BB 3/21/16

Good morning Phoenix and welcome to Movie Monday!  Let’s start this week out with a Tina Fey movie:  Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

Plot:

A journalist recounts her wartime coverage in Afghanistan.

Trivia:

·         The film's title, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, is military phonetic alphabet for and a humorous allusion to the abbreviation "WTF".

·         In a February 2016 interview with NPR, Kim Barker, who wrote "The Taliban Shuffle", the book that was the basis for this movie, said Tina Fey first became interested in optioning the memoir because when Michiko Kakutani reviewed the book for the New York Times, Kakutani said Barker "depicts herself as a sort of Tina Fey character."

·         In an interview with Jimmy Fallon, Tina Fey says the film is dedicated to her late father Donald Fey, who sadly passed away during filming. There had since been a scholarship set up by Fey for veterans who want to study journalism.

·         The Green Scarf that Martin Freeman's character Lain MacKelpie wears throughout the 1st half of the film, that eventually ends up with Tina Fey's character Kim Baker, is from a Scotish Football Team (Soccer for all you American Blokes) "Celtic FC" Martin Freeman is a British Actor playing a Scottish character in the film England & Scotland have quite the rivalry in Football, dating back to the late 1800's.

·         This is the third time Martin Freeman and Billy Bob Thornton have worked together. The first was in "Love Actually"(although they did not share any scenes). The second was in the 2014 TV show "Fargo".

Goofs:

·         When Kim first arrives in Afghanistan, Fahim hands her a band for her hair and says, "Here Tina" she replies with something like "That's why you're the fixer".

·         During the bombing in the cold open (and again later in the film), Kim is calling her producer back in New York on an iPhone. This scene takes place in 2006; the first iPhone wasn't released until 2007.

·         Though General Hollanek (a colonel when 1st seen) has hair and mustache out of conformance with USMC standards, we are in a war theatre and he is a field officer; no general officer above him would care at all, nor even say anything. Stateside, is an entirely different thing.

·         During the early parts of her interviews with the Marines on the FOB several Marines identify themselves by their rank, several of them state a rank that is different than the one they are wearing on their uniform.

·         At the time of Kim's arrival in Afghanistan in about 2002, two V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft are shown on the airfield's flight line. The Osprey was not deployed to Afghanistan until 2007.

So - here's hoping you all have a fangtastic Monday!
<3  Brock V"""V