Departments

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Oliver Stone

  • SOURCE: WSJ
    8-13-13

    Oliver Stone to Japan: Apologize for WWII war crimes

    Film director Oliver Stone, who is no stranger to controversy, turned from his sharp attacks on the U.S. for the atomic bombings of Japan to criticize his hosts over their attitude to China and other Asian neighbors.In a speech to foreign correspondents in Tokyo, Mr. Stone said that Japan needs to more completely apologize for its wartime acts, and said it should also resist a shift to relying on military might to deal with security challenges posed by its neighbors such as China and North Korea.Japan’s leaders have expressed “deep remorse” over the physical damage and psychological pain the country has inflicted on other Asian countries, but repeated visits by cabinet ministers to a controversial war shrine in Tokyo and growing talk of revising the nation’s peace constitution have made other countries skeptical about the intention of these remarks....

  • SOURCE: NY Review of Books
    2-21-13

    Sean Wilentz: Cherry-Picking Our History

    Sean Wilentz is George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American History at Princeton and author of The Rise of American Democracy. (February 2013)Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick’s new book and accompanying ten-part televised documentary have a misleading title. Most if not all of the interpretations that they present in The Untold History of the United States—from the war in the Philippines to the one in Afghanistan—have appeared in revisionist histories of American foreign policy written over the last fifty years. Challenged by early reviewers, Stone and Kuznick have essentially conceded the point about their sources and claimed that what they call the “revisionist narrative” that informs their book has in truth become “the dominant narrative among university-based historians.”

  • SOURCE: National Review
    1-24-13

    Conrad Black: The Henry Wallace Rewrite

    Conrad Black is the author of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom, Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, and the recently published A Matter of Principle. He can be reached at cbletters@gmail.com.

  • Oliver Stone’s Latest Travesty

    by Ron Radosh

    This weekend, Oliver Stone’s new documentary, South of the Border, his ode to Hugo Chavez and South and Latin America’s new quasi-Marxist and not so quasi dictators, has opened in New York City and Los Angeles, and will open nationwide in a week.  It had a showing this past Wednesday at the AFI Silverdocs Festival in the Washington, D.C., area, and my article about it  appears today in the weekend edition of  the Wall Street Journal.  I argue therein:  “What Mr. Stone and his writers have presented is a standard far-left narrative that is part of a long line of propaganda films, a modern American version of the old agitprop.  There are no dissenting voices in this film.  Nor is there any mention of the fact that Mr. Chávez has closed down television and radio stations that disagree with him and arrested dissenting political figures.”  The film is what you can expect from the likes of Oliver Stone, a virtual know-nothing who uses his celebrity and acclaim as a film director to spew out hatred for the country that has made him wealthy and influential.

  • SOURCE: CS Monitor
    8-3-10

    Nathan Gardels: Oliver Stone on Wall Street, Gordon Gekko, and Hugo Chávez

    Oliver Stone is the director of some of Hollywood’s most famous films, from “Platoon” to “Wall Street” to “JFK.” Last week he sat down in the Los Angeles offices of his production company, IXTLAN, to talk with Global Viewpoint Network editor Nathan Gardels about his recent documentary, “South of the Border,” and his upcoming release, “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.”"South of the Border"Nathan Gardels: As you show in your recent documentary, “South of the Border,” US diplomacy and the American media have reacted with general hostility to the empowerment of the poor and indigenous in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay and, to some extent, in Brazil. Why is that?Oliver Stone: I suppose it comes from the old imperial impulse of the US toward Latin America going back to the Monroe Doctrine, Teddy Roosevelt, the protection of American business interests, and support for military dictators throughout the cold war. The US remains hostile to anyone on the left coming to power in their “backyard,” anyone who thinks the resources of a country belong to its people.

  • Oliver Stone Still Doesn't Get It

    by Larry Rohter

    One month ago, I incurred the wrath of Oliver Stone for stating the obvious in an article I wrote:  his new movie South of the Border, ostensibly a “documentary” about Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and a group of supposedly like-minded South American colleagues, is so riddled with errors, misrepresentations, fabrications and fraudulent statistics as to be useless except as an example of over-the-top propaganda.  At the screening for the movie that I attended, I counted more than two dozen assertions that are demonstrably incorrect, but chose, in the limited space available to me, to focus on but a handful.