There was an interview in BU Today this morning with Robert Zelnick a BU COM professor who served as an executive editor for the Richard Nixon/David Frost interview that we looked at in class.
This interview is being given the Hollywood treatment by Ron Howard in the upcoming movie Frost/Nixon:
I actually saw this trailer for the first time last weekend, when I went to see "W," which is another film people in this class may be interested in:
I think this trailer sells the movie as something it's not; as a cinematic berating of George W. Bush. Stone really portrays him as a sympathetic character, someone with good intentions and a myriad of obstacles. That being said, it's certainly not an admiring portrait either, often painting him as a reformed alcoholic business failure who took a shot at politics and got in over his head (which, I suppose, is not that far off.)
Oliver Stone's portrayals of the Nixon presidency and the JFK assassination are more revisionist history, including more theory than historical fact. But this film actually sticks pretty closely to what we know, using accounts by people such as Bob Woodward and Richard Clark. The only "iffy" area I'd say would be the relations between Bush Jr and Bush Sr. I have no idea where Stone got his source material for some of those more personal scenes.
You can read the mixed reviews at Rotten Tomatoes (which currently stand at about 60% good 40% "rotten") but I'd say that the movie is worth checking out, if only to see Richard Dreyfuss' phenomenal interpretation of Dick Cheney.
Has anyone else seen this? Thoughts?
While we're on the subject; does anyone have "presidential" movies to recommend? If you can stomach Kevin Costner's miserable attempt at a Boston accent, I really like the movie "Thirteen Days" about the Cuban missile crisis. Also the documentary "Fog of War" is an amazing film about Robert McNamara that touches on a variety of subjects from the past 60 years of US history. It's interesting to hear stories and opinions on WWII, Vietnam, the Cold War, etc from a man who had a front row seat in all of those events.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
There's always Primary Colors & Beatty's Bulworth (which I have not seen, but heard good things - any movie with Mya's "Ghetto Superstar" attached must be decent, right?), The Manchurian Candidate (go with the original version, in my opinion), and... I've run out.
As for "W" - definitely a lot more sympathetic to Bush than I would have expected. I went to see it with one of those fabled not-anti-Bush (so not exactly pro-Bush, but close) people and he was surpirsed it was not all "BUSH IS TERRIBLE BUSH IS AN IDIOT".
I mostly had a problem with them inserting infamous bush-isms into his past. Although, I guess it served to remind the viewer that the film was just a guesstimate at his past?
Oh...and the ending was a bit off.
Fog of War is fantastic, Primary Colors is great, too. If you watch The War Room in its entirety it's pretty damn interesting. I'm sure there are other ones, but those three are my favorite.
Yeah; the ending for W is a bit bizarre. But the somewhat surreal scene of metaphor/symbolism was closer to typical Stone than any other aspect of the film. And I'm sure it's hard to film a movie about a story that doesn't have an ending yet. Sure, Bush's presidency is almost over, but it's a long way from having any historical closure.
The Bulworth soundtrack dominated my tape deck back in 1999, but the movie wasn't great. It had good intentions, but any film that has Warren Beatty rapping is dead on arrival.
Fog of War is one of my favorite films of all time; haven't seen Primary Colors though.
I understand that his story wasn't over yet, but it was just really crazy that it would end in the middle of the summer of 2004 with no mention of re-election.
Post a Comment