Daniel Day-Lewis stars in the next (post-Obama) presidential drama

Daniel Day-Lewis, center, as Abraham Lincoln, in a scene from the film, 'Lincoln' (AP)

Apart from the mostly-forgotten musical Nine, the last most of us saw of Daniel Day-Lewis was him screaming "I. Drink. Your. Milkshake!" into Paul Dano's face. The Oscar-winner's next role is something of a departure from oil prospector Daniel Plainview – he's the star of Steven Spielberg's forthcoming Lincoln (out 25 January), a biopic of Abraham Lincoln's battle to end slavery.

If the recent US election wasn't timely enough, the movie is based on several chapters from Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals, which was cited by Barack Obama as the inspiration for the selection of his first cabinet in 2009. But is the heavyweight story and grade-A cast (Sally Field and Joseph Gordon-Levitt) enough to end Spielberg's relative dearth of Oscar success (he last won in 1998 for Saving Private Ryan)?

American critics think so – it's currently "93 per cent fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes.com. An approval rating that Barack Obama could only dream of.