My Life In Movies Flashes Before My Eyes: The King's Speech, 2010

So, earlier this year, I did an Oscar special on The King's Speech and I feel as if everything I said still stands so it seems redundant to go over it again, so find it here.

But, some thoughts, have you noticed Colin Firth's posture? Also, Colin Firth wants to be on Doctor Who. Why are we wasting time on River Song when Colin Firth wants to be on Doctor Who? It would be awesome. Maybe we could save it for the fiftieth anniversary. Now, what if there was some way to get him and the Tenth Doctor in the same thing? I could be happy for a month off that.


Obviously, I meant something else. Try to put Catherine Tate in it. Preferably written by Richard Curtis. Or I could write it, either way, really.

Best Picture 1998: Shakespeare in Love

I think at this time it would be appropriate to have a slight discussion of Miramax and in particular, its Oscar dynasty in the period encompassing the 1990s. Miramax, if you don't know, was founded by two brothers, Bob and Harvey Weinstein. Their intent was to distribute films other studios wouldn't because it wouldn't be financially feasible. Basically, The English Patient. Yeah, I'm talking to you. They were known for auteur works like Pulp Fiction, Clerks, Trainspotting, a lot of Woody Allen junk and oh, yeah, The English Patient. In 1993, Disney bought Miramax and this may not be where the trouble began, it ended somewhere around Michael Moore, Fahrenheit 9/11 and the brothers leaving the company. Then Disney sold Miramax in 2010. So, let's call it a brief spectacular history.



So, 1998, Shakespeare in Love. First, some fun facts. Julia Roberts was originally to play Viola, but she wouldn't do it unless Daniel Day Lewis played Shakespeare. Luckily, Daniel Day Lewis had the good sense to stay the hell away from Shakespeare in Love starring Julia Roberts. That was back in 1991, so it was another seven years before the film was completed.

We meet Shakespeare in the middle of a case of writer's block as he works on his new play, Romeo and Ethel, The Pirate's Daughter. He falls in love with Viola played by Gwyneth Paltrow, a rich girl betrothed to Lord Wessex, played by Colin Firth. I just want to say I find this trend of female protagonists in the 1990s not wanting to marry or be married to Colin Firth really disturbing. Long story short, Viola inspires Shakespeare to write one of his his greatest plays. I could go through a turn by turn summary, but frankly, we would get bogged down in minutiae and just listing the cast presents a problem because everybody in the film is good. Ben Affleck puts on a good performance in this movie without resorting to his Boston townie accent which still would have been amusing. The story is predictable, but not devoid of interest at all. In fact, one of the charms of the film is that it is so familiar to the audience with its Shakespeare references and inside jokes. It's not as if you have to be a Shakespearean scholar in order to get it, either, you basically need two to three years of high school, which is what I had when I first saw it. For example, Rupert Everett plays Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare's rival and openly regarded in the film as the greatest playwright around. Queen Elizabeth I, played by Judi Dench, hides in the audience of the play as a commoner. Shakespeare's parting with Viola leads him to write Twelfth Night.

So, let us move on to the pressing issue. Was Shakespeare in Love really the best film that came out in 1998? Let's look at the nominees. Elizabeth, Life Is Beautiful, The Thin Red Line and a little film called Saving Private Ryan. I think we can safely count out Life Is Beautiful because that film is schmaltzy crap. I didn't used to think so, I cried when I first watched it and then I visited about five concentration camps and now Roberto Benigni pisses me off. The Thin Red Line is about three hours of Terrence Malick doing Terrence Malick things and I have no idea what the point was. If you know, please tell me. Elizabeth was good and Saving Private Ryan is you know, generally regarded as the greatest of the modern war epics. I think it's all down to a matter of taste. Is Shakespeare in Love good? Yes. Is Saving Private Ryan good? Yes. They're just different and only one could win.

This is not really useful to deciding which film should have won in 1998, but I like it. So, here's what happens when Blackadder meets Shakespeare:



Okay, now because I can, here is an entirely different take on the Shakespeare question featuring two actors from this film, Rupert Everett and Colin Firth, written by Rupert Everett, whose Colin Firth crush may be more serious than mine. I'm pretty sure he decided to rip off a movie he was actually in. From St. Trinian's Part 2: The Legend of Fritton's Gold. If you don't know what that is, I think you have to be a British teenage girl.

Best Picture 1996: The English Patient

1996 was hailed by most media and critics as "the year of the independent film." Just look at the nominees for Best Picture: The English Patient, Fargo, Jerry Maguire, Secrets & Lies and Shine. Movies that just about no one had heard of until they got nominated with the obvious exception of Jerry Maguire. It was back before Tom Cruise jumped on couches. I still haven't seen Shine. Apparently, Geoffrey Rush is a crazy guy who plays piano. Don't take that the wrong way, it could be good, I just don't know.

So, The English Patient is the story of Count Almasy played by Ralph Fiennes and his affair with Katharine played by Kristin Scott Thomas. If you're me, you just had to go look that up because all I could remember was that Kristin Scott Thomas is married to Colin Firth in the film and thus, she's cheating on Colin Firth and that just doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense. The interesting thing is that structurally the story takes place in two time periods: the affair happens on the eve of World War II and the part in which the Count tells his nurse his story takes place in its final days.

So, if you couldn't tell the love story is lost on me. The Count seems like a possessive jerk and just stands around spouting a lot of romantic puffery with an accent and somehow gets an Oscar for this when frankly I found Maid in Manhattan so much more compelling. I guess that's because he's so consumed by love or whatever, which I'll admit he was less consumed by love in Maid in Manhattan. Katharine is you know, cheating on Colin Firth, so she must be crazy, right? But in the interests of fairness, here's some scenes that I find gross.




And don't forget the supposedly hot scene where Count and Katharine have sex while Colin Firth is playing Santa Claus. I do not joke. Anyway, the war comes, they have to stop their exploration which is okay because no one actually cared about that anyway if they cared about this movie at all. Because I know I didn't. Colin Firth has also gotten wise and in what some characterize as an insane act of revenge, I call trying to do us all a giant favor. He flies a plane into the Count's desert camp with himself and Katharine on it. I couldn't find a clip of that so here's Colin Firth dancing earlier.



So, Colin Firth dies (the character was called Geoffrey Clifton, I just don't care) and I lose all interest. Kristin Scott Thomas is badly injured and the Count takes her to the cave to protect her from the desert. He makes the journey back to Cairo to try to get help, gets thrown in jail, escapes and comes back to find out Katharine is dead.

So, I could go on about the stuff towards the end of the war with Juliette Binoche which is let's face it, more interesting, but I don't care. There's some stuff with Willem Dafoe seeking revenge, but ultimately this film just didn't hold my interest. So if you feel robbed by me, here's some Rotten Tomatoes reviews.


Meanwhile, the best part of this is the episode of Seinfeld where Elaine feels pretty much like I do about The English Patient and faces ostracism because of it, so here's how that ends up.

Future Classic: The King's Speech - 2010

I have decided to temporarily forego the formality of waiting forty or fifty years for a movie to officially become a classic and report on them in time for this year's Oscars. Today, I am going to discuss The King's Speech, my favorite movie of the year. If I could get through Toy Story 3 without crying, maybe. I'll try to keep it spoiler lite but seriously, you should know how World War II ended by now. Onwards...

If you can't tell by now, I'm a little bit of an Anglophile. I always gravitate towards anything with the royal family and so, Colin Firth as the king, I am there. Let us henceforth refer to King George VI as Bertie, because I like that it reminds me of Jeeves and Wooster. Bertie is the Duke of York, the second oldest son of King George V, which by all accounts means that he's not going to be king, which really works out because Bertie has a stammer. Or a stutter. The opening sequence of the film is one of the best I've ever seen: setting up the stakes, creating tension and creating a great deal of empathy for Bertie very quickly. We see him fumble through a speech of Wembley Stadium in front of a huge crowd and worse on the radio. His wife, Elizabeth, (because I guess they didn't think THAT would get confusing) played by Helena Bonham Carter is desperate to help him and seeks out Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), an Australian speech therapist in order to help him. Bertie goes to meet with Lionel and is convinced that no one can help him. So, we follow Bertie back to Christmas with his dad where we start to get the idea that Bertie's real problem is his decidedly screwed up family. Realizing that Lionel can help him, Bertie returns and starts working at curing his stammer.



In a brilliant montage, Bertie works on the stammering and this is interrupted by the coinciding crises of his father's death and his brother, Edward VIII, taking up with an American divorcee which is bad. It quickly becomes apparent that Edward is not up to the task of being king at all.



So, in the style of the bromance, Lionel tries to explain to Bertie that he can be king just as good as his brother, that he doesn't need to be afraid. Bertie doesn't want to hear it because he doesn't want to be king AT ALL and who the hell would? Even when you get to do whatever you want like on The Tudors, you're still miserable and beheading wives left and right. They break up for a while until Bertie is about to be crowned and Bertie is finally ready to understand what Lionel tried to tell him.

We follow them through the coronation and to the opening of the Second World War and everything ties together brilliantly. I really loved this movie and the elegance of the storytelling and the way director Tom Hooper was able to set the mood. Colin Firth gives an inspired performance, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter are also quite good in their roles. Rush manages to make the role of an Australian in the King's Court somehow not comical and is compelling as a man who slowly begins to realize he's playing a role in history. Bonham Carter is quite good as the slightly offbeat future Queen Mother and you really believe the chemistry between her and Firth. (You might be thinking, how hard is it to have chemistry with Colin Firth? Watch Uma Thurman fail at it in The Accidental Husband. And Helen Hunt.) Also, Guy Pearce as Edward is really great at playing a jackass. In conclusion, it is an intimate story that changes the course of global events. Some deride it as being too feel good, but I think it's struck a chord in people, wanting to believe that we can be more than we think we are. So, screw you, negative people who don't want to feel good.


In the part that's not important, I failed to notice that Jennifer Ehle played Lionel Logue's wife. Probably because they made her look really old and it would have gone like, "Mr. Darcy!" "Miss Bennet, you've aged horribly." Try to imagine some mashup of these two.






So, I'll keep you updated with some other commentary on Best Picture nominees and also some opinion on past winners.

On a completely superficial note, how much do I love this poster?

My Own Prejudices: Pride and Prejudice, 1940

I think any girl from the ages of fourteen to twenty-five probably at some point traverses across the romantic literary terrain of Pride and Prejudice and quickly becomes infatuated. You read the book, you watch Colin Firth in that wet shirt and then you find out Jane Austen died alone and single and you get really depressed and have some ice cream. You also eventually develop your own prejudices about what constitutes a good Darcy just like there are debates about who makes the best Bond: some people like Sean Connery's suaveness, some people prefer Roger Moore's easy wit and then there's always some idiot that tries to persuade you Timothy Dalton was the best. So, for me Colin Firth is my Darcy. So, I was curious when I read that Colin Firth was first intimidated by the part because Laurence Olivier had done it. I don't know a lot about Laurence Olivier except that I couldn't make it through Othello because of the blackface. Okay, moving on.

The 1940 edition of Pride and Prejudice is directed by Robert Z. Leonard and seriously, Brave New World's Aldous Huxley is one of the writers. Seriously. Laurence Olivier stars as Mr. Darcy and Greer Garson is Elizabeth Bennet. Let's face it, we don't really care about any of the other characters. I'm sure Jane is nice and all but let's face it, we don't care. Darcy is somehow less of a jerk, which somehow makes him less appealing. I know everyone is going to end up in therapy because of that one. This Darcy kind of comes off like a wimp and I don't even want Elizabeth to end up with him. I just stopped caring. Also, I hate to sound like a bitch, but I think Greer Garson may just be too pretty to be Elizabeth Bennet. I know, awful, but to me Elizabeth Bennet is the romantic heroine of the bookworm girl. She's smart, she's not ugly, but Greer Garson is pretty enough to be a cinema star. (No offense, Jennifer Ehle. Any woman that gets to be the girlfriend of Colin Firth and James Purefoy is my hero. The latter is a reference to Bedrooms and Hallways, which has its own Jane Austen moment.) Meanwhile, there are some changes made that I hate. If you've seen the 2005 version, you know that they compressed some of the plot. Well, this movie is even shorter. So this version is even more compressed. No trip to Pemberley and the scandal with Lydia gets wrapped up in about the same five minutes that Jane and Bingley get together, then Elizabeth and Darcy get together. Also, the whole thing with Lady Catherine? Instead of her being an actual snob, Lady Catherine visits Elizabeth and treats her badly just to make sure she's not a gold digger. Really. I could have forgiven the random archery scene if we had not had that. I think we probably have some studio head of the Golden Age to blame for that one. "Yeah, but how do we know Elizabeth just doesn't like Darcy for his money?"

So, I didn't like this one. I'll go back to my miniseries on DVD. Meanwhile, a clip from Bedrooms and Hallways.