Elizabeth: The Golden Age

[MacGuffin]

Teaser Trailer

Release Date: October 12th, 2007 (wide)

Starring: Geoffrey Rush, Clive Owen, Cate Blanchett, Samantha Morton, Abbie Cornish, Jordi Molla 

Directed by: Shekhar Kapur 

Premise: During her 16th Century reign, England's Queen Elizabeth I strikes up a relationship with Sir Walter Raleigh.

[A Matter Of Chance]

Elizabeth: The Academy Award for Cate

[Pubrick]

Elizabeth: This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Universal Pictures

[Ravi]

Elizabeth: This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Universal Pictures

"How dare those pirates promote our film like this?!"

[Ghostboy]

That's a really thrilling trailer.

[Ravi]

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070422/asp/7days/story_7669196.asp



After the Oscar-winning Elizabeth, Shekhar Kapur has finished work on the second film of his trilogy. Kapur talks to Smita Sarkar on The Golden Age

Shekhar Kapur would rather blog than speak. But we've caught him at the right time — he has just finished shooting and has a moment to breathe. And, of course, when the topic is his favourite Elizabeth I, once queen of England, it doesn't take much to galvanise the otherwise soft-spoken director.

The Golden Age — the much-awaited second phase of the Oscar-winning Elizabeth — is nearing completion. Shooting has just got over, and the sound and background scores are now being worked on. A.R. Rahman has done the music for the film, along with Oscar-nomine Craig Armstrong. And Kapur is full of excitement.

"There are two aspects to the story — there is the individual, micro aspect of Elizabeth's personal tribulations and there is the larger macro aspect of the political turmoil that England goes through," he says.

Kapur, clearly, is passionate about the subject of queens, for let's not forget he shot to international fame with a film called Bandit Queen. The new film, on Elizabeth I, is set against a period that saw a violent rift between the Catholics and the Protestants in England.

"At that time, the Spanish threat was looming large on England. Spanish King Philip II commanded the fabled Spanish Armada and was out to dominate England in the high seas. Elizabeth, a Protestant, attracted the ire of the devout Catholic Philip II — a situation further complicated by the fact that nearly 60 per cent of the English Parliament and the majority of her subjects was Catholic," the filmmaker says.

Add to that a series of treacherous plots to dethrone her by members of the Royal family and you have a historical thriller. "If not for a freakish storm that damaged the Spanish Armada, Spain, and not England, would've been the colonial power ruling the world for the next 500 years," Kapur says.

"Shekhar likes doing films that are biographical in nature," explains executive producer and close associate Mohan Chopra. "Elizabeth is not the only character he has worked on. He has also made Bandit Queen, which was biographical. He is a very keen observer of human nature. Biographies may not be all that he'll do, but at this point of his career this is what he wants to do," Chopra says.

The Golden Age is slated to be released on October 12 in the UK and the United States. Produced by Universal Studios, the $57 million film was shot in places such as the Westminster Abbey in London and parts of Scotland.

There is some excitement in film circles about the music in The Golden Age. "Knowing Rahman, there will be more than a hint of Indian music in this film," says Chopra, who is also the producer of Rahman's recent solo album Pray for Me Brother. "The producers love his skills and his diversity. His coming together with Oscar nominee Craig Armstrong will be very much like fusion food," he says.

Sound production for the last leg of the film is underway in the prestigious Soho Studios in London and Kapur is busy supervising that. Now that a major portion of the work is done, the crew is visibly relaxed. "It took Shekhar a very long time to prepare and start work on this film," says Rajesh Rajilal, his assistant in London for the last five years. "After completing the screenplay, he had tapped producers in Canada and Australia. He wanted this to be a big budget film. It's his dream project," Rajilal says.

Understandably, for the period is rife with drama. If England was at a political crossroad, so too was Queen Elizabeth — and this turmoil serves as the common thread between Kapur's two films on the subject. In The Golden Age, Elizabeth feels an unexpected vulnerability in her love for Walter Raleigh — a love denied to a Queen who had sworn everything to England. To keep Raleigh near her, she encourages Bess Throckmorten, her lady in court, to cultivate a relationship with him. This is the second phase of Elizabeth's life that Shekhar captures in The Golden Age.

Keeping the thread of continuity alive are Cate Blanchett and Geoffrey Rush, who play the same roles as in the first film — those of Queen Elizabeth and Sir Francis Walsingham, respectively. Joining them are Clive Owen, (Walter Raleigh), Samantha Morton (Mary Stuart), Abbie Cornish (Bess Throckmorten) and Jordi Molla (King Philip II of Spain).

"Golden Age is about immortality. It is what happens to people when they are in positions of absolute power. They then aspire to divinity and feel they are set apart from other mortals," Kapur writes in his website.

Meanwhile, what's clear is that his saga of Elizabeth does not end with The Golden Age. Kapur is planning out the third in what is going to be his Elizabeth trilogy. The theme will be mortality. "For that, I will wait a while — for Cate Blanchett to start looking 10 years older," says Kapur.

[MacGuffin]

New Trailer here.

[Pubrick]

beautiful.

catecornishclivemortonarmadaspeechtastic.

[MacGuffin]

[matt35mm]

I actually quite like that.  Elegant and simple where it easily could have been a very messy poster.

A rare successful big giant face poster.

[Ghostboy]

Everything about this movie is classy and awesome so far. The only thing that can go wrong now is the movie itself. Which will probably be the case.

[RegularKarate]

Well, the trailer convinced me to re-rent Elizabeth which I haven't seen since it first came out because I hated it... maybe I'll like it almost ten years later.

[MacGuffin]

Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Source: Entertainment Weekly

History often repeats itself. Especially in the movie business, where sequels, remakes, prequels, and threequels have lately defined the zeitgeist. But that incessant parade of things revisited doesn't hold much allure for Cate Blanchett. Or at least it didn't one fateful night in January 2005, when director Shekhar Kapur and actor Geoffrey Rush, two of Blanchett's chief collaborators on the 1998 art-house crossover hit Elizabeth, met her for dinner at the swanky Hotel Bel-Air in L.A. Their mission: persuading the actress to don the royal raiment again for a follow-up, Elizabeth: The Golden Age. ''They came very, very fueled with excitement,'' Blanchett remembers. ''And alcohol, probably.... I pooh-poohed the idea,'' she says. ''I thought, 'I've done that. Why would I want to come back and retell the same story?'''

The original Elizabeth turned Blanchett from a promising talent only dimly known outside her native Australia into a shiny new global star. She pulled off an unforgettable transformation from randy young palace terror into stuffy head of state, her face powdered a ghastly white as she forged a newly virginal image. Blanchett copped a Golden Globe for Best Actress, and an Oscar nomination, too. Six years after that red-carpet odyssey, Kapur wanted to tell the story of Elizabeth's middle years, when she was firmly ensconced in power. For months, Blanchett remained skeptical. Would audiences truly be able to judge Golden Age independently? And why should she risk tarnishing the first film's perfectly good legacy? In the end, some blunt talk from Rush finally swayed her. His pitch? You're getting older — don't be so picky. (She was 35 at the time; she's now 38.) ''I remember saying, 'You're moving into that traditionally difficult phase where mainstream Hollywood is going to possibly pass you by,''' says Rush. '''Roles like these, that require someone of your capability and daring, don't come along that often.'''

And so, in April 2006, Blanchett found herself back in regal harness, her brows and lashes once again bleached to match the queen's ultra-plucked aesthetic. Amazingly, considering the gap between films, virtually the same key team from the first movie signed on. There were a few new faces as well, notably Clive Owen, Kapur's first choice to play adventurer Sir Walter Raleigh. As Golden Age portrays things, Elizabeth falls hard for the rugged explorer — but loses him to her favorite female companion from the royal court, Bess Throckmorton (Abbie Cornish).

One of Blanchett and Kapur's most frequent points of discussion was how much to fictionalize Elizabethan details. ''I'm very engaged in adhering to the actual events,'' says Blanchett, ''whereas he's kind of playing loose and fast with history.'' Indeed, Kapur used the facts of Elizabeth's life merely for inspiration. The first Elizabeth took considerable flak from reviewers for its factual liberties — one of the boldest being the idea that the queen in fact romped in bed with any number of men before officially reinventing herself as a virgin. This time, Kapur could get slammed for portraying King Philip II of Spain as a far more megalomaniacal religious crusader than records suggest — which plays into the movie's pointed contemporary overtones about the dangers of intolerance in an age of jihad.

Blanchett worries less about fine points of history in the film than whether the general public wants to see more Tudor happenings at all, following Helen Mirren's award-winning turns in 2006's The Queen and HBO's miniseries Elizabeth I. ''You hope that people don't tire of it,'' she says. ''Or think, 'Oh, here it comes again.''' But Kapur feels emboldened by early positive feedback, and he's anxious to plan yet a third Elizabeth movie. ''At first you just hope people won't laugh at your film, or boo it out of the theater,'' he says. ''Then you hear people are liking it, and you get greedy.''

[MacGuffin]

Indian filmmaker Kapur hoping for Elizabeth III

As the widely-acclaimed "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" premiered at the Toronto film festival Sunday, India-born director Shekhar Kapur mused about making a third installment of the British monarch's life.

Shekhar said he'd been sitting on the script for this sequel for almost a decade, since his Academy Award-winning epic "Elizabeth" was released in 1998.

But Cate Blanchett, star of both pictures, was hesitant, he told reporters.

Blanchett, who won the award for best actress at the Venice film festival on Saturday for her role in Todd Haynes's Bob Dylan biopic "I'm Not There," said: "I didn't feel like enough time had passed" since the first film -- until now.

"Having to be that responsible to drive a film, it was the first time I'd ever done it and I was exercising muscles I'd never exercised before," she explained.

The Australian actress conceded: "There are endless possibilities with Elizabeth ... And I think there will be a lot more Elizabeth (films) because she's endlessly fascinating."

But she remained coy about joining the cast for a possible third film.

"Elizabeth: The Golden Age" picks up several years after the first ended, with Elizabeth I more confident in her rule and facing her greatest challenge: the attempted overthrow of Protestant England in 1585 by the Catholic figurehead of Europe, King Philip II of Spain.

Actor Geoffrey Rush reprises his role as loyal Sir Francis Walsingham in the film, and Clive Owen is introduced as Sir Walter Raleigh, who spearheaded English colonization of North America, beguiling the queen who is preoccupied by her failure to produce an heir.

The film also stars Abbie Cornish, Rhys Ifans, Jordi Molla and Samantha Morton.

"The first one was about power and love, betrayal, survival, separation and disengaging all in the context of power. This one is much more about absolute power ... and being divine ... and what that means," Kapur said.

"The third one (would be) about if you become a model in your life, how would you face mortality ... If you go to the top, and you suddenly are going to die, you become average, ordinary by dying because everybody dies," he said.

On a more intimate level, Blanchett added: "The first film was about denial, a woman denying herself in terms of her role ... this one is about acceptance, a woman having to confront that she is aging."

During the reign of Elizabeth I, known as the Elizabethan era, playwrights such as William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe flourished, Francis Drake became the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe, and Francis Bacon established scientific method to deduce by elimination and inductive reasoning the cause of underlying phenomena.

Blanchett compared the English monarch to Princess Diana, saying both "captured the public's imagination and people felt they could connect to her."

Despite very different personalities, "that she walked often with very little guard, and walked down and shook the hands (of her subjects), I thought a lot about Diana, strangely enough," she said.

Diana, the mother Prince William, of the future king of England, died in a Paris car crash in 1997.

Also relevant in Elizabeth I's story today, said Kapur: "Fundamentalism and tolerance are issues that face us so clearly right now" in a post-9/11 world.

[Pubrick]

Diana, the mother Prince William, of the future king of England, died in a Paris car crash in 1997.

oh, it was an american article.