Just now watching the new Manchurian Candidate, and I didn't know

it before, but one of the news broadcasts in the background was discussing an incident at an event for the manufacturer of touchscreen voting machines to be used in the film's upcoming election. A bunch of protesters got into the event and dumped millions of chads from the balcony or something in protest :).

Not a bad movie.

with Al Franken and (I think) Arianna Huffington, as if several years down the road the news shows are dominated by the likes of them, instead of the ones we have now. It did a good job of showing a general deterioration of living conditions in this country.

Meryl Streep is absolutely fabulous as the mother/senator. It's so clear that her character is always the smartest person in the room, and even if she's senator, it's because she was elected when her husband died, and never ever has gotten the recognition she deserves on her own, so there's this undercurrent of frustration, coupled with a truly evil right-wing world view. She really inhabits her characters.

It's a classic. It has Frank Sinatra and Angela Landsbury in it. It was made just before the Kennedy assasination and considered too controversial to release in light of that. It wasn't released until the early 80s. It's one of my favorite movies of all time. I haven't seen the remake.

then the remake. it would be very hard to top the orignal,esp sinatra.

I haven't seen the new version either. Angela Lansbury was so good as the mother. BTW, she was about the same age as Laurence Harvey, who played her son.

many years :) The original is excellent. The new one, however, brings more believability to the story. It's still far-fetched as far as the mind control goes, but I find the corporate aspects to be much more believable than the premise of the first one.