ronhelf-24-613931 Reviews

And the Children Shall Lead (1985 TV Movie)

Fact Check....

[8/10 · 4 January 2023]

First, a fact check. And the Children Shall Lead, contrary to a couple of posters, first ran on PBS's Wonderworks series not on HBO. It aired for the first time on PBS on 4 January, 1985.

Like so many of the programmes that aired on Wonderworks, including The Girl From the Limberlost, an updated version of the Canterville Ghost, The Chronicles of Narnia, Jacob Have I Loved You, and Ollie Hopnoodle's Haven of Bliss these TV movies were a coproduction between WQED-Pittsburgh, KCET-Los Angeles, KTCA-St. Paul/Minneapolis, WHRO-Hampton-Norfolk/Virginia, South Carolina Educational Television, WETA-Washington, D. C. and KERA-Dallas/Fort Worth and Disney; The Chronicles of Narnia were done with the BBC. All of them are more than worth checking out.

A Heartland Christmas (2010 TV Movie)

A Wonderful Episode of a Wonderful Series...

[8/10 · 27 November 2017]

The Heartland episode, A Heartland Christmas, written by one of Heatland's best writers, Heather Conkie, encapsulates what is, at least for me, so wonderful about this CBC series. There is the breathtaking beauty of the Rockies, a place I know well. There is the inner strength of the Bartlett clan even in the face of adversity. There is the community coming together to help others, in this case horses trapped in a canyon. And then there are those Heartland themes of healing and redemption. All of these things tie this episode to the holiday season, something missed by that ideological, manichean, and simplistic bull hockey masquerading as a review that Stan Canada is shovelling around. This episode is not to be missed for the wonderful performance by Nicholas Campbell and the final scene between him and Shaun Johnston. As for the deduction, I took some points away from this episode because it doesn't seem to square with the continuity of Heartland seasons one through four.

The Hanoi Hilton (1987)

I love the smell of conspiracy theories in the morning...

[10 June 2014]

I really do love the smell of conspiracy theories in the morning. Sadly the post of jw_55767 proves once again that most people prefer their ideological myths to reality.

So lets look more closely at some of JW's myths about this film. First, the theory that Hanoi Hilton disappeared because of a cabal of the rights favourite demon, "Hanoi Jane" and her media mogul husband Ted Turner. Turner. Wrong. Hanoi Hilton was released theatrically. It made, as IMDb notes less than a million dollars. All things being equal this means, if the market is always right as right wing apologists and polemicists usually maintain, Hanoi Hilton was voted down by American consumers and was not systematically hidden away by Ms. Fonda or her media mogul husband so no one could see it.

Second, another favourite strategy of right wingers is to play up the atrocities of the enemy, which did occur, war after all is hell, and play down those of their own country. In reality, however, Americans committed atrocities in Vietnam just like the enemy did. One of many examples: My Lai. Atrocities, of course, have occurred in each and every modern war and they were committed by all sides.