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A nation divided. Panic in the streets. Mounting fears that the troubled republic wouldn’t survive. Though Jonathan Putnam’s Lincoln and Speed novels are set in the tumultuous years that would ultimately lead to the American Civil War, the creator of a forthcoming TV adaptation of the series, “These Honored Dead,” admits that the historical narrative is as timely as ever.

“In the time we’ve been working on it, the themes have become far more relevant than they were when we started,” said series creator and showrunner Michael Bergmann.

“These Honored Dead” is an eight-part one-hour series based on Putnam’s best-selling murder mystery series, which revolves around the real-life friendship between the young lawyer Abraham Lincoln and his lifelong friend and intellectual rival Joshua Speed. Bergmann’s Burgeon & Flourish will be bringing “These Honored Dead” to Mia’s drama series pitching competition, where they’re looking to meet with broadcasters,...

Of course there'll be another roundup on The Tree of Life. But first, let's give a little breathing room to some of the other films opening this Memorial Day Weekend.

"The extreme leftists of the 1960s and 70s who sought to change the world one bomb at a time might have been unhappy to know that their revolutionary legacy is doing nice business at that bourgeois temple, the art house," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "It's a legacy that in recent years and specifically since 9/11 has been romanticized and critiqued in movies like The Motorcycle Diaries (a prehistory involving the young Che Guevara); Che (about his campaigns in Cuba and Bolivia); The Baader Meinhof Complex (German leftists who embraced violence); Good Morning, Night (the kidnapping of the former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades); Carlos (the Venezuelan Marxist turned mercenary). United Red Army tells much the same story,...

Interesting article in The Guardian this week about Tied to a Chair filmmakers Michael Bergmann and Doug Underdahl who obtained a Leica Pradovit D-1200, built a tenth-row rig at New Jersey's Washington Theater and projected their film off their laptop. From the piece: The picture on the ageing silver screen in front of us is unquestionably of theatrical quality. The independent film-makers Michael Bergmann and Doug Underdahl move around, checking from all angles. It is, as Bergmann has warned, different: not film's luminous grain nor video's harsh flatness. This digital image is thrown by a high-end Leica business projector powered by … a Macbook Pro running QuickTime Pro. Two emissaries from Leica's nearby Us headquarters seem stunned....