Everything everybody else has said about "Speech"...I didn't much care for the casting of Churchill but he didn't have much to do (and I am not sure anybody can play Winnie without being a caricature)...David and Wallis did come off badly, didn't they?

But how many Oscar nominations will this one movie get? Bonham Carter's Duchess and future Queen was spot on.

Editing to add that I just realized what bothered me about Churchill...the actor also plays Peter Pettigrew in the Potter films!

[This message has been edited by Kay (edited 01-09-2011).]

Brendan Gleeson can, and did, in Into the Storm. He won an Emmy and a couple of other awards for that performance.

And the guy who played Hitler in the newsreel toward the end....REALLY REALLY bad... Chaplin was better.

Eugene Lehman's Lives of English Monarchs says that Wallis Simpson didn't want "David" to abdicate. The reason given was that she'd gotten all out of him that she thought she could get and was ready to move on. If that's true, the abdication put her on the spot. She could either be the woman who deserted a man who'd given up his throne for her (and how welcome would she be in royal circles after that?). Or she could marry the geek and live out her life on an allowance from the new king's pocket. Some choice. But a rather fitting punishment, some might say.

[This message has been edited by Lorna (edited 01-10-2011).]

In case anyone's interested, Colin Firth won a Golden Globe last night. But that's the only award The King's Speech received. The Social Network and its director, David Fincher, won. Natalie Portman won for Black Swan.

I went to see Sanctum yesterday, spelunking on a grand scale. The visuals were terrific, most of them; the 3D did a good job of catching the enormousness of the caverns. But even though the story is based on a true event, the script is just one cliché after another. Tiresome and predictable. And it's ironic that a movie built on visual clarity should resort to swooping cameras and quick cuts whenever it became difficult to show the characters' orientation to one another and to the cave's passages they were going through.

I'd say skip this one.

Too late; we went last night. The cave was great, but the movie wasn't. Sanctum is released ONLY in 3D. Without those 3D effects, there's nothing much worth looking at. So maybe that's a clue to go by: If it's only in 3D, stay away.

That sounds like a good clue to me.

I just saw The Eagle and thought it gripping from beginning to end.

Online commenters have been complaining about the Romans having American accents. We all know that the Romans must have upper-class English accents. Upper-class Romans, anyway.

That aspect certainly didn't bother me, and I found the grimy, gritty, dangerous imperial frontier setting completely believable.

Is everyone aware of the Black Swan controversy? Natalie Portman's head was digitally imposed upon the body of an American Ballet Theatre soloist named Sarah Lane. No wonder she danced so well. The producers are saying Lane was used only a little, and Lane is saying 95% of the full body dance shots were of her.

[This message has been edited by Lorna (edited 04-08-2011).]