Word: idy
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...Heart is, it can't compete as riveting drama with Terror's Advocate, the Barbet Schroeder documentary also showing in Cannes. Like Winterbottom, but long before him, Schroeder has compiled an imposing resume of fiction films (Barfly, Reversal of Fortune, Single White Female, Murder by Numbers) and documentaries (General Idi Amin Dada and Koko, a Talking Gorilla). His new non-fiction study is a biography of Jacques Vergès, a lawyer who defended some of the most infamous activists of the 20th century, from the terrorist Carlos the Jackal to the Nazi executioner Klaus Barbie...
Everyone saw Forest Whitaker win the Oscar for Best Actor, but few saw his performance onscreen. Now, at home, viewers can see what all the fuss was about. They'll find that Idi Amin Dada, the Ugandan dictator Whitaker plays with charismatic power, is a secondary character in this fact-based drama about a Scottish doctor (James McAvoy) testing his scruples against the seductions of power. The film replays the old Graham Greene trope of Europeans acting out their fascination and guilt amid Third World chaos. In this case, that makes for a tepid and implausible sideshow to the immense...
...parasitic and British talent gets sucked into the Hollywood machine, never to return home. But most of the time, there's give and take. The U.S. system gives some funding or a distribution deal, and, in return, it gets a good story. Kevin Macdonald's portrait of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin The Last King of Scotland was made with mostly British funding, giving him the freedom to make his movie his way. "If I tried to do The Last King of Scotland through the U.S. studio system, it would be a very different film, if it had ever been made...
...year's best foreign-language films made by an aging action star. BEST ACTOR LEONARDO DICAPRIO, Blood Diamond RYAN GOSLING, Half Nelson PETER O'TOOLE, Venus WILL SMITH, The Pursuit of Happyness FOREST WHITAKER, The Last King of Scotland FOREST WHITAKER He's big, he's bad, he's Idi Amin Dada, the cannibal king. The soft-voiced Whitaker will win for his booming turn. LEONARDO DICAPRIO Right actor, not-quite-right movie. Leo was fine here as a diamond smuggler but even better in The Departed. SACHA BARON COHEN In the year's most brilliant, surely ballsiest performance...
...none of these is likely to upset Whitaker's front-runner status. As the self-proclaimed "His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa and Uganda," the normally soft-spoken actor gives the kind of booming, effortlessly charismatic performance that charms Oscar voters. No matter that the film has grossed only $5.5 million in four months in the theaters. The acting awards are where Hollywood does its good deeds, regardless...