Lincoln

[Frodo]

Official Trailer -are you planning on seeing it?

[Dancing with Myself]

Been waiting years to see back when I heard Spielberg was making it.

[RI]

It's really, really blatant Oscar bait, but it might be interesting. I haven't looked at the reviews yet though, so that might impact whether I see it. I generally don't care for Civil War era films though.

[Redalgo]

I want to see it. The question is merely whether I will opt to spend several dollars on going to see it at the cinema or wait a couple of years for it to show up on television.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Anybody who knows me knows my answer: yes, I would love to see it if I had the time and enouh money for tickets.  Being the old-school Yankee-style Northern Republican I am and Lincoln quite possibly being one of my favorite presidents, I'm not sure that I can resist.  Oh, and did I see Charles Sumner and/or Thaddeus Stevens in the promos?

[King]

Glad it's getting good reviews.  I was uncertain with the previews.  There's so much screaming going on in them that it looked like the whole cast had bitten off a little more scenery than they could chew.  Perhaps they just cut to clips of the arguments to make it more action packed in marketing.

[Kaine for Senate '18]

I'll actually be going with my political biography class to see it.

[Donerail]

Never liked Lincoln, and since this'll probably be another we-love-Lincoln film, no.

[Frodo]

Never liked Lincoln, and since this'll probably be another we-love-Lincoln film, no.

Now why would that not surprise anyone here? 

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Never liked Lincoln, and since this'll probably be another we-love-Lincoln film, no.

Now why would that not surprise anyone here? 

(as much as empty quoting is despised on this forum)

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

I saw Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter at midnight, and I will probably be seeing this at midnight.

[Rooney]

I guess that Spielberg was sitting in his den drinking a non-alcoholic beveridge and thought "I feel like getting an Oscar." After he thought for all of three minutes he decided, "Biopic! The academy loves biopics." He then put a bunch of names of popular and PC historical figures into a hat, closed his eyes and picked up a name. The name was "Harvey Milk." "That will never do," said Spielberg, "A movie about him was just made. I will have to wait until at least 2014 to rip that one off." He then pulled out a second name: "Nelson Mandella." "Drat!" thought Spielberg, "A movie about him was just made as well. Also Morgan Freeman is probably booked to be in another movie about an articulate, intelligent black man by now and Will Smith is still considered too 'edgy' by the academy crowd." Spielberg than threw his hands into the hat for a third time and produced the name: "Abraham Lincoln." "This will do," Spielberg said, "All I need to do is have a lot of arguing, over the top dialogue, running through buildings in suits and some preachy monologues and this will win me another Academy Award." 

[Vote UKIP!]

I'm going to see the movie with several of my fellow history majors in a week or two.

[Warren 4 Secretary of Everything]

I'm going to see it, then ill yell duck at the end when he's at Ford's Theatre. Yeah, I'm gonna be that guy.

[Lief 🗽]

Daniel Day Lewis is in it, so of course.

[Mr. Morden]

Official Trailer -are you planning on seeing it?

This is the better trailer:

Another trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfGYGLiqAZQ

"Clothed in IMMENSE power!"

A few promotional clips can also be found on Youtube, e.g.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPK2FA5I6Vg

As one of the Youtube commenters wrote, "someone please make a meme out of Hoooow daaare yoooou".

[justfollowingtheelections]

No discussions on this movie yet?

Well I saw it on Saturday at 12:30pm.  The theater was almost full, which is very unusual for a matinee screening.  The crowd was slightly older, but younger than what you would see at a screening of any other "serious" film.

I thought the movie was really good.  Daniel Day-Lewis especially was really good as Lincoln.  I also liked David Strathairn as Seward and the actor that played Fernando Wood.

The film is really about the 13th Amendment and all the political games that take place in Washington in order to ensure that a bill gets passed.  Lincoln wants to get the 13th Amendment passed in Congress before his inauguration and the new Congress comes in.  Like most, he is disgusted by the institution of slavery, but his position on equality are not as clear.
The Amendment had already been passed in the Senate and Lincoln believed that with many of the Democrats having lost their election battles, they would now be more open to voting for the Amendment if they are offered a job.  Seward hires a team of lobbyists to help negotiate with Democrats that are on the fence, but they still have a hard time getting the votes they need.
Thaddeus Stevens is also very much involved in the film, and the dynamics between Radical Republicans, Conservative Republicans and Democrats are very interesting.
Stevens makes a really good point in a conversation with Lincoln, telling him that people vote for him to lead, not to follow.  It reminded me a little bit of Obama who is often accused by progressives (I'm one of them) that he is not very vocal on issues that concern a lot of people and the "other" side has a clearly insane position.

There were some funny reactions when they showed Stevens' black wife (who in reality looked far more white, but I guess they wanted to make it clear to audiences that he had a relationship that was not approved by the majority of the population back then).

There was another interesting scene where a Kentucky congressman who ended up voting for the Amendment, claimed that while disgusted by slavery he couldn't vote to end it because he didn't know what would happen to the slaves afterwards.  One of the radical Republicans responded "They will be free, what do you think will happen to them?" which made everyone laugh.  The KY Congressman then said that if we end slavery, we will then have to give them voting rights, and then he began naming other things that might happen if slavery ended.  The last thing he said was "Are we going to allow women to vote too?" which resulted to a huge fight in the House.  The audience of course laughed hysterically.

There was an old man next to me, wearing a baseball hat, who had a HUGE bag of pop corn (how can anyone eat so much pop corn?  I was worried he was going to have a heart attack from all the junk food he was eating) who seemed to really enjoy the film.

After the film, a young dark-skinned guy (I assume he was part-Polynesian part-white but I could be wrong) was having a discussion with an old very liberal-looking white woman and he seemed to be really surprised that the Republicans were the party that were against slavery.
She began talking to him about 1964 but I walked away and I didn't have much of a chance to hear what she said after that.

Overall, the film was really good and I would highly recommend it to any history buff, and also anyone even remotely interested in the political process.  I also found the whole experience of observing the crowd's reactions quite interesting.

Comments?

[Paul Kemp]

For some reason there's another thread in the Forum Community, which probably should be moved and merged into this one:

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=165094.0