Time to Make a Speech

It's very nearly the end of the year, which is kind of exciting because I will be spending most of the first 2 months of 2011 in Europe in the snow, very far away from home. It also means that is coming up to the last few weeks of teenage-dom for me as I'll be 20 in January. Everything is happening at the beginning of next year. I'm not sure what I should really do with all this information. Should I make a "Year That Was"- style sentimental account of the last year? Should I instead do an optimistic "Year That Will Be", outlining all the goals I have for next year and how I hope to achieve them? I don't think so, I'm not really a fan of either of those things, although I do feel that having goals and learning from your past decisions is important I don't think you should necessarily need to talk about these at length. So instead I'll just give a quick review of a movie a saw yesterday called The King's Speech.


I thought this film was probably one of the best I've seen in awhile. It was an inspiring true story that was executed perfectly through film, nothing included seemed superfluous or repeated, every shot was just as vital as the last. Often when I see films even the good ones have parts which I feel are unnecessary because they bring up plots points or ideas which have already been sufficiently explained or are just plain useless in the way of story telling (Where the Wild Things Are, I thought, was a repeat offender of this). Sometimes films just have parts which makes them lag and as a viewer (albeit one with a short attention span) just distance you from the story through sheer boredom.

The performances of the main two actors especially, Colin Firth who played King George VI and Jeffery Rush who played his speech therapist Lionel Logue were fantastic. Both performers commanded the audiences complete attention whilst on screen without stepping on each other toes, their performances were completely equal never having one outshine the other despite the opposite polarity of their characters. The story brought to light just how very important the ability to speak with confidence and clarity is in power relationships and how we are perceived by others. In a day and age when 'text speak' is infiltrating our spoken language this message is especially prevalent.  

I hope everyone had a very merry Christmas and best wishes for the New Year.