Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Two Tastes in One!

My friend Diana and I drove into the D to watch two movies today.

Frost/Nixon was set in the 1970s after Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency, when David Frost - a British journalist/television personality - who is well known for his interview of Richard Nixon in a series of talks in 1977. Diana and talked about how we remember Watergate and watching some of the related hearings - and I think I was probably 14 or 15 at the time. We didn't much remember the Frost interviews though, but we decided it was because we were in our junior and senior years in high school, and our focus at the time was not political. There were things such as boys, classes, boys, senior year, boys, parties...(you get the picture) to think about. The movie was interesting to watch, and the acting was very good. Frank Langella, in particular, did a fantastic job playing Richard Nixon. Michael Sheen played David Frost. It was a good, good movie.

An even better movie is Doubt, with Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman and one of my faves - Amy Adams. Streep plays Sister Aloysius - the much-feared principal of a parochial school. She comes to believe that Fr. Flynn (Hoffman), the parish priest, has committed an impropriety with one of the students, who happens to be the only black child in the school, and is not wholly accepted by his peers. Amy Adams plays Sister James, a young and fairly new teacher, who tries to give her students the benefit of the doubt - much to the chagrin of Sister Aloysius. The interplay between the characters was interesting. The acting was phenomenal. I loved this movie!!! One thing that Diana and I noticed at the end was that the movie was dedicated to a Sister Somebody, who was touted as their Sister James. And...that person was the creative consultant for the film. We wondered if the movie was based on a true story, but I have not read or seen anything to that effect. Anyone know?

MK out.

2 comments:

  1. The charactor of sister James in Doubt is based on a a Catholic school teacher that the writer and director of Doubt had when he was very young. The same Sister James that was used as a consultant on Doubt. The story itself is fiction

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow! Thanks for the comment and for the information.

    ReplyDelete