Celebrating Queen Elizabeth’s Jubilee Year

Posted on June 5, 2012 at 11:01 am

This week, Queen Elizabeth II celebrates her 60th anniversary on the throne.

Helen Mirren won an Oscar for her performance in The Queen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8nD2KB0a_E

And Colin Firth won an Oscar for his performance as her father, King George V, in The King’s Speech. The queen and her sister are little girls in this movie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzI4D6dyp_o

There are some glimpses of the real-life wedding processional of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip in the Fred Astaire musical Royal Wedding. And there’s a very silly scene in The Naked Gun where Leslie Nielsen “protects” the queen. (Thanks, @carrierickey!)

And for the real thing, there’s The Queen 60 Glorious Years Diamond Jubilee Commemorative Edition and The British Royals Collection / Queen Elizabeth II.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY6ScESFsrA

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For Your Netflix Queue Lists

Vanessa Redgrave’s Elizabethan Hat Trick

Posted on October 29, 2011 at 3:54 pm

I did not like “Anonymous,” the new film speculating that Shakespeare’s plays were written by the Earl of Oxford. (They were not.) But I did enjoy Vanessa Redgrave’s luminous performance as Queen Elizabeth, with her daughter Joely Richardson playing the queen in her younger days. It completes Redgrave’s sweep of the era. In “A Man for All Seasons,” she appears briefly but unforgettably as Queen Elizabeth’s mother, Anne Boleyn, so mesmerizing it is easy to understand why a king would change the world to marry her. And she also played Elizabeth’s greatest rival in the title role of “Mary Queen of Scots.”

The two queens never met in real life, but if they had, I hope they would have shown the courage and resolve of Redgrave and Glenda Jackson.

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