The Queen (DVD)

1997 was not an easy year in British history. Britian ceded Hong Kong back to the Chinese, the IRA continued their attack on both the British Mainland and the Provinces, BA workers went on strike, the first Harry Potter book was published and bone-in cuts of beef were banned, oh yes, and there were the fairly minor stories involving Tony Blair sweeping to power to head a new Labour administration and the death of Princess Diana. It's not often that we get a film that concentrates so closely on a snippet of time in history, let alone one which concentrates on a snippet of time less than 10 years in the past and one which involves the current reigning monarch. ...

After all the Oscar nominations for best costume, score, director, original screenplay and movie and Helen Mirrens's best actress winning performance as Queen Elizabeth II, I really wanted to see The Queen (2006) and having missed it at the cinema it was on our DVD rental list. But to my surprise ITV showed the Stephen Frears directed film in late August this yea to coincide with the 10th anniversary with the death of Princess Diana so I settled in to watch it. The film focuses on the events, reactions and responses of the Royal Family, the British public and government in the week from the death of Diana to her funeral in 1997. In brief the film starts with ...

One of the most critically acclaimed and award-winning films of last year was Stephen Frears’s The Queen, starring the Oscar, Bafta and pretty much every other award-winning Helen Mirren as Elizabeth II. The film begins with the election of 1997, when Tony Blair (played here by Michael Sheen) became PM for the first time. We watch as he nervously conducts his first meeting with the queen, in which she has to formally ask him to become Prime Minister and all that official stuff. The film then moves forward to Sunday 31st August 1997, which everyone over a certain age will remember was the day when Princess Diana and Dodi Al-Fayed were killed in the ...