"JFK: The Final Hours" on NGC at 6pm and 2am tonight

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New documentary being shown tonight at 6PM and 2AM on the National Geographic Channel.

Covers the final 24 hours of the president's life. Most of the footage is in color (filmed by then-White House cinematographer Thomas Atkins).


some scenes below:

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1. ‘JFK: The Final Hours’ Is A Powerful Portrait Of President Kennedy’s Last Day Alive

By Scott Meslow

JFK: The Final Hours is narrated by Bill Paxton, who just eight years old when he saw Kennedy give a speech outside the Hotel Texas just three hours before his death. From there, the film embarks on an exhaustive rundown of the last 24 hours of JFK’s life, cobbled together from photographs and interviews with the people who were there that day. With virtually no time devoted to the assassination itself, JFK: The Final Hours is free to explore many of the lesser-known elements of the story, tracing a route that took him from the Texas Hotel to Brooks Air Force Base to numerous smaller meetings and encounters on the last day of his life.

The list of people interviewed in JFK: The Final Hours includes Clint Hill, one of Kennedy’s Secret Service agents, and Buell Frazier, who drove Lee Harvey Oswald to the Texas Book Depository on the day of the assassination. Both men have interesting stories to tell, though they’re largely made up of the same details that are recounted in many other, similar books and documentaries about the Kennedy assassination: the way Kennedy’s head moved after he was shot, or the wrapped package of “curtain rods” that Oswald carried with him to work that day.

But as fascinating as their insights are, it’s the people who interacted only briefly with the Kennedys that really stand out. There’s something very affecting about the mundanity of the events leading up the assassination, and the way that so many of the people interviewed in the film still treasure their brief encounters with the Kennedys. It’s the tiny details that stick; the young girls who got their hair done like Jackie and waited all morning outside the Hotel Texas for a glimpse of the couple, or the boys’ choir that nervously performed for the Kennedys at what turned out to be their last meal. No matter how small or brief, everyone remembers their interactions with the Kennedys on that day: Corkie Friedman, who was married to the mayor of Fort Worth, describes a moment when J.F.K. casually complimented her earrings that almost made her faint.

read more: http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2013/11/08/2914781/jfk-final-hours-powerful-portrait-kennedys-day-alive/

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2. kick for those on east coast

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