Spielberg Defends Product Placements in "Lincoln"

Since opening Saturday, director Steven Spielberg has been defending the abundance of product placements in his latest film "Lincoln".

Starring Daniel Day Lewis as the iconic 16th President, one of the film's first scenes features Lincoln consulting an Apple MacBook Pro during a meeting with his Secretary of State William Seward and noted abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens, a conference that concludes with Stevens recommending Lincoln and Seward check out "Animal Practice" on NBC.

In another notable scene, Lincoln is captured delivering a deeply moving speech in a cabinet meeting that has been catered by Tony Roma's.

"I stand by the film," Spielberg said, "I have and will certainly entertain all valid criticisms of my work, but I don't consider as such whether or not Mary Todd Lincoln drank Diet Coke or Ulysses S. Grant drove a Land Rover."

Still, many reviewers have decried the anachronistic placements as distracting and diminishing of an otherwise worthy film.

"It's not a bad film, other than it exaggeration of Lincoln's hand in promulgating the passage of the 13th Amendment, discounting the decades-long efforts of the abolitionist movement, and the fact that I don’t think the original Gettysburg address mentioned Liberty Mutual Insurance or Carnival Cruiselines."