Watch Oswald's Ghost For Free

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Simply Perfect

Pretty Good

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

That is about the extent of this film's contribution. If you think Todd Gitlin, or Tom Hayden know beans about any of this, their participation will disabuse you of that notion. And if you have forgotten how Mark Lane got rich off his speculations on the assassination, here is a reminder.If you think polling a subset of less than 2% of the US population is key to understanding an issue in which Stone tells us more than 70% of the US population is united in having no faith in the Warren Report, you will love the wacky logic of OSWALD'S GHOST.A LOT of opinion and very few facts. I find the musings of an Mailer on his last legs interesting because I find Mailer's thought processes interesting, but he adds nothing to the issues here either. One might as well hear yet another actor tells you what he/she "thinks" about politics. They do better when someone writes their lines.The objective of this documentary is to show how "dark revanchist forces" (AKA Republicans, generals, intelligence folks, corporate types etc), as opposed to the good old-time lefty Marxist doctrine, resorted to assassination in the cases of JFK, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, and the like to hold back "the future." If you have somehow missed out of on the many "documentary" efforts of film makers like Stone to get this point across, here is another chance.Case in point, it is useful to have Edward Jay Epstein's send up of Garrison's numerological idiocies, but whatever viewers think about "who dun it," and we have a lot of evidence here on IMDb that there are a lot of opinions about that, Stone intentionally ignores the hardest evidence of what really counts right under his nose.The key point is that there is no evidence as yet that ANY single assassin can have pulled off the JFK assassination... Oswald or anyone else. Trying to aim and fire all those shots and make two hits with a piece of crap like a Carcano bolt action with that scope... just hasn't worked.Any fair minded analyst must concede THAT makes a lot of difference to evaluating a film like OSWALD'S GHOST which is more agitprop than Doc.EVERY attempt to duplicate the marksmanship required of the "one assassin in six seconds" theory over the past 40 years has failed. One of the most detailed attempts to duplicate it was put together by CBS News a few years after the assassination. Stone carries a few feet of film showing the test underway. But Stone never tells us that CBS couldn't duplicate it either.It does matter. Stone is just another tourist, putting together his idea of pretty faces that the PBS PC will find acceptable and same-old same-old commentary with no context and no understanding of what he is dealing with. Hey, they paid him and ran it.Too bad that was enough for him

OSWALD'S GHOST got a brief theatrical release on it's way to an American EXPERIENCE broadcast on PBS. There is little to recommend for seeing it on the big screen as most of its footage is either archival stock that was meant to be shown on TV in the first place, or typical talking heads interviews from the present day.The film goes over familiar territory for anyone even vaguely familiar with the JFK assassination. Some of the talking heads such as Mark Lane and Dan Rather trot out stories most have seen before. More interesting are individuals like former Presidential Candidate Gary Hart and Norman Mailer who, rightly or wrongly, give us their insights into the matter (more on Mailer later). For the first hour or so, Director Robert Stone tries to portray a sort of kaleidescope (a word used in the documentary) of the Assassination, the official and conspiracy theories and a view of how it affected people of the immediate and subsequent generations. On that level, it sort of keeps one's interest. Some of the footage is less familiar than others, and it's edited together competently enough. Gary Lionelli's music itself is evocative, but, unfortunately, Stone mixes it too high and he drowns out some of the dialog in the process. Worse, much of the archival footage would be more effective without the intrusive music. *** Possible SPOILER AREA ***And, then, in the last 20 minutes, Stone completely flips the film on its end. Gone is the dispassionate, relatively even-handed approach and he gives the film over completely to one side of the argument. Norman Mailer and HIS theory of the assassination come to dominate the final section of the documentary. Mailer's conclusions become the film's conclusions. In light of Mailer's subsequent death, the film could just as easily been called, "Mailer's Ghost". And, then, it ends abruptly.Without knowing more about Stone (his surname an irony in itself that even he can't avoid as he includes behind-the-scenes footage of OLIVER Stone directing his film JFK!), it's impossible to know if this method of seemingly pulling the rug out from the viewer was an intentional act of the old in-and-out sucker punch, or if it naturally evolved that way through the editing process. In either case, it considerably weakens the film - setting all prejudice one way or another about one's particular view of the JFK assassination aside. Not only does it come out of nowhere, but it tarnishes what was good about that first hour.

I saw this today and I was impressed with some of the archival footage and some of the interviews given. It's worth checking out if you're interested and/or have some knowledge on the case. I guess I would have liked to have heard more from Mailer and more on Oswald. I do think they gave some good information on a few details JFK missed. This is an informative and sometimes stylish documentary, worth checking out, the only reason I won't give more details on some of the plot points is for the fact that they had a lot to do with the conspiracy and a lot of them were red herrings. What this documentary does is put a few things into perspective, i.e. Oswalds motive, Dan Rathers comment saying the presidents head went forward, etc. My reason for giving this a ten was simply because the rating's too low, it deserves a 7 out of 10. Recommended.

Here is my soapbox dispelling the myths as promoted by the film. Please bear with me.While the documentary strive to supply the information in conjunction with rare footages, Robert Stone did a dismal job ignoring the central heart of the conspiracy connected to the CIA (not rogue but whole) and the Mossad in the elimination of President Kennedy, partly in revenge over Bay of Pigs fiasco and JFK's private threat to "splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter to the winds" & withdraw from Vietnam where CIA place its stake and most importantly reversing JFK's foreign policy towards Israel on the matter of clandestine development of the nuclear arsenal at the secret nuclear reactor Dimona. JFK signed National Security Action Memoranda 55, 56 and 57 that stripped CIA of its power to freely operate in covert ops and to account for its actions, which outraged senior members of the CIA. (JFK fired CIA director Allen Dulles after Bay of Pigs failure, and that same person ended up as a member of the Warren Commission.) The tension between Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion & his subsequent successor Levi Eshkol and JFK was well-documented in the telegram correspondences ("Israel and the Bomb" by Avner Cohen). David stepped down abruptly on June 23, 1963 over argument with JFK concerning Israel's right to develop nuclear weaponry, ostensibly for self-defense in case of warring with hostile enemy neighbors.CIA and Mossad, through the coordination of chief of counterintelligence James Jesus Angleton as liaison to Israel, cooperated in the joint operation to "remove" JFK to protect their geopolitical interests as well as the reputation, and the end result were the escalation of Vietnam War due to Gulf of Tonkin hoax and the complete turnaround of U.S. foreign policy to unconditionally respect Israel's power and sovereignty as an erstwhile ally in Middle Eastern affairs.Lee Harvey Oswald may well have been involved in the conspiracy but only as an intelligence agent through myriad of contacts (US Naval Intelligence and possibly KGB), but he was a patsy as he said -- he was simply framed up as a useful covert intelligence asset for disposal by the CIA and the conspirators. In other words, Lee was certainly not guilty.Lyndon Barnes Johnson was undoubtedly a traitor as were the high-ranking members of the US government and military who knew what faction removed JFK. Because LBJ usurped the power to appease the military-industrial complex, fabricating Gulf of Tonkin incident to begin escalating the Vietnam War to a larger level and extract the blood money & introduce sophisticated weaponry, tactical strategies and military technology in the process of brutalizing Vietnam to a perpetual third world nation status. The "communist domino theory" is non-sense as an excuse framed to justify the illegal and pointlessly bloody war.After JFK's assassination, it is likely that President Johnson had contemplated invading Cuba after fabricating the intelligence that Castro ordered the murder of JFK in retaliation for the attempted invasion as well as spreading the fear of communist onslaught if not contained; USSR agreed to withdraw the missile bases, with the condition that USSR will once again retaliate to destruct United States should U.S. invade Cuba in a massive effort again.JFK died a true patriot for America in defending her sovereignty against foreign and internal threats that converged to murder President Kennedy. The nuclear fires of World War III will be traced back to the assassination of JFK that have changed the course of human civilization forever, with the military-industrial-Congressional complex and State of Israel consolidating the ultimate power to decide the manifest destiny for the current world affairs at large...Fascinating spools of rare footages aside, "Oswald's Ghost" offer absolutely nothing new for the knowledgeable readers of the pivotal event like me. The problem is that propaganda is an easy and persuading media to bamboozle the uninformed viewers, which is why this movie infuriate me every other minute with disinfo (omitted, half-truth, lies).Robert Stone and the producers, why have you forsaken America with the film that only the Establishment and lone assassin-magic bullet theory/Warren Commission defenders would approve of? Forsaking the truth lead to America's demise and disintegration as a sovereign republic subservient to Israel and the ruling oligarch Elite's pernicious influence. (For reference: "Plausible Denial" by Mark Lane; "Final Judgment" by Michael Collins Piper; "The Last Confessions of E. Howard Hunt" by Erik Hedegaard, Rolling Stone, March 21, 2007; George Washington farewell address, Sept. 1796; President Kennedy's speech "The President and the Press: Address before the American Newspaper Publishers Association" in NYC, April 1961)1/2 out of 4Postscript: I recommend reading Citizens for Truth about Kennedy Assassination chairman James DiEugenio's critical review of Oswald's Ghost. Google his name combined with the film title. Postscript II: Watched the ABC News special The Kennedy Assassination: Beyond Conspiracy originally aired on ABC in fall 2003 on History Channel on February 19, 2008. It's a sham with the predicably biased narration doling out lie after lie, exaggeration and half-truths. Do your research, not what the media tell you to believe Oswald was responsible alone and alone.