Sunday, August 23, 2009

On my oddy knocky.

How do I get pictures to work on this? HTML OK?



I guess so then. Now, *ahem*. Watched Frost/Nixon, what a wonderful piece of history, journalism and psuedo-sympathy for a tyrannical man. The most interesting aspect of the movie is the constant parallels drawn between Frost and Nixon, and their twin goals of breaking through into that "promised" land, that status of the Gods, that of being Successful in America.

Beyond that, if you know the story you get it told again but in a very convincing and touching format. Brilliant acting all round, with a few beautiful points that the savvy watcher will have asked themself during the watching of the movie, such as when Nixon asks Frost "Maybe we got it mixed up, do you think? I should've been the talkshow host and you the president of America."

It really illustrates the charismatic monster that Nixon was, seeing he knew what he'd done and yet still covered up with a plans to return to politics. He kept things to himself which I'd aquate to using Charisma on yourself to keep your conscience from stopping you from any certain action. The problem with people like that, however, the ego feeders, the self strokers, the people who're convinced they know everyone else, or can atleast pin down their "type" after a simple examination, is that everyone is vulnerable to beginning to believe them just because they sound so confident in what they say.

I've seen it plenty of times, it plenty of ways. The boss of any group is the one who makes the most noise, and is very often the one who starts things. Monkeys beating each other with bones in Space Oddysey, Tyler Durden beating on the narrator in Fight Club, The Boss chewing out Ann Hathaway in the Devil Wear's Prada (We apologise for the reference to the Devil Wears Prada and promise to not let Fox Murdoch repeat such an act. - Editor). Until someone comes along with a "louder" way of saying things the status quo remains the same. Hitler got germany going, didn't he?

What makes this spectacular is that Nixon's ego was big enough to take on the whole of a nation that he had wronged. Even better was the fact that Frost was the hero needed to slay the beast. No one thought he could do it, considering the size of everything and especially his own talents (What, a few talk shows?) so it was truly a David and Goliath situation.

Sorry, now I'm just praising the whole story of good versus evil. The movie tells a story and draws it up as such, it's not simply "Frost is the guy that got a confession out of Nixon, end of story." It's much more like "This is what Frost was against - everything." A spoken-word hero, a legend of interaction.

Quite happy to have this on my DVD shelf, a history lesson kids these days would actually watch.
7/10? Extra point 5 for Frank Langella's portrayal of Nixon.

WAIT A MINUTE! I started with a picture of Alex from Clockwork Orange, what relevance did that have? I was going to do two small reviews of Frost/Nixon and CO but I guess I'll just close with the emotions kicked up by the first 7 minutes of CO and nothing more:

This is boys will be boys, pushed to the extreme. Violence, rape, sex, their own language, yet still of high intelligence, taste and culture. Watching Alex and his droogs battle Billy Boy and his gang just makes me wanna join in.

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