Invictus saw a gathering of award-winning talent as stars Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon step in front of the camera of Clint Eastwood.

The film is coming to Blu-ray™ and DVD on the 14th of June and HeyUGuys are offering you the chance to win one of two copies of the Muti-pack, which includes a Blu-ray™, DVD and a Digital copy of the film.

Full details of the pack are below, along with the synopsis to get you in the mood.

All you need to do is answer the following question using the form below,

What is the nickname of the South African rugby team?

The small print:

• This competition is open to the UK only.
• Only one entry per household will be counted.
• The competition will close Sunday 27th June at 23.59 GMT.
• The winner will be picked at random from entries received.

The usual T&Cs can be found here. Good Luck!

SYNOPSIS

He was imprisoned 27 years for his heroic fight against apartheid. So what does Nelson Mandela do after he is elected president of South Africa? He rejects revenge, forgives his oppressors and finds hope of national unity in an unlikely place: the rugby field. Hollywood legend Clint Eastwood powerfully directs an uplifting film about a team and a people inspired to greatness.

In a performance that won him NBR’s Best Actor Award and an Academy Award® nomination, Morgan Freeman portrays Mandela, who asks the national rugby team captain (Best Supporting Actor Academy Award® nominee Matt Damon) and his underdog squad to do the impossible and win the World Cup. One team, one country.

The universal language of sports has never spoken so thrillingly as in Eastwood’s Invictus.

Special Features

Multi-pack:

Blu-ray™ Disc

• Matt Damon Plays Rugby (trt 6:48) – Turning a Hollywood star into a rugby player

• Invictus music trailer (trt 2:32)
• Vision, Courage and Honor: Clint Eastwood and the Power of a True Story (trt 100 min) – Via Picture in Picture (PIP), Clint Eastwood explains in-depth what attracted him to this important story and how he brought it to life on film
• Mandela Meets Morgan (trt 20:00 min) – Get to know Nelson Mandela as Morgan Freeman meets with him to prepare for the film
• The Eastwood Factor (trt 22:20) – Cutdown of TCAT’s feature length Schickel documentary

DVD Disc:

• SD Feature
• Digital Copy (iTunes and WMV files)
  • Matt Damon Plays Rugby (trt 6:48) – Turning a Hollywood star into a rugby player
  • Invictus music trailer (trt 2:32)




COMPETITION NOW CLOSED

© 2010 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.  All rights reserved. “Academy Award®” is the registered trademark and service mark of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Invictus isn’t a word I’d ever heard before and until watching the movie, I had no idea what it was or meant. Well, let me tell you! Invictus is a poem written by William Ernest Henley (1849–1903) which becomes the backbone for reuniting a country when it was on the brink of collapse. Borrowing the poem’s name Clint Eastwood’s new movie takes us through that journey about how a man who was a prisoner becomes the president of his country to lead and unite it in a way that no one thought possible.

Invictus the movie is based on the book by John Carlin (Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Changed a Nation) and stars Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela and the movie begins with stock news bulletins from the 90s which show him being released from prison, and then moving on to showing the election lines stretching for miles with him winning and going into office. We start by seeing all the white people leaving the office of the president as they believe that their jobs will be taken away from them. Far from it.  Mandela encourages them to stay knowing that his country cannot be rebuilt on the outside, if it doesn’t begin from within.

Clint Eastwood reunited with many of his longtime collaborators, including director of photography Tom Stern, production designer James J. Murakami, editors Joel Cox and Gary D. Roach, and costume designer Deborah Hopper. The music is by Kyle Eastwood and Michael Stevens and the entire movie was shot on location in and around the cities of Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa, (and I didn’t see a single ‘Prawn’!).

Matt Damon plays Francois Pienaar, the South African rugby captain who was leading his team when Mandela was elected president. After seeing Mandela try to reform his own office, we move to the playing field where we see the Springboks (SA) playing rugby against England where, quite frankly, we hammer the living daylights out of them! Pienaar is worried for his position in the SA team when the bosses become worried that their prized team needs a revamp, especially as they’re hosting the next world cup 12 months away.

Mandela is at the game against England and meets all the players on the pitch before the match where we come to realise that the SA team only has one black person in the form of Chester Williams (McNeil Hendricks) and that during the match, all the white people hated Mandela and the black people were all supporting England during the match. He realised that if he could get his national rugby team on side and win the World Cup as the host country it could, in turn, unite his nation.

What I loved about this film was that from the outset Eastwood laid out the fact that the country of South Africa was in big trouble. The black people had a new president that they had been allowed to vote in for the first time but that the majority of the white people were still very unhappy about it. But what the movie showed was how clever Nelson Mandela really was. These biopic movies can often be unbelievable with large chunks missed out of what really happened. But I think with Invictus, everything we needed to know was in the movie. It all happens quite quickly but then, the real events all happened within a year and since it’s true, you can’t really argue with the facts.

Eastwood manages to not only concentrate on the main storyline but also on how it affected normal people like Mandela’s bodyguards, learning to work alongside white people and visa versa, the average Joe in the street, the young child who befriends a couple of police officers to listen to the rugby match on their radio and how this movie was all about rebuilding rater than destroying which Hollywood seems to have done a lot of recently. Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon were both fantastic as always and it must have been very hard to keep the South African accents up all the time. I’d like to find out what sort of vocal training they had to do to help.

To sum up, this is a movie that I really enjoyed. If you like rugby, you’ll probably like this movie and they had the real Chester Williams giving technical advice on how the movie should be shot. Rugby isn’t really the main focus though, it’s just a chariot to carry the underlying story of Apartheid and rebuilding a broken nation. It was great to see a film being made that showed how a country and be rebuilt rather than destroyed.

Freeman was excellent and the perfect person to play Mandela. I can’t think of any actor who would have done him justice. I’m not sure Damon’s casting was spot on as I couldn’t see through his current Bourne style status that he has but he did a good job and his accent was superb throughout. The movie dragged in a couple of places but it is a Clint Eastwood film! I found it moving, inspiring and I’d love to see it again. I have no doubt you’ll see this movie appearing in schools for years to come to show the collapse of apartheid and what a great man Mandela really was. Will Clint Eastwood ever make a bad film? So far he hasn’t.

Invictus is released in UK cinemas 5th February. If you haven’t seen the trailer, you can check it out here and we also have footage from the press conference which you can watch in it’s entirety here.

In my opinion, being in the same room as Matt Damon is pretty cool, then add Morgan Freeman and it gets a lot cooler, then add the legendary Clint Eastwood and my mind gets blown! Put that in reverse order and you’re pretty much where I was this morning at the Invictus Press Conference in a lovely swanky hotel in London, England.

HeyUGuys were lucky enough to be invited along to the press conference for Clint Eastwood’s latest movie where he lives behind the camera, Invictus which stars Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela and Matt Damon as Francois Pienaar, the South African rugby captain who inspired a nation. Invictus tells the story of how Mandela used his national rugby team as a catalyse to rebuild the South African nation after so many years of apartheid. Our review will be up later this week.

In the meantime, check out the press conference in it’s entirety. The audio starts quite quiet but improves a couple of minutes in. Enjoy it! Invictus is released 5th February.

Yesterday we were lucky enough to attend the press conference for Invictus where three legends in the form of Clint Eastwood, Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman were in attendance. That footage will be hopefully be online later today but in the meantime, here’s some footage and photos from last night’s premiere of their new movie, Invictus which is released this Friday, 5th February. All the stars were in attendance and interviews with them all are below.

Our review will follow later this week too. Click the images below to enlarge.

Many people I know (one in particular!) can’t wait to see Invictus. It stars Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman and tells the story of how Nelson Mandela and the then captain of the South African rugby team, Francois Pienaar, use the sport to reunite their apartheid-torn country. The trailers have looked wonderful and when I tell you that legend actor / director Clint Eastwood is directing, it adds a whole new dimension of excitement-to-see.

Warner Bros. have sent us two new images, one of Matt Damon surrounded by loads of kids with the South African team and Morgan Freeman in his prison cell. Having already been nominated for an array of Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe Awards as well as being hotly tipped for Oscar® success, Invictus is most definitely one to watch out for. It’s released 5th February so not too long to wait.

Click the images below to enlarge.

With the end of the year approaching and new media being released for films next year, I find myself really looking forward to 2010. One of the movies that I’m looking forward to is Invictus which stars Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman and is directed by Clint Eastwood.

Invictus tells the story of how the country was united through sport, in this case Rugby. Damon plays Francois Pienaar, the South African captain tasked with convincing his white team mates that times need to change. It’s out in the UK 5th February 2010. You can see the trailer here.

Below we have some new images (click them below to enlarge) that Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Spyglass Entertainment have released plus a clip from the movie which was released on Yahoo earlier today. You can head over to Yahoo to view it in HD.

Proof that Matt Damon isn’t just a action hero can be seen in the new trailer for the Clint Eastwood directed, Invictus. The trailer was released last night on Apple (which you can see the trailer in HD) and it looks inspiring. Any trailer that can give me goosebumps has to be worth a watch!

Also starring Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela, this movie tells the story of how the country was united through sport, in this case Rugby. Damon plays Francois Pienaar, the South African captain tasked with convincing his white team mates that times need to change. It’s out in the UK 5th February 2010.

Synopsis: From director Clint Eastwood, “Invictus” tells the inspiring true story of how Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) joined forces with the captain of South Africa’s rugby team, Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon), to help unite their country. Newly elected President Mandela knows his nation remains racially and economically divided in the wake of apartheid. Believing he can bring his people together through the universal language of sport, Mandela rallies South Africa’s underdog rugby team as they make an unlikely run to the 1995 World Cup Championship match.

Yahoo have released a new poster for Clint Eastwood’s Invictus (click it to enlarge). The movie stars Matt Damon playing the South African rugby captain Francois Pienaar and Morgan Freeman who plays the part of Nelson Mandela.

The movie is based on the book by John Carlin,and tells the story of South Africa’s bid to hos the Rugby World Cup in 1995. Apartheid had only just ended and Mandela had not long been released from prison to be made president. Mandela sees this as an opportunity to unite his countrymen and joins forces with the rugby team captain Francois Pienaar to fulfill his goal .

Invictus is released in the UK 5th February 2010.