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| President Andrew Shepherd- Greatest Moment: Unabashedly embracing regulations for greenhouse gas emissions and firearms in an epic speech while up for re-election. |
Directed by Rob Reiner; Starring Michael Douglas, Annette Bening, Martin Sheen, Michael J. Fox, Richard Dreyfuss, Shawna Waldron, David Paymer; Rated PG-13 for some strong language.
Academy Award-winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, known for THE SOCIAL NETWORK and television series The West Wing and The Newsroom, claimed in TV Guide that he wrote most of the script for THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT while under the influence of cocaine. Undoubtedly, this is no surprise, and perhaps refreshing news, to the conservative critics who disdained the film for its brazen Clinton-era liberalism, but hey, on crack or not, the liberals still have the best screenwriters. Michael Douglas stars as popular Democratic President of the United States Andrew Shepherd, a widowed father facing re-election and attempting to pass a crime control bill, but Congressional support for the bill is coming up short from both parties. The Republicans are vehemently against the President's passion project, but the Democrats resent the bill for being "toothless", exemplified by Lewis Rothschild (Michael J. Fox), the White House Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, who is infuriated by the watering down of the firearms regulations section of the bill. A hardball-playing lobbyist, Sidney Ellen Wade (Annette Bening), has been hired by an environmental lobbying firm to petition for the Administration's support of an upcoming bill to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and despite their political positions, the single President Shepherd begins to court Miss Wade. Their relationship starts to threaten each others' political careers, first as Republican presidential candidate hopeful Bob Rumson (Rumsfeld?), played by Richard Dreyfuss, starts to use the President's relationship to question his ethics and "traditional family values", and worse, as their respective bills may not pass if the other does.
An obvious path to Sorkin's The West Wing, it shares many themes that the series' earlier episodes would cover, i.e. gun control and "proportional response", similar character dynamics in an idealized White House staff, and Martin Sheen, who played President Josiah Bartlet in The West Wing, co-stars in THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT as President Shepherd's White House Chief of Staff and close confidant, A.J. MacInerney.The politics are undoubtedly liberal, so if that bothers you, it'll probably be difficult to enjoy, but it contains a total reverence for the democratic process and the Presidential Office, filled with Sorkin's trademark rich and snappy dialogue, plus a fun and funny romantic story at the core.
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| President Merkin Muffley- Greatest Moment: Almost averted total nuclear holocaust. |
DR. STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (COMEDY/WAR, 1964)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick; Starring Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Slim Pickens, Peter Bull; Rated PG for thematic elements, some violent content, sexual humor and mild language.
Legendary filmmaker Stanley Kubrick decided to follow up his 1962 British black comedy, LOLITA, with a contemporary Cold War thriller about a nuclear incident, based on Peter George's novel Red Alert, also known as Two Hours to Doom. The story told of a United States Air Force general who, in the midst of a paranoid fit, unilaterally launches a preemptive nuclear strike against the Soviet Union, sending B-52 bombers kept in perpetual flight near U.S.S.R. targets in case of nuclear attack. Wing Attack Plan R was designed to allow retaliation should a first strike nuclear attack completely debilitate the U.S. Government. While adapting the novel into a screenplay with the book's author, Kubrick began to realize that the intricacies and ludicrous thinking behind not just the scenario, but also the real world methods of nuclear intimidation were better suited to a dark comedy than a thriller. That's how a story of nuclear annihilation became one of the best and funniest film comedies of all time, even at a time when nuclear annihilation very much seemed to be a real world possibility.
The story is basically the same, with USAF General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) launching a nuclear strike on the U.S.S.R. in an overblown fit of Freudian insecurity after a case of impotence. While the U.S. Army battles their way into the Burpelson Air Force Base where Ripper is holed up with the only cease code required to call of the B-52 bombers, President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers) calls together his top officers and aides in the "War Room" in an emergency attempt to deal with the situation. Amongst the eccentric characters in President Muffley's council are the bombastic General Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott), who's actually excited by the notion of going to war with the Commies, and Dr. Strangelove (Sellers), an ex-Nazi mad scientist and expert on nuclear technologies, as well as Alexei de Sadeski (Peter Bull), the Russian ambassador with confused priorities.
British comedian Peter Sellers, who co-starred in Kubrick's lurid comedy LOLITA, re-collaborated with Kubrick for STRANGELOVE, playing three distinctly different roles; the nebbish British RAF officer Group Captain Lionel Mandrake in an officer exchange program and Ripper's executive officer attempting to obtain the cease code, bumbling President Muffley who plays straight man to the War Room's over-the-top personalities, and the psychotic German Dr. Strangelove. Initially, Sellers had intended to play a fourth character, the Texan bomber pilot Major T.J. "King" Kong, but an ankle injury made it impractical to perform in the constrained bomber set, so comic actor Slim Pickens was cast instead.
Despite its then-contemporary Cold War setting, the film's sense of humor, satire and comic performances remain as fresh as even the best comedies of today, plus, the opening credits feature a sex scene between airplanes.
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