Thinkin' On Lincoln

Well I bet you though I was gonna leave you guys hangin, but fuck no, I'm back. My buddy Shane wanted to see the movie Lincoln starring Daniel Day Lewis as, well, Abraham Lincoln. In fact Shane recommended that I see it the day that I went to see Django Unchained. I told Shane that I predicted that Lincoln would be kinda boring--a bunch of honkies sitting around in rooms in three piece suits smoking cigars and drinking brandy talking for two and a half hours. I was kind of right. In fact there was a point where Shane was snoring.
But the movie was kind of dope, particularly because it stars DDL. The man is not an actor, he's an artist. Every movie that he's in he kills it. Last night watching Lincoln I couldn't believe that it was Day-Lewis. Not that I know what Abe was like, but it seemed like Daniel Day Lewis nailed his mannerisms right down to the pitch of his voice, performing without the familiar DDL vocal boom that I'm used to hearing. Talk about suspended belief. I was wondering to myself where they got all the footage of honest Abe before film was prevalent. That, or I wondered how long Louie Barletta had been involved with acting. I don't know Day Lewis' Lincoln just kind of reminded me of Louie at times.
So Day Lewis was excellent, as was to be expected. Spielberg? Meh. The film had what I would describe as Disneyesque undertones at times, pulling more at the viewers' heartstrings than our minds. I would have liked the movie to be a bit colder, darker. Obviously there's not a happy ending (Lincoln gets shot and if that's a spoiler I sort of feel sorry for you), but I just believe that there was alot more pain and gief along the way. Daniel Day Lewis would have been the perfect vehicle for Spielberg to illustrate some of that and I kind of feel like he fell short. The 16th president's rumorized ambiguous sexuality was only slightly barely not even really grazed upon for example, and that is only true for the most intuitive sub text-steeped viewers (which I may not even be one).
Overall Lincoln is indeed worth watching thanks to Daniel Day Lewis' excellent-as-always performance, but if I had to do it again I might have watched it on Netflix in the comfort of my living room. Just sayin'.