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 Nominee 2010: Black Swan

Black Swan. What can I say about Black Swan?

Well, let me start with this: I work a really odd shift that usually runs from early morning to early afternoon, leaving my afternoon open to go to the movies since the rest of the world is still at work. Usually, I find myself in a theater full of old people with a smattering of college students, then I imagine that someday when I am old I will have every afternoon to go to the movies without the inconvenience of going to work before. I went to see The King's Speech twice and both times, I found a theater full of old people and college aged girls who I assume were there for Colin Firth. When I went to see Black Swan on a decidedly deserted afternoon at Santikos Palladium, I was in the theater with one old couple, one middle-aged couple and three women who did not stop talking or picking up THE DAMN PHONE!!! Bitches, you paid the money, you climbed all the way to the top row so you could walk in front of me every ten minutes in the almost empty theater and you're talking. Not even about the movie that much! What I was trying to say before I got sidetracked there was that it's not exactly commercial fare. I'm not saying that because of the weird semi-Lesbian thing or even Darren Aronofsky's somewhat gratuitous fixation on Natalie Portman's crotch. It is because it's actually weird. And not in a bad way.



Natalie Portman plays Nina, a ballerina obsessed with perfection. She seems to be living out her mother's failed ambitions as a ballerina and everything about her says that she's a child still. The auteur master of the ballet company, Thomas, played by Vincent Cassel is putting on a new Swan Lake and is looking for a Swan Queen. Her main competition is a new dancer to the company, Lily, played by Mila Kunis. Lily is everything Nina isn't, confident in the role of the Black Swan, which Nina struggles with. In order to be the Swan Queen, she has to let go of her need to feel perfect. We follow Nina as she finds the way to transform into the Black Swan.

Okay, I won't spoil this one. I will say that Aronofsky's direction is pretty damn near perfect. What struck me first was the camera work, the way it's so dizzying and you feel everything Nina feels. Natalie Portman gives a brilliant performance, the anxiety and desperation that Nina feels is so taut. Cassel is great, the role of somewhat womanizing ballet company master could easily come off as piggish, but he avoids it. We don't hate him so much that we don't recognize everything he's saying about Nina is correct. Barbara Hershey as Nina's mom is great, making the audience guess if she's good or bad. Mila Kunis has her first grown up role and it makes me want to forgive her for being on Family Guy.

What really impresses me is the way that we get sucked into the ballet world. A lot of films made by lesser filmmakers would have bored us with ballet details and boring exposition. Black Swan avoids this and even when ballet stuff gets put in there it doesn't feel contrived and we don't feel as if the story has stopped. What I couldn't believe was happening was in several scenes was that when Portman dances and is inadequate and I could tell she was unlike so many velvet curtain dramas where the audience has to be told, due no doubt to Aronofsky's direction and the actors' performances. I would link a clip to demonstrate this, but somebody at YouTube decided to disable embedding, so just head over there and search for Black Swan clip. This is definitely a trip inside Nina's head, replete with spectacular visual effects to complement rather than detract from the performances. We get to know Nina so well that by the time the film reaches its conclusion, it's foregone.

Best Picture? I don't know. I still kind of think The King's Speech has it. It is excellent, but it's like the 1998 Oscar race where Shakespeare in Love beat Saving Private Ryan, the choice is between totally different animals. One being a swan. I still have to see the other nominees, but Natalie Portman gives such an intense performance, I don't know how it could be topped. Any opinions out there on that?

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?