Salon.com > Helen Mirren

Jeremy Irons’ strange anti-gay rant

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 13:55:00 +0000

If you happen to be both liberal and obsessed with British Academy Award winners, brace yourself. This is the worst thing to happen since Helen Mirren made those cavalier remarks about rape and consent a few years back. On Wednesday, beloved eternal dreamboat Jeremy Irons gave an unsettlingly strange interview to Huffpost Live host Josh Zepps in which he seemed to argue that marriage equality will send us down the path to legalized incest.

Irons looked genuinely flummoxed when Zepps posed the question of "How far does it extend?" regarding equality, saying, "I don't know. It's a very interesting one, and I don't really have a strong feeling. But I see that what we had in England, which was not marriage but a union you could make if you were gay and you wanted to make a civil partnership. Same rights, not the name. It seems to me that now they're fighting for the name and I worry that it means somehow we debase or we change what marriage is. I just worry about that. I mean taxwise, it's an interesting one because, you see, could a father not marry his son? ... It's not incest between men. Incest is there to protect us from inbreeding, but men don't breed so incest wouldn't cover that. So if that were so, then if I wanted to pass on my estate without death duties, I could marry my son and pass on my estate to him."

“Phil Spector”: Is fame a Faustian bargain?

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 02:00:00 +0000

“Phil Spector,” starring Al Pacino and Helen Mirren and directed and written by David Mamet, is a supremely odd film, and not because Pacino dresses up in a wide variety of wigs and rambles sort of in character, like a set of Pacino ticks coming through Quaaludes. The movie, which premieres on HBO on Sunday night, has been disavowed by both Spector’s wife and the survivors of Lana Clarkson, the woman Spector is currently in jail for murdering, and should you watch, you will understand their concerns. “Phil Spector,” reflecting Mamet’s own take on the case, argues, fairly forcefully, that while the one-time wunderkind of ‘60s pop arrangements may have killed Clarkson, there was enough reasonable doubt to have set him free. He was not acquitted, however, because people perceive him as a freak. Spector was too much of an epic weirdo to get a fair trial.

Jennifer Lawrence’s fall to grace

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 19:46:00 +0000

Last night, a debate broke out among our friends on whether the 22-year-old Jennifer Lawrence, now crowned by the academy as the best actress for her terrific performance in "Silver Linings Playbook," will have staying power. One insisted she was a flash in the pan. The rest of us, who first fell hard for her in "Winter's Bone," argued that she really does have the chops. Who can say, really. Remember, Dr. Haing S. Ngor won an Oscar for his brilliant performance in "The Killing Fields," and that was pretty much the last we saw of him. So, only time will tell how her career pans out, though she's poised — with the Hunger Games franchise, and a new deal to reteam with David O. Russell — to stick around for a while. Really, the question that lingers is: Why are young women held to such scrutiny?

The strange case of Alfred Hitchcock

Sat, 24 Nov 2012 19:00:00 +0000

“Hitchcock” is less a bad film than a middling, minor one, but it fails the standard I once heard applied to books about Proust: They have to be good enough that you wouldn’t be better off reading Proust instead. The contrast, in this case, is ridiculous. On one side, you’ve got a tepid inside-Hollywood comedy, featuring a pretty good Helen Mirren performance, Anthony Hopkins lumbering around in a fat suit, some late-‘50s Los Angeles atmosphere and a few intriguing tidbits of movie history. On the other side, you’ve got “Rebecca” and “Strangers on a Train” and “North by Northwest” and “Vertigo” and countless other pictures we could name, without even getting to “Psycho,” the groundbreaking horror film that serves as background to the domestic plot of “Hitchcock.” It’s not close.

Helen Mirren has the sexiest body on planet

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 16:35:00 +0000

She's 66 years old. She has an Academy Award for playing a decidedly frumpy Queen Elizabeth. Her last movie role was as the elderly spinster nanny to Russell Brand's playboy millionaire in "Arthur." And she's officially got the best body in the world. Dame Helen Mirren, what was it like when they created you on Mount Olympus?

When the gym chain LA Fitness polled 2,000 members on the sexiest male and female physiques on the planet, you'd expect renowned hotties like Nicole Scherzinger and this year's It Girl, Pippa Middleton, to make the list. And they did. But who'd have guessed that Inspector Jane Tennyson would blow away the competition for the top spot? Or that 48-year-old Elle Macpherson would come in second, and 42-year-old Jennifer Lopez would land in fourth? And lest you thinking defying Father Time is for the ladies, the male list is decidedly unyouthful too, with Daniel Craig, Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, David Hasselhoff and Simon Cowell all making appearances. Note to gravity: YOU LOSE.

“Arthur”: Russell Brand as Dudley Moore, from Mars

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 01:01:00 +0000

You pretty much know what you're getting with "Arthur," a remake of an early-'80s comedy hit that misfires on multiple levels but isn't all that terrible. (Put that on your poster, Warner Bros.!) This fable of a feckless, alcoholic zillionaire who finds true love has been tastefully updated for contemporary sensibilities by director Jason Winer and writer Peter Baynham. (So: No more drinking and driving!) It never departs from its zany-heartwarming rom-com recipe and it bears absolutely no relationship to real life. I know it's only April, but "Arthur" might be the year's first summer movie, in the sense that if you're stuck in the house on a rainy day with a large group that extends from tweens to grandparents, you could definitely do worse. (The film's humor is a teensy bit risqué, not to mention bewildering, for smaller children.)

“The Tempest”: Helen Mirren’s sadly elegant mom-magician

Fri, 10 Dec 2010 22:30:00 +0000

It's difficult, but not impossible, to wreck a Shakespeare play completely, and if there's a reason to be grateful for Julie Taymor's muddled, middling production of "The Tempest," it lies in the fact that she doesn't do that. A wizard of the Broadway stage who created the long-running "Lion King" musical (and the now-previewing Spider-Man musical), Taymor has what you might call a mixed record as a film director: I mean, everything she makes is a mixed bag. (Her last two movies were the Beatles musical "Across the Universe" in 2007, and the biopic "Frida" five years earlier. Make sense of that, if you can.) This is her second big-screen attack on the Bard, and it's a whole lot friendlier than her gory, deranged "Titus" from a decade ago.

“Red”: Cynical, idiotic — and a total blast

Sat, 16 Oct 2010 01:30:00 +0000

Film critics always run the risk of digging for deeper meanings below the surface of crap entertainment products (although heaven knows I would never do anything like that). In the case of a campy, clever, intentionally dumb espionage caper like "Red," which is based on an obscure DC Comics graphic novel, it's safe to say that ideology is beside the point. Still, "Red" arrives in the same year as "Salt," "The A-Team" and "Knight and Day," and tells a strikingly similar story: The military-intelligence complex has become a nexus of bureaucratic evil, and only the outcasts, retirees and traitors are fighting for truth and justice. (Yes, of course this is just this year's model of the age-old tale about individuals battling a corrupt system.)

Helen Mirren is still naked

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 18:10:00 +0000

Helen Mirren may just be the nakedest actress ever to win an Academy Award (although, God bless her, Kate Winslet sure gives it a run for the money). One month shy of her 65th birthday, the Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire shows no signs of putting her clothes on any time soon. Topping her 2008 red bikini escapade, the woman who has played the queen of England made a splash this week in New York Magazine's summer issue, clad only in milky bathwater. And yes, there are nipples.

In the accompanying interview, Mirren discusses her new film, "Love Ranch," wherein she plays a Nevada madam who has an affair with a man 30 years her junior, and explains, "I much prefer overt sexuality to sleazy, vulgar prurience." Overt sexuality – always one of Dame Mirren's strong suits.

Helen Mirren, a screen siren at 64

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 02:01:00 +0000

I could watch Helen Mirren in just about anything -- even, it turns out, Michael Hoffman's well-intentioned but overstuffed "The Last Station." Based on Jay Parini's novel of the same name, the movie focuses on the final years of Leo Tolstoy's life (he's played by Christopher Plummer, in a goaty beard that looks to have been attached with spirit gum), specifically on the author's alternately contentious and affectionate relationship with his wife and muse, the Countess Sofya (Mirren). Sofya, who is what we might consider in modern vernacular "a handful," fears that her aged husband, who espouses a philosophy that includes the denunciation of private property, is about to sign a new will that will leave her and the couple's numerous children penniless. She uses her considerable charm to cozy up to Valentin (James McAvoy), a Tolstoy acolyte whom she believes has the power to dissuade the great man from signing his life's work away.