World War II or the Vietnam War that hasn't been discussed before.
So I came away from the film feeling the McNamara still doesn't know who he is or what he is about....still trapped in the fog of his wars.
A Little Foggy
Fog of War
An interesting insight into a highly intelligent, articulate and fallible man. Mr. McNamara discusses eleven crucial lessons that he has learned about the waging of war. Present leaders would do well to take these lessons to heart. Hindsight has enabled him to understand and articulate the mistakes that he and Johnson made with regard to Vietnam. Many of these mistakes are eerily similar to the mistakes that the Bush administration has made and is making with regard to Iraq.
I don't know anything about Mr. McNamara except from what I learned in this video. Therefore, I suppose I had a fairly unbiased opinion of him before watching this. After watching this, however, I come away with a feeling that he is a good man who got lost in the fog of war. It is interesting to note that some of the first advice that he offered to Johnson was to get out of Vietnam before it spiraled out of control. This is confirmed by an excerpt of a phone conversation that he had with President Johnson.
I think that this video is slightly marred by the quirky editing. I would have been much more pleased with a more extended and in depth discussion with Mr. McNamara instead of quick sound bites that are obviously cut and edited, I guess for "artistic effect," but to me they detract from the seriousness of the subjects that McNamara is discussing. It's almost as if the producers of this video didn't trust the attention span of the viewing public to simply listen to and learn from an in depth conversation and exploration of important events.
The subject matter itself deserves five stars, but the handling of it in this video deserves only three in my humble opinion. It's worth watching, but don't expect to be wowed by it or to gain a significantly deeper understanding of the events that it touches.
Another Place, Another Time
Robert S. McNamara is the consumate 20th century man. He is truly representative of his time. The interesting little homilies that he claims he has gleaned from his expereinces are universal and true. McNamara displays all the qualities that made him the most effective Secretary of Defense in the 20th century: articulate, thoughtful, a natural debater and very, very smart. Despite all the issues, McNamara says only what he want to, even stating that he never, never answers a question asked of him. Overall, this is an excellent documentary, it should be standard viewing for any American History course covering this period.
Related DVD's The Fog of War - Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara
Startling and powerful, Control Room is a documentary about the Arab television network Al-Jazeera's coverage of the U.S.-led Iraqi war, and conflicts that arose in managed perceptions of truth between that news media outlet and the American military. Egyptian-American filmmaker Jehane Noujaim (Startup.com) catches the frantic action at Al-Jazeera headquarters as President Bush stipulates his 48-hour, get-out-of-town warning to Saddam Hussein and sons, soon followed by the network's shocking footage of Iraqi civilians terrorized and killed by invading U.S. troops. Al-Jazeera's determination to show images and report details outside the Pentagon's carefully controlled information flow draws the wrath of American officials, who accuse it of being an al-Qaida propagandist. (The... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Jehane Noujaim DVD Release Date: Released the 26 October 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $19.98 Your Price: $14.99YOU SAVE $4.99!
Buy it
Fans of Oliver Stone's J.F.K. will recognize the opening moments of writer-director Eugene Jarecki's Why We Fight, in which outgoing President Dwight Eisenhower warns of the pernicious and growing influence of what he called the "military-industrial complex." But Stone's movie, which uses the same footage, was a work of fiction. While those who disagree with the decidedly leftist point of view in this documentary will probably consider it the product of paranoid liberal fantasy as well, there's enough credible material, much of it supplied by the targets of Jarecki's criticisms, to make Eisenhower look like a prophet and everyone else uneasy about the dark confluence of politics, money, and war that controls the country's fortunes. The message here is that while there may be... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Eugene Jarecki DVD Release Date: Released the 27 June 2006 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $24.96 Your Price: $14.47YOU SAVE $10.49!
Buy it
An epic in length and breadth, this documentary aims at nothing less than a full-scale portrait of the most dominant institution on the planet Earth in our lifetime--a phenomenon all the more remarkable, if not downright frightening, when you consider that the corporation as we know it has been around for only about 150 years. It used to be that corporations were, by definition, short-lived and finite in agenda. If a town needed a bridge built, a corporation was set up to finance and complete the project; when the bridge was an accomplished fact, the corporation ceased to be. Then came the 19th-century robber barons, and the courts were prevailed upon to define corporations not as get-the-job-done mechanisms but as persons under the 14th Amendment with full civil rights to life,... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Mark Achbar - Jennifer Abbott DVD Release Date: Released the 05 April 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $29.99 Your Price: $22.49YOU SAVE $7.5!
Buy it
Director Gillo Pontecorvo's 1966 movie The Battle of Algiers concerns the violent struggle in the late 1950s for Algerian independence from France, where the film was banned on its release for fear of creating civil disturbances. Certainly, the heady, insurrectionary mood of the film, enhanced by a relentlessly pulsating Ennio Morricone soundtrack, makes for an emotionally high temperature throughout. Decades later, the advent of the "war against terror" has only intensified the film's relevance.
Shot in a gripping, quasi-documentary style, The Battle of Algiers uses a cast of untrained actors coupled with a stern voiceover. Initially, the film focuses on the conversion of young hoodlum Ali La Pointe (Brahim Haggiag) to F.L.N. (the Algerian Liberation Front). However,... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Brahim Haggiag DVD Release Date: Released the 12 October 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $49.95 Your Price: $37.46YOU SAVE $12.49!
Buy it
Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism uses the inflammatory tactics of the Fox News Channel to demonstrate the conservative bias that's handed down by Fox's owner, media mogul Rupert Murdoch. The documentary gathers interviews from media watchdogs and former Fox employees (including a former anchor, Jon Du Pre, who describes his flailing efforts to create a celebration for Reagan's birthday when the one he was sent to cover never materialized), but their overwhelming condemnation of Fox's skewed news practices isn't half as effective as footage taken directly from Fox itself--an appalling montage of pundit Bill O'Reilly telling guests to shut up; repeated efforts to paint Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry as weak and waffling, while President Bush is... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Robert Greenwald DVD Release Date: Released the 13 July 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $9.95 Your Price: $9.95YOU SAVE $0!
Buy it
