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Showing posts with label Movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Movies. Show all posts
Hollywoods exploitation of Margaret Thatcher?

Hollywoods exploitation of Margaret Thatcher?

This article in the Daily Mail has a lot of interesting comments by a lot of people who knew Margaret Thatcher personally. I suspect that these articles are as interesting as the new movie about her is. One typical comment is given by Eve Pollard:

this invasion of the privacy of an 86-year-old-widow is truly shocking.
It reveals the most powerful woman the West has ever known as frail, feeble and lonely. But, you feel, almost against their will, director Phyllida Lloyd and screenwriter Abi Morgan (neither of whom, I suspect, would have approved of Mrs T when she was in office) couldn’t help but make an ill and powerless Margaret Thatcher sympathetic. . . .
Movie stars put up big bucks for Obama's re-election effort

Movie stars put up big bucks for Obama's re-election effort

This is a bit of a dilemma since I had liked some of these stars. There has been some speculation that Tom Hanks outspoken and nutty support for Obama has actually hurt his star drawing power for his movies.

big-name movie stars including actors George Clooney, Michael Douglas, Sharon Stone, Michael Keaton, Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson. Filmmaker Steven Spielberg and his wife, actress Kate Capshaw, also gave to the 2012 campaign, according to the latest Federal Election Commission report. Jennifer Garner and Gwyneth Paltrow both contributed under their married names —Affleck and Martin, respectively.
“30 Rock” actor Alec Baldwin, who has often toyed with a potential political run, also shelled out cash for Obama’s second-quarter fundraising haul. And several other TV actors — such as “Monk”’s Tony Shalhoub, “Glee”’s Jane Lynch, “24”’s president Dennis Haysbert and sci-fi stars Scott Bakula and Richard Dean Anderson — joined Baldwin in contributing to the president’s reelection bid.
Comedians Will Ferrell, Carl Reiner and “The Simpsons”’s Yeardley Smith also doled out money for Obama, whose campaign attracted a record-breaking $86 million in donations. . . .
Michael Medved reviews Atlas Shrugged

Michael Medved reviews Atlas Shrugged

You can listen his review here. A written copy of the review is available here. Michael gives the movie just two stars out of four, but I think that he is being much too harsh on the decision to move the movie to the current day. It seems to be much of his motivation for only giving the movie two stars. That said, I agree with him that Taylor Schilling is "luminous" in the role of Dagny Taggart.

Atlas Shrugged Part 1 is Awesome

I saw Atlas Shrugged over the weekend (I actually saw it twice) and I thought that it was great. Movie review critics have been vicious, big surprise given their liberal biases, and all the more reason that I hope that people give this movie a real chance. The trailer is available here. A positive review of Atlas Shrugged 1 is available here.

But what about the movie itself? There’s no big name actors (unless you count genre actor Armin Shimerman from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Deep Space Nine”) and a very small budget. Yet a story told from the point of view that rich guys are trying to save society while an apathetic government is content to let it lapse into ruin is itself highly unusual and does make one think. This is a thought-provoking film that asks you to use your brains instead of enduring explosions, car chases, and weapons fire, meaning that, by definition, it was never intended to be a mainstream film. The director, Paul Johansson, is himself credited for playing the mysterious John Galt, not to mention that this is part one of three (as the book is reportedly 1100 pages.) For what they had to work with and what was accomplished, the film succeeds in creating heroes of the main characters, making the mystery of John Galt’s designs and motivations compelling, and most importantly, setting up the remaining two parts of the trilogy.


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