*DED*

Jan. 7th, 2007 09:08 pm
trixtah: (Default)
[personal profile] trixtah
Ok, cuteoverload.com has finally succeeded in killing me. Ducklings! Little flappy wings! David Attenborough! Hilarious music!

On the other moving pictures front, I went to see The Queen today. It's about the reaction of the Royal Family to Princess Di's death, and the manoeuvrings of the newly-elected Labour government at the time. What an excellent movie. Helen Mirren just gets better and better. And the guy who played Tony Blair, Michael Sheen, was perfect too. I was the only person in the theatre who laughed when a flunky told Blair that Gordon Brown was on the phone, and he said, "Tell him to wait". Ho ho.

But there were a number of funny moments throughout, as there were poignant ones. I liked the Queen's interaction with the king stag, and all the associated symbolism. I also liked how her handling of her dogs and her vehicles compared and contrasted with her handling of human beings and the situation. The photography was awesome, with some great shots of the Highlands.

I didn't really like the way that Cherie Blair was played as a bit of a smart-arse. While she's always been reasonably frank about her political opinions, I think she's way too intelligent to have been such a smirking schoolgirl about them. Prince Phillip is played perfectly by James Cromwell, in that I wanted to shoot him with his own shotgun. Prince Charles was played by Alex Jennings, who gave him possibly a bit too much of a wimpish affect, but he handled the emotional stuff well.

The Salon review is actually one of the few of Stephanie Zarcharek's where I think she mainly hits it on the head. The Guardian fills in more of the gaps from the UK perspective. It's definitely worth heading along to. It's sympathetic, but not sycophantic, and is an interesting look at the possible behind-the-scenes events relating to those mad times in England.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-01-07 10:28 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] saluqi.livejournal.com
Buggery, I wouldn't have minded seeing The Queen. Just not the french one.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-01-07 10:31 am (UTC)
ext_8716: (Default)
From: [identity profile] trixtah.livejournal.com
Double buggery! Well, it's good enough that if you fancy seeing it on the big screen - and I think the photography is worth it - I'd actually like to see it again, if you'd like company. It's got a lot of detail to be soaked up.

Review comments

Date: 2007-01-07 12:56 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jekni.livejournal.com
What cracked me up about the review was reading the comments.

Particularly the idiot complaining about spoilers. Where was he in 1997? A Canadian, too.

Re: Review comments

Date: 2007-01-08 04:43 am (UTC)
ext_8716: (Default)
From: [identity profile] trixtah.livejournal.com
Yeah, I saw those, dear lord. OMG, Princess Di is dead!!!1?!

What bloody planet was he on?

(no subject)

Date: 2007-01-07 01:36 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] khavrinen.livejournal.com
The ducklings are from the series The Life of Birds (http://www.amazon.com/Life-Birds-David-Attenborough/dp/B000069HXL/sr=1-1/qid=1168175642/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-2083936-7410020?ie=UTF8&s=dvd). I remember that scene from seeing it on TV because at the end of each episode they showed a little section about the "making of", and David Attenborough talked about the difficulty of catching them on film. He said the photographer had been sitting in his blind for days, waiting for the ducks to make their jumps, when one morning this beautiful family of swans comes swimming along the pond, shining golden in the foggy sunrise mist. He thinks, "Man, I can't miss this gorgeous shot", so he turns the camera around and films the swans, and of course halfway through that happens to be the exact time the ducks pick for their leaps. So, in order to get the film shown in that link, he had to come back the next year. I really love watching programs like that ( and I could listen to David Attenborough's voice all day long ), but there's no way I'd have the patience to be a wildlife photographer.

(no subject)

Date: 2007-01-10 05:47 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] seeker66.livejournal.com
OK, apparently, ducklings bounce!

(no subject)

Date: 2007-01-15 05:13 pm (UTC)
filkferengi: (Default)
From: [personal profile] filkferengi
Now I'm getting an urge to reread Robert McCloskey's _Make Way For Ducklings_ [which won the Caldecott for best picture book long, long ago].

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