Tea with the Queen

Well not exactly. But we did go to see The Queen this afternoon and i gotta say, all the accolades Helen Mirren is getting are justified. She did a fabulous job. As most know, the movie focuses on the week between Diana Spencer's death and funeral and how the Royal Family did and did not react to it in the face of the grief that so much of the general public showed. I think it did surprise them all. the movie uses quite a lot of actual footage of Diana and of her brother and arrivals at the funeral. It did a good job of showing how out of touch the Royal Family was with the general feeling of the nation but aside from Philip, they don't come across as stuck up, just naive in their isolated world. I thought at the time that there was more contention between Charles and his mother but there wasn't much of that in the movie, he pretty much came across as cowed by her and very distant from her as a son which is, i believe, true anyway. He seemed inclined to make subtle attempts to rectify the situation behind her back, using his secretary to contact Blair. There was a rather ironic scene where the Queen is standing by a broken down vehicle and sees a magnificent 14 point stag that she knows is the object of a stalking party on the other side of the Scottish hills on Balmoral and in the end the stag is indeed shot by an unexpected source when it strayed off it's usual course. You could draw parallels.

Anyway, the performances were fantastic. Michael Sheen is nearly a dead ringer for Tony Blair and Helen McCrory plays his wife Cherie with gleeful irreverence. James Crawford makes a very believable Prince Philip right down to the cold and austere arrogance he is known to possess. Even Alex Jennings' portrayal of Prince Charles is probably very spot on. We both enjoyed the movie quite a bit and i do hope she wins the award tomorrow night. It's pretty cool, she's already won awards for playing Elizabeth I in a mini series last year for tv and a few awards already for Elizabeth II. Not many actors get recognition in the same year for roles where the characters are actually related to each other, 400 years apart.

Before the movie, we had brunch in Gatsby's on Spring Garden Road and i had a wonderful Eggs Benedict with Caesar Salad and after we went for a tea. Tomorrow i want to do some cooking for the freezer and get some space cleared in the closet and dresser and get some cleaning done. Where he's arriving on Saturday and i work all week, there's really no time to do it all.