After the war, in one of the great efforts of spin control in our history, both Davis and Stephens, despite their own words, insisted that the war was not about slavery after all but about state sovereignty. By then, of course, slavery was "a dead and discredited institution," McPherson wrote, and to "concede that the Confederacy had broken up the United States and launched a war that killed 620,000 Americans in a vain attempt to keep 4 million people in slavery would not confer honor on their lost cause."
Why does getting the story right matter? [T]here is to this day too much evasion of how integral race, racism and racial conflict are to our national story. We can take pride in our struggles to overcome the legacies of slavery and segregation. But we should not sanitize how contested and bloody the road to justice has been.
OMG. Holy cow. What an amazing movie. Somebody called it, “A cross-cultural martial arts epic.” Oh, yeah. Takes place in Finland and ancient China. Features some of the most-beautifully filmed martial arts fighting I’ve seen – and I’ve seen a lot of good stuff. Also, an interesting story, although it requires some patience and focus. I expect to watch this one again. Highly recommended to anyone with an interest in myth, fate, and beautifully choreographed fighting (not particularly violent). Wow.
I was interested in the futuristic vampire flick, Daybreakers, in part for the premise, in part for the appearance of Ethan Hawke. I made the mistake of watching this during dinner. Yet, I did not turn if off when one character spewed chunky vomit on another. However, a few minutes later, when a character exploded and threw gallons of blood all over the set, I did turn this off and remove it from my queue. And, reluctantly, return to my steak dinner.
BTW, the poster shows the rip-off of the Matrix, only instead of aliens storing humans for energy, vampires store humans for blood.
"Your Highness" (R, 102 minutes). A juvenile excrescence that feels like the work of 11-year-old boys in love with dungeons, dragons, warrior women, pot, boobs and four-letter words. A promising cast (James Franco, Natalie Portman, Danny McBride, Zooey Deschanel) in one of the worst films of the year, a witless farce set in medieval times and featuring a curious obsessions with adding obscenities to every sentence. The screenplay by McBride is more suitable for a campfire skit by dirty-minded 11-year-olds on the closing night of summer camp. One star.
