Search FCW

Advanced Search
Subscribe Now!
Table of Contents
Business
BPM
CXOs
Columns
Columnists
Defense
E-Government
Elections 2008
Enterprise Architecture
Funding
Homeland Security
Health IT
IPv6
LOB
Management
Procurement
Privacy
Policy
Program Management
State and Local
Security
Technology
Telework
Workforce

More Topics
resourcecenter
Home
Letters to the Editor
Current Issue/Download
Print/Online Archives
Editorial Calendar
researchstore
resourcecenter
Sprint Communications for Continuity Operations
Oracle Resource Center
GSA: Your Customer Service Agency
Government Leadership Survey
Green Solutions Guide
Report: Information Sharing
DISA IT Strategy & Vision
Emergency Preparedness Report
Report: Green Computing
PEO EIS Guidebook
Content Library

More >>


FCW.com BLOG

Latest News
ADVERTISEMENT




 
FCW Insider:

FCW Insider: March Madness is (Government) Movie Madness

By Christopher J. Dorobek
Published on February 27, 2008 - 03:51 PM

Comment

Click here to comment on this blog

Newsletters

You might also be interested in these FCW newsletters:

Daily

To learn more, click here.

There is a wonderful book called The Enlightened Bracketologist: The final four of everything. It essentially pulls together March Madness style brackets on... well, pretty much everything you can think of… red wines… celebrity sports couples…CEOs (Warren Buffett beat out Jack Welch)… Special thanks to 1105 Government Information Group production czar Michael Protos, who got the book for his birthday last year.

It is very fun. They have done a great job picking interesting people to 'edit' the brackets.

Anyway… for FCW's Fed 100 issue (March 24 – right in the heat of March Madness), we’re going to do a bracket of movies that have a government theme… and let people vote on these using our FCW.com poll over the next few weeks.

What we'll do is let the 'competitions' run online for three days, so you'll have to check back often.What we are doing right now is pulling together a good list of movies that have a government theme. (Earlier this month, I highlighted movies with a hacker theme, but I thought we'd focus on movies that have a government theme broadly.) So... I'm seeking your help creating the list of movies that we will then pair off for competitions. (We'll try and take similar movies, like pitting the movie Dave against the movie American President.)

So, I am posting the initial list below after spending a lot of time online over the weekend.

Here is how the process will work. Every three days, we will post a new competition among movies on FCW.com's poll site, which can be found at www.fcw.com/polls. And we are coming up with a page where we list all the brackets. I'll post that when we get all the movies and have... well, bracketed them. (You'll see how it works as we move forward.)

The first step is getting a comprehensive list of the best 32 movies with a government related them. If you know others or have suggestions, post them here... or shoot me a note.

This list is in no particular order. If you have thoughts about what movies should face off with another movie, let me know that too.

So... here are some movies.

* Breach (2007)
* Enemy of the State
* Independence Day
* War Games
* Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
* Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
* Absolute Power (1996)
*  All the President's Men (1975)
*  The American President (1995)
* Dave (1992)
* Dick (1999)
* In the Line of Fire (1993)
" JFK (1992)
* Nixon (1995)
* Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1940)
* Murder at 1600 (1997):
* No Way Out (1987)
* Thirteen Days (2000)
* The Contender (2000)
* Election (1999).
* Manchurian Candidate (1962)
* State of the Union (1948)
* The Candidate (1972)
* Wag the Dog (1997)
* The Good Shepherd (2006)
* Clear and Present Danger (1994)
* Black Hawk Down (2001)
* A Few Good Men (1992)
* The Silence of the Lambs (1991) -- she's an FBI agent, right?
* Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde (2003)
* An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
* The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
* Primary Colors (1998)

I have 33 movies here. I think we will start with a 'seating' of 32, so one of these will go. And if you have others, send them along or post 'em here. We're looking to get this going by the end of the week. Over the next day, we'll be working on the first round battles.

Stay tuned here. I'll let you know when things get started.

Update: Got a bunch of e-mail already.

All The King's Men (1949 or 2006 ), gotta have that one
Fail-Safe (1964), good movie, but a first-round loser to Dr. Strangelove
Duck Soup (1933) -- Hey, Groucho was president/dictator of Freedonia -- that's government, isn't it?
 
If you want to expand the field to 48 or 64, you could go outside the U.S., for movies of kings (Lion in Winter; Beckett) or other government officials and rulers (Last King of Scotland, any number of British spy movies).

Also...

The Captive City (1952). Starring John Forsythe. Plot: A couple flee their home in a nice middle America town to reach Washington DC and appear before Sen. Kefauver’s Committee to Investigate Organized Crime. In the film’s opening and closing segments, Sen. Kefauver speaks directly to the audience.

The Man with One Red Shoe (1985)
Traffic (2000)
Seven Days in May (1964)
X-Files: Fight The Future (1998)
Bob Roberts (1992)
Citizen Kane (1941)

The Siege 1998
Man of the Year 2000
Deja Vu 2000
Bulworth 1990
Bourne Identity 2002
The Last King of Scotland 2006
Conspiracy Theory 1997
Patriot Games 1992
Swordfish 2001
Pelican Brief 1993
Behind Enemy Lines 2001
Armageddon 1998
U.S. Marshalls 1998
Clear & Present Danger 1994
Hunt for Red October 1990
Apocalypse Now 1979


View Comments

I would suggest getting rid of Blackhawk, Live Free, Die Hard, Inconvenient Truth (great movie but only documentary on the list) and Silence of the Lambs, in favor of Quiz Show http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110932/, Guilty by Suspicion http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101984/, and All the King's Men, the older version http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0216534/, not the Sean Penn version.

My vote goes to Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but then again, I still get teary at the end of It's a Wonderful Life.

Posted by IT Fan on February 27, 2008 - 03:29 PM

Advise and Consent (1962), probably the best political movie ever made, is conspicuous by its absence.

Posted by Lonesome Hawk on February 28, 2008 - 06:53 AM

I thought your list was good. However, I feel there are two omissions: Sentinel and Sum of All Fears. I also concur with some readers in that Traffic perhaps offers an interesting corollary.

Here's to popcorn... Hutch

Posted by Hutch on February 28, 2008 - 12:09 PM

I'd throw out "Nixon" since it was a smear by Oliver Stone and "An Inconvenient Truth" since it was deadly dull and it was masquerading as truth when it really had an ideological axe to grind based on what the state of the science was (and still is).

Posted by johnt23502 on February 28, 2008 - 12:19 PM

Post a Comment

To post a comment, you must be a registered user of FCW.com and be logged in. Use one of the forms below to login or register for FREE to FCW.com. To protect your privacy, you can use an alias as your username.

Login to FCW.com

E-mail Address:
Password:
Forgot your password?
Register and Post Comment

* First Name:
* Last Name:
* E-mail Address:
* Password:
* Retype Password:
* Blog Username:
* Comments:


E-mail me when new comments are posted in this thread?


upcoming event

Enterprise Architecture 2008 - Washington, DC
September 9 - September 10, 2008

Occupational Health & Safety Executive Summit - Arlington, VA
October 6 - October 7, 2008


 

head
fcw
issue
First Name State
Last Name Zip
Title Email
     

Home | About | Contact | Customer Help | Privacy Policy | Editorial Info | Advertise | Link policy / Reprints | Site Map


1105 Media, Inc.

© 1996-2008 1105 Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved.