The Morning After: Ken Burns' (And Seth MacFarlane's) War

Star Wars parody? Again? Haven't we had enough of those over the last 30 years?

I thought the Family Guy show hit its target about 85% of the time, and when it did ("What, we get paid by the laser now?"), it was great. It was obvious that MacFarlane is a big SW fan, and the little bit with Seth Green at the end about the Robot Chicken parody was a perfect slice of top-this geekspeak.

Didn't watch The War yet, but it's DVR'd.

THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW !!!!!

check out http://www.differentdrummer.typepad.com
for what might be problems with Burns'
work...what it might leave out that Americans hould know about WWII

For some inexplicable and mad reason, I'd like to see Family Guy cover Empire and Jedi as well.

Ken Burns' miniseries on The War is simply shameful. Burns' claims to explore the issue of race (as he has in previous projects) and WWII stories so as to give a true account of the war from a multi-ethnic background. Instead of a melting pot of interviews, Burns focuses on the white and African American voices. What about the Japanese Americans who served even while their own country was herding family and friends into camps? And to give a mere 28 minutes out of 16 hours of finished film to Hispanics, the most highly decorated ethnic American group of that war, is disgusting. Ken Burns should be ashamed of his omissions in his "true" account. PBS should drop their plan to distribute this for free to American school children.

I tried to watch "Family Guy" but it really didn't grab me until the end when they were talking about "Robot Chicken" - then I finally sat down long enough to watch it. I don't know why; I've never seen "Robot Chicken" and I usually never miss "Family Guy." Maybe it was the creepy old neighbor as Obi Wan that put me off.

@Kay: By my count, Burns includes interviews with four Japanese American WWII vets in The War. (It's possible I'm missing some.) I don't recall who does and doesn't appear in the first episode, but Daniel Inouye at least was in that one, right?

Kay, I watched last night and there was a lot of coverage from many racial groups' (if I may use that term) point of view. I read your comment and wondered if we had watched the same program.

I though the 20 minute "four towns" prelude was badly done.... I couldn't wait for it to be over, and for "The War" to start.... the next 100 flew by, however....right up until the thuddingly wrong use of a new song sung by Norah Jones for the "ending" of the first 2 hour episode.

And I agree that the "tacked on" Hispanic soldier piece was pretty pointless and smacked of tokenism. It would not have been that difficult to intercut the "Hispanic" stories into the main piece -- putting a half honor at the end of the first episode was insulting to the audience...and (I suspect) to Latinos.

What makes the choices regarding the "tacked on" Hispanic half-hour so gauling is that, with a little effort, Burns could have found Hispanic Americans from the Philippines or Guam who fought in the war - or were related to soldiers. Both the Philippines an Guam had been Spanish colonies for centuries prior to becoming US territories at the end of the Spanish American War and Philappine Insurrection (~1901). One has to assume that some of the "Filipinos" who fought alongside "Americans" were of Spanish origin....

I watched "King of the Hill." Pretty good. (Drinks a beer.)

Please give me Ken Burns email adddress.

Thanks,

Bill Fox

"The War" is a totally fabulous piece of work...keeping in mind both the motions and the privacy issues that this type of movie might entail.

I have nothing but glowing remarks about this movie/documentary. Something "entreneu..." it would seem that one unit mainly was featured...but I'm not going to commit to that...

Lots of "how many stars can you find..." as to the movie's marching theme (nyuk nyuk).

Ken Burns....ya get an "A." WHY DON'T YOU HAVE AN EMAIL ADDRESS -- and the phone number doesn't work either....