![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
winterbadgerMy interior is still feeling a bit bruised in a few places, so I'm going to take a day or two more at home. OTOH, it's feeling much better than I would have expected right after the surgery. As much of a surprise as it was to me how much it hurt right after, I'm astonished at how fast the body bounces back. There's still some inside pain and outer tenderness, but I swear right after I was feeling as if I was never going to be the same again, like it would take forever to come back from something that ouchy. I guess what they say about guys and dogs (we only ever live in the moment) may be true. :-)
Another nice evening with Da Grrlz. Nora came over and watched her basketball game (at first it looked like we couldn't get it, but what had been blacked out was the previous Knicks-Celtics game that ran over--although I have no idea why *that* would be blacked out for a DC audience...), but the four of us didn't go out to dinner. NB was feeling a bit off, and I was still a little dodgy for transport. So when C & M got back from an afternoon of shopping, they heated up the rest of the delicious stew from the night before and we watched the second half of the Elizabeth program.
I agree with C, it was much better than the movie with Cate Blanchett in some ways; it was still too histrionic for my taste--I think it's good to show historical people as being very human, so they don't just become ciphers spouting famous lines, but I think it can go too far too. I think they did a poor job of conveying the atmosphere of the court some of the time, making it seem too much like just a random assemblage of people and ignoring the gravity and decorum, the protocol and the gravity of an institution that was both the personal household of a powerful and cultured noble and the government of a nation. Ignore all of that, and you have to push the drama and wildness of unusual incidents up to make them seem unusual.
And no one ever seems to be able to both get costuming right *and* make the actors wear it. The clothing was pretty good in this, much better than most, but the had the usual failure with headwear (men who should have been wearing scholar's caps were wearing things that looked like coifs made out of leather, and most of the men and women, wore nothing at all) and lots of serious, important men were wandering around in their doublets in cold weather in formal settings--Robert Cecil seemed not to own a robe at all, appearing most of the time looking like a servant. Most astonishingly, Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester and Queen Mary's lord chancellor appears throughout dressed as a layman (and, of course, bareheaded and with a Yasser Arafat beard).
They left out almost all the court politics, making everything depend on Elizabeth's relationships with people as individuals. Yes, those were important, as with any monarch, but, for instance, Cecil's long and bitter struggle with Essex over who would hold the most influence with the queen, was left out entirely, and Essex's adventure in Ireland and his later rebellion portrayed as simply elements of his extreme nature.
And the attempts to make the atmosphere feel "period" were, IMO, distracting and annoying. Plainly dressed servant soften appeared in corridors full of nobles going somewhere (West Wing-style "walking and talking" shots) as if to remind us that *gasp* people had servants then. But the servants don't seem to know how to behave around nobles. Members of the queen's bodyguard slouch, stand around looking decorative, or wander off to talk to maids, instead of actually, well, guarding the queen. As usual, the Tower of London is a gloomy, cold, dungeon-filled place that people only go to die. Mysteriously, the place of execution is inside the Tower, but executions are attended by (small) crowds of common people (you know, the way the public is allowed to wander into the Rose Garden to watch the president sign legislation...)
I also found the camera work, the sound, and the music detracted substantially. They insisted on using the juvenile device of joggling the camera a lot to suggest a crisis atmosphere and sudden action. To me, that's what actors and scripts (and maybe rapid cuts and quick pans) are for. They had all the noises of daily life boosted way too loud to accentuate them (doors opening and closing, objects being set down, people walking through corridors); at times this made it difficult to hear dialogue. The music was probably the worst part of this: repetitive, a combination of what I think was supposed to sound like period religious music (all choirs are made up of children, right?) and electric guitars. It was horrible and discordant, both musically and thematically.
Of course, it's hard to collapse a reign like Elizabeth's into a few hours. And they did get many things right, including some of the smaller historical details, unlike the Blanchett movie that simply *invented* vast distortions for the sake of "drama". I thought that "The Virgin Queen" did a good job of capturing some aspects of Elizabeth's personality, of her relationships with her favourites, of the characters of Burghley, his son, and Walsingham. But it still astonishes me how well the old miniseries of the 1970s (Six Wives of Henry VIII, Elizabeth R) and the movies of the same period (Mary Queen of Scots, Man for All Seasons) did at capturing the same events and telling them (IMO) more skillfully and credibly.
Another nice evening with Da Grrlz. Nora came over and watched her basketball game (at first it looked like we couldn't get it, but what had been blacked out was the previous Knicks-Celtics game that ran over--although I have no idea why *that* would be blacked out for a DC audience...), but the four of us didn't go out to dinner. NB was feeling a bit off, and I was still a little dodgy for transport. So when C & M got back from an afternoon of shopping, they heated up the rest of the delicious stew from the night before and we watched the second half of the Elizabeth program.
I agree with C, it was much better than the movie with Cate Blanchett in some ways; it was still too histrionic for my taste--I think it's good to show historical people as being very human, so they don't just become ciphers spouting famous lines, but I think it can go too far too. I think they did a poor job of conveying the atmosphere of the court some of the time, making it seem too much like just a random assemblage of people and ignoring the gravity and decorum, the protocol and the gravity of an institution that was both the personal household of a powerful and cultured noble and the government of a nation. Ignore all of that, and you have to push the drama and wildness of unusual incidents up to make them seem unusual.
And no one ever seems to be able to both get costuming right *and* make the actors wear it. The clothing was pretty good in this, much better than most, but the had the usual failure with headwear (men who should have been wearing scholar's caps were wearing things that looked like coifs made out of leather, and most of the men and women, wore nothing at all) and lots of serious, important men were wandering around in their doublets in cold weather in formal settings--Robert Cecil seemed not to own a robe at all, appearing most of the time looking like a servant. Most astonishingly, Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester and Queen Mary's lord chancellor appears throughout dressed as a layman (and, of course, bareheaded and with a Yasser Arafat beard).
They left out almost all the court politics, making everything depend on Elizabeth's relationships with people as individuals. Yes, those were important, as with any monarch, but, for instance, Cecil's long and bitter struggle with Essex over who would hold the most influence with the queen, was left out entirely, and Essex's adventure in Ireland and his later rebellion portrayed as simply elements of his extreme nature.
And the attempts to make the atmosphere feel "period" were, IMO, distracting and annoying. Plainly dressed servant soften appeared in corridors full of nobles going somewhere (West Wing-style "walking and talking" shots) as if to remind us that *gasp* people had servants then. But the servants don't seem to know how to behave around nobles. Members of the queen's bodyguard slouch, stand around looking decorative, or wander off to talk to maids, instead of actually, well, guarding the queen. As usual, the Tower of London is a gloomy, cold, dungeon-filled place that people only go to die. Mysteriously, the place of execution is inside the Tower, but executions are attended by (small) crowds of common people (you know, the way the public is allowed to wander into the Rose Garden to watch the president sign legislation...)
I also found the camera work, the sound, and the music detracted substantially. They insisted on using the juvenile device of joggling the camera a lot to suggest a crisis atmosphere and sudden action. To me, that's what actors and scripts (and maybe rapid cuts and quick pans) are for. They had all the noises of daily life boosted way too loud to accentuate them (doors opening and closing, objects being set down, people walking through corridors); at times this made it difficult to hear dialogue. The music was probably the worst part of this: repetitive, a combination of what I think was supposed to sound like period religious music (all choirs are made up of children, right?) and electric guitars. It was horrible and discordant, both musically and thematically.
Of course, it's hard to collapse a reign like Elizabeth's into a few hours. And they did get many things right, including some of the smaller historical details, unlike the Blanchett movie that simply *invented* vast distortions for the sake of "drama". I thought that "The Virgin Queen" did a good job of capturing some aspects of Elizabeth's personality, of her relationships with her favourites, of the characters of Burghley, his son, and Walsingham. But it still astonishes me how well the old miniseries of the 1970s (Six Wives of Henry VIII, Elizabeth R) and the movies of the same period (Mary Queen of Scots, Man for All Seasons) did at capturing the same events and telling them (IMO) more skillfully and credibly.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-12-05 03:33 pm (UTC)Although the Schiller Mary Stuart play is historically inaccurate, it acknowledges that it's conujecture. Harriet Walter and Janet McTeer are excellent in the roles.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-05 03:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-05 03:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-05 03:34 pm (UTC)Are there at least hot scenes to which I could FF?
:-)
no subject
Date: 2005-12-05 04:09 pm (UTC)I had an argument about this with a GF at the time it came out; this is a wonderful film, except that it pretends to be history. Why does Hollywood make "historical" movies and then change all the hisotry? Why not just make a medieval fantasy story set in the Land of Zog with beautiful costumes, excellent actors, and a whacking good love story? Mysterious.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-05 04:22 pm (UTC)But frankly, anybody who sees a Hollywood film looking for historical accuracy is deluding themselves...
no subject
Date: 2005-12-06 09:30 am (UTC)well that's really good
feel 100% soon x
no subject
Date: 2005-12-06 12:52 pm (UTC)