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..
