According to the U.K. Guardian, President Barack Obama, upon leaving Great Britain, gave Prime Minister Gordon Brown a very special present, a box set of 25 classic American films (see above), which the Guardian snarkily describes as "a gift about as exciting as a pair of socks."
Well, maybe to a non-film buff. But to a cinephile like myself this looks like a pretty good selection. Two Fords. A couple Hitchcocks. A little Chaplin. A little Keaton. 2001. The Wizard of Oz. What's not to like?
Now if the situation were reversed - if I were Barack Obama and somebody gave me a box set containing Gone With the Wind - I might conceivably be offended, because I consider that film to be a little, you know ... racist. However, I don't see that the Prime Minister has anything to complain about. Unless he already has all these films.
What did the Prime Minister give the President? An "ornamental pen holder made from the timbers of the Victorian anti-slave ship HMS Gannet."
Via Wonkette.
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
PM Gets Box Set From POTUS
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5 comments:
HMMM AND IF PUTIN WAS TO VISIT ME, I WOULD LIKE 50 RUSSIAN FILMS PLEASE, BEGINING WITH ANY AND ALL BY EISENSTEIN, THE SOLDIERS STORY, WAR AND PEACE, AND DERZU USALA, MY FAVORITE FILM BY KURASAWA (FILMED IN RUSSIAN). WHAT OTHERS ID LEAVE TO HIS DISCRETION OR PERHAPS YOUR SUGGESTIONS( NO BORING PROPOGANDA SHOWS PLS!)\
CORNEL
Obama definitely got the lesser gift.
The problem was that when Brown actually tried to watch the films, the region code prevented it:
http://techdirt.com/articles/20090319/1337464182.shtml
That's funny, Anonymous.
Seems like "free trade" doesn't mean much in the realm of intellectual property.
My suspicion has been confirmed by a google search...the top 25 is indeed the AFI list from 2007. Shucks...I was kind of hoping the president was secretly a film buff.
And fuck the Guardian. What were they expecting - a vibrator? That might have sold more copies of their newspaper but among the possible and probable, this was an excellent gift...region issues aside of course...
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