Midnight Madness For ‘Breaking Dawn’ DVD 
BAFTA Awards: What ‘Artist’, Dujardin, Streep … 
64th BAFTA Awards Winners: ‘The Artist’, Meryl … 
BAFTA 2012 Preview: Very British Affair Takes On … 
RECORD-BREAKING WEEKEND! 4 Films Open $20+M: ‘The … 
Remembered: Jennifer Hudson To Perform Whitney Houston … 
Live From NY, It’s Jean Dujardin On 
R.I.P. Whitney Houston 
TOLDJA! Indomina-BET Buy Sundance ‘LUV’ 
Saoirse Ronan Bigger Teen Action Queen 
WME Signs Writer-Director Jon Kasdan 
‘Glee’s Jane Lynch Joins Indie Film Comedy 
Universal Revives ‘Dracula Year Zero’ With … 
Jodie Foster Sending Mel Gibson Film ‘The … 
‘Roseanne’ Reunion: John Goodman To Co-Star In … 
UPDATE: Closing Arguments Conclude In Golden Globes Trial; … 
Series Adaptation Of ‘Legion’ With … 
Lionsgate Calms Investors With Talk About Charlie Sheen, … 
Ridley Scott Commits To Next Direct McCarthy’s … 
Marvel Studio’s Tim Connors Defects To Legendary As … 
UPDATE: Warner Bros Lawyers Dig In Garbage Over ‘The … 
The UK press was weirded out by President Obama’s gift to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown of these 25 DVDs selected by the American Film Institute:
Some press read deeper meaning into the movie titles and content: “Like Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront, could Brown have been “a contender … a somebody” if the US Congress had shown a little more interest in his global New Deal? Like Luke Skywalker on the Millennium Falcon, is Brown’s history of support for light-touch financial regulation in the City of London now endangering the mission? The 25 films also include two from the end of the Great Depression.”
Loading ...
He should have included Night of the Comet.Classic Sci Fi from the 1980′s.
Sure hope O gave Gordo Region 2 (ie playable in Europe & UK) DVD versions of those films and not Region 1 (playable in the USA) versions. Region encoding is kinda dumb if you ask most people anywhere in the world but I guess it appeals to the executives need to feel powerful and dominate distribution in the most capricious way possible (many players are hackable to become ‘region-free’ and there’s quite a trade in them around the world online)
Or maybe Gordo’s people will have to stop by Circuit City and pick up the right DVD player before he goes home thereby slightly stimulating the US economy? They better hurry if that’s the case…this is the last weekend they’re open.
GB go home GB go home, he stopped by CHINATOWN, then drove up SUNSET BLVD., to sing in the rain.
GB, got dizzy like VERTIGO and tried to find the yellow brick road back down to THE WIZARD OF OZ, dazed by the CITY LIGHTS, he tried to cool down, though SOME LIKE IT HOT.
GB, went ON THE WATERFRONT to cool down, and found it wasn’t a WONDERFUL life in America, It was THE GRAPES OF WRATH. So GB flew away he was GONE WITH THE WIND, back to the UK avoiding any PYSCHO.
I think this was a great gift, as a friend told me he saw six movies on his return trip back to Europe. So maybe GB will have something to look at on his return trip to the White house.
The UK media used to complain about Tony Blair being a “lap dog” to the President… Now how do they like being treated like a “bitch?”
Gordon Brown had priceless gifts to give Obama and his children, and he got a cheap DVD set and cheap marine one helicopters for his kids in return. Gordon Brown also has vision problems, with massive vision loss in one eye. Our President insulted our oldest ally because Obama’s aides say he is “overwhelmed”. Executive experience might have helped before seeking the toughest job in the world. Thanks for already pissing off our greatest ally in the world. A pen made from Britain’s anti-slave ship vs. a DVD set of movies. Epic fail! I thought Obama was supposed to be smart.
I miss W. He at least had class. Obama is just an incompetent boob.
Brown gave Obama an ornamental pen holder made from the timbers of a Victorian anti-slave ship, and in return he got a box set of DVDs, which he probably can’t watch as they are Region 1 and he is blind in one eye and partially sighted in the other. Oh, that and Michelle got Brown’s kids a tacky model of Marine 1 from the White House gift shop.
I guess if your first real job is being President, you are going to screw it up.
Um, Luke didn’t “endanger the mission” until Return of the Jedi. And he wasn’t on the Falcon, he was on the Imperial Shuttle. Does this guy know anything?
The UK press is digging for stories. IT’S THE F***ING 2007 AFI TOP 25!!!! No thought when it into it. JFC!
all extremely white, all male. yawn. diversify your film portfolio Mr. President. Maybe add “All About Eve”, “Do The Right Thing”, “Friday”, etc.
One of the titles should have been “Idiocracy”, so that Brown and our good friends in the UK can see exactly where this country is headed.
As an American I am embarrassed, forget what some may think of our current President, this was one head of state to another and the President of the United States of America (or his assistants) gave the Prime Minister of Great Britain DVDs ?! Are they even compatible with British DVD players? I am truly embarrassed, all leaders and foreign dignitaries that come to this country deserve to be treated with respect (safe for the obvious exceptions), I thought that was one of the promises Mr. Obama made when he entered the White House.
How odd and utterly random…
Though “On the Waterfront” was more about McCarthy and Kazan’s excuse for naming names than the Great Depression, so that particular spin on why these films were picked seems unlikely.
I thought Gordon Brown didn’t have sight in one eye, with limited vision in the other – was this a real calculated gift, or what –
This is a consolation prize on a low-budget game show.
I gave a wedding gift like that once, and the dude wasn’t even class president.
Well, it IS a great list.
Wizard of Oz – “Ignore the man behind the curtain.” Rahm-Bo only runs the tele-prompter.
Some Like It Hot – Criminals on the run, just like Obama appointees. Maybe he is hoping to have his own Marylin Monroe.
Vertigo – Obama is possessed by Lincoln.
ET – ET on Earth is like Obama in the White House. Afraid, alone, and wants to go home. Those evil Talk-Show hosts are out to get him.
Sunset Blvd – Washed up, going nowhere, and living in a fantasy world. Main-Stream-Media, I am ready for my close up.
Wait til they figure out that US region DVDs won’t play in the machines at 10 Downing Street.
Well, at least it wasn’t a re-gift….was it?
Why give gifts at all. It should be all about business. This gift giving to people who have everything needs to go the way of the Dinosaurs.World leaders should spend their time onreal issues not gift giving.
Our Charlatan-In-Chief should have given only one movie: “The Candidate” and Obama should have autographed it himself.
Obama is hubris personified, classless and clueless. Michelle absolutely snubbed the entire UK delegation and treated them with impertinence, as if the entire party was there to pay homage to her and her husband and not actually try to formulate any degree of a cohesive plan on, well, anything. (And that doesn’t come from Fox News, but from people in the White House.)
This wasn’t an exception, this is an insight as to how Obama thinks. This nation will regret the Obama Experiment for a very long time.
But since this is a Hollywood blog, we ought to tie this in to our industry somehow.. so here goes… the economic plan that Obama has already passed (you know, the $2.4 trillion plan that was passed without anyone in Congress reading it) is formulated to destroy speculative investments, which means raising capital for Hollywood movies is gong to be damn near impossible.
Institutions (Bear, Lehman, Citi) who ran funds for media production are not just broke, the law is formulated so that any new funds though investment bodies will not be able to invest in anything Hollywood. This comes after 10 years of Hollywood Studios steadily reducing or eliminating their own funds from production coffers and relying on distribution fees and baked accounting books to get by financially – name anther industry where the major players (practically an oligarchy, nearly a monopoly) does not use its own money for its own product or process. It’s been a recipe for disaster long in the making, but the design of this bailout and accompanying legislated financial controls are going to absolute kill Hollywood in the only way it knows how to function.
Mix that is with digital distribution and soon the world will realize it no longer needs Hollywood to be a base of operations. Anyone with a $10,000 Mac and a $20,000 RED camera can make a movie, and some/many of those are bound to be good… and a touch of a button can already upload/distribute them on 1250 digital distribution screens in the US. It’ll be 4500 screens by the end of 2014.
Hollywood cheered for Obama, primarily because Hollywood never asked a single question of him. Hollywood enabled its own decline.
Yea go team.
the region coding is an ancient story people. we can play any disc we want here in Europe. region free players are all over the place.
How come “PINOCCHIO” wasn’t included?!
Oh, like Lend-Lease wasn’t enough. The exchange of gifts between heads of State is a matter of diplomacy that’s supposed to be guided by the respective countries’ protocol departments. Assuming that Obama and Brown didn’t work out some kind of secret side deal (trade agreements, military commitments, dollar vs. pound stability, etc.) for which DVD-Gate is a smoke screen, perhaps we’ll be seeing on eBay all the little shampoo bottles and shower caps that the Browns lifted from the White House bathrooms.
Gordon Brown would have gotten better swag at a Publicist’s Award Dinner.
Obama did a couple of other things during the visit to snub Brown as well. I’d say Brown must have really said or done something to PO Obama at some point before he was President. Wonder what it was…. THAT’s the real story.