Why the King’s Speech Won

My son and me in some famous place I look pregnant. Maybe Zeus did it.. Oh well, All that GREAT Greek Food.

Hmm. I’ve been writing a lot about the Oscars because it is topical and I am experimenting with the blog format…trying to see what gets hits and when the busy period is…

I am also sick with a bug I caught in Vegas.

Anyway, I was listening to BBC Radio Four, their Today Program, and,of course, they covered the King’s Speech’s success at the Oscars, mentioning that Paul Bettany was first up for Colin Firth’s Oscar winning role… but he turned it down to spend more time with his wife, actress Jennifer Connolly, and family.

Well, on this trip to Greece last August, I messed up my reservation by taking a ferry from Lesvos to Athens on a whim and had to go to Athens airport to fix up the problem or risk having to buy an entire new ticket to get home.

I got to the airport really early, exhausted from not having slept in 3 days. I was first in line at the Air France booth, with one family group in front of me. My 25 year old son,who had met me in Greece and was only leaving the next day, came with me to provide moral support.

He elbowed me and said, “Look there’s Jennifer Connolly and her family right in front of us.”

“Oh yea, I said.”

“And her husband’s as famous as she is,” my son said. (But he was too tired to remember the name.)

I suddenly felt bad because I had been staring at them all. Not because they are famous. I hadn’t recognized them.. Only because they were right in front of me for a long time, working out a big travel problem too.

But also because the Bettany/Connolly’s have two younger boys and I have two boys, both big and grown, and it makes me nostalgic to watch families like that, families travelling with boys. Memories, you know.

In Plomari, there were many Australian families visiting as tourists and I found the family dynamic interesting to watch, in that it was the men who were in charge of the kids, it seemed to me. The woman, often very pretty, often just sat back. I wondered if this is how they did it at home, or if the women were ‘on a break’.

And, just like with these Autralian families, Bettany was the one dealing with the boys, and Jennifer Connolly was standing shy and delicate in the background (she is tiny of course) so I assumed he was Australian.(British accent.)

Anway, when my son told me who they were, I reflexively said something really stupid to my son…. I said, “I wish he were Colin Firth.” It’s a running joke in my family that I like Colin Firth. I play upon, in my role as silly old mom who likes Period Pieces.

And then my husband puts me in my place by imitating Fat Bastard from Austen Powers every once in a while, you know, the nipple thing. The Anti-Darcy.

(I’m actually glad Bettany wasn’t Colin Firth, because I was tired, filthy, FAT, wearing a HUGE dress I had bought for 2 dollars at a thrift shop and my ankles were really swollen from 2 weeks of 100 degree heat and I had an ear infection – in both ears.

I ended up taking the plane with them, of course. And the shuttle bus to the airport from the plane. Ordinary people. I don’t think anyone recognized them.

Kind of ironic.

Whatever, thank God the Academy Awards are over. I’m up to here with The King’s Speech “mythology” and incessant Oscar Promotion. Last Night, Tom Hooper (who seems boyish) thanked his own classy-looking mom, who was in the audience. Nice moment. He said she was the one who attended a reading of a play and came to him saying “I think I have found your next movie.”

But just a few weeks ago on CBS’s Sunday Morning, it was said that Geoffrey Rush was presented with the copy of the play and it was he who said “This would make a better movie.”

That’s what happens when you have so much time on your hands, and you are a PR person by trade…

Anyway, I think that the King’s Speech wins as Best Picture and Best Director, even screenplay, would not have happened were it not for Colin Firth’s performance. Colin Firth thanked Tom Ford, and I think he’s right. I’m not sure he would have won Best Actor, or even been nominated, had he not been nominated last year.

And remember, the King’s Speech bandwagon got rolling at the Toronto Film Festival, where Firth is a favourite (in large part because he has Canadian connections.)

(Oh, Sixty Minutes last week claimed that the King’s Speech critical and box office success was out of the blue: Nonsense again. )

But Firth deserves his award for 30 years of good and great performances.

We don’t want him to be another Peter O’Toole.

This is the LAST THING I write on the topic.

Need a new topic..

The King’s Speech: Momentum is Everything

Leaving Las Vegas yesterday, on a bright sunny day, I was happy, because I had enjoyed three days of pure restorativesunshine – and sunshine is what I went to Las Vegas for in the first place.

The weather forecast had been ominous for days: it would be cloudy, cold, rainy or even snow on our chosen dates.

Luckily bad weather held off. The gray stuff has arrived in time for this weekend. LA is predicted to get record cold, rain and maybe snow?? just in time for the Oscars.

I caught a bug on the plane or in the casino, so I’m in bed reading the Oscar (ah, Academy Awards, copyright articles, especially in the Guardian that are going berzerker over the King’s Speech.

That ‘little’ British movie may take the prize of best picture over Social Network. Many are predicting this anyway. The movie has momentum. The Social Network, released aeons ago, does not.

Many reviewers think that this is something of a travesty. Most tend to believe Colin Firth deserves best actor (and since he missed out last year for a Single Man which hardly anyone watched but ‘everyone’ admired) and since he’s hit the jackpot in the awards season leading up to the 2011 Oscars, is there any doubt he’ll climb the stairs to the dais (employing his trademark elegant gait) to pick up his first best actor award? I mean if he doesn’t slip in the snow and conk his head earlier on Sunday.

But these critics I’m talking about claim the Social Network is better cinema and more likely to go down in film history as the more memorable and meaningful film.

Both the King’s Speech and The Social Network, these critics say, are examples of marvelous storytelling, which is what movies are meant to be about, but the King’s Speech is old-fashioned cinema.

The Social Network, they believe, is a story for our time. (And they point to the big mess in the Middle East as proof.)

And I can see their point. Very clearly. But being older I prefer that the King’s Speech win best picture.

I would have gone to see that movie even if it had spent 2 days in the cinema. My great aunts, born in 1880s and coming of age in the Nickelodeon era, would have liked this movie, too, and just the way it is. (No sex, no violence and frankly, they had first hand experience of the abdication and cut out newspaper stories which they left behind in a trunk.)

But that’s not why I think the film The King’s Speech deserves Best Picture. Because it’s accessible…

And it’s not for the superb acting, either. What British film or BBC afternoon play for that matter DOESN’T have good acting? And Colin Firth is expert at playing decent men struggling with a problem. Darcy…George Falconer..etc…

The King’s Speech deserves the Oscar because the movie was made on a shoestring. 15 million if we are being told the truth.

The reason why there aren’t many great movies this year (and attendance is at a record low) is because many movie projects, including some of Colin Firth’s, were cancelled with the last economic downturn. That’s what I assume, anyway, when they disappeared from IMDB.

Now, the movie money people tend to believe what gamblers believe, that you have to gamble a lot to make a lot. So we have Cameron’s Avatar and plenty of high tech movies that lost a lot of money and a few, like the incomprehensible (to old-fashioned old female fart me) Inception that made a tonne.

Special effect movies like the Tourist, with AAAA list stars can tank, as we all know,not that we feel too sorry for the A list stars.

I want the King’s Speech to be crowned best film of 2011 (despite the unabashed promotion and unfettered attempt to wine and dine the Academy voters. I mean, Weinstein admitted it!) because I feel this might inspire mainstream filmmakers to get down to basics and make good simple watchable movies to entertain me. I’m selfish. The young can have their video games.

This King’s Speech proves that you don’t have to sacrifice production values when making a ‘little’ film. And you may make money too.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to see all the svelte/emaciated/anorexic starlets and stars on the red carpet, sashaying around in silks and chiffons, covered in goosebumps or wearing, oops, dare I say it FUR, which is good for the environment and the financial health of empoverished aboriginals, but don’t tell them.

Questions of Silk and Chiffon

A fashion spread from the Delineator, 1909. Each dress had a number with a corresponding pattern. Still, it is unlikely the Nicholson women made such fancy dresses. Of course, in those days, a woman would have one or two nice dresses, no more. We are used to seeing these fashions in movies, like Titanic, on gorgeous actresses portraying wealthy women. Let’s face it, the fashions in movies like Easter Parade or Gigi are half the fun.

With the Academy Awards coming up Sunday, or the Oscars, it is interesting to observe that the women in these early fashion magazines were fantasies to aspire to, much as the modern actresses parading the red carpet are, today, 100 years later. For the Academy Awards are all about fashion, right? (Of course, this year they’ve nominated more popular movies as well as the art house movies like An Education which critics like but few go to see in the cinema. (Well, I do.)

(I hope my favourite actor Colin Firth wins best actor for A Single Man, despite the fact I have very mixed feelings about the movie. I don’t even believe, as most critics do, that Firth outdid himself in this movie. He’s always worthy of a nomination, I think, anway. Oh, and I tried to watch the Olivier Pride and Prejudice last night, taped off Turner Classic Movies, but I couldn’t. Those ridiculous hats and dresses! Not Regency at all! I’m just so used to the Colin Firth P and P.)

My next chapter of Flo in the City, a story based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/, will be about fashion, which means I have to ‘study’ this Delineator to absorb the lingo, the fashion jargon, which is Greek to me.

(I’m watching Richard III on my big screen, right now, and Olivier is doing his winter of discontent speech, in a silly wig..very distracting.)

Here’s a bit from this Delineator…Society Page, in honor of the 2010 Oscars, because, since the 1910 era, actors (and singers) have taken the place of society people in the the heart of us dull normals as people to look up to.

Not in one’s wildest flights of fancy could one call New York a deserted city, even during this deadest and dullest season on the year. Fifth Avenue alone feels the defection of its householders and the sightless eyes of its closely boarded windows turn a vacant stare on the quiet and sunny street.

The city has been taken over by an ever changing flow of visitors, who are here to enjoy the amusements which New York affords during the Summer Months. These women, or girls rather, for they are still girls, with their love of youthful pleasures have been planning for these days or weeks in the city and have used all of their ingenuity to be gowned correctly for all occasions.

Our concern is with the women who lead in the matters of fashion. Newport, Narragansett, Manchester, and the other cities by the seas are at the height of the season, and there seems to be no dearth of amusement if one is fond of polo tournaments, tennis matches and yacht races. The older women of the social world are apt to be a bit bored by the never varying program that repeats itself each Summer, but if one is young and not too much troubled by temperament, I believe the point of view is somewhat different (Sic!) Nothing is or should be a bore to someone of one and twenty, although one gloomy young person who is dragging through the first year of society assured me, when she came to order her summer frocks, that another winter she intends to take a flat on the east side and work among the poor so that she can get a little rest. However, I noticed that once she became really interested in the question of summer silks and chiffons , the slums seemed to slip a little into the background.. (PS. for some reason this excerpt of August in the Cities by the Sea by Mrs. Simcox, written in 1909 and therefore in the Public domain disappeared off my blog. Hmmm. Ghosts?)

(Hmm, I love this…It was OK for society matrons to take an interest in social problems, but clearly it was not encouraged in the young. A young woman concerned with more than her appearance was deemed ‘dull’ and too troubled by temperament. The media, in this case, magazines, provides a kind of conditioning, with a few well-chosen words. (Does this happen today? But of course.)

Now, I gotta go to IMDB and see if Richard III won any awards for costumes. I hope not. They are awful!! Gielgud looks like he’s wearing a woman’s wrapper from that 1909 Delineator I have on hand. But the acting, ahh, that’s a different story.

Dream Factories of Another Kind

Edith and that silly hat. 1910 ish. How would you like your fashion faux pas’s immortalized on future blogs by some witless click-happy descendant?

Well, the Academy Award nominations came in this morning, and I was glad to see my favourite Colin Firth nominated for best actor (although like most of his fans, who are being cautious, methinks, I have yet to see his performance.) But I also love Jeff Bridges and as a good Canadian I want Up in the Air to do well. I saw it and enjoyed it. I also saw the Blind Side (enjoyable but I don’t think Bullock’s performance holds a candle to Streep’s in Julia and Julia) and An Education which is too arty and restrained for most people. I loved it, though. District Nine was so unHollywood I am freaked that it was even nominated.)

And then there’s James Cameron’s Avatar, which I haven’t yet seen because I can’t get into the theatre on Saturday nights.

Speaking of James Cameron, I’d like to slide into my topic here, on this blog entry, Hats and Big Hats and the Millinery Profession of Yore.

As I’ve written before on this blog, hats will never come back into fashion, because ‘hair’ is the new ‘hats.’ When those fashion-role models to us all, the resplendently bony actresses attending Oscar, parade the red carpet, stopping once in a while to spout nonsense to those obnoxious, obsequious (but necessary and rather parasitical or is it symbiotical) Infotainment hosts or hostesses, they will NOT be wearing hats. Even that actress who played Coco, in Coca before Chanel (if she attends) won’t be wearing a hat, despite the fact Coco Chanel started her career making hats (smaller) for her rich friends.

(If Princess Diana and Kate Winslet’s character in Titanic couldn’t bring hats back, no one ever will.)

Besides, hats cover hair and hair is a HUGE industry. Hats get caught on the top of car doors, too.

But the 1912 era was the era of the BIG HATS and in my next chapter of Flo in the City, my novel in progress about a young girl coming of age in the 1910 era, based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/ , I will have Flora visit town Milliner Miss Eugenie Hudon to ask if she can work as an apprentice. And Miss Eugenie Hudon will burst her bubble. I have no idea if Hudon was a sweet and kind woman or a bitter business woman, or anything in between, but (as I wrote in an earlier blog) I will pattern her after this awful woman who once interviewed me for an advertising job.

I know Miss Hudon is a savvy business woman from the invoices for her business: “all accounts must be settled 30th of each month” and because of the famous hat incident involving Flo’s mother, Margaret, who, in 1909, was tricked into buying a big hat she didn’t want.

I have two interesting archival documents to draw from: one that discusses millinery as a career for women (in 1908) and says, basically, that the field is overcrowded, underpaid, ‘parasitical’ in that it employs girls who still live at home, for no one can live on 6 dollars a week outside the home.

But it is also the ‘glam’ job of the era. (Few women then (none, maybe)considered the movies (well, motion pictures) a glamourous profession, as they were very low rent and tarty.)

Millinery was GLAM because it was creative work, and clean work, as opposed to factory work, and a very few very lucky individuals (working for big department stores) made it BIG TIME, and earned up to 1,000 a year and travelled to New York and Paris.

Millinery, back then, was just like the acting profession today, one might say. Or the music profession, or pro sports, or the lottery -or, ahem, writing: BIG DREAMS sustained industry workers, who slogged on for little recognition and less pay.