1) Each won an undeserved prize for excellence in his profession, journalism in the case of Duranty and acting in the case of Kingsley.

2) In each case, the prize involved belittlement, oppression, and butchery of non-western peoples, Ukrainians for Duranty and Indians (or at least their accents) for Kingsley.

3) Each prize should be revoked.

Kingsley's godawful portrayal of Mohandas Gandhi doesn't appear on Cineleet's list of Ten Bizarre Ethnically Challenged Casting Choices, but it should. Apart from that omission, and Pete Postlethwaite's inclusion as an obvious stand-in for Kingsley (and Kayser Soze), I have no problem with anyone's appearance on the list. And I fully agree that when Peter Sellers did it, it was brilliant. Life's not fair.

Via

Edit: Doh! Commenter Dan informs me that Kingsley is in fact one quarter Indian and was born Krishna Bhanji. I still think his performance sucked, but I can't say it was ethnically inappropriate. I leave this post unaltered as a reminder to myself that google exists to be used.

Given my glee at the historical fun of 10,000BC, I greatly enjoyed this list Yahoo put together of the 10 most historically inaccurate movies. Good stuff here. Strange that Mel is involved in 3 of them, and Tom Cruise gets another one in. The list reminded me that I really need to see Apocalypto. Especially if Conquistadors show up as saviors!

This got me to thinking about what movies should be on this list (which should really be called the most inaccurate blockbusters, or something..) I would submit to you that the most historically inaccurate movie of all time was the Ringo Starr vehicle, Caveman. Although, I do give the film kudos for handing out a sheet of paper at the screening that defined the language of ancient man. That is some impressive research!