Movies Watched and Upcoming
Nov. 2nd, 2008 01:27 pmLately 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.
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.