Word: queen
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...quickly, but George W. Bush's tardy response last year to Katrina's devastation of the Gulf Coast echoed almost exactly the lethargy that enveloped the Royal Family of Britain eight years before, in the days following the car crash that killed Princess Diana. Like Bush in Crawford, the Queen stayed holed up in Balmoral, her country estate in Scotland, while her subjects, shocked by the violent death of the blond goddess whose flaws they cherished as much as her charms, sobbed their hearts out. Strange, isn't it, how the powerful get short-circuited from their power base...
...That, anyway, is the proposition of The Queen, an immensely entertaining and seemingly acute chronicle of the week Diana died, as dramatized through the very different reactions of stern, befogged Elizabeth II (Helen Mirren) and of Prime Minister Tony Blair (Michael Sheen), who was keenly attuned to public sentiment and how to manipulate it. The film, written by Peter Morton and directed by Stephen Frears (best known for Dangerous Liaisons), won the screenplay and actress prizes at Venice this month. Friday The Queen helps launch the 44th New York Film Festival before opening in selected cities...
...however accurate the portrait of the royals in The Queen, the first impression the movie gives is one of cool, devastating satire. Or perhaps Elizabeth and her family really are as drab as the film paints them! They don't aspire to glamour; they renounce it. Cloistered at Balmoral, knitting and nattering in their plain wool sweaters, caring more for their pets than for their children, the Royal Family seems a parody of the pettiness and insularity of the English middle class. They might be the extended clan of Wallace and Gromit or cousins of Mrs. Proposition and Mrs. Conclusion...
...happens, my prejudices or insights are seconded by The Queen. Charles (played with a dense delicacy by Alex Jennings) is the one member of the family immediately and deeply stricken by the news of Diana's death. He grieves for her, as his parents first refuse his request to go to Paris to identify the body then suggest he get there not on the royal jet but by connecting commercial flights. When the others attack Diana's skills as a mother, Charles makes pointed remarks about the love she showered on her two sons, unlike his own mother...
Unlike “Prep,” Curtis Sittenfeld’s decent but hackneyed portrayal of those ruthless pre-college years, “Special Topics” minimizes the ‘to be or not to be’ virgin dilemmas and queen bee versus wannabe showdowns. While that approach worked for the movie “Mean Girls,” the intellectually inclined will relish Pessl’s knack for language, unconventional arrangement, and substantial academic references...