Politics and popcorn

Last night I put away the books for two hours and took advantage of an opportunity to see the premiere of The Iron Lady starring Meryl Streep. The movie is a biopic about former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Ms. Streep can do no wrong, in my opinion. Combine her acting talents with politics and that’s my idea of a great night.

I won’t get too much into the nuts and bolts of the movie because Ms. Dow over at http://kulturebykatherine.wordpress.com/ will have that taken care of this weekend.

All I’ll say is that Streep is unbelievable. But the movie, directed by Phyllida Lloyd, left me wanting more: more about Thatcher’s political career, more about the time she governed, more about her relationship with other leaders, more about the riots and strikes…

When I got home I spent a good hour looking up clips of Thatcher and reading about her. There are many other women (and men) in politics that I’m interested in learning more about, too.

....the first female head of state and woman president Vigdís Finnbogadóttir is one of them.

In short, Finnbogadóttir is incredible:

“She was a divorced single mother and breast cancer survivor.

"How could she be president," alluded one male contender, "She's a woman and half a woman at that."

Her response? "I'm not going to breastfeed Iceland- I'm going to lead it."

And sure enough, in 1980, Vigdis was democratically elected as Iceland's first female president and served four consecutive terms.” 

- from http://rosastef.com/blog/

Now, if I had it my way, I would live my life out as a character in The West Wing. Until I figure out how to make that possible, I’ll continue to keep an eye out for more political films (that I can live through vicariously).

When’s the movie about Clinton coming out? I’ve heard something about the one profiling Sarah Palin and the 2008 US presidential election called Game Change (is it a comedy?).

Any other recommendations for books and films about politics?