Tag: JFK

Screening Room: ‘Jackie’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - Awards, Film - NewLeave a comment

jackie1

For all the films that have been made about JFK, his presidency, his assassination, and the aftermath and legacy, relatively little attention has been paid to Jacqueline Kennedy. Pablo Larrain’s haunting Jackie goes a long way to address that shortage.

Jackie is playing now. You won’t find a better acting job than seen in its star Natalie Portman. My review is at Eyes Wide Open:

Watching Natalie Portman inhabit Jacqueline Kennedy in Pablo Larrain’s post-assassination fugue piece Jackie is as wrenching and unforgettable as the film itself. Portman’s ability to live the role comes not just from acutely inhabiting Jackie’s particularly affected mid-Atlantic tones and breathy pauses. She plays the First Lady as strenuously poised, to be sure. That was the Jackie the country was familiar with. But Portman threads her performance with the elements country wasn’t allowed to see in the aftermath of John F. Kennedy’s assassination: Her glassy shock at the killing itself, the terror and fury that boiled up behind the shock, and the steel-tempered force of will that clamped everything back together…

Here’s the trailer:

New in Books: ‘Dallas 1963’

On By chrisbarsantiIn BooksLeave a comment
The morning of November 22, 1963, JFK told Jackie, "We're heading into nut country today"
The morning of November 22, 1963, JFK told Jackie, “We’re heading into nut country today”

dallas1963-coverLeading up to today’s 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, dozens more books have been written on the killing itself as well as his legacy. This adds to the whole bookstore’s worth of titles already out there. Incredibly, there are still new and worthwhile takes to be found. Dallas 1963 is a case in point. Tackling neither the assassination theories that have sprouted hydra-like in the last half-century or the Jackie-burnished legend of Camelot, it focuses on one thing only: the virulent right-wing hatred waiting for JFK that day in Dallas.

My review of Dallas 1963 ran in today’s Barnes & Noble Review; here’s part:

A well-spoken Democratic president whose background and ethnicity raised reactionary suspicions. A new government health care plan denounced as anti-American social engineering. Accusations of treason and talk of insurrection. Militia-like groups recruiting members. A powerful media machine waging all-out warfare on the president and his allies. In Bill Minutaglio and Steven L. Davis’s electric, frightening urban political history Dallas 1963, the authors don’t need to draw parallels between the conservative panic that erupted during John F. Kennedy’s presidency and the fears currently inflaming the far right wing. It’s all right there on the page…

There’s an excerpt from Dallas 1963 at NPR here.