Lee Daniels' "The Butler," Oscarbait servant's tale starring Forest Whitaker and Oprah

The presidential stunt casting here... I just... and then there's Jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=eZ4xDTz8Avc

only lee daniels film i've seen is the paperboy so i'm kind of psyched for this being a jfk-style holy hell movie

written by Jonathan from Buffy The Vampire Slayer!

plus we'll finally get a look at what's got terence so excited

http://gawker.com/5988691/terrence-howard-praises-oprahs-tig-ol-bitties

to be clear, John Cusack is playing NIXON
Robin Williams is playing IKE

Daniels already gave us Cusack as a drooling swamp maniac. Nixon seems just as within the realm of possibility.

written by Jonathan from Buffy The Vampire Slayer!

He's an Emmy-winning screenwriter now!

yeah that was a cute surprise watching the ceremony. this looks a lot more intense than his usual hbo crap, but lee daniels doesn't do "not intense."

"Emmy-winning screenwriter"

this phrase does not compute.

"Just do the Lloyd Dobbler thing but without the boom-box....and make peace signs, John."

fonda as nancy is kinda inspired

i'm thinkin LD is showing restraint bcuz Zac Efron is not playing a Kennedy

fonda as pat nixon would at least be a good joke

Isn't August too early for Oscarbait?

Future camp classic in the making right here.

The Help was an August release.

Begging not to have a title change (1916 short film, that's p dickish of WB):

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/butler-battle-director-lee-daniels-579971

Bad luck for Lee "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire" Daniels.

I don't really understand the rules here. Could the studios behind Cronenberg's Crash and Baumbach's Kicking and Screaming have tried to prevent Haggis's Crash and that Will Ferrell soccer comedy from using those titles?

ironically enough, in the "our editor recommends" sidebar

Gerard Butler in Talks to Star in Sci-Fi Action Project 'The Raven'

everything u own and evertyhing u have is because of that butler

is there a facebook macro w that line yet y/n

I only started seeing ads for this within the last few days, but it looks like all the garbage.

Can we at least thank Daniels for cranking out all of these future camp classics?

fonda as nancy is kinda inspired

― i wanna be a gabbneb baby (Hungry4Ass), Saturday, June 15, 2013

esp if she plays Nancy like Faye Dunaway did Joan Crawford.

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02339/Fonda_2339069b.jpg

lol this looks so execrable but ... I can kinda see Cusack as Nixon

he's got the jowls

This is getting some respectable reviews even from ppl who've previously found Daniels unable to suppress "his Ed Wood"

Lee Daniels' "Ed Wood" was the sharpest tool in his box.

Can we at least thank Daniels for cranking out all of these future camp classics?

A few fleeting moments like Cusack getting jowly and Winfrey putting on her fighting lipstick aside, this movie is a big speed bump along that legacy.

The idea that different generations will have different approaches to effecting change, and how that relates to the civil rights movement, is so obvious that even Daniels can't totally whiff it.

i somehow missed that liev schreiber is playing lbj in this.

uh I somehow missed that Cusack is playing Dick.

kind of in shock if the director of the paperboy and the writer of game change actually team up for a cameo-riddled movie that's actually good

I will be in shock when that happens, too.

hey crypto the magnificent are you saying this movie's good or boring

Neither.

you little obfuscer

Eric's principle kink (as a critic, at least) is the whole good/bad binary

Unfair, but probably true.

A Kaelian works/doesn't work binary is maybe closer.

Oh, and the respective sizes of the two male lead's pecs. That too.

so from what i can gather it is neither a camp classic nor good nor boring but daniels didn't totally whiff it

now i just want to know if it's larger or smaller than a breadbox

US or UK style?

let Armond help you!

Everyone here, from limousine liberal parade of Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave to the various Presidential caricatures (Robin Williams, James Marsden, John Cusack, Liev Schreiber, Alan Rickman), look like waxworks. From the beginning, Forest Whittaker plays the title role as a gaunt, wizened symbol of oppression and endurance–a Morgan Freeman figure of quiet dignity and rectitude. His wife (Oprah Winfrey) and two sons (David Oyewelo and Isaac White) seem like appendages rather than family. Gaines' estrangement from his world suggests a reverse Benjamin Button aging through decades, keeping quiet during eras of social turmoil. He - and this film – most resembles Forrest Gump, that symbolic idiot savant witness to social progress he played no part in.

The Butler is unconvincingly noble–without even that streak of psychotic behavior in the ridiculous shit pie scenes of The Help. Gaines is always crotchety and proper, leaving dirty-minded resilience to Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding, Jr in scene-stealing supporting roles–they're surrogates for Daniels the salacious auteur who's uninterested in what propriety and self-control mean.

http://cityarts.info/2013/08/13/run-forest-run/

What is the pec movie of the summer, E?

I'll let you know when I get out of Kickass 2 tonight.

ok now that i know mariah carey gets raped by alex pettyfer I believe this film was directed by lee daniels

fave headline so far

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2013/08/the-its-a-mad-mad-mad-mad-world-of-race-relation-movies.html

best presidential impersonations of the last twenty years: George and Barbara in The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear

W in Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay.

Worst: whoever did Nixon in J. Edgar.

I saw a short promo segment about this movie on one of the "entertainment news" TV shows last night - Access Hollywood or whatever - and Lee Daniels was talking about JFK and wife as "these kids, coming into the White House." I about threw a boot into the screen. JFK was 43 years old when he was elected president. Granted, Jackie Kennedy was 31, but come the fuck on.

http://ginavivinetto.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/jfksplash.jpg

DO NOT FORGET YOUR DYING KING

i mean wasn't TR the only one younger than JFK? he *was* a kid as far as presidents go.

or as Roosevelt's good frirend Cecil Spring-Rice said, "You must always remember that the President is about six."

TR wasn't that young cuz ppl didn't live so long then, even w/out assassins

he and FDR died at about the same age. He would've lived longer if it wasn't for his Amazon trip and eating six eggs a day.

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/08/lets-stop-calling-i-lee-daniels-the-butler-i-the-new-i-forrest-gump-i/278783/

In the last week or so, Lee Daniels' The Butler -- based on the true story of an African-American White House butler who waits on eight different presidents during his 34-year tenure -- has received a flurry of mixed-to-positive reviews. In them, there's a particular comparison that keeps cropping up between The Butler and another mega-famous film. Daniels's movie, No. 1 in the box office this past weekend, has been called "a White House Forrest Gump," "Lee Daniels' Forrest Gump," and "a more serious-minded Forrest Gump" (among others), and even the director himself has said he envisions the Forest Whitaker vehicle as "his black Forrest Gump."

Given its vast, multi-decade narrative and its one-man-sees-American-history-happen-up-close structure, it's understandable that so many critics would be quick to see the similarities. But to label The Butler a version of Forrest Gump isn't quite fair, and ignores one of the most important virtues of Lee Daniels's film. Lee Daniels' The Butler paints an imperfect but far more multi-dimensional portrait of the black Civil Rights movement, presenting it as a necessary struggle for justice that both united and drove apart families, friends, and lovers, even when they were on the same side. Forrest Gump cast the Civil Rights movement as a prop, at best, and a threat, at worst.

comparing any movie to Forrest Gump is insulting

a threat, at worst.

― curmudgeon, Wednesday, August 21, 2013 3:34 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

? this seems like a weird way to characterize it

the sds & black panther characters were def played as villains and creeps iirc

oh yeah i forgot abt that

The same arguably goes for the way *some* of them are portrayed in Lee Daniels' The Butler as well.

Lee Daniels' The Butler paints an imperfect but far more multi-dimensional portrait of the black Civil Rights movement, presenting it as a necessary struggle for justice that both united and drove apart families, friends, and lovers, even when they were on the same side. Forrest Gump cast the Civil Rights movement as a prop, at best, and a threat, at worst.

LDTB isnt so proud that it wont milk black radicalism for yuks though - as soon as the son becomes a panther he's treated as a punchline by the movie, until he learns he should ~work within the system~ and leaves behind the world of mesh shirts and natural hair so he can run for senate.

http://www.ebony.com/entertainment-culture/the-butler-shuffles-through-black-history-888#axzz2ccVVfo00

harry lennix sounds awesome.

LDTB isnt so proud that it wont milk black radicalism for yuks though - as soon as the son becomes a panther he's treated as a punchline by the movie,

rather like Robin Wright Penn treated like a petrie dish of infection as soon as the sixties start

well that's kind of what hippies did to women tho

A Good Day In Hell - The Official ILM Track-By-Track EAGLES Listening Thread

I pretty much don't need to see any more movies that genuflect in the direction of any presidents ever

especially this crew!

Aw damn, just as they're shoring up funding for that Martin Van Buren triptych.

Looks like Daniels is casting Amy Adams as Janis Joplin in his biopic follow up to "Benson"

Oprah and Hollywood's "sassy black lady" problem

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/09/oprahs-oscar-buzz-and-hollywoods-sassy-black-lady-problem/279407/

it doesn't transcend its "50 important years in 2 hours" genre (most of the presidential performances are worthless, hated how every time forest and oprah had a nice quiet moment at home you knew something awful was about to happen) but i found this way more affecting than i expected.

there may well be a few i haven't seen (ie maybe that new mandela movie), but i'm having a hard time thinking of an american-made historical biopic that spends less time giving the well-intentioned straight/white/christian/male audience someone to identify with while the gay/black/jewish/female characters suffer. We're always asked to judge the presidents, not identify with their dilemmas or admire their bravery. rando-celebs-as-presidents aside, the only line of dialogue from A Likable Mainstream Person Driven To Do The Right Thing (the character typically the lead in films about human rights) is a short bit where a nameless college student is being told to pretend he's a violent racist as prep for a sit-in. even hotel rwanda had nick nolte and joaquin phoenix as "but what would I do?" surrogates for that audience (iirc they even have a scene together where they discuss just what should be done).

Whitaker and Oprah (and in his small role, even Cuba G) were fine in this. A shame the script was so heavyhanded and frequently dumb. LOL'd at the Nixon nose on Cusack. h4a otm above.

And damn Lenny Kravitz looked so good.

Kravitz is Daniels' Tippi Hedren.

I figured there must be something wacky in the deleted scenes, and yep -- Jack and Jackie have a tryst interrupted by the Cuban missile crisis.

That IS weird that Jack was having a tryst with Jackie!

Despite generally good perfs, a potentially cool premise and a couple of interesting threads this was basically shite. Some deeply weird casting going on with the presidents (actually thought Marsden did the best job).

they ran outta cameo cash for Jennifer Aniston as MM

xp

yeah they needed someone more giant and freakish as LBJ. Also "I'm going to Vietnam" is always the first line of any supporting younger brother's next-to-last scene.

If Adolph Reed. Jr.'s critique of Obama is to be believed, I can see why the prez would admire this butler.

Jane Fonda was my favorite of the star cameos; Alan Rickman was too querulous. Reagan might have been a mummy in '86 but he was a mummy that told jokes.

Ronald Rickman was the most egregious. What were they thinking?

Instead of Rickman, they should've gotten

http://img42.imageshack.us/img42/5417/183southpark.jpg

Jane Fonda had exactly 42 seconds of screen time.

She somehow managed to wink at the camera 58 times.

Blame the hairspray.

shoulda built White House set bigger so she'd look tinier

I'm glad we got a '70s montage that included Sanford and Son so they didn't have to cast Ford and Carter.

I saw this in Brooklyn the other night -- J Hoberman presenting White House Down and The Butler simultaneously on the same screen (Butler sound on, WHD muted with subtitles).

http://www.rogerebert.com/balder-and-dash/films-in-conversation-j-hobermans-presentation-of-white-house-butler-down

weird