Milsurp After Hours

The War... about WWII... produced by Ken Burns, starts on PBS on September 23rd and runs for two weeks. It uses four cites as a point of focus: Mobile, Ala., Waterbury, Conn., Luverne, Minn., and Sacramento, Calif. It tells the story of people who fought that war, at war and on the home front, from each of those places as a reflection of the country as a whole. I'm looking forward to seeing it.

There was some controversy about language in this series. The local PBS stations have a choice of two versions.

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/tv/story/2007/09 ... ml?ref=rss

Have heard of complaints that he never interviewed any Latino veterans, which were numerous. Shows that you can't please everyone.

Vern.

I read that he went back after the latino complaint and added in about 30 minutes of program speak to this concern. The additional footage is in the completed film.

Well, it's over..... the series, although they seem to be starting it over again tonight.

I thought it fasinating. Maybe in a way because a people from my home town of Mobile had something to say about their experience and made up a good part of the show. One Mobile lady must have said both "War", pronounced without the "r" and "boys" in a two syllable way I can't approximate in writing, in every other sentence she spoke. But it was all pretty well done and there was no drag to any of it.

I think Burns drove home the horror aspect to the full extent. There was no shortage of dead bodies in piles and individually with much mutilation and gore. This in a series where the public tv edited out the four letter words to keep from offending tender sensibilites which tells us something about the strange society we live in.

Think the Marines got a lot of play. The Army's part in the Pacific was minimized at best. Guadalcanal for instance was presented as a total Marine victory, while they actually left the island to the Army while much of the fighting was left to be done. But... the story isn't a military unit history, but of people, and of the people he was following, he got those stories right I feel.

Oh, and the hispanic thing didn't amount to a hill of beans. What little was added was a plus to the film.