for those of you that love historical documentaries, PBS is airing The American Revolution this week. This is another one from Ken Burns. He does a great job. His Vietnam one was riveting.
PBS-The American Revolution (Ken Burns)
- Thread starter cayin
- Start date
We really liked the one last night. But from now on we’re probably going to just watch one hour per night and just spread it out. Two hours was a little much
yeah, plus there is the basketball game tonight. So I will probably only watch an for an hour tonight after the game is over.
yep got a couple doobs for it. im locked n loaded
PBS maybe a month or two ago was re-airing The Roosevelts and that was so damn good. Burns does a great job.
Along with Meryl Streep, Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti... probably a few other heavyweights I missed.
Last night's episode was excellent.
Tom Hanks, Samuel L Jackson.
The first part was fantastic. Nobody tells complex stories in a well thought out way like Ken Burns.
One of the challenging aspects of this, I imagine, was having virtually zero photography or film to use as a key part of the storytelling. He has to rely on paintings and renderings as the visuals throughout, but the guy still puts things together in a way that's so, so captivating.
They have been working on this show for 10 years, he said he loves that PBS gives him plenty of time to research and get it all ready to go, stated the other networks would never give him that much time and would want to rush him so they could air the program.
Basically everything he has done is excellent, the only one I really thought was lacking was his baseball one, they basically stopped during the 70s, and said little to nothing of the last 50 years of the game
Basically everything he has done is excellent, the only one I really thought was lacking was his baseball one, they basically stopped during the 70s, and said little to nothing of the last 50 years of the game
I listen to the podcast series history that doesn’t suck and they interviewed Burns last week. That was a point he said was very difficult. He said there is so much legend and story telling attached to this because there wasn’t as much journalism and photography as there was shortly after this finished. I haven’t watched any yet but can’t wait.
When I read Jon Meacham's book on Jefferson, The Art of Power, it was kind of the same thing. I'd read several books on Lincoln and obviously there's a lot of compelling photography in those. But in the Jefferson book, nothing. Obviously it being a book it's not nearly as reliant on the visuals but still.
If I was a high school or junior high history teacher that taught American History, I would have a really hard time not using Ken Burns docs as the core of my curriculum. Something like watching for 25 to 35 minutes, depending on the best break in the episode, followed by 15 to 20 minute open discussion. Then a paper or test at the end of each series. Spend a few days between each series covering some other topics that aren't in his docs to fill some of the holes. It feels like the vast majority of kids would get more out of that than the typical textbook and lecture approach.
mine did with Centennial. Friday's senior year (im sure this dude did from 1990s- 2007 at least)
We enjoyed trying to guess the voice actors. Tom Hanks also had a part
