Whilst it warms the cockles that rugby union is attracting the likes of Eastwood, Freeman and Damon as a vehicle to tell a story again Hollywood has over look the facts in the case of RWC 1995, SA Rugby and the SA Government;

Fact: The All Blacks deserved to win the cup but were poisoned.
Fact: The Bok’s had signed with WRC however welched on the deal.

Lets not forget the dishonesty and lengths South Africa went to to seal its place in history. The powerbrokers of SA and SA rugby were not men of integrity and not rugby men in my opinion. So believe the hype about hope and unity etc etc however under the surface was a machine intent on doing whatever it took to win.

For the record I am not a Kiwi or a racist. I just don’t like crap being reported as fact.

Then that explains it all. Enough said.

MyGeneration, you are stating your opinion, i have stated mine.

1 – Mandela should be responsible for poisoning the AB’s using methods he learned while in prison.
2 – Some sort of shout out to the best film about South Africans in history – Lethal Weapon 2. Perhaps one of the Boks should say something like “He’s the president? But…but…he’s BLICK!”.

My point was that the phrase ‘Heavy–handed, mindless schlock’ was straight out of the grab-bag of film critics’ cliches. Critics 101 if you like. I’ve no doubt there exists two critics who think Eastwood is wonderful, and possibly many more who don’t.

Funny you should mention Midnight in the Garden…. – one of the most overrated novels to be made into one of the most overrated movies…. would be my view. A few years ago, I had an opportunity to visit Savannah in Georgia where it was shot – and boy do they idolise it. They even have tours that take you around parts of the city to show you where certain scenes were filmed. You can get your picture taken. Local art galleries have paintings by local artists commemorating some of the locations. All a bit OTT.

And why do you not like Mystic River written by the brilliant Denis Lehane and to which the screen play is very faithful? Ambiguities and sublties abound in this story which I thought Eastwood handled well in what is a complex story to tell.

To each his own as you say.

Certainly not the worst.

I never said Suzie should be in the movie. Rather I said I’d include the food poisoning. I wasn’t inferring that the All Blacks were deliberately poisoned at all, but that they had food poisoning.
I have the VHS of the semi-final as well, and it’s contentious whether Benazzi scored that try. He later admitted years later that he did. You can take that with a grain of salt I guess…

Just little things like that make the difference between a great movie and a terrible movie like Tokyo Story.

It’ll be a winner in SA, and have a milder following in Europe – maybe more so in Australasia. Invictus doesn’t have enough rugby action in it – a la Any Given Sunday for example – it’s more a means to an end in glorifying Mandela’s pursuit of unity. It takes liberties with his relationship with the SA captain and makes more of it than actually happened – but that’s how you write screenplays for US audiences.

He was given the part only after Sinatra, Wayne, McQueen and Newman had all passed on it.

It does fit with his penchant for supporting the underdog and victim – a recurring theme in a lot of his movies that are mentioned in earlier posts. Invictus fits the bill in that respect. Heavy–handed, mindless schlock is film critics cliche. Black is black and white is white? I would have thought that Eastwood’s characters have more trodden the line between the two and been more ambiguous in the values and morals he portrayed/adopted in the pursuit of ‘good’.

Stiff competition for the holiday adult dollar in the States as Invictus goes up against two likely blockbusters, the $300 million Avatar and Robert Downey’s Sherlock Holmes, and one proven blockbuster, the Sandra Bullock movie with a background of American football, The Blind Side. But if Invictus has legs, makes its nut, and a tidy little profit besides, maybe those rugby scripts that ended up in the slush pile will get another look.

In the semis, the Boks scored one try, France 0. And although the ABs beat England, England still managed to score 4 tries against them.

In the final, neither team scored a try.