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History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

HNN Hot Topics: Hollywood & the Movies

Commentary: Historians

  • Thomas Doherty: The Last Bow for 35mm Film (2-20-12)
  • Robert Brent Toplin: If History is Any Judge, the History Movie is a Big Winner at Oscar Time (2-20-12)
  • Bruce Chadwick: History Films Are Back at the Oscars (2-20-12)
  • Tom Engelhardt: How the Movies Saved My Life (11-17-11)
  • Wayne Federman: What Reagan Did for Hollywood (11-14-11)
  • James Shapiro: Hollywood Dishonors the Bard (10-16-11)
  • Albert Auster and Leonard Quart: Hollywood in Iraq (4-21-11)
  • Kiernan Bagge: Hollywood and Its Relationship with History (02-13-11)
  • Thomas Doherty: Hollywood’s Take on Islam (11-2-10)
  • Ron Radosh: Oliver Stone’s Latest Travesty (10-19-10)
  • James Livingston: Rummaging in The Hurt Locker for a Moral Equivalent of War (4-19-10)
  • Michael C. Scott: Hollywood’s Obsession with the Ancient Epics (3-22-10)
  • The Saga of the Warner Brothers, Hollywood's Studio Family (3-14-10)
  • Robert Brent Toplin: Punish Torture? Hollywood's Answer (4-27-09)
  • Robert Brent Toplin: Ronald Reagan and the Day the Earth Stood Still (12-29-08)
  • Paul Boyer: How Movies Help Elucidate U.S. Nuclear History (11-1-08)
  • Aaron Gerow: What Are Japanese Fantasy Films Telling Us? (2-26-06)
  • Gordon Arnold: The Strange Afterlife of the Vietnam War (8-19-06)
  • David McNeill: Clint Eastwood's Iwo Jima (2-12-06)
  • Jeremy Black: What We Can Learn from James Bond? (1-24-06)
  • Jennifer Gaboury: Women Warriors Are the Rage in Hollywood--But What Was the Truth? (9-7-04)
  • Thomas Palaima: The Difference Between Hollywood's Troy and Homer's (5-18-04)
  • Rick Shenkman: How Hollywood Imagines American Presidents (10-22-03)
  • Film Reviews

  • Bruce Chadwick: Red Tails: World War II’s Tuskegee Airmen Fly Again in Film and on Stage but Much History is Ignored (1-30-12)
  • Lee P. Ruddin: The Devil's Double (10-11-11)
  • Lee P. Ruddin: Of Gods and Men (2-17-11)
  • Ron Briley: The Conspirator: Film and Historical Truth (2-6-11)
  • NYT: Finding the Humanity in the F.B.I.’s Feared Enforcer (11-8-11)
  • Salon: Made in Dagenham: A patronizing film about working-class feminism (11-18-10)
  • Robert Brent Toplin: What Happened to Our Money? Oliver Stone Returns to Wall Street (10-3-10)
  • Richard Bernstein: Sadism Gets a Pass at the Movies (a review of Inglorious Basterds) (9-9-09)
  • Robert Brent Toplin: W.: History and Psychology from Oliver Stone (10-26-08)
  • Anthony B. Toth: Disney's Hidalgo: A New Hollywood Low (3-31-08)
  • Jonathan Dresner: How True to History is Tom Cruise's The Last Samurai? (8-8-05)
  • Timothy R. Furnish: Kingdom of Heaven: What Parts Are Real? (5-16-05)
  • Tom Engelhardt: The Iraq War: The Movie (And Why It Is Such a Dud) (5-26-03)
  • Robert Brent Toplin: Why Gangs of New York Doesn't Deserve an Oscar (3-13-03)
  • History Movie/Movie History News

  • Meryl Streep film The Iron Lady is criticised by Margaret Thatcher's biographer (12-16-11)
  • Christian Bale defends 'Rape of Nanjing' film (12-12-11)
  • Lost Alfred Hitchcock film found in New Zealand (8-3-11)
  • Hollywood turns to history (7-22-11)
  • Aside From the Vampires, Lincoln Film Seeks Accuracy (5-9-11)
  • Why is King John always the villian in movies? Because he really was awful, say historians (3-1-11)
  • World War II-Era Film in NLM Collection Named to National Film Registry (6-6-11)
  • Making Hollywood Films Was Brutal, Even for Fritz Lang (1-23-11)
  • The silence of the silent movies (7-8-10)
  • Portraits of Hollywood’s Founding Power Players (11-1-10)
  • The 10 most historically inaccurate movies (8-4-09)
  • Top 10 Movies About Academic Life (6-2-09)
  • High Noon, Godfather II, Grand Illusion, and 22 other indispensable movies for understanding war and diplomacy (5-4-09)
  • Nixon and the movies (1-23-09)
  • How the Movies Made a President (1-16-09)
  • Howard Zinn dismisses trivial in history movies (1-16-09)
  • Frost/Nixon critic: Movies no place to learn real history (12-2-08)
  • 10 most historically inaccurate movies (3-29-08)
  • Can movies teach us about African-American history? (2-7-08)
  • The Afterlife Is Expensive for Digital Movies (12-23-07)
  • The History of Surf Movies (6-1-07)
  • The day Hollywood sent James Stewart to a brothel to make a man of him (11-5-06)
  • AHA explains why film reviews have been suspended at the AHR (5-1-06)
  • How Ray Allen Billington Picks the Movies Listed as Historic by the Library of Congress (2-5-04)
  • Patrick Rael: Gods and Generals is Good Hollywood -- Don't Go See It (2-24-03)
  • Hollywood: 3 Top Movie Myths About Pearl Harbor (8-27-02)
  • Books

  • Jim Cullen: Review of Steven J. Ross's "Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics" (Oxford, 2011) (12-20-11
  • Ron Briley: Review of Jennifer Frost's "Hedda Hopper's Hollywood: Celebrity Gossip and American Conservatism" (New York University Press, 2011) (7-13-11)
  • Andrew Feffer, Review of Robert Brent Toplin's "History by Hollywood" (University of Illinois Press, 2010) (6-27-10)