Dame Helen Mirren has once again been lauded for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II, this time for her turn in West End production, The Audience. The 68 year-old star was named best actress at the 59th London Evening Standard Theatre Awards at the weekend's awards ceremony.

Helen Mirren Is The London Evening Standard's Best Actress.

However, Mirren was reluctant to hog all the praise to herself, telling reporters that she felt that the Queen was also deserving. "I did feel very much that the response to the play was as much a response to that person, that extraordinary woman, as it was to my performance," she said, via BBC News.

Continue reading: Helen Mirren's 'The Audience' Queen Performance Wins Standard Award

Doomsday Review

By Bill Gibron

Bad

Step aside, zombie films -- there's a new derivative genre in town. The post-apocalyptic thriller is out to trump your ongoing redundancy. Instead of bringing something new to the dystopian brave new world, writer/director Neil Marshall's Doomsday has simply decided to reference each and every offering in the oeuvre. A substantial slip from his championed efforts (Dog Soldiers and The Descent), this Escape from Newcastle calamity is like watching George Miller channel John Carpenter. Toss in a little Aliens, a few medieval riffs, and enough Mad Max references to choke Mel Gibson's ego and you've got a disaster pretending to be profound.

When the Reaper virus devastates Glasgow, the British government quarantines all of Scotland. A few survivors make it out. The rest are locked behind heavy steel walls and guarded gates. Nearly three decades later, the plague reappears, this time in downtown London. Desperate to find a cure, Cabinet Minister Caranis (David O'Hara) gets Police Chief Nelson (Bob Hoskins) to send his top officer back into the hot zone. He chooses lady loose cannon Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra). Her goal? Lead a group of soldiers to Kane (Malcolm McDowell), a doctor who was once in charge of Reaper research. Seems the satellites have been picking up images of humans in the supposedly uninhabitable realm, and if Kane has found a cure, they may be able to stop the insidious disease.

Continue reading: Doomsday Review

Love's Labour's Lost Review

By Rob Blackwelder

Good

For a long time I've had a theory that the musical genre couldn't survive the cynicism of modern audiences except as a ironic in-joke, like the "South Park" movie or as a post-modern homage, like Woody Allen's "Everyone Says I Love You."

I couldn't have been more wrong -- and leave it to Kenneth Branagh, a writer-director-actor who has made his name revitalizing old (old, old!) school entertainment -- to prove it by bringing back the kind of weightless musical delight that carried Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers to stardom.

For his new adaptation of Shakespeare's "Love's Labour's Lost," Branagh has re-imagined the buoyant romantic comedy as a classy, corny, 1930s movie musical, complete with uplifting dance numbers and a catalog of favorite big band ditties sung with great enthusiasm (if not great skill) by a quality cast of cheerful actors clearly having the time of their lives.

Continue reading: Love's Labour's Lost Review

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