President Obama Gets Private ‘Lincoln’ Screening At White House
The perks of being the POTUS: President Obama will get a private screening of Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln on Thursday at the White House with the cast and crew of the film in attendance.
Fresh off the heels of his re-election as President of the United States, Obama is celebrating with a movie night at the White House with the cast and crew of Spielberg’s biopic about the 16th president invited, reports MSN.
The film is already earning significant Oscar-buzz for Daniel Day-Lewis’s performance as Abraham Lincoln.
Though we can’t say whether or not President Obama will like Lincoln, we have to appreciate what amounts to a pretty surreal scene: America’s first black president, elected for a second term, watching a film about his predecessor’s ultimately successful efforts to abolish slavery once and for all.
That’s a pretty cool moment for our culture, no matter how you feel about President Obama’s politics. Indeed, critics are weighing Lincoln not just on its cinematographic merits, but also its cultural lessons.
“Go see this movie,” writes A.O. Scott of the New York Times. “Take your children, even though they may occasionally be confused or fidgety. Boredom and confusion are also part of democracy, after all. Lincoln is a rough and noble democratic masterpiece — an omen, perhaps, that movies for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
According to the White House website, the private Lincoln screening will be held at 4:35 pm on Thursday with cast and crew present, though it wasn’t specified whether Spielberg, Day-Lewis, Tommy Lee Jones, or Sally Field would attend.
Day-Lewis would provide especially good company though. Last week during an award acceptance speech at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts’ Britannia Awards, Day-Lewis referred to an empty chair next to him (echoing Clint Eastwood’s RNC speech) and said:
“I know as an Englishman it’s absolutely none of my business, but I’m just so very grateful it was you!”
What would you give to watch Lincoln at the White House with President Obama, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Steven Spielberg?
