Sunday, April 17, 2011

rope

Is it me, or is The Conspirator basically the script of Breaker Morant dressed up in American Civil War drag and crowned with a post-9/11 polemical spiel like a big hat with ostrich feathers?  Not that I have a problem with polemical spiels, necessarily. Or big hats with ostrich feathers. Or even combinations of the two.  But an augustly mutton-chopped Kevin Kline peering through little rectangular frames and pronouncing mock-earnestly on the need to save the nation from itself really makes me wish they'd save the Lehrstücke for Stephen Colbert.

2 comments:

  1. Did you ever catch HBO's John Adams? Was it any good? (By which I mean, was there as little Manifest Destiny Mythologizing and Great Man Worship as possible)

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  2. The first two episodes, iirc, so my only impressions so far are the emphasis they placed on the mob mentality of anti-British sentiment (there is a tarring and feathering scene that is, I believe, a fairly accurate representation of that peculiar pastime), and the over-lighting. Though they managed to keep the outlets out of the shots.

    Anyway not enough to tell how the man himself was going to come out in the final analysis, since traditionally you can only be elected POTUS if you don't screw it up till you get there. Where I left off he was still in his "Probably we shall all be hanged" phase, so destiny was not at all manifest.

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