Reenactments

An American and a British television company have found a way around the ban on cameras at Michael Jackson's child-molestation trial: dramatic reenactments. E! Entertainment Television and satellite company British Sky Broadcasting are joining to present daily re-creations of the trial, executives said Tuesday. Court transcripts will be used to highlight the previous day's testimony and court events.

Called to action by the blast of a horn, more than 30 yapping, spotted hounds spill down a hill, bound across a country road, leap a fence and rush a faded winter field. On their heels are about two dozen hunters on horseback, men and women in breeches and tweed and velvet hats. The few motorists this deep in the country on a winter weekday morning slow down to watch. Some stop. It's something to behold, this pageant of beasts and man - a scene from another time, another place. A painting.

If ever an event symbolized the congealing of news and entertainment, it's the civil trial of O.J. Simpson. If disoriented, you have cause: The trial is getting sober daily coverage from E! Entertainment Television, a cable network "dedicated to the world of entertainment," while mainstream TV news coverage is as theatrical as ever.

In the film based on her memoir "Mulberry Child," Jian Ping speaks of her family's ordeal during the Cultural Revolution with searing detail and not an ounce of sentimentality. The same can't be said of director Susan Morgan Cooper's heavy-handed approach to the material. Moving between a present-day mother-daughter clash of values and a personal history of life under Mao's regime, her docudrama is an awkward mix. Especially distracting are the reenactments, which undercut the power of the film's archival images - among them photographs taken surreptitiously by one of China's Red Guardsmen.

George Washington's Christmas crossing of the Delaware River led to critical battles in Trenton and Princeton. Its annual reenactment is now the subject of a legal fight. But modern skirmishers put aside their differences over some of the portrayals to conduct the 49th reenactment.

Poor, poor little rich boy Gordon Clune. Poor little starving Gordon Clune. --excerpt from a PBS Net forum about "Frontier House" The widely seen PBS reality series "Frontier House" captured the many sides of Gordon Clune and his Malibu family. It caught their whining side, complaining side, feuding side and cheating side.

Charlie Oldham tugged on his wool infantry hat, wiped a thick layer of sweat from his forehead and limped back onto the battlefield in Moorpark on Sunday. In real life, the stocky 47-year-old works as a building inspector in San Jose, but over the weekend he joined nearly 500 Civil War buffs to engage in a reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg. "We're hard-core people here," Oldham said as he clutched an antique rifle that he used to fire blank rounds.

Eight gunmen firing submachine guns and pistols. Grenades exploding near a debris field of broken glass, aluminum and tubs of water. Men with painted faces running from place to place in camouflaged fatigues alongside three tanks. And pilots from the Royal Navy of Great Britain flying Lynx helicopters overhead with special infrared cameras attached to record the entire event. U.S.

The producer of an Academy Award-nominated documentary short is complaining that this year's Oscar-winning film in that category deceptively used reenactments, a charge that one of the winning filmmakers dismissed Monday as sour grapes. In a letter sent to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the producer of "Sister Rose's Passion" argues that "Mighty Times: The Children's March" competed "unfairly, flouting ethical standards set forth by the academy."

The police were stymied. They had a murder victim, five eyewitnesses, an offer of a $40,000 reward--and no suspect. So they did what any red-blooded, television-watching Americans would do: they staged a re-enactment of the crime--the carjack murder of Chatsworth resident Naghi Ghoraishy--and invited the media. "A lot of crimes have been solved through re-enactments" on television shows like 'Unsolved Mysteries' and 'America's Most Wanted,' " said Los Angeles Police Capt.

The tall ships dueling off the coast of Dana Point were only supposed to look like they were at war. But after the cannon aboard the tall ship Amazing Grace rumbled, the stinging pain that Donna Reed felt in her legs was quite real. "It was like a scene from 'The Exorcist,' " said Reed, her wounds still sore days later. "I started to bleed in several different areas. " She had been shot. So it went during what was supposed to be a climactic moment in the Ocean Institute's annual tall ships festival: the Saturday evening mock cannon fight that would simulate the spectacle of a historic battle on the high seas.

The exceptional documentary "Holy Man: The USA vs. Douglas White" tells the haunting tale of White, a Lakota Sioux medicine man from South Dakota's storied Pine Ridge Reservation who, at age 72, was imprisoned for the alleged sexual abuse of his two young grandsons. Years later, his grandsons, who were ensnared as children in a family custody feud, confessed to lying at White's trial. But White, whose case this film asserts symbolizes the racial bias Native Americans frequently face in the U.S. courts, remained incarcerated until 2009, when he died at 89 from lung cancer.

Former California Highway Patrol Officer Tomiekia Johnson, charged with killing her husband more than two years ago, tearfully testified Friday that she and Marcus Lemons were struggling over her gun when it accidentally went off. "I was not trying to kill Marcus. I would never try to hurt him," she said, weeping. "He always hit me. " Johnson took the stand on the fourth day of her trial. She is accused of fatally shooting her husband in the head on the night of Feb. 21, 2009, as they argued on the side of a road in Compton.

The Blue & the Gray, the largest Civil War battle reenactment in the West, returns to Moorpark for the 11th year. Relive the 1860s with five different battles reenacted, including, Gettysburg and Antietam. Expect to see cannons, cavalry, infantry, North and South encampments and the folks who provisioned each side. Underwood Family Farms, 3370 Sunset Valley Road, Moorpark. 10 a.m.-6:15 p.m. Sat., 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sun. $15. Bleacher seats $3 per battle. http://www.civilwaralliance.com/CWA/Moorpark1.html.

The image of President Obama, standing in the White House East Room Sunday evening, solemnly declaring that America’s public enemy number one, Osama bin Laden, was dead, was published in newspapers all over the world. But what if that photo wasn’t real? A provocative post on the website of the Poynter Institute, which provides training for journalists, details how the president recreated the first 30 seconds of his televised address, including his approach to the podium, to the nation for the still photographers present after the speech was concluded.

Surely I was in Boonville, Mo., with Catherine Watson as I read about Missouri's role in the Civil War ["Conflicts of Interest," April 10]. As an immigrant, I embrace the great legacy of the Confederates and Union armies with sincere thanksgiving, honor and tears. Long live America. Daniel Kim Porter Ranch I've never been able to understand the fascination this country has with reenactments of Civil War battles ["Call to Arms Again," April 10]. Those who support these events would probably say they are paying tribute to American history through these reenactment battles.

About 3,000 spectators, mostly white, stood silent and uneasy as a weeping woman playing the role of a pregnant 18th-Century slave begged a white actor to buy her along with her husband so the couple would not be separated. When the re-enactment of a day in the life of Colonial Williamsburg was over, some in the audience Monday were weeping too. Among them was a civil rights activist who had denounced the re-enactment as trivializing black history.

TV documentaries about American history in the post Ken Burns-age have a certain predictability -- a placid interweave of earnest interviews with historians, portraits of long-dead presidents and reenactments with the inevitable extras in period costume and fife and drum music. But Monday night sees an energetic reworking of the form. "Rediscovering Alexander Hamilton" on KOCE illuminates the life and accomplishments of one of the most brilliant yet least celebrated Founding Fathers.

SIERRA VISTA, ARIZ. Cochise Cowboy Poetry and Music Gathering When, where: Feb. 11-13, Buena Performing Arts Center Highlights: Cowboys who also happen to be poets and musicians perform their rough-and-tumble art. The theme for this year's annual event is "Cowboys in Blue. " Cost: $18 a day; $16 for seniors and military; $6 for students. Some shows are free on Feb. 12. Info: (520) 678-9952, http://www.cowboypoets.com CATALINA ISLAND Valentine's Day Sweetheart Dance When, where: Feb. 12, Casino Ballroom Highlights: Avalon's historic Art Deco ballroom comes to life with music and dancing.