Together with two dozen of our esteemed colleagues, we spent the afternoon voting for the annual New York Film Critics Online awards. Stephen Frears’ The Queen was a clear favorite, winning no less than five categories: Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Director, as well as acting awards for Helen Mirren and Michael Sheen. Guillermo del [...]
Posts Tagged ‘stephen-frears’
The Queen
You can watch good movies again and again, but only great movies get better every time. Helen Mirren is getting all the press for her outstanding performance as QEII, but the writing is what made that performance possible. Peter Morgan’s screenplay manages to be at once historically specific and archetypal, using a unique week in [...]
Muckworld Roundup
In the onrush of the ever-churning hype machine, never-ending blogs, and the constant RSS-fuelled river of news, it’s hard to hold on to two or three related thoughts for much longer than it takes to hit post. To counteract the continuing blurbification of the culture at large and my head in particular, here are a [...]
The Queen – Director’s Commentary
Frears, Mirren, Morgan. Photo: Eugene Hernandez/indieWIRE
I’ve watched and written about this movie more than once, but a DVD commentary with Stephen Frears and Peter Morgan was reason enough to give it another whirl. On the audio track, the film’s director and screenwriter are every bit as entertaining as they were at the NYFF press conference, [...]