[Leica] Ken Burns misfired - so far

[r.s.taylor at comcast.net (Richard Taylor)]

Larry - I agree completely.  I watched about a half hour of this  
episode and then gave up.  Burns is wringing all the life out of  
story.  He did the same thing in the PBS series on jazz.  Every time  
the music got going good he cut to some talking head who told us how  
important it all was.  Boring, boring, boring.

But, then, PBS has been doing that alot in the last ten or fifteen  
years.  With only a few exceptions (News Hour, Frontline, and  
occasionally Nova) they've forgotten how to make interesting,  
effective documentaries backed with real facts.

Regards,

Dick



On Sep 28, 2009, at 10:28 AM, Lawrence Zeitlin wrote:

> We share your disappointment with the first episode of the National  
> Park
> series. My wife and I have spent considerable time in many of the  
> parks and
> even rafted through the Grand Canyon. I guess we were expecting a  
> visual
> tour through all the parks, both the ones we have seen and those we  
> have
> not. Instead we were treated to a dry, and fairly uninteresting  
> history
> lesson stressing the rapacity of some early land developers. It is  
> apparent
> that Burns is trying to recreate the success of his Civil War series  
> by
> using the same model. But the Civil War had a distinct time line.  
> Events and
> battles occurred in a sequence which structured the story. Not so  
> with the
> parks. Each is unique. It matters little which was created first or  
> the
> legal battles surrounding the creation of each. What they look like  
> now is
> all important.
>
> Larry Z
>
>
> <<I'm finished with the first episode of Ken Burns' documentary on the
>
> national parks and I have to say I feel he made some really strange
>
> choices. Sometimes the colors seem so hyped up as to be surreal. I'm
>
> thinking of the Yellowstone Canyon images in partiular and some images
>
> inside the Grand Canyon where there's a distinct green band between
>
> the sky and the cliffs of the canyon.
>
>
> Is this just me? These are places I visit relatively often and it's
>
> like it's all been amped up so much that it no longer is the place I
>
> know and remember.
>
>
> Adam Bridge>>
>
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