The Queen

No time for a long post or a review or anything like that, but I wanted to say that Nicole and I saw The Queen last night and enjoyed its pulpy tone very much. Odd that one of the big Oscar contenders is essentially a gossipy, palace-intrigue-in-the-tabloids story. The film plays like a made-for-tv movie with really, really good actors. Okay, a made-for-tv movie with a sensitive (but critical) eye on its cast of characters. The royals come off as priveleged, out-of-touch, even delusional. But with the possible exception of Prince Phillip, they also end up somehow sympathetic. There's a great scene where Elizabeth--out looking for Phillip and "the boys" who are hunting on a lush estate--gets her 4x4 stuck in a riverbank. Tony Blair looks like an "everyman" next to the collective cluelessness of the royal family--and the film goes to great lengths to play up this aspect of his persona (eating toast with his kids, watching tv, making banter with his anti-monarchist wife, etc.). There's a nice dig at Blair's eventual alliance with W. and subsequent drop in approval ratings. As EVERY review has noted, Helen Mirren does indeed embody the role and surely deserves the oscar.