My father spent the first 31 years of his life in Communist Poland, leaving him with a distrust of major media that left him inclined to espouse this adage: “The only news you can be certain is accurate and untouched is sports.” He knew the universal appeal of sports as a diversion from the bleakness of life in even the most oppressed societies, and passed that lesson on to me from an early age.

**SPOILERS COMING***

Similar principles drove Nelson Mandela to use sports as a means of forgiveness and reconciliation when he made the dramatic climb from being a prisoner in the apartheid era of South Africa to becoming the nation’s first black president. And it is that powerful process that drives the new film “Invictus,” starring Morgan Freeman as the legendary leader and Matt Damon as Francois Pienaar, the leader of South Africa’s official rugby team, the Springboks, who led the team to victory in the 1995 World Cup Final in a season that provided the first major step towards national unity after decades of division. (more…)

If I was forced today to guess which 2009 release will win the Academy Award for Best Picture, I would first complain that it’s impossible to guess right. Then I would put my money on Clint Eastwood’s The Human Factor (Warner Bros). In mid-March, it’s silly to start discussing which upcoming movies will be Academy Award contenders, but there are some films, still in production, that seem to have the pedigree to “go all the way.” Eastwood’s next movie as a director, based on John Carlin’s Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela & the Game That Changed a Nation, seems like a decent bet.

Academy Award winner Morgan Freeman acquired the film rights to the book, and he will play a post-prison Nelson Mandela with friend Eastwood directing. The Human Factor will tell the story of how the 1995 World Cup Rugby Final between heavily-favored New Zealand and underdog South Africa helped to heal the post-Apartheid racial divide. Matt Damon, sporting blonde hair, has reportedly trained hard in order to credibly play South African captain Francois Pienaar. Some photos have begun to show up from the current production.

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