Vietnam

Film Review: “Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell” — Shell Shocked

March 26, 2024
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Faith is a very elusive thing in the transcendent “Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell.”

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Book Review: “Back to the Dirt” — An American Apocalypse in Progress

May 11, 2023
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All of the characters in Back to the Dirt are, in a sense, survivalists, people clinging onto what’s long gone, stockpiling karma for an apocalypse that is already upon them.

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Book Review: Éric Vuillard’s “An Honorable Exit” — A Brilliant Chronicle of a Tragedy Foretold

April 27, 2023
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Éric Vuillard’s method is to create an ironic rapport with the powerful: his vignettes dramatize how France’s elite delude themselves into thinking the colonial world order can be kept intact after World War Two.

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Film Review: “The Wake Up Call” — A New and Important Feature Documentary

April 12, 2022
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Eric Neudel and Alison Gilkey found a tremendous subject for a documentary, and have told his tale with urgency and compassion.

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Book Review: Cowboys and the Wild East — “In the Dragon’s Shadow: Southeast Asia in the Chinese Century”

October 25, 2021
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Proceeding largely country by country, Sebastian Strangio penetratingly explores Southeast Asia’s multifaceted struggle with its behemoth Chinese neighbor.

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Film Review: “F.T.A.” — An Anti-War Gem, Rediscovered

March 6, 2021
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Exuding a guerilla theater, agitprop vibe (with touches here and there of vaudeville and live sketch comedy), F.T.A. is a thrilling expression of pacifism and accountability directed at the military.

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Film Review: Beware of “Last Days in Vietnam” — A Whitewash of the War

September 26, 2014
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Contextualizing is everything. And that’s particularly true of Last Days in Vietnam, where the odious things Americans did there weigh down the ostensible heroics shown in our exiting the country.

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Film Review: “Far From Vietnam” — A Remarkable Anti-War Film

September 25, 2013
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Far From Vietnam dared say what no American documentary, even the most radical, would insinuate for fear of being accused of treason: in Vietnam, the Americans were the new Germans.

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Movie Review: Black Power Mixtape 1967–1975 — Scattered, Skewed, But Engaging

October 17, 2011
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This intriguing documentary, made up of first-hand footage about the Black Power movement, will air on WGBH’s Independent Lens this Thursday @ 10 p.m.

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Book Review: Timothy Leary and Daniel Ellsberg — Dangerous Men?

March 31, 2010
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By Harvey Blume The major problem with these treatments of Timothy Leary and Daniel Ellsberg is that they portray their main characters as if there was no possible resonance between them, as if they came from different eras. The Harvard Psychedelic Club, by Don Lattin, HarperOne, 256 pages, $24.99. The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel…

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