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Oswald's Ghost (2007) More at IMDbPro »

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5 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
Mildy Interesting Kaleidescope Takes an Unexpected Turn, 16 January 2008
5/10
Author: Joe Stemme (gortx) from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

OSWALD'S GHOST got a brief theatrical release on it's way to an American EXPERIENCE broadcast on PBS. There is little to recommend for seeing it on the big screen as most of its footage is either archival stock that was meant to be shown on TV in the first place, or typical talking heads interviews from the present day.

The film goes over familiar territory for anyone even vaguely familiar with the JFK assassination. Some of the talking heads such as Mark Lane and Dan Rather trot out stories most have seen before. More interesting are individuals like former Presidential Candidate Gary Hart and Norman Mailer who, rightly or wrongly, give us their insights into the matter (more on Mailer later).

For the first hour or so, Director Robert Stone tries to portray a sort of kaleidescope (a word used in the documentary) of the Assassination, the official and conspiracy theories and a view of how it affected people of the immediate and subsequent generations. On that level, it sort of keeps one's interest. Some of the footage is less familiar than others, and it's edited together competently enough. Gary Lionelli's music itself is evocative, but, unfortunately, Stone mixes it too high and he drowns out some of the dialog in the process. Worse, much of the archival footage would be more effective without the intrusive music.

*** Possible SPOILER AREA ***

And, then, in the last 20 minutes, Stone completely flips the film on its end. Gone is the dispassionate, relatively even-handed approach and he gives the film over completely to one side of the argument. Norman Mailer and HIS theory of the assassination come to dominate the final section of the documentary. Mailer's conclusions become the film's conclusions. In light of Mailer's subsequent death, the film could just as easily been called, "Mailer's Ghost". And, then, it ends abruptly.

Without knowing more about Stone (his surname an irony in itself that even he can't avoid as he includes behind-the-scenes footage of OLIVER Stone directing his film JFK!), it's impossible to know if this method of seemingly pulling the rug out from the viewer was an intentional act of the old in-and-out sucker punch, or if it naturally evolved that way through the editing process. In either case, it considerably weakens the film - setting all prejudice one way or another about one's particular view of the JFK assassination aside. Not only does it come out of nowhere, but it tarnishes what was good about that first hour.

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5 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
A little unfocused but still interesting, 16 January 2008
10/10
Author: Vincent Cadena from California

I saw this today and I was impressed with some of the archival footage and some of the interviews given. It's worth checking out if you're interested and/or have some knowledge on the case. I guess I would have liked to have heard more from Mailer and more on Oswald. I do think they gave some good information on a few details JFK missed. This is an informative and sometimes stylish documentary, worth checking out, the only reason I won't give more details on some of the plot points is for the fact that they had a lot to do with the conspiracy and a lot of them were red herrings. What this documentary does is put a few things into perspective, i.e. Oswalds motive, Dan Rathers comment saying the presidents head went forward, etc. My reason for giving this a ten was simply because the rating's too low, it deserves a 7 out of 10. Recommended.

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12 out of 21 people found the following comment useful :-
Shrill propaganda documentary that repeat "Oswald did it" & nothing else, 14 January 2008
2/10
Author: Michael Kenmore from Provo, Utah

Here is my soapbox dispelling the myths as promoted by the film. Please bear with me.

While the documentary strive to supply the information in conjunction with rare footages, Robert Stone did a dismal job ignoring the central heart of the conspiracy connected to the CIA (not rogue but whole) and the Mossad in the elimination of President Kennedy, partly in revenge over Bay of Pigs fiasco and JFK's private threat to "splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter to the winds" & withdraw from Vietnam where CIA place its stake and most importantly reversing JFK's foreign policy towards Israel on the matter of clandestine development of the nuclear arsenal at the secret nuclear reactor Dimona. JFK signed National Security Action Memoranda 55, 56 and 57 that stripped CIA of its power to freely operate in covert ops and to account for its actions, which outraged senior members of the CIA. (JFK fired CIA director Allen Dulles after Bay of Pigs failure, and that same person ended up as a member of the Warren Commission.) The tension between Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion & his subsequent successor Levi Eshkol and JFK was well-documented in the telegram correspondences ("Israel and the Bomb" by Avner Cohen). David stepped down abruptly on June 23, 1963 over argument with JFK concerning Israel's right to develop nuclear weaponry, ostensibly for self-defense in case of warring with hostile enemy neighbors.

CIA and Mossad, through the coordination of chief of counterintelligence James Jesus Angleton as liaison to Israel, cooperated in the joint operation to "remove" JFK to protect their geopolitical interests as well as the reputation, and the end result were the escalation of Vietnam War due to Gulf of Tonkin hoax and the complete turnaround of U.S. foreign policy to unconditionally respect Israel's power and sovereignty as an erstwhile ally in Middle Eastern affairs.

Lee Harvey Oswald may well have been involved in the conspiracy but only as an intelligence agent through myriad of contacts (US Naval Intelligence and possibly KGB), but he was a patsy as he said -- he was simply framed up as a useful covert intelligence asset for disposal by the CIA and the conspirators. In other words, Lee was certainly not guilty.

Lyndon Barnes Johnson was undoubtedly a traitor as were the high-ranking members of the US government and military who knew what faction removed JFK. Because LBJ usurped the power to appease the military-industrial complex, fabricating Gulf of Tonkin incident to begin escalating the Vietnam War to a larger level and extract the blood money & introduce sophisticated weaponry, tactical strategies and military technology in the process of brutalizing Vietnam to a perpetual third world nation status. The "communist domino theory" is non-sense as an excuse framed to justify the illegal and pointlessly bloody war.

After JFK's assassination, it is likely that President Johnson had contemplated invading Cuba after fabricating the intelligence that Castro ordered the murder of JFK in retaliation for the attempted invasion as well as spreading the fear of communist onslaught if not contained; USSR agreed to withdraw the missile bases, with the condition that USSR will once again retaliate to destruct United States should U.S. invade Cuba in a massive effort again.

JFK died a true patriot for America in defending her sovereignty against foreign and internal threats that converged to murder President Kennedy. The nuclear fires of World War III will be traced back to the assassination of JFK that have changed the course of human civilization forever, with the military-industrial-Congressional complex and State of Israel consolidating the ultimate power to decide the manifest destiny for the current world affairs at large...

Fascinating spools of rare footages aside, "Oswald's Ghost" offer absolutely nothing new for the knowledgeable readers of the pivotal event like me. The problem is that propaganda is an easy and persuading media to bamboozle the uninformed viewers, which is why this movie infuriate me every other minute with disinfo (omitted, half-truth, lies).

Robert Stone and the producers, why have you forsaken America with the film that only the Establishment and lone assassin-magic bullet theory/Warren Commission defenders would approve of? Forsaking the truth lead to America's demise and disintegration as a sovereign republic subservient to Israel and the ruling oligarch Elite's pernicious influence. (For reference: "Plausible Denial" by Mark Lane; "Final Judgment" by Michael Collins Piper; "The Last Confessions of E. Howard Hunt" by Erik Hedegaard, Rolling Stone, March 21, 2007; George Washington farewell address, Sept. 1796; President Kennedy's speech "The President and the Press: Address before the American Newspaper Publishers Association" in NYC, April 1961)

1/2 out of 4

Postscript: I recommend reading Citizens for Truth about Kennedy Assassination chairman James DiEugenio's critical review of Oswald's Ghost. Google his name combined with the film title.

Postscript II: Watched the ABC News special The Kennedy Assassination: Beyond Conspiracy originally aired on ABC in fall 2003 on History Channel on February 19, 2008. It's a sham with the predicably biased narration doling out lie after lie, exaggeration and half-truths. Do your research, not what the media tell you to believe Oswald was responsible alone and alone.

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3 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
The Movie is psy-op propaganda, 17 July 2008
Author: carmagnolahead from United States

Oswald's Ghost is far from a critical expose on the assassination, as Oliver Stone's JFK was. The very fact that Oswald's Ghost's director has the same last name as Oliver to direct the film, says volumes about the intelligence community's ( and the mainstream media's ) agenda to confuse future generations.

The fact that classic dissemblers, like Priscilla Johnson McMillan, Dan Rather and J. Edward Epstein are given leading roles in the film, is the strongest indictment against the film. That Norman Mailer is given so much time in the film as well( and the last word ), makes me want to catalog the in the "Propaganda/Fiction Department Section, along with The Warren Report, and other books. The PBS and American Experience staff should all be ashamed of themselves for perpetuating the lies about the assassination.

The only honest criticism given in the film are given by Tom Hayden, Josiah Thompson and Todd Getlin, but neither three give any real facts from the critical literature to educate the viewer.

Hugh Aynesworth, a Dallas/Fortworth journalist who covered the assassination at the time and who comments on the Warren Report, spouts the official version, that Oswald acted alone. Aynesworth tells us a white lie when he says that he interviewed one witness who watched Oswald shoot from the sixth floor window of the Texas school depository Building. He may have interviewed witnesses that day, or sometime later, but no witnesses positively identified Lee Harvey Oswald in that window that day. Aynesworth's words, simply, can't be taken for granted.

Robert Dallek, who also given prime time in the film, was one of the historian researchers who worked for The Assassination records and Review Bord ( ARRB )in the nineties. That board was created and pushed through Congress by President Herbert Walker Bush in 1991 as a last ditch effort to foist, literally, tons of heavily redacted ( and forged ) declassified Secret CIA, FBI, ONI ( Naval Intelligence) documents into the American public's lap. So much for Dallek's hidden agenda, as well.

J. Edward Epstein, another spokesman in the film for the "we'll never know the truth about the assassination "theory, wrote some good books on the assassination, but he was Army Intelligence, so we can't trust him, either.

Mark Lane, who wrote one of the very first critiques on the Warren commission Report's findings, Rush to Judgment, the film's only honest critic of the warren Commission Report, but he is overrided by the film's general dishonesty.

Dan Rather, another journalist who speaks in the film is also dissembling. He was in Dallas that fateful day, as a cub reporter for CBS. Rather was one of the very first to see the Zapruder film, and he caved-in, changed his story, and sold his soul to the devil. Rather originally said that the President's head "fell backwards and to the left", which coincides with a shot from the front. Then he changed his tune to: "the President's head fell forwards and to the left", to go along with the warren Commission's magic bullet single lone nut theory. I have the two copies of Life magazine from January 1964, both printed on the same day. The first one, with Dan Rather's first line was pulled off of the press, and the second censored edition that was officially released, with Rather's changed tune is the one that the American Public got.

That Priscilla Johnson shamelessly shows her face again on the assassination subject doesn't surprise me at all. She was one of the very first intelligence assets to disseminate mis and disinformation, with lies to the Warren Commission and to the American public( with her book, Marina and Lee ).

I attended the ARRB's venued event when it came to Boston in the early nineties and convened at the State House on Beacon Hill. Priscilla Johnson McMillan, who is also given prime time in Oswald's Ghost was invited by the Review Board to testify. The first question that the Board asked Priscilla was whether she had ever been approached by the CIA. Priscilla never did answer that question, but instead,dissembled for a good twenty minutes or half hour and in so many words or less, basically told the panel and the audience that if anyone wanted to know who really killed John F. Kennedy, they should go to Russia and dig-up frozen KGB colonels, and ask the. In the film, Priscilla tells us that if Kennedy were alive today, that he'd be as puzzled as all of us are ( not me! ) as to who killed him and why. I have seen McMillan's CIA 201 file that has her checked-ff as a "witting asset". So much for her testimonial in the film.

Norman Mailer is given way too much time ( and the last word ) in the film. He says that he spent twenty-five years studying the assassination, and then he admits that he as an amateur. From what he tells us in the film, it is obvious that he didn't read enough of the critical literature. Of course, he was a friend of Priscilla Johnson McMillan's, which says a lot. In his book, Oswald's Tale, Mailer leads his readers by the nose and after eight hundred and something pages, tells them that Oswald killed Kennedy because Marina didn't give him ( Oswald, not Kennedy ) enough sex. Mailer should have titled his book, Oswald's Tail ( two puns intended ). puns intended ). Mailer can be thus dismissed as either an unwitting fool, or a witting stooge.

Basicaly, Oswald's Ghost is a total waste of time.

Bruno Hrvat

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3 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
Visually Stunning But Otherwise Very Questionable, 20 February 2008
6/10
Author: Matthew Kresal from United States

It's impossible to review this film without having a bias. I do believe a conspiracy was responsible for the assassination of John F. Kennedy but, as always when dealing with these matters, I do keep an open mind. While the film ostensibly is not on the whodunit but that question has done to us, Oswald's Ghost has a definite bias in it. And that bias is what kills the film.

Director Robert Stone seems to have done his homework. His interviews cover many proponents of both sides of the argument. He also goes a step further to present unseen or rarely seen / heard materials including news clips and the actual Dallas police recordings. Stone also chooses to employ some interesting visual techniques in the film as well. For example there is the whirlpool of Oswald and Warren Commission images at the start of the film, the (apparent) black hole of conspiracy books, and the positive / negative effect on stock footage during the playing of the recording of Perry Russo's sodium pentothal questioning. These are all well done, but their use in Stone's context is questionable.

Thus the film's fault lies in its bias. Stone seems convinced that the mystery is solved and has been for nearly forty-five years. The film then proceeds to essentially say that independent researchers (that is to say conspiracy theorists) have led the public on a wild goose chase of truly epic proportions. Stone seems to use the film and virtually every frame to saying this. Stone's film is not just, as he claims, a study of the effect of a mystery on the public. For the most part the film feels like an indictment of those who dare not agree with his point of view.

Would the film have been better without this bias? That's hard to say, really. I suspect that one's own opinion on the topic determines how one interprets the film. While one can argue over the factuality of the film, it is visually striking in its presentation as if to shock and awe. Does it succeed in that aim? I'll leave you to be the judge…

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7 out of 13 people found the following comment useful :-
Solid and interesting enough but adds nothing specific to a crowded marketplace (spoilers!), 12 July 2007
Author: bob the moo from Birmingham, UK

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

This documentary starts with the assassination of President Kennedy and covers the theories and "facts" put forward around the actions of Oswald and others. As well as this it continues into the modern day to the ghost of Oswald hanging over America through the ongoing theories in the modern media.

The subject matter is always going to be interesting. Whether it is the infamous "back and to the left" shot or other details taken in solitude or in combination, I think it is fair to say that many people do have some doubt about the idea that a solitary gunman killed Kennedy from the position in the book depository, although they may differ in how far they take their theories in regards what really happened. However the risk with any film that covers an extensively covered subject is that it will not have anything distinctive or new to offer. Although this film vaguely has a theme of Oswald in a wider socio-political context, this doesn't really happen apart from the final 15 minutes where we slightly touch on Oliver Stone's film and the modern view of Oswald. However outside of this it is very much a straight history of the assassination that looks at the event itself, Jack Ruby, the Warren report and so on.

It is a solid enough documentary in how it does this and, if you know little of the history then it is a very good entry level film thanks to the relatively "factual", non-sensational approach that is also lacking an obvious slant one way or another. The problem with it is that it really offers very little that you have not seen one place or another. In fact, by covering the entire story, it means that you will have seen more detail on every aspect of this somewhere else that has dealt with just that aspect at a deeper level.

The overall impression then is of a summary, of a film that pulls everything together in one place and acts as a way to get a bit of the whole story in case you then want to go away and find more yourself about the Warren Report, about the theories, about Jack Ruby and so on. Thing is, with the story so widely covered and known, is that really a service we need another product to be fulfilling.

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8 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
one-sided piece of propaganda, 13 December 2007
2/10
Author: chasmilt777 from Dallas, Texas

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

I has hyped up in seeing this documentary, only to find disappointment after rushing across Dallas during rush hour traffic to see a special viewing at the Texas movie theater.

Even though Robert Stone said that he tried to present both sides in his documentary, the end suggested that Oswald acted alone. Stone did not convince me of this, instead he only angered me into thinking that I wasted my time in watching his film.

Stone only showed the members of the Warren Commission and never mentioned them by name. These Commission members would have been happy to know that their deception is still being presented today. Gerald Ford, the only man to ever hold the position of President that was never elected by the people, and Robert Dulles, the ex-director of the CIA who was fired by JFK, are two of the men in American history that helped cover-up the true events that happened that dark day in Dallas.

Stone points to Oswald as being the man who shot at General Walker in Dallas before the assassination of JFK. This was never confirmed. If this was true, it only proves that Oswald was not a very good shot or marksman. In the cover of night, Oswald misses Walker, but yet at high noon and in broad daylight, Oswald hits President Kennedy three times in six seconds. No sniper in our special forces could pull off this feat. Not with a single bolt action rifle. Oswald has no Davy Crockett nor Daniel Boone. This film brought up none of Oswald's military training or rifle skills.

How did the Warren Commission get away with thinking that the American people are stupid enough to believe that Oswald acted alone ? It seems that the director of this documentary thinks the same. I was very disappointed to find out that Norman Mailer believed in this deception too.

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Circumstantial Evidence, 30 January 2009
Author: panamint from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

There is no film of Oswald shooting at anything.

There is neither film nor any photograph of Oswald in or around Dealy Plaza at all, shooting or otherwise.

There were no witnesses who saw Oswald himself shoot at the car (one witness saw someone shoot- but couldn't ID who).

No witness put Oswald on the sixth floor of the building at the time of the shooting.

Oswald appeared in 3 or 4 separate police lineups after the shooting but nobody at these face-to-face viewings identified him as shooting anything in Dealy Plaza.

Oswald was never tried in a court of law for any crimes committed on November 22, 1963.

Oswald himself was murdered. He was assassinated.

The Warren Commission postulated that there were two Lone Nuts- Oswald and Ruby. Even if you think they were nuts, there is little or no evidence that they were "Lone" nuts. They were both very talented at covering their shady associations (and they had many). So talented that you can't prove they WERE or WERE NOT) part of a conspiracy.

Thousands of CIA documents were released in the 90's but with huge blacked-out spaces. No less than Tom Brokaw of NBC said (I believe in 1999) that there may be "a million" documents still secret, not to be released until as late as 2050.

No film or witnesses against Oswald. No trial of Oswald. Still-secret documents. It always amazes me that Dan Rather or Peter Jennings or anyone can be so certain that there WASN'T a conspiracy, or that so-called "buffs" can be so certain that there WAS one.

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Another lame Bush-era attempt to discredit conspiracy buffs, 4 December 2008
6/10
Author: davea-16 from United States

This film has great production values and footage, but all it does is gloss up another lame attempt to paint conspiracy buffs as paranoid losers blind to the evil machinations of one Lee Harvey Oswald. We all know we'll never know the truth, but the flawed logic applied in these 'documentaries' always baffles me. A second shooter means a controversy, right? Isn't the second shooter Jack Ruby? He was stalking the Dallas Police station all weekend, but Stone wants us to believe his shooting of Oswald was spontaneous and proves it by showing how close he cut his appointment with destiny at the Western Union? Give me a break. Nuts who claim JFK was shot by his driver or that Tippett was the shooter on the Grassy Knoll don't help...but in the end people just need to rely on what can be seen, and that's that there is no way Oswald pulled this off alone on any level. End of story.

Of course this is better than the reenactment of a few years back that 'proved' the magic bullet theory and then concluded that it eliminated discussion of a conspiracy. You know, without ever addressing the head shot(s). Ever.

Wake me up when someone without an agenda produces something new.

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1 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
IF you are curious about what a group of left-wing Jews think of the JFK controversy, don't miss this., 17 November 2008
Author: wulfstan from New York

That is about the extent of this film's contribution. If you think Todd Gitlin, or Tom Hayden know beans about any of this, their participation will disabuse you of that notion. And if you have forgotten how Mark Lane got rich off his speculations on the assassination, here is a reminder.

If you think polling a subset of less than 2% of the US population is key to understanding an issue in which Stone tells us more than 70% of the US population is united in having no faith in the Warren Report, you will love the wacky logic of OSWALD'S GHOST.

A LOT of opinion and very few facts. I find the musings of an Mailer on his last legs interesting because I find Mailer's thought processes interesting, but he adds nothing to the issues here either. One might as well hear yet another actor tells you what he/she "thinks" about politics. They do better when someone writes their lines.

The objective of this documentary is to show how "dark revanchist forces" (AKA Republicans, generals, intelligence folks, corporate types etc), as opposed to the good old-time lefty Marxist doctrine, resorted to assassination in the cases of JFK, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, and the like to hold back "the future." If you have somehow missed out of on the many "documentary" efforts of film makers like Stone to get this point across, here is another chance.

Case in point, it is useful to have Edward Jay Epstein's send up of Garrison's numerological idiocies, but whatever viewers think about "who dun it," and we have a lot of evidence here on IMDb that there are a lot of opinions about that, Stone intentionally ignores the hardest evidence of what really counts right under his nose.

The key point is that there is no evidence as yet that ANY single assassin can have pulled off the JFK assassination... Oswald or anyone else. Trying to aim and fire all those shots and make two hits with a piece of crap like a Carcano bolt action with that scope... just hasn't worked.

Any fair minded analyst must concede THAT makes a lot of difference to evaluating a film like OSWALD'S GHOST which is more agitprop than Doc.

EVERY attempt to duplicate the marksmanship required of the "one assassin in six seconds" theory over the past 40 years has failed. One of the most detailed attempts to duplicate it was put together by CBS News a few years after the assassination. Stone carries a few feet of film showing the test underway. But Stone never tells us that CBS couldn't duplicate it either.

It does matter. Stone is just another tourist, putting together his idea of pretty faces that the PBS PC will find acceptable and same-old same-old commentary with no context and no understanding of what he is dealing with. Hey, they paid him and ran it.

Too bad that was enough for him

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