Tag Archives: Vietnam War

May 01 2026
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Art and architecture, Daily Post

Settling in for the three-hour Director’s Cut

Thursday 30th April 2026, 7.05pm (day 5,362)

Apocalypse Now, 30/4/26

Clare really dislikes Apocalypse Now and I have given up trying to establish why this is. It’s not that she has anything against the genre, as she agrees Full Metal Jacket is a classic, for instance. But she was out all evening….

On the other hand, having sat through the Coppola Cut for the second time, unlike with some movies (particularly The Wicker Man which was butchered in the initial edit) this one doesn’t benefit all that much from the additional material. All it really adds is forty minutes and three pairs of breasts. Nevertheless if you ask me (but not Clare) this remains a work of crazed brilliance.

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Mar 30 2019
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Daily Post, Portrait, Stranger

War tourism

Saturday 30th March 2019, 12.20pm (day 2,774)

War tourism, 30/3/19

This blog is both commentary, and record. So there is one part of me that regrets there is such a thing as ‘war tourism’ exists — that the dreadful conflict between the two parts of Vietnam, with the interventions of the USA, that lasted for some ten years from 1964 or so should now be something that people have come to feel is merely the background for a family photo. On the other hand — I went to the War Remnants museum in Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh CIty) today; I too was a war tourist. So should I feel guilty? The place was even-handed enough, there were some fascinating things to look at (most of all, the gallery of war correspondent photographs from both Vietnamese and European/American photographers), it passed most of the day. I learned, and that’s surely what matters. But could I stand and smile for the camera in front of a death machine? That’s something else.

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