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The Daily Dose/November 2, 2007
By Gaylon Kent
The Writer's Shack
   
Notes from around the human experience, including taking tea with Lizzy, Wally and Mary, On This Date, plus The Column Four Foto: Phoebe Cates!
CAPSULE MOVIE REVIEW: Elizabeth: The Golden Age: You know it's funny, I thought I liked this movie. It was kind of charming and the acting ranged from good to excellent. The battle scene was kind of hard to follow, and, if you're the type who's read just enough to make you dangerous but not enough to make you a historian, you may well have been thinking some liberties with history may well have been taken. But overall, I was thinking I liked it.
Then, continuing a habit started in childhood, I read some of the reviews after I had seen the movie.
Uh-Oh: They weren't kind. 'Useless," said one. 'A failure on any appreciable level' proclaimed another. 'Highbrow camp masquerading as a history lesson' was probably my favorite.
Standard Disclaimer: Gaylon is not a professional movie reviewer. He is not even a movie fan in general, attending movies on every now and then. His opinions generally reflect a rather low opinion of the medium, and, might even be termed snobbish. For reference, his all-time favorite movies are Fletch and Same Time Next Year.
Brass Tacks: But I thought it was pretty good. A sequel to the 1998 Elizabeth, Cate Blanchett does well reprising her role as Queen Elizabeth, as does Geoffrey Rush, appearing once again as Sir Francis Walsingham, turning in the kind of performance we expect from Geoffrey Rush. Clive Owen is a little too handsome and daring as Sir Walter Raleigh, but he means well, even if he probably didn't lay as much pipe at Court as we are led to believe, but its bloody 16th century England for Pete's sake, so why not liven matters up a little with a tan swashbuckler?
Leading off: Elizabeth is single and under pressure to marry and produce an heir. She has portraits of potential suitors paraded before her, and a young, bumbling European prince even appears at court (an incident that actually happened years earlier), because by this time Elizabeth is in her early 50's and probably in no mood to date, much less bear children. Her Majesty graciously shoes him away from her table, informing party goers that Her Majesty's charms had overwhelmed the prince and that he was retiring to quarters for the remainder of the evening, which, as break up lines go, is pretty good.
OTOH: Producing an heir isn't a bad idea because next in line to the throne is Elizabeth's cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, who Elizabeth jailed two decades earlier upon Mary's arrival from Scotland after abdicating the throne. Mary has the free time required to plot her cousin's death. Various plots are, in fact, discovered over the years, including the evil Babington Plot, which in real life was uncovered before an attempt on the Queen could be carried out, though in the movie the plot is carried out, resulting in an assassin producing a pistol (of a type which had yet to be invented) and pulling the trigger, though for some reason a bullet hadn't been placed in the chamber, probably because the bullets hadn't been invented yet. Walsingham uncovers the plot, which leads to the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots and we are led to believe the evidence against Mary was incontrovertible, when history records it really wasn't.
Those Zany Spaniards: This gets the Spaniards in a tizzy again. King Philip, a weeping, sniveling little snot, builds a lot of ships and tries to invade England so he can secure the throne for his daughter, but is repelled by the English navy. If this film is your only reference on this matter, you will come away believing that the Spanish Armada significantly outnumbered the poor English. You would also come away with the impression that this great English victory was due solely to the heroic efforts of Sir Walter Raleigh, without whom we would all be speaking Spanish right now.
Shocker!: This is not the case, at all. The English had more ships and better sailors, and, in fact, history doesn't even record if Sir Walter Raleigh was at the battle with the Spanish Armada, much less single handedly defeating them by abandoning his own ship and leaping into the water to guide a burning ship into a key Spanish vessel and destroying it despite the fact anybody who dove into the English Channel probably have died.
Sir Walter Raleigh worms his way throughout this movie. Played well and mischievously by Owen, Raleigh first appears fresh from a voyage to the New World bearing gifts for Her Majesty, including the first potatoes and tobacco to be brought home. He also brought two Indians with him, as well as some gold stolen from the Spaniards, which really annoyed the Spaniards. Elizabeth has a crush for Sir Walter, and she would tell a lady in waiting named Bess to keep an eye on him for her, which Bess interprets to mean go ahead and bear his child, although this tasty development didn't actually happen till several years later.
Dry, Technical Matter: Elizabeth: The Golden Age, 1 hour and 54 minutes, rated PG-13 for blood, mainly, as well as simulated torture and executions, as well as a scary Spanish ambassador that has a really big mouth.
We Interrupt This Program For A Word From The Ratings Department:
Following Is The Official Writer's Shack Rating scale:
EX - Excellent; as good as the medium can produce in every respect.
VG - Very Good; well worth your time.
AR - All Right; not completely without merit.
SP - A steaming pile, utterly without merit and not worth your time, my time or anyone else's time.
Official Rating: AR. There are way too many historical inaccuracies for this to be taken too seriously, but any movie with Cate Blanchett and Geoffrey Rush where the script was not written by retards is worth your time.
ON THIS DATE: In 1920, the first commercial radio station, KDKA, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, signs on the air for the first time, broadcasting the results of the presidential election between Warren Harding and James Cox. The letters KDKA do not mean anything in particular, they happened to be the next call letters on a list kept by the government for issuing licenses to ships and maritime shore stations.
In 1948:The Chicago Tribune's opinion notwithstanding, President Harry Truman defeated Thomas Dewey in the 1948 presidential election.
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