THE KING'S SPEECH OSCAR TRIUMPH

Helena Bonham Carter and Colin Firth in The King's Speech

Great news from the Oscars that The King's Speech has scooped four categories.

Although there is no Oscar for best location the part that Drapers' Hall played in the film has certainly been widely noticed.  In particular, the scene where George VI gives his accession speech in the Livery Hall and his attempts to speak before the Privy Council are spliced with shots of the various royal portraits on the walls including a stern Queen Victoria makes for memorable cinema.

The King's Speech is clearly destined for a most sucessful 2011 and I am sure that the part the Hall played in creating some of the film's most evocative scenes will be of continuing interest. 

THE KING'S SPEECH AND DRAPERS' HALL AS A FILM LOCATION

On its way to be a smash hit.

I have not yet been to see it but clearly The King's Speech is on its way to be a smash hit.  Readers of this blog will want to know that Drapers' Hall substitutes for Buckingham Palace, as it has done in a number of other films.  There is an agreable symmetry in this as George VI was an honorary freeman of the Company. 

The filming was quite recent and only took a weekend with a follow-up day to tidy up loose ends.

Some publicity material for Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London

Another recent film was Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London.  Try Wikipedia if you want a resume of the plot but in summary it is about a 15 year old who joins the CIA and has adventures.   In Cody Banks 2 the Livery Hall is the locale for a great dinner - the finale of the film. A huge number of extras were dressed as ambassadors, generals, clergymen.  The sight of actors in their full costume taking a surreptitious fag in Throgmorton Avenue was an arresting sight.

Probably one of the most interesting developments in recent times has been the search by Bollywood for locations outside India.  Those who have sat for hours on buses in India with a worn out video screeching away will recall that twenty years ago Kashmir or Kerala were deemed highly exotic locations.  Today Bollywood reflects a much more widely travelled Indian public and also the realities of worldwide distribution. 

Locations in Britain are now popular.  Loch Lomond is apparently at the top of the list but the Hall has also featured.  Quite how the plots are structured remains a mystery.  Most are largely episodic with the hero and heroine singing a duet to be joined by a mass of singers and dancers that is followed by yet another unexplained scene change with more singing and dancing.  Great escapist stuff. 

One of the recent Bollywood films that used the Hall was Veer, the Epic Story of a Warrior veer.erosentertainment.com/ which was memorably described by Frank Lovece in Film Journal International on the lines that 'Bollywood fans more accustomed to modern-day musical romances or stylish crime thrillers will be pleasantly surprised to find a period piece that's more Xena: Warrior Princess than A Passage to India.' Go enjoy!

Back to The King's Speech, I hope it will do well at the Oscars shortly.