Oppenheimer won an Oscar as the best picture for 2023. It was popular internationally as well as the United States. Perhaps it is because I have seen so many movies about the bomb that my reaction was jaded. My reaction was just the opposite of the Oscars. I flunked it on what I consider to be basic technical issues. No. 1 - Continuity. The story line was so jumbled that I never knew where I was or when or who the characters were. To me it was just a big jumble, so I gave up after 30 minutes of struggle.
Of course, the individual who was the basis of the film was a complicated figure with lots of drama in his story. The Red Scare tried to destroy him, and so it dimmed his place in history. There were lots of characters who played significant roles in the story, and their physical appearance in the film added to the confusion. Too many eggheads.
I guess you could describe these as two segments of a series: 2024: The Bomb and the Cold War and 2021: 9/11 And the War on Terror.
If you combine the two, you will have too many episodes to watch during a week. You need to choose one, wait a few weeks, and then do the other. It’s not the issue of lots of hours of TV viewing. It is the dense drama that is presented in a gripping manner that will keep you glued to your seat.
If you want to know the inside story of what happened not only inside the U.S Government, but also inside foreign governments, this is it. I learned so much about history. The reason was not only because so much was classified at the time, but also the cumulative effect of the interactions and the results. I felt like I had been asleep for 50 years even though I have read a lot of history.
Community Theater in the Triangle has rebounded following the pandemic that saw a lot of the smaller companies without university support go out of business. Just recently the North Carolina Theatre Co. filed for bankruptcy after offering Broadway musicals in Raleigh for 40 years. They simply couldn’t compete with the national touring productions at the Durham Performing Arts Center. DPAC is one of the largest theaters in the nation in terms of gross receipts.