THE FILM: If you’d like to sit back on a cold wintery day and tap into a little bit of history in a classic way you may want to check out the 1930 biographical film Abraham Lincoln (also released under the title D.W. Griffith’s Abraham Lincoln) since it was directed by D.W. Griffith. What’s nice about the film is that it not only covers Lincoln’s political years, but his early years as a storekeeper and rail-splitter as well as his time spent as a lawyer courting Mary Todd in Springfield. The story is told in a series of smaller vignettes depicted in scenes with each of about equal length. Also included is the famed Lincoln-Douglas debate although some reviewers of the film have commented that its accurateness seems a little suspect even though the first part of the film (pertaining to Lincoln’s early years) appears to be spot-on. And as is to be expected from any Lincoln biography, the film ends with the assassination. Last, as a form of full disclosure, we should point out that the film has been included in the listing of “The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (and How They Got That Way)” by certain reviewers, but we still mention it as an option to transport your mind to a visual time concerning Lincoln instead of relying merely on the literary.