The Queen starring Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II and Michael Sheen as Tony Blair.
My dh and I watched this film the other night. This film and seeing the Queen made me so nostalgic I could not believe it. I am not British. My grandmother lived in Bermuda and I spent every summer there until I went away to school. We saw the Queen's head on stamps and money and sang "God Save the Queen" and ate British food. What floored me about this movie was that that my grandmother dressed like her, talked like her and she had a whole value system like her based on protocol and certain values. This movie made me appreciate and understand my grandmother so much today.
Now, the movie itself is about how the reaction to Princess Diana's death threw her for a loop. All about modernization and new values. I have mixed feelings about the film as documentary. Prince Charles comes off looking a bit too much like a saint and other members of the royal family come off as horrible. I certainly do not know the accuracy of it. I did appreciate the way the movie also revealed something important about the values of that generation. To be perfectly honest, I think i prefer a bit more of the distant protocol as compared to the Jerry Springer approach.... Anthow, if anyone else has seen this movie, I was wondering if perhaps it made them think of that generation in heir families.
Other movies we have been watching on DVD.
MI-5... love it but deeply disturbing. I just know another main character is going to be killed off soon. Watching 2 episodes back to back is a recipe for disturbing dreams.
Rome: so-so and we probably won't watch any more of it. Here we see Cicero, Julius Caesar and all this political intrigue but the film skips over all the political intrigue and seems full of gratuitous sex and violence for shock value... but it is more boring value to me.
Murder One: I missed so many episodes of this when it was on broadcast TV. So much more fun to be able to watch episodes together and not wait a week. Wow, that Richard Cross is an evil manipulative man!
We are still working our way through all the episodes of the original Mission Impossible and Perry Mason. Della Street's character went through a major change between Season 1 and Season 2. In the first season she was a hip, independent sassy woman. Unfortunately, Season 2 sees her domesticated and matronly. I still love Perry Mason but both their characters were sassier in the first season before they got made over and tamed down for mass consumption.
AKA Merri
Family Challenge Team: The Spine Breakers with my dh Glenn AKA Phaedrus
To be perfectly honest, I
To be perfectly honest, I think i prefer a bit more of the distant protocol as compared to the Jerry Springer approach....
Oh how I agree with you!
"Perhaps what the average member of a group is capable of doesn't limit what a given individual can accomplish." -- Boston Globe, letter to the editor
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I remember this film. I
I remember this film. I found it interesting but also questioned how accurate it was. I'm not British but I agree with your thought on the distant protocol, it just feels more royal somehow. I could also see some of my grandmother's values in her as well. Funny, how they are the ones we alyways assumed came with her to the US. What this film did the most was make me curious about the queen herself. I've been researching her, off and on since. She is a very intriqueing lady.
I couldn't watch Rome either, it was just to much sex and blood and to little plot.
--Missy
"You shouldn't take life to seriously. You'll never get out alive." Van Wilder
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Queen Elizabeth
I am reading Silent in the Grwave now by Deanna Raybourne. There we see Victorian mourning customs at the beginning. I grew up in the South and there are definitely funeral protocols in that culture. As a child I chafed against many of the formal rules but sometimes I do think there is some some comfort to them as well. The casserole brigades of the South.... it's just something that is done.
My grandmother acted a lot like Queen Elizabeth. Looking at their clothes....it was like looking at my New England family of my childhood. I kept watching that film and wondering why it felt so familiar...no way my family has any connection to that world and yet it was like looking at my past. I think I would like to know much more about the Queen after seeing that movie.
AKA Merri
Family Challenge Team: The Spine Breakers with my dh Glenn AKA Phaedrus