*** Official INVICTUS Discussion Thread

Everytime I see one of these, I always think to myself: my god, has Matt Damon done an insane job managing his career.

 

Look at it, he and Ben Affleck started with the same Buzz, except Ben was perceived as the "pretty boy" and managed to do a series of pretty crap big-budget films (see: Armageddon, Paycheck) and then a series of total crap (Gigli, etc.) he through in some minor roles for a certain fan base that they both did (Dogma, Clerks II cameo, etc.) 

Meanwhile, Matt Damon came out and while Bourne was a blockbuster, no one thought the first film would blow up as it did, it was just a really smart script.  He followed up Goodwill Hunting with Rounders right away, which was a great low budget film and maybe the best film ever about playing cards.  (yes, there are several out there also in contention, but it's up there).  The Talented Mr. Ripley, then Bourne Identity.. Oceans films, then Syrianna (very good), The Departed (he's incredible in it) , The Good Shepherd (better then it got credit for)

I mean, add Invictus to his list, and Damon is quickly weaving his way through some of the best directors in the business and really becoming a box office draw.  Meanwhile, Ben Affleck is basically nowhere... Hollywoodland was decent though.
 

This has the right real story and could be pretty effective on the screen.  I'm there.

Check out Gone, Baby Gone. Even if you don't like him as an actor, Affleck's got lots of talent as a director. For what it's worth, I think he's been taking much better roles and movies in the last 5 or so years.

Damon looks like P.S. Hoffman if he was younger and not fat.

after seeing the trailer this doesn't look like something I need to see now.
Not even sure what it's about.

Ben was good in "Hollywoodland" also. 

He's done much better in selecting roles lately, yes. 

I like this project for so many reasons. I like that a movie about the first year or so under South Africa's first black president is being released in the first year or so under the United States's first black president. I like that after Eastwood was targeted with aspersions of racism over elements in his Iwo Jima movies and Gran Torino, he makes a movie about Nelson Mandela. I like that I won't have to worry any more about Morgan Freeman wasting an uncanny likeness by dying before starring as Nelson Mandela in something. Most of all, I like that it's titled Invictus, after the William Ernest Henley poem:

OUT of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

The poem fits Mandela's life perfectly, but on a broader scape it speaks to themes of induvidualism that have run through Eastwood's entire body of work, from his early crime dramas and westerns as an actor through to his more recent works as a director.

He was hilarious in Extract.

the film has no "feeling" for me

I thought I was going to be the only person in the audience for my matinee showing, but four other people joined me just as the trailers were beginning to show. 





Crawdaddy

I saw it yesterday and there was about 30 people there which, for the little theater that I saw it in, was a very large number.