I have seen Lincoln...

Saw it at a special screening (media, I think; I got a pass through a friend of a friend) last Wednesday. The lack of stupid **** that normally preceeds a movie did not make up for the 45 minutes we had to get there before the movie started, but it was well worth the wait.

And I think it comes out nationwide on November 16, NY and LA a week before that (but don't quote me).
 
Spielberg made it based on Doris Goodwin's preposterous book. How could it be any good? Lincoln was a bigger fuckup than Obama and the only reason his reputation has been sustained is because he got shot in a timely fashion and didn't get blamed for the disaster of reconstruction.
 
Lincoln didn't have any firm idea about how reconstruction could or would go and to think he would have reacted any differently than his party did to the south electing to congress and its governorships and legislatures the people who led them in and into the war is myopic.

THe south had no intention of losing the peace and to let them get away with re enslaving the blacks via law codes would have been a betrayal.
 
I'll spare you and save you some time. He suspended the writ of habeas corpus, arrested thousands of his political opponents, shut down scores of newspapers, ordered the arrest of the chief justice.

He made political appointments to generalships, which resulted in military disasters repeatedly and when he appointed professional military people he appointed the wrong ones, which let the war drag on for four years.

When he finally appointed a general who could and did beat Lee at Gettysburg he flew into a rage and shifted the command to Grant because he did not think Meade was aggressive enough.


He lied about casualties.

He gave away huge swaths of the american west to the railroads, his legal clients. He profiteered from the sale of his lots in Council Bluffs when he made it the jumping off point for the transcontinental railroad. jThe graft that came in during his administration continued for decades and led to some of the most outrageous thieving in history,.

He made war on his own people for seceding and then acted as midwife to the secession of West Virginia, in spite of and in violiation of the constitutional provisions for the creation of new states.

He favored sending the freed blacks to Africa or the Carribean and before the war favored insuring the continuation of slavery in the southern states but keeping it out of the others.

And he introduced the noble Prussian practice of conscription into a land of free men and shot the men who deserted.

He claimed the southern states were never really out of the union but to be officially back in he wanted to ban from office the southerners who had fought in the southern army or served in its elected offices.

If maintaining the existing union was the only thing that mattered, most of that can be justified----it is just too bad for the hundreds of thousands who did not agree and got killed.

No doubt that tear jerking moron Spielberg will show that all this greatly troubled him.
 
"If maintaining the existing union was the only thing that mattered, most of that can be justified"

You said it, not me.

I'm sorry you would have preferred a president who would have gone about the most compromising means in order to achieve what he did. Maybe James Buchanan is more your style.
 
Apparently Daniel Day-Lewis' voice was reasonably close to the actual Lincoln (as much as we can tell anyway). I like it that they didn't succumb to the usual temptation to portray every historical male who was a strong leader as speaking with a deep, gravelly, resonating voice.

I can kind of forgive it with Patton just because there might not have been an actor on the planet good enough to speak with a similar voice to the historical Patton and still project anywhere near the same aura and gravitas.
 
I love reading Lincoln and consider the Cooper Union address to be the greatest American political speech. I just don't think he was a good president in that he violated every legal and constitutional restriction there was. I'm glad he saved the union because I wouldn't want to live in a place like the south, then or now.

I picked up most of my factual ammo taking classes on the war and reconstruction under Barnes Lathrop at UT decades ago when I was a grad student. Not to say Lathrop would agree with me.

As for DiLorenzo, he hates Lincoln because he sympathizes with the old south to an extent; I don't share his hatred or his sympathy.

Lincoln was well versed in the bible and shakespeare and wrote with great talent; I think you can make the case he was our greatest writer as president. Better than Jefferson.

I read a few volumes of Nicholay and Hay years ago and got to where I liked and respected them so much that their love of their boss convinced me he was a good man.

But his administration of the war was a disaster and his toleration for money criminals in his party was on par with Clinton's sexual morals. Both were irresponsible to an extreme degree.

I would rather spend an evening talking to Lincoln than any other president. I just don't think he was very good at the job.

ANd contrary to what that plagiarist Goodwin argues, I don't think his cabinet worked well together. If they had, they would have won the war a couple of years earlier.
 
I'm not sure if this was mentioned in the movie, but Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy. A century later, Kennedy would have a secretary named Lincoln. Something to think about . . . .
 
Lincoln did not have a secretary named Kennedy. He had two secretaries, Nicolay and Hay, who wrote a great multi volume biography of him.
 
Wasn't he gay? Does it address that? Andrew Sullivan always say that Lincoln was a homosexual, but that might be because Sullivan is a homosexual and wants someone famous like that to be homosexual too.
 
I think this was a marvelous movie. I've read more on Lincoln than most. Visually the movie was terrific. I am frankly amazed at how much a handsome guy like Daniel Day Lewis can look like the photographed honest Abe, down to the way his clothing fit and his hair went astray. Sally Field as Mrs. Lincoln gave great depth and complexity to the character. I view Ms. Lincoln approximately as unfavorably as before, but in a different way. Lincoln had amazing intellect and insight into the human condition. A lot of that came through in the movie.
 
I saw it today.

I am a history enthusiast and a lifelong film buff who appreciates good acting, a storyline and/or the accurate or thoughtful on screen portrayal of an important subject, good cinema production and direction, skillful screenwriting, excellence in cinematography, good makeup, film design, set dressing, well staged action sequences and stunt work, theatrics and tableau, location selection, movie music, dramatic and comedic ebb and flow and the use of special or CGI effects.

Any or all of these in combination or even individually can make a movie worthy of my time.

I enjoyed and understood "Lincoln," but feel most moviegoers would find it lengthy, labyrinthine, laborious, lackluster and less than what they needed to really enjoy sitting through it.

I feel this material's probably better suited to a reference book that most folks wouldn't be inclined to read.

The moving pictures here are very good, but creating my own mental pictures from the written words of Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln" might have been a better place for myself and many others to start.

And watching this film could then serve as an adjunct and an addendum to reading that book for those with an interest.

Steven Spielberg, Daniel Day-Lewis and many others who worked on this film will deservedly receive Academy Awards' acclaim and almost certainly some will win Oscars, but most film goers should probably look elsewhere for their movie entertainment.

Their loss, but IMHO, as a movie, I think it's just too deep, too involved, too slow and too long for most folks to easily enjoy.

But kudos to those who make the attempt.

I found it a better flick in most ways (that matter to me) than "War Horse."

Every journey to any educational epiphany begins somewhere and this could be a worthwhile place for some to start.

What do you think?

cool.gif
 
Come to think of it, I've never seen Lincoln's birth certificate...

Alright, you've convinced me. I'm going to vote democratic party next time.
 
South Austin

No No you got it all
wrong
Lincoln was succeeded by Johnson
while Kennedy was succeed by Johnson who drove a Lincoln
 
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