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Lately I've been on a political movie mood. I watched Recount the other day, which stars Kevin Spacey, Tom Wilkinson and Laura Dern and follows the events in Florida in the wake of the 2000 Presidential election. It was an incredibly good movie, particularly given that was about vote counting and legal challenges and everyone knows the ending.

I have to say, I really love this trend of making movies about relatively recent political events. The Queen I thought was brilliant, particularly as is it has the eventual fate of Tony Blair in regards to his popular support in mind. And while I know films like that have been criticised for not being able to be distanced enough from events to make them useful, I think they're brilliant since it's so hard to keep track of exactly what's happening following the news, particularly if you are, say 15 like I was when the Florida recount happened. And films of that nature are far more useful while the players and issues involved are still alive, than 50 years down the track.

Further, I was browsing through the movie trailers on the apple website and the movie I'm really looking forward to this Oscar season is Frost/Nixon. I'm a bit of a Watergate geek, having read All the President's Men and Katharine Graham's memoir, and the movie looks fantastic. And it's got Michael Sheen, Rebecca Hall and Matthew Macfadyen. W, Milk and Battle in Seattle also look pretty good and are all unabashedly political movies.

However, this trailer broke my brain just a bit. Okay, it's a sports movie about rugby with black jerseys and the haka, that could in some circumstances be okay i.e. if it were a movie about the All Blacks. It's not okay when it's a sport movie about American's playing rugby complete with black jerseys and a haka. I'm sorry, but WTF? I can imagine that in some corners of America, rugby is played, but the wholesale stealing of All Black iconography (which is New Zealand national iconography) for a rugby movie set United States about a teenager with Daddy-issues is just so mind-blowingly wrong. The equivalent would be a New Zealand movie Abraham Lincoln helping a woman from Auckland get her groove back. I really do wonder if they're going to release it in New Zealand.

Date: 2008-11-02 01:06 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] artic-fox.livejournal.com
WHAT. THE. HELL. IS. THAT. RUGBY. MOVIE?

Ugh, ugh, and more ugh. I took a sneak peek at the IMDB boards as well to see if I could come up with some answers, and came up with this thread (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0840322/board/nest/111309651) where they seem to think it has something to do with the Polynesian community in the Salt Lake City area? And/or something to do with Highland rugby? (whatever that is). But then again that thread is filled full of strange observations from people are guessing about New Zealand/Polynesian culture and can't even spell 'Maori'. And they say that Utah has the second largest population of Tongans in the world (second to Tonga). Okay, quick internet search tells me there are more Tongans in New Zealand than in Utah, which is what I thought. Ugh, ugh, ugh.

Oh, and I really want to see Frost/Nixon as well. The trailer looks great. The film premiered at the London Film Festival here, but isn't out for a little bit longer yet.

Date: 2008-11-02 01:19 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] meddow.livejournal.com
That parts of that imdb thread cause me physical pain to read ('Mowri'!?). I really hope they do release that movie in NZ, just so we can get some sort of official explanation from the filmmakers as to WTF is going on. Or see if the NZRFU will sue their asses, since they seem to be particularly litigation-friendly lately.

I was looking at the release dates for Frost/Nixon and there isn't one listed for New Zealand, which makes me wonder how long I'm going to have to wait.

Date: 2008-11-02 01:30 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] artic-fox.livejournal.com
The end of the trailer quoted a September release date for the US, and IMDB lists no other release dates around the world. Maybe that is a good thing.

I hope you don't have to wait for Frost/Nixon for too long. I see it isn't here until January. *sigh*

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