Lincoln

Welcome to the future of high school history classes in the United States of America, people.  Call me crazy but Lincoln, although the performances, hair-make-up, costume and set design were stellar was as boring as sitting in the dentist chair waiting for the dentist to finally inspect your teeth.  I can't pretend that it was the best film of 2012 and thankfully it wasn't.

I can agree that it is probably the best film ever made about Abraham Lincoln and his final days as the 16th president of our wonderful country but that's as far as I can go.

It was Hollywood doing what it does best, flashing its obese budgets and casting name actors making thousands of dollars for a day or two on set. In any other film the role would be considered a background player speaking role, cast by some unknown, struggling L.A. actor and paid as such.  It was silly to see all these great actors play supporting actors who were animated caricatures, Hollywood uses actors as Band-Aids and filler and Lincoln is an example of this very practice.

I cannot mess with the performances by Daniel Day Lewis, Sally Field and David Stratham. The best casting in the film, in my opinion of course is James Spader as W. N. Bilbo.  Awesome decision Spielberg! I was also very taken with Tommy Lee Jones character, Thaddeus Stevens, not that it was a far cry for Tommy to play this person or anything, but the story line is special during those times.

When I left the movie theater I thought about high school and how damn boring history class could be at times and how this movie is changing that boredom for future generations.  History teacher's can now play Schindler's List, Lincoln and Platoon in one week and spare high school students weeks and weeks of reading those old, heavy and not always interesting history books assigned to them each school year.  Don't get me wrong, history is one of my favorite classes and I still study history to this day.  The difference between self-study and public school study is choice and choices made by the learner are so much more exciting.

I give this film a cool for all future high school students and the two hours of peace for all high school history teachers.