The Queen

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Post by Penelope »

Yes, Reza, but will voters really think Mirren is more 'due' than Kate or Annette. Mirren only has 2 previous nods compared to Kate's 4 and Annette's 3--and both Kate and Annette have been far more comitted to film than Helen--who, I believe, is better known in the States for her TV work (Prime Suspect) than for her film work.

I'm just saying. As much as I want to see my beloved Kate win an Oscar someday, the pain of seeing her lose again would not be anywhere as much as it was when she lost to those non-entities Helen Hunt and Hilary Swank. At least Helen Mirren is a genuinely terrific actress.
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Post by 99-1100896887 »

Kate Winslet's performance in the dark and murky Elizabeth I cannot hold a candle to Mirren's recent Emmy-winner. She was absolutely astounding, running the gamut of all those emotions and, knowing she was going to be seen in The Queen, I watched carefully, and lo--she looks very much like E the 2 R . Best performance in years for an Emmy actress.
I am insterested to see how the film handles Charles, and particularly the "repellent" Philip. Their relationship has never been good--poor Chuck could never please-- and both lack a sense of morality, I believe.
On another note, I will make a bet that Elizabeth knocks Charles out of the running for king( can you imagine Camilla as a Queen or princess?) and installs William as her successor. He would bring some class to the position , and he is bright, whereas Charles is forever seen as Big-Ears and not too teerribly swift.
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Post by Sonic Youth »

I don't think ANY voters will hold Caligula against her.

I was just satirizing the ridiculous argument that someone doesn't deserve to be nominated because they were in "Dawson's Creek" or "The Karate Kid III" some years ago.
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Post by OscarGuy »

Reza, they are merely putting the idea in people's minds that SOME voters will look back at her past work in those films and think she's undeserving. That's all they were saying. They aren't saying she doesn't deserve to win.

However, we've seen with Cate Blanchett losing for playing Elizabeth I that the Oscars don't necessarily respond to "great" performances and if someone more sentimental comes along, then they could be given the Oscar instead of Mirren.

Another thing you must remember is that actors who do most of their work on television don't always do well at the Oscars since it's a competitive medium.

We'll see how the rest of the year's performances stack up. After all, many will consider Winslet well overdue for an Oscar and with the Lead category's penchant for the 20-somethings, it could be her year...
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Post by Okri »

I think SY is pointing out that the phrase "the actress from Caligua is now an oscar winner" is rather surprising. Just like that "actress from Beverly Hills 90210" is surprising.
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Post by Reza »

Greg wrote:
Sonic Youth wrote:"The actress from 'Caligula' giving an Oscar winning peformance? I don't think so!"

She was also in The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, which got an X rating and was one of the films that led to the creation of the NC-17 rating.

Are you guys implying that since Mirren has done certain ''dirty deeds'' on screen therefore should be denied the Oscar - citing Caligula and Thief? I'm amused at Sonic's prudish take on her early appearance in Caligula. Although what he probably means is that a person appearing in a trashy film like Caligula should not be awarded an Oscar. That too sounds quite prepostrous! Anyway I don't think Caligula is in the same category as Karate Kid 3 etc. It may be trash but is a camp classic and never boring.

Whichever the case, Dame Helen, certainly deserves to win especially going by the rapturous reviews below.The BAFTA is hers but will the Academy follow suit? Especially if babe, Kate Winslet, is her main competition? Oh, there's also Annette Bening on the horizon. Should be an interesting race.
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Post by Greg »

Sonic Youth wrote:"The actress from 'Caligula' giving an Oscar winning peformance? I don't think so!"
She was also in The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, which got an X rating and was one of the films that led to the creation of the NC-17 rating.
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Post by Sonic Youth »

I don't know about AMPAS, but this looks like the BAFTA frontrunner.

Mirren may not be a babe now, but she does have "Caligula" in her past. I don't know if that's equivalent to "Dawson's Creek" or "Karate Kid 3" or not, but...

"The actress from 'Caligula' giving an Oscar winning peformance? I don't think so!"
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Post by Mister Tee »

So, three things about this movie:

1) Mirren is clearly a significant contender for best actress, even should the competition be strong. She'd be on her third nomination, she's a familar face around Hollywood (with a well-known American husband) and she's already held in extremely high regard (especially among women of a certain age) for TV work like Prime Suspect and the recent Elizabeth I. Much as I'd love to see Kate Winlset win an Oscar, I can't say I'd be at all disappointed were it Mirren who stood in her way. In either case, it'd be a capital-A Actress, not a babe going serious.

2) The film itself is getting strong enough notices that it might be the serious-minded/high-pedigree/actors' showcase some if us thought The History Boys might become. Possible writing, supporting actor, director, even picture nods?

3) About that screenplay nomination...is this one of those scripts called original even though it's based on obvious real events? Or might the fact that the writer and Frears did an earlier TV piece around the same Tony Blair qualify this as an adaptation? Or will they play the Syriana/Munich game -- survey the landscape in December and shoot for the category that looks less populated?
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Post by Sonic Youth »

The Queen

Geoffrey Macnab in Venice
Screendaily


Dir: Stephen Frears. UK 2006. 97mins.


The British have been making films about their Royal Family almost since cinema began. What is so distinctive about Stephen Frears’ brilliant new feature The Queen is that it is unfolds only a few years ago – in 1997 at the time of Princess Diana’s death – and depicts characters still living and in power. Despite an occasional tendency toward mannerism and caricature in the early scenes, Frears steers a deft line between satire and sycophancy, creating a work that is ultimately complex and moving.

Generating buzz in advance of its world premiere in Venice, The Queen is bound to turn into a full-blown media phenomenon in the UK when Pathe releases it on Sept 15. Of course it will remind home audiences of the hysteria surrounding the death of “the people’s princess”, when the British – supposedly buttoned up and repressed – gave full vent to their emotions. (“Something has happened,” the Queen, played by Helen Mirren, belatedly acknowledges, “there has been a change, a shift in values.”). But for many it will also bring back memories of the enormous optimism about prime minister Tony Blair’s first Labour Government, which was elected only a few months before Diana died. Nine years on, as Blair’s premiership enters its final phase, much of that optimism has dissipated.

There is clearly huge international interest in the subject matter, too. Whatever its wobbles in recent years, the British Royal Family remains a brand with immediate worldwide recognition value while Diana’s iconic status is undimmed. The Queen has pre-sold widely and will be opening the New York Film Festival prior to its US release through Miramax later in the autumn. Helen Mirren’s beautifully nuanced performance as Queen Elizabeth II is likely to be crowned with a host of awards nominations (she won an Emmy last month for her portrayal of Elizabeth I in the same-named TV mini-series).

For better or worse, the Royal Family remains an integral part of life in Britain. The Queen’s image is seen on everything from stamps to tea towels. It is more than 50 years since her coronation, but she remains an aloof and enigmatic figure, and outside her broadcasts to the nation is not given to public utterances. Audiences will be immensely curious about a film that attempts to show the human being behind the regal persona. With its shots of the Queen’s four corgis bouncing through the gardens, its sweeping imagery of the Scottish Highlands and its portrayal of the Windsors at home, The Queen will appeal to Royal lovers.

However, those who believe that this particular family and its associates are – as Helen McCrory’s Cherie Blair suggests – “freeloading, emotionally retarded nutters” – will find little to change their minds. In the end, the debate about the relevance of the Royal Family isn’t what the film is about. This is a detailed character study of two characters: Blair (Michael Sheen) and the Queen during a tumultuous period in both their lives.

The Queen is the second collaboration between Frears and Morgan following on from The Deal, the made-for-TV drama exploring the vexed relationship between Blair and his Chancellor Gordon Brown. Again, it takes a little to get over the discordant effect of actors playing real-life characters who are so well known.

Early on, it seems to be shaping up as a satirical comedy. We first see the Queen watching Blair’s (Michael Sheen) election triumph on TV while having her portrait painted. There is politicking on every side and this intensifies following the death of Princess Diana, as Prince Charles (Alex Jennings) desperately tries to reach out to Blair and the media. The Queen herself remains aloof, cocooned from the growing public outcry about the perceived callousness of the monarchy on her Balmoral estate; meanwhile Blair’s advisers, led by Alistair Campbell, are openly contemptuous of the Royal Family, as is his wife. Chancellor Gordon Brown doesn’t feature at all but the film-makers are able to convey the tension between him and Blair simply through the device of showing the prime minister refuse to take one of his phone calls.

Gradually, as Blair begins to feel sympathy for the Queen and resolves to help her out of the PR hole she has dug for herself, the storytelling becomes far richer and more affecting. The wonder of Mirren’s performance is that she is able throughout to convey her character’s hauteur and sense of duty but also her vulnerability.

There is an emotional depth, too, to Sheen’s portrayal as Blair. In The Deal, his portrait of the prime minister sometimes felt like a very clever caricature, rich in smarm; here, as he comes to the aid of the stricken older woman (who in some subliminal way reminds him of his mother), he is far more sympathetic.

The film-makers never lose their sense of irony or political perspective. To Cherie, Tony’s mounting admiration for the Queen is simply history repeating itself. “At the end of the day, all Labour prime ministers go gaga for the Queen,” she goads him. Nonetheless, audiences too are likely to share his sympathy. In one key scene, the Queen is shown, having reluctantly returned to London, meeting the crowds outside Buckingham Palace. Slowly, she begins to accept that she has utterly misjudged the mood of the people.

Peter Morgan’s screenplay largely avoids polemics or cheap shots and has clearly been exhaustively researched. Even the most comic and intimate lines (for example, James Cromwell’s Prince Phillip telling the Queen to “move over, cabbage” as he clambers into bed) are apparently sourced, and the extensive use of archive footage (on which Power Of Nightmares director Adam Curtis advised) only adds to the air of verisimilitude.

The production and costume design are witty and instructive. The film-makers contrast the formal luxury in which the Royal Family live with the Blair’s cramped and untidy home. Whereas the Queen’s shelves are full of beautifully embossed old books, the Blairs’ shelves heave under the weight of endless paperbacks.

At home, Blair is spotted in a Newcastle United football shirt whereas the Queen is seen in her familiar headscarves. She has an army of servants while he does the washing up. Prince Phillip comes across as an avuncular but bloodthirsty old reactionary: his reaction to the death of Diana is to propose taking her children out on the moors to kill a stag, as if a little blood sport is the best thing to keep grief at bay.

The Queen manages the rare feat of being fair without being bland. Neither Buckingham Palace nor Downing Street can complain that it’s a distorted picture of what happened during that week in September, after Diana’s death, or that it presents the key protagonists in a misleading light. At the same time, there is a warmth and humour here which no documentary account would ever likely capture.
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Post by Sonic Youth »

The Queen


By DEREK ELLEY
Variety


Tradition and informality collide - and mutually benefit - in the deliciously written and expertly played "The Queen." Dramatised version of the week following the death of Princess Di, from the different vantage points of the British Royal Family and newly elected P.M. Tony Blair, cheekily mixes on-the-nail perfs and docu footage into a witty, and finally moving, recreation of a period that challenged both royals and pols in their responses. Toplined by a socko performance from Helen Mirren, the small, upscale pic should prove a modest theatrical success on the back of heavy promo and positive crix, with lotsa ancillary mileage.

Film preemed Sept. 2 at the Venice fest to major plaudits, and should prove a classy opener at the New York fest Sept. 29. It's the second collaboration between Frears and scripter Peter Morgan after their 2003 TV movie, "The Deal," which recreated in a similar way the private arrangement struck between Blair and (current Chancellor) Gordon Brown over sharing of power if New Labour won the election.

Opening on May 2, 1997, "The Queen" picks up almost where "The Deal" left off, as Blair (Michael Sheen, encoring) and wife Cherie (Helen McCrory) are on a high with news of their overnight landslide victory. That day, they go for the traditional audience with the Queen (Mirren), to be "invited" to form a new government. Anti-royalist Cherie is scornful of the whole procedure, Blair is boyishly nervous, and the Queen politely scornful of the populist upstarts.

Almost four months later, all the players are woken by news of Diana's car crash in Paris - "What's she done now?" gripes Prince Philip - and, as they all gather round TVs in their pyjamas, her subsequent death in hospital. The Queen (never a Diana fan) is icily controlled, and sees it as a private family matter. Blair, still hugely popular but untested as a leader, senses a potential crisis in the making. But his spinmeister, Alastair Campbell (Mark Bazeley), is already on the job, jotting down the words "people's princess."

Caught on their summer vacation at Balmoral Castle, in Scotland, rather than at London's Buckingham House, the Queen battons down the hatches and refuses any official comment. Despite enormous outpourings of national grief and media pressure, she won't entertain Blair's request for a public funeral, chiefly on protocol grounds that, when she died, divorced Diana was no longer a member of the royal family.

With the bit between his teeth, and egged on by anti-royalist Cherie, Blair opines: "They screwed up her life; let's hope they don't screw up her death." He seizes the political opportunity in an emotive speech in which he uses the term "people's princess," and later is privately supported by Prince Charles, who agrees the Royals must "modernise" and meet the mood of the country.

During the next five days, up to Diana's funeral, the twin poles of protocol vs. pragamatism, private grief vs. public mourning, and duty vs. opportunism bend this way and that. The Queen, battered by the media, is gradually persuaded by Blair to come out of her foxhole and meet public demand halfway.

What's cleverest about Morgan's script is that Blair himself is shown learning from the Queen's professionalism and eventual sense of duty, to the point where he defends her against Cherie and Campbell's anti-royal sneers. But his admiration is more that of a political survivor than anything else, of a man still insecure in his new job who can learn from someone who's been at it for almost half a century.

In one of the script's several neat refs to the present day, the Queen tells Blair that "one day, quite suddenly and without warning, the same thing [public hostility] will happen to you," rendering the perky pol momentarily speechless.

Like "The Deal," pic is essentially about the finessing of a problem and the lessons learned during it. But the emotional and ethical borders of "The Queen" are much larger, and give the movie an extra heft that makes it play well on the big screen.

Much of that heft is also down to Mirren's performance, which starts off as simply an uncanny lookalike job, with the cut-glass accent down to tee, and gradually takes on layers of texture. Thesp reaches into the royal's most private moments - rigorously writing her private diary, or alone on a Scottish moor - without tipping into bathos or pure impersonation. In the latter half, Sheen also manages the same trick, to the point where the crucial phone-calls between the two, who only meet face-to-face at start and finish, start to pack a real emotional punch as they find a mutual rapprochement.

Supports are all on the button, with often creepily accurate body language - from Yank John Cromwell's blithe Prince Philip, through McCrory's snide Cherie, to Bazeley's cocky Campbell and Alex Jennings' contrite Prince Charles. Roger Allam discreetly fills in the background as the Queen's private secretary, and vet Sylvia Syms is almost unrecognizable as the waspish, seen-it-all Queen Mother, who's quite content to talk about her own forthcoming funeral.

Alexandre Desplat's music, generally over docu footage, provides a sense of drama at key points. Frears' decision to shoot the royals' scenes on 35mm and the Blairs' on handheld Super-16 - contrasting the formality of the former with the informality of the latter - works far more subtly in practice than it sounds in theory, largely because it's not overdone by d.p. Affonso Beato (an Almodovar regular).

Color in print caught had a slightly muddy quality that actually helps create a sense of "period" distance, even though that heyday of Cool Britannia was less than 10 years ago.
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Post by Sonic Youth »

The Queen


By Kirk Honeycutt
Hollywood Reporter


"The Queen" represents a new kind of docudrama that scrutinizes public events where the wounds are still raw. "Queen" slips audaciously behind the famous facades of Buckingham Palace, 10 Downing St. and Balmoral Castle to catch Queen Elizabeth and Prime Minister Tony Blair in action. Both these personages, of course, still occupy those positions. Peter Morgan's well-researched screenplay, which the ever-versatile director Stephen Frears has meticulously brought to vibrant life, zeroes in on the traumatic week in August 1997 following Princess Diana's death in a Paris car crash. The film, a fascinating mix of high-minded gossip and historical perspective, examines the clash of values -- of ritual and traditions versus media savvy and political ambition -- that leads to a crisis for the British monarchy.

One is so used to seeing movies and TV shows mock the British monarchy that it takes a while to adjust: This is a serious attempt to delve into the thinking and beliefs of several extremely well-known yet distant personalities. The actors do not look too much like their real-life counterparts; this is no Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum. But the actors and filmmakers are dedicated to capturing their behavioral ticks, speech patterns and mind-sets so as to accurately as possible catch their actions and reactions to this tragedy.

Boxoffice will be through the roof in the U.K., but in the U.S. probably only Anglophiles, admirers of Frears and adventurous filmgoers will line up for this Miramax release. That could mean limited domestic boxoffice.

In the days following Princess Di's death, Queen Elizabeth (Helen Mirren), cocooned with her family in dangerous isolation at her summer retreat of Balmoral in Scotland, seriously misreads the grief of her subjects. Her silence over the princess' death, which she considers a "private matter," damages her image and the institution of the monarchy. Blair, a slick political practitioner of spin and PR, seeks to overcome the family's denial and confusion with an aggressive mix of persuasion and pressure.

With nearly everyone involved still very much alive today, it makes good sense for "Queen" to take a balanced and sympathetic view. But it makes good dramatic sense as well. Mirren's Queen comes off initially as a relic of a bygone era with a direct link to Queen Victoria herself. But over the course of the week, she emerges as ... well, a queen with dignity and durability, a woman dedicated to doing her duty but needing to cope with a newly discovered "shift in values." Mirren is superb in finding those telling moments where the royal mask drops to reveal the flesh-and-blood woman.

So, too, must Sheen's Blair adapt to an evolving situation. Whereas he is a little weak-kneed in his first audience with the Queen, despite his wife Cherie's (Helen McCrory) well-known anti-royalist sentiments, he now exhales and begins to push none too gently. Sheen has played Blair before in a telefilm also scripted by Morgan and directed by Frears. Yet Sheen still lacks the politician's supreme self-confidence and smoothness.

Prince Charles (Alex Jennings, stiff but correctly so) comes off as the voice of modernity in the family, but also a bit wimpy as he fears assassination in the days following his ex-wife's death. The Queen Mum (Sylvia Syms) is the soul of comfort and tempered advice for her daughter, but the advice pertains to another era and is of no use. Only Prince Philip (American James Cromwell, who really does not fit into this mix) acts like a blustering fool. Could he really be this daft?

Press notes claim that Morgan had "access to an exceptional array of inside sources" for these royal portraits. Wouldn't you love to know his source for the scene in which Prince Philip crawls into bed with the Queen and murmurs, "Move over, Cabbage."

The film's design is terrific as the formality in the Queen's apartments contrast brilliantly to the rough-and-tumble casualness of Blair's -- "Just call me Tony" -- office and household. So the film serves dual functions. It's a giddy delight to see how these famous people behave among themselves. Yet on the serious side, the film gives us a tantalizing peak at how people operate in the corridors of power at moments of crisis.
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