Viraj's Weblog

Today I saw 'Thank you for smoking'. It's a satire about tobacco lobbyists, and I thought it was stylish and very funny. The lead is played by Aaron Eckhart, whom if you have seen 'In the company of men', can play a white-collar villain better than anyone else. In that movie he's exploiting women with his words. I remember him in that movie because I thought to myself, "what an evil bastard." In this movie instead of women, he's exploiting the public with his words.

The movie is really cool in how it visualizes spin. There is an amazing scene where he's talking at a podium. His mouth is moving, but you don't hear words, you hear a machine gun going in sync with his mouth, and he's spraying the whole room. That's probably the best depiction of spin I've ever seen.

There is scene with a movie exec (played by Rob Lowe) discussing how to make cigarrettes sexy again. They decide to add smoking to a sex scene in a space ship movie, blowing circles around naked bodies. It has to be in the future because smoking would be accepted then. They planned to release a new brand of cigarrete with the movie. It was hilarious but it's probably not too far from the truth when it comes to advertisements in movies. Speaking of which, I saw V for Vendetta. I'm not writing a review of that since everyone probably has seen it. Anyway, I caught the flagrant JVC advertisements throughout.

Anyway, it was a good movie that makes you think. Great direction too.