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What’s so special about The Special Relationship?

Posted on March 4, 2010 by Darren

I got to see the Irish premiere of Alice in Wonderland at the weekend, thanks to boards.ie and the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival, and afterwards there was a Q & A session with Michael Sheen and Timothy Spall. Michael Sheen casually remarked that we’d be seeing the last of Peter Morgan’s “Blair trilogy”, The Special Relationship, hitting screens in about mid-July-ish. It’s been on my must-see list for a while – and the Internet Movie Database had a release date in 2011 last time I checked – but I have to admit that I’m a bit surprised at this particular companion in the tradition “Tony Blair and x” double act format. The Deal gave us Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. The Queen gave us Tony Blair and… well, take a guess. The Special Relationship gives us Tony Blair and a US President. Which one? Dennis Quaid (yes, Dennis Quaid) as Bill Clinton. Yep, that’s not the US President I was thinking of either.

The "Special" Relationship... It even sounds like a bro-mance...

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: bill clinton, biography, cinema, film, george w. bush, Movies, peter morgan, politics, the deal, the queen, the special relationship, tony blair | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: The Deal

Posted on March 3, 2010 by Darren

You know the kind of movie The Deal is. It’s about an over-the-hill writer who decides to screw with the Hollywood system and play it against itself, while seducing a beautiful woman and generally just being a cad. In short, it’s a movie writer’s fantasy. That’s by no means a bad thing, to be honest – when done right, you get the dark comedy Robert Altman’s The Player, a story of a writer’s revenge on a corrupt studio executive; unfortunately, when you do it wrong, you end up with a self-indulgent mess like The Deal.