As for the celebrity impersonations in the new movie The Butler, about a White House butler from 1952-1986:
Robin Williams looks rather like Truman, but plays
Eisenhower. (Perhaps Williams was signed to play Truman, but then got reassigned when
Truman got cut to shorten the movie?)
Boyish romantic comedy leading man James Marsden plays JFK
even though he looks more like RFK.
Minka Kelly, actress/model/whatever and former girlfriend of
Derek Jeter, is too va-va-voom to play Jackie Kennedy. She’d be well cast in a
historical bedroom farce where Jack has to sneak Marilyn out through the White
House dressed in a dark wig and Jackie’s wardrobe (if you want to write this
up, be my guest.)
Liev Schreiber isn’t too far off in size and looks from LBJ,
but as a Northeastern bourgeois, he lacks the massive Texan personality. Matthew
McConaughey of Uvalde, TX is moderately tall and would have been more fun.
John Cusack is Nixon, although he looks more like Kennedy.
Cusack plays Nixon as sinister and crazy, like a charmless version of the
Nixon/Dracula mélange invented by Jeremy Irons to portray Claus von Bulow in Reversal of Fortune.
Ford and Carter are relegated to newscast footage of
themselves.
Jane Fonda is well-cast as a gracious Nancy Reagan. Ideology
aside, they are similar enough that they can be compared: – Jane was a better
movie actress, Nancy was a better big man's wife (Jane seemed to be a bit of a distraction
to the careers of Tom Hayden and Ted Turner.)
Alan Rickman looks surprisingly like Ronald Reagan, but the
introspectively gloomy Severus Snape sounds less like Reagan and more like the actor-turned-President
doing an amusing impression of Alan Rickman after a White House screening of Die Hard.
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28 comments:
" John Cusack is Nixon, although he looks more like Kennedy. Cusack plays Nixon as sinister and crazy, like a charmless version of the Nixon/Dracula mélange invented by Jeremy Irons to portray Claus von Bulow in Reversal of Fortune.
Ford and Carter are relegated to newscast footage of themselves."
-Not even the liberals liked the 70s.
Best Nixon on Screen ever.
Never understood the left's hatred of Nixon he did things today that would put you on the left politically. Granted, his staff would be the usual right wing types of the Republican Party. Nixon did the EPA, affirmative action for girls sports in College but I think the law on title 9 needs to be balance and I did appreciate that girls track and swimming increase in college because of title 9 but it hurts too many guys programs. Nixon supported some affirmative action for Hispanics would he have been as bad as Reagan on legalizing millions I don't know. Some liberal Dems that worked now for the Center for immigration studies supported Mondale and we know about Barbara Jordon, so not all of the left like Ted Kennedy was pushing for it.
David Bowie would be the best Ronald Reagan.
GHWB was stand-in president for a day in 1985 wasn't he? Oprah should have called up the guy who played him in that Naked Gun movie.
Casting Hanoi Jane as Reagan's wife is obviously an intentional slap in the face to a President liberals despise.
Well, both the left and right is stupid these days. I wrote in the Huffington Post that Texas is not alone with the uninsured problem or educational problem because of legal and illegal immigration of the low skilled, that California is just as bad or worst in some ways, and a liberal writes me back. Conservatives are just as stupid they think you can have low taxes and lots of guest workers and have a good economy.
"SF threatens to sue over influx of Nevada patients"
http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/local/sf-threatens-sue-over-influx-nevada-patients/nZTYN/
"San Francisco officials are considering suing Nevada for allegedly giving some 500 poor psychiatric patients one-way bus tickets to California."
Per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, blacks, who are around 11% of the workforce, make up the following share in each of the following occupations:
25% cab drivers and chauffers:
21% laundry and dry cleaning workers
22% personal care aides
21% porters, bellhops, & conceirges
17% maids and housekeepers
18% janitors
17% supervisors / housekeeping &c
17% food service, non-restaurant
17% cooks
21% misc. health care support staff
15% 'medical assistants'
15% physical therapy aides
35% nursing, psych, & home health aides
23% licensed practical nurses
You still see concentrated participation in a certain sort of service occupation, but more in institutional settings - e.g. employment in nursing homes rather than private households.
http://reason.com/archives/2013/08/21/how-the-right-learned-to-love-gun-contro
Chris Lane - a white Australian baseball player lynched by two blacks and a third "youth" who looks kind of white but has a ghetto name so presumably half-vibrant (he hasn't been charged with murder - the two black "teens" have).
Just another vicious lynching that will disappear down the memory hole very soon.
Mel Gibson on steroids?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/20/mel-gibson-muscles_n_3785618.html
Off topic, Noam Chomsky echoes your point that modern politics is openly about advertising:
http://dailycaller.com/2013/08/21/chomsky-palin-was-right-about-obamas-hopey-changey-gimmick/
Never understood the left's hatred of Nixon he did things today that would put you on the left politically
Nixon was hated from the McCarthy, anti-communist days. Back when Washington and Hollywood were filled with card carrying Commies (very many of them Jewish), Nixon was on the anti-communist side and was demonized for it. Same as McCarthy was demonized, even though he was completely right in his accusations.
So Nixon was hated by the Jewish media and intelligentsia for that, and it just carried over to his Presidency. All his Leftward moves -- let's nor forget opening up China, a long-term disaster for the world -- were to placate his Leftist haters. Though of course, Republicans never learn that you can't placate Leftists. Older Commies still hate Nixon with a fierce rage. Like Sweeney Todd, they never forgot and they never forgave.
Since then, the card-carrying Commie has given way to the Cultural Marxist, but the hate remains the same (see Palin, Sarah).
let's nor forget opening up China ... to placate his Leftist haters
That argument better fits the EPA and Title IX than the opening up of China. Improved relations with China served U.S. foreign policy interests by widening the divide between China and the U.S.S.R. There were other foreign policy motivations, and the policy itself has had mixed consequences. Still, at the time, the ability to outflank the U.S.S.R. diplomatically would have outweighed any other considerations.
Kal Penn apparently opposes stop and frisk now?
https://twitter.com/kalpenn/status/368857366491430912
"Sincere thx 2 all 4 educating me on S/F; I DO oppose it."
" What I learned from getting shot
Defenders of stop-and-frisk and racial profiling have made me break my public silence about the night I almost died "
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/19/what_i_learned_from_getting_shot/
"Everyone who’s ever shot me was black and wearing a hoodie. There just aren’t any reasonable inferences to draw from that fact."
"San Francisco officials are considering suing Nevada for allegedly giving some 500 poor psychiatric patients one-way bus tickets to California."
Awesome. Someone in Nevada has been watching South Park.
Maybe a few hundred more incidents like that would convince the public it's time to split up the Union.
Kal Penn apparently opposes stop and frisk now?
"Sincere thx 2 all 4 educating me on S/F; I DO oppose it."
By "educating," of course, he means, "Letting me know I'd better get on board with this attitude change if I ever want to work in this town again."
Any honest portrayal of Nixon would have to show him as an all-time favorite of the White House staff. He was loyal to his lower middle class roots and did not tolerate rudeness to the domestic help by any political underlings.
1) The best Nixon/Dracula mélange is Frank Langella.
2) How dare you refer to Alan Rickman as Severus Snape. He is now and forever will be Hans Gruber. There will never be another Hans Gruber because the bad guys in movies are no longer German.
3) Rickman did a great indy called Snow Cake with Sigourney Weaver.
Sounds like we need to make a movie about a closet conservative White House Staffer's experience working for Obama. I can hear the wailing already. Same thing with the recent Trayvon Zimmerman fake reenactment video that has come out. My guess is that it would go viral and liberals would jump like a cat on a hot tin roof.
Re Chris Lane, the Australian student (baseball scholarship kid) shot in Oklahoma:
The initial news reports listed the suspects as two black and one 'Caucasian'. Perhaps a mixed race immigrant from the Caucasus? Judge for yourselves:
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/chilling-911-call-details-final-moments-of-melbourne-baseballer-chris-lane8217s-life/story-fni0fiyv-1226700172461
The story is big news in Australia. The narrative: We must not import the kind of problems found in America.
Ah... immigration control? No, no, no... gun control.
Gilbert P.
Richard Jenkins would make a good George Herbert Walker Bush.
W.C. Fields would have made a pretty good Bill Clinton if he dropped a few pounds.
John Cusack is Nixon, although he looks more like Kennedy. Cusack plays Nixon as sinister and crazy, like a charmless version of the Nixon/Dracula mélange invented by Jeremy Irons to portray Claus von Bulow in Reversal of Fortune.
Haven't seen The Butler, but I did see Reversal of Fortune. Having seen von Bulow on interviews on TV, this being one of the first celebrity murder trials, I thought Irons nailed von Bulow perfectly. He had von Bulow's strange hybrid Scandinavian/British RP accent down cold, as well as his prep school inspired aristocratic mannerisms. Ron Silver by contrast was trying too hard to sound like a Brooklyn-born celebrity Harvard Law Professor that he wasn't and Dershowitz was.
""The initial news reports listed the suspects as two black and one 'Caucasian'. Perhaps a mixed race immigrant from the Caucasus? Judge for yourselves"
"Mixed race immigrant from the Caucasus" named "Michael Jones" brilliant!
Hey come to think of it, the Luna kid looks just like Halle Berry's brother, you guys all told me yesterday you'd claim his as white!
Sorry, but I've got about as much enthusiasm for watching this movie as I would for watching a stranger's turd swirl down the commode at a run down gas station men's room.
You seriously couldn't get me to watch this flick even if you paid me to take a day off from work to do it.
To expect me to pay $20 bucks from my own pocket for me and my girlfriend to watch it and waste a couple of hours I could have spent finding something random to watch on Spike, FX or HBO is just far too much to high a mountain, Hollywood.
Bruce Greenwood was a quite good J Kennedy in that film a few years back. Dennis Quaid or Sam Neill might have fit the part looks-wise too, although they're all too old for it now. It is remarkable just how like Reagan (albeit 1960s Reagan, not 1980s Reagan) they got Rickman to look.
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