Virtual Methodist

Well, it's coming to the peak of the film awards season and in a year where every second film is in 3D the 2 most lauded are avowedly 2D, and focus on word and relationship rather than action and CGI. I haven't seen the mind-bending "Inception", nor experienced the feathers flying in "Black Swan", and I am hesitant to go see "True Grit" as I feel I would be betraying my mother who was John Wayne's No 1 fan bar none, but I have seen both "The Social Network", written and directed by the peerless Aaron Sorkin, and more recently "The King's Speech" and in my humble opinion, the latter deserves all the plaudits it has received so far, and should walk off with many effigies of Margaret Herrick's "Uncle Oscar" next week. It is essentially a powerful 2-hander, with the backing of a superb ensemble cast. For me the only disappointing performance in the whole film was Timothy Spall's Churchill which was a comple...

This time next week "The King's Speech" is due to go on general release in the UK (it was apparently released in the US at the beginning of December). It is the dramatised story of King George VI, who relunctantly took the throne when his brother Edward VIII abdicated to marry Wallis Simpson, and his relationship with the unorthodox speech therapist who helped the King conquer his stammer, so that he could speak more confidently in public. I am not an ardent royalist, and rarely make time on Christmas Day to listen to the current Queen's speech (I'm usually either preparing the dinner, eating it or lying comatose in a chair having eaten it). That said I know the closing words of the King George VI's Christmas Speech from 1939 off by heart. That is because the Principal of my old secondary school, John Frost, finished his speech at every first day assembly with the words that King George quoted that year. The country was uncertain as to what the recently decl...