9/11: Day That Changed The World (Smithsonian/Inception DVD)/Civilization: The West & The Rest (Neil Ferguson/BBC DVD Set)/Going For The Gold: The ’48 Games (2012/BBC DVD)
Picture: C/C+/C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C+/D/C- Main Programs: B-/B-/C
It is now
eleven years since the events of 9/11/01 and it is as problematic and
disturbing an event as ever with some people still peddling conspiracy
theories, many questions unanswered and some obvious ones too ugly to answer. In this, we look at a new program on the
subject and some rather related special interest titles.
The new
release on the attacks is from The Smithsonian Channel through Inception Media
with a DVD entitled 9/11: Day That
Changed The World (an over-obvious title that strikes me as odd) in a
program that lasts 90 minutes, has some good archive footage and is narrated by
Martin Sheen. Sure, there is going to be
overlap, but it is still worthy of the many sincere programs out there about
the subject and does not go off into silly-land about what really
happened. The only issue I have with
this and most programs on the subject that do take the matter seriously is that
it can often treat the event more like just another linear historical event
when it is much more, but this is worth a look as is the 45-minutes extra
program Stories In Fragments. This is a tough subject to deal with when you
really look into it and expect a grim feel when you watch.
Professor
Neil Ferguson has some interesting ideas about how Western Civilization (U.S. culture
and its influence all over the world) has been such a success, how it continues
to be so and will it continue. Can it
continue? If it does not, will that mean
the end of the U.S.
and the like? Civilization: The West & The Rest has episodes including Competition, Science, Property, Medicine, Consumerism and Work
which he semi-amusingly dubs “killer apps” that the U.S. and its allies introduced to
the world and how they changed the world for good and usually for the better.
However,
some of his arguments are incomplete, assumptions problematic and maybe being
limited to six episodes compromised him somewhat, but I still think there are
some flaws here no matter what. It would
be interesting if an extra debating his ideas were included, but there are
sadly no extras. However, his research
is impressive, some of the moments are great and it is a challenging
mini-series worth going out of your way to see.
Finally
in time for the recent huge success of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, Dr. Who
Matt Smith plays one of two men who are Going
For The Gold: The ’48 Games (2012) in a British telefilm about how a
nearly-broke and bankrupt Great Britain held The 1948 Summer Olympics and it
turned out to be a more than just another sporting event, but a show of what
the country was capable of after the horrors of WWII and now succeeded by the
United States as the dominant country in the world, showed what they still had
as a country.
Unfortunately,
this is a bit of a run-on melodrama, even at only 90 minutes, but it is a story
worth telling. A documentary might have
worked better and when the box is comparing it to Chariots Of Fire, you know this one is going to be a slow viewing. A trailer, photo gallery and trivia game are
the extras.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on all three DVDs are good, if not great
and sometimes a little soft, but both 9/11
programs have analog video footage and other flawed archive footage, so they
tend to perform more poorly. The lossy
Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo in all three cases are just fine for simple stereo
sound, but don’t expect any hidden Pro Logic surrounds.
- Nicholas Sheffo
