I saw The Queen this weekend. It was not that great: yeah, Helen Mirren is really good, and so is Michael Sheen, but the script is pretty clunky -- a lot of plodding, expository dialogue, a few heavy-handed metaphors -- and some of the casting (James Cromwell as Prince Philip, particularly) is disastrous. Also, maybe as an American, it's hard to care about the whole thing -- monarchy in crisis, blah blah blah.
It did get me thinking, though, during last night's first part of the 24 premiere. Both the movie and the show are, in part, about the role of stoicism in politics. The Queen -- in fact, the queen herself -- explicitly states that. In 24, people are always making sacrifices -- the sole chance for redemption for a lot of characters, over the past five seasons, has been being willing to take one between the eyes for the good of the country. So there's that. There's also the acting style of most of the company, which is built around emotion so smothered as to resemble autism. Mary Lynn Rajskub (Chloe) is an extreme example, but it's there with James Morrison (Bill Buchanan) and Roger Cross (Curtis), too, to such an extent that watching the two of them awaiting Jack last night put me in mind of Hal Hartley's movies, which seemed to work only due to similarly restrained performances from his company -- Adrienne Shelly, Martin Donovan, Karen Sillas . . . Morrison, Cross, Rajskub, Kiefer Sutherland and Jayne Atkinson all feel like they're members of a similar troupe. D.B. Woodside (Wayne Palmer) does not, which makes me feel like his presidency is as doomed as the Logan administration was. It feels like he's not going to be able to authorize appalling things in the same way his big brother did and I wonder if the show is using Woodside's limitations as a performer to bolster the kid-brother-dressed-up-in-big-brother's-clothes effect of Wayne as president. Maybe I'm wrong. -- Peter
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