any suggestions?

i'm working on a list of important political movies for a friend of mine who's graduating from UCLA's public policy program next week. so far, here's what i've got:

1) "the contender"
2) "bob roberts"
3) "the manchurian candidate"
4) "all the president's men"
5) "the parallax view"

anybody got ideas? the more modern, the better: i don't want to overwhelm her with 70's conspiracy flicks.

"big if"

just finished mark costello's "big if." very interesting book: it focuses on our national obsession with assassinations and public violence. it goes into detail about the secret service, and how they do what they do, which i think is fascinating stuff. i love to read about things like that: groups or occupations that most people know only on the surface, rarely about how they function on the inside.

it's a weird coincidence, because my friends and i were discussing assassinations last night. k3 got a chain email that said that every 20 years, a president is assassinated (attempts count, too) or dies in office. if this is true, then we'd be due for another one this year. we were trying to work out the timeline in our heads, but couldn't go back consistently. we only remembered the biggies: regan, kennedy, roosevelt, lincoln, etc.

anyway, it's a really good book. i'd definitely recommend it.


ETA: for those of you who might be curious, that presidential death timeline is bull. i found a website listing assassinations & attempts, and they're all over the map: jackson (1835), lincoln (1865), garfield (1881), mckinley (1901), FDR (1933), truman (1950), JFK (1963) ford (1975), regan (1981).

the fact that there were only 3 in the 19th century, and double that number in the 20th century, is very disconcerting. says a lot about our violence-obsessed culture, does it not?