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Idyllic vision of career versus reality.

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Idyllic vision of career versus reality.

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Get Low is a 2009 drama film directed by Aaron Schneider, and written by Chris Provenzano and C. Gaby Mitchell. It tells the story of a Tennessee hermit in the 1930s who throws his own funeral party while still alive. The film stars Robert Duvall, Bill Murray, Sissy Spacek and Lucas Black. Duvall was awarded the Hollywood Film Festival Award for Best Actor for his lead performance.

No one really "knows" Felix Bush, who lives as a hermit in the woods. Rumors surround him, such as how he might have killed in cold blood, and that he's in league with the devil. So, the town is surprised when Felix shows up at Reverend Gassy Horton's church with a large roll of cash and requests a " funeral party" for himself, which Rev. Horton refuses to do. Frank Quinn, the owner of the local, financially troubled funeral parlor, covets Bush's money and agrees to advertise and help organize a funeral party. Townsfolk and others in the area are invited to come to the event and tell Felix Bush the stories they've heard about him. To ensure a good turnout, Bush insists upon a raffle, with his property as the prize; many people buy tickets at $5.00 dollars a piece.

Things get more complicated when an old mystery is remembered, involving a local widow named Mattie Darrow, who was Bush's girlfriend in their youth, and her deceased sister, Mary Lee Stroup. With the help of Charlie Jackson, a preacher who insists upon the truth from forty years ago being revealed, Bush intends to confess his shame about and complicity in a terrible occurrence. He reveals to Mattie his affair with her married sister, Mary Lee, telling her that it was Mary Lee who was his true love, his only love. To the people gathered for his funeral party, he tells the story of how the two of them made plans to run away together and, when she didn't arrive at the agreed place, he went to her home to search for her. He discovered that her husband had attacked her with a hammer, knocking her out. The husband threw a kerosene lamp against a wall to set the house on fire and kill himself, the unconscious Mary Lee, and Bush. Bush freed himself from the attacking husband, but as his clothes caught fire, he also saw Mary Lee catch fire. As he went to put the fire out, he felt himself flying through the window, possibly pushed by the husband, and he was unable to re-enter the house to save Mary Lee.

Mattie leaves the party, the raffle is held and a winner proclaimed. Later, after everything has been packed away and everyone has gone, Mattie returns; she seems to have forgiven Bush. He dies shortly after, walking toward who he sees as Mary Lee coming down the lane toward him.

His actual funeral service and burial is held in a small area of his property where he has, over the years, buried his animal companions. Charlie officiates the ceremony, with Reverend Gus Horton, Buddy, his wife and child, Mattie and Frank in attendance. After a short benediction from Charlie, Mattie places a portrait of her sister, Mary Lee, on Felix's casket, allowing them to be together, even if only figuratively. As his grave is filled, the mourners leave.

The film is loosely based on a true story that happened in Roane County, Tennessee, in 1938. Duvall's character, Felix Bush, was based on a real person named Felix Bushaloo "Uncle Bush" Breazeale. It was filmed entirely on location in Georgia, with support for the production provided by the Georgia Department of Economic Development.

The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and is distributed by Sony Pictures Classics. It was released on July 30, 2010, in the United States, opening in four cinemas and taking in a weekend gross of $90,900, averaging $22,725 per cinema. This placed the film at twenty-third overall for the weekend of July 30 to August 1, 2010. As of January 2011, the film had grossed $9,100,230 in North America and $401,361 in other territories, totaling $9,513,225 worldwide.

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 85% based on 145 reviews, with an average rating of 7.20/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "Subtle to a fault, this perfectly cast ensemble drama is lifted by typically sharp performances from Robert Duvall and Bill Murray." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 77 out of 100, based on 35 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Robert Duvall had overwhelming praise from critics, with John Anderson of The Wall Street Journal writing: "... Mr. Duvall... gives [the film] a heart." A New York Times review by A. O. Scott highlighted Duvall's "superb" performance as well.

Casey Burchby at DVD Talk noted that Get Low contains "a wonderful group of performances by a dream cast. Surprisingly, none of the leads were in the running for any of 2010's major awards."

Schneider won the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature for the film.

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Get Low is a 2009 drama film directed by Aaron Schneider, and written by Chris Provenzano and C. Gaby Mitchell. It tells the story of a Tennessee hermit in the 1930s who throws his own funeral party while still alive. The film stars Robert Duvall, Bill Murray, Sissy Spacek and Lucas Black.

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Biographical consideration of real people.

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Biographical consideration of real people.

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The Fighter is a 2010 American biographical sports drama film directed by David O. Russell, and stars Mark Wahlberg (who also produced), Christian Bale, Amy Adams, and Melissa Leo. The film centers on the lives of professional boxer Micky Ward (Wahlberg) and his older half-brother and former boxer Dicky Eklund (Bale). The film was inspired by the 1995 documentary that features the Eklund-Ward family, titled High on Crack Street: Lost Lives in Lowell.

The Fighter was released in theaters on December 17, 2010, by Paramount Pictures. The film grossed $129 million worldwide and received largely positive reviews, with critics praising the performances; many comments regarding Bale's weight, accent, and mannerisms widely refer his performance as one of the greatest performances of the century. It was nominated for seven Academy Awards, winning the awards for Best Supporting Actor (Bale) and Best Supporting Actress (Leo).

Micky Ward is an American welterweight boxer from Lowell, Massachusetts. Managed by his mother, Alice Ward, and trained by his older half-brother, Dicky Eklund, Micky became a "stepping stone" for other boxers to defeat on their way up. Dicky, a former boxer whose peak of success was going the distance with Sugar Ray Leonard in 1978, has become addicted to crack cocaine. He is being filmed for an HBO documentary he believes to be about his "comeback".

On the night of an undercard fight in Atlantic City, Micky's scheduled opponent Saoul Mamby is ill, and a substitute is found in Mike Mungin who is 20 pounds heavier than Micky, a huge difference in professional boxing, constituting two or three weight classes. Despite Micky's reservations, his mother and brother agree so that they can all get the purse and tell Micky that the fighter is out of shape and has ring rust. They arrive at the fight and find that the substitute fighter is actually ready for the fight and in top shape, and soundly defeats Micky. Micky retreats from the world and forms a relationship with Charlene Fleming, a former college athlete who dropped out and became a bartender.

After several weeks, Alice arranges another fight for Micky, but Micky is concerned it will turn out the same. His mother and seven sisters blame Charlene for his lack of motivation. Micky mentions he received an offer to be paid to train in Las Vegas, but Dicky says he will match the offer so he can keep training and working with his family. Dicky then tries to get money by posing his girlfriend as a prostitute and then, once she picks up a client, impersonating a police officer to steal the client's money. This is foiled by the actual police and Dicky is arrested after a chase and a fight with them. Micky tries to stop the police from beating his brother and a police officer brutally breaks his hand before arresting him. At their arraignment, Micky is released, but Dicky is sent to jail. Micky washes his hands of Dicky.

On the night of the HBO documentary's airing, Dicky's family, and Dicky himself in prison, are horrified to see that it is called Crack in America and depicts how crack addiction ruined Dicky's career and life. Dicky begins training and trying to get his life together in prison. Micky is lured back into boxing by his father, who believes Alice and his stepson Dicky are bad influences and did more damage to his career than good. The other members of his training team and a new manager, Sal Lanano, persuade Micky to return to boxing with the explicit understanding that his mother and brother will no longer be involved. They place Micky in minor fights to help him regain his confidence. He is then offered another major fight against an undefeated up-and-coming boxer. During a prison visit, Dicky advises Micky on how best to work his opponent, but Micky feels his brother is being selfish and trying to restart his own failed career. During the actual match, Micky is nearly overwhelmed, but then implements his brother's advice and triumphs; he earns the title shot for which his opponent was being groomed.

Upon his release from prison, Dicky and his mother go to see Micky train. Assuming things are as they were, Dicky prepares to spar with his brother, but Micky informs him that he is no longer allowed per Micky's agreement with his current team. In the ensuing argument, in which Micky chastises both factions of his family, Charlene and his trainer leave in disgust. Micky and Dicky spar until Micky knocks Dicky down. Dicky storms off, presumably to get high again, and Alice chides Micky, only to be sobered when he tells her that she has always favored Dicky. Dicky returns to his crack house, where he says goodbye to his friends and heads to Charlene's apartment. He tells her that Micky needs both of them and they need to work together. After bringing everyone back together, the group goes to London for the title fight against welterweight champion Shea Neary. Micky scores another upset victory and the welterweight title. The film jumps a few years ahead, with Dicky crediting his brother as the creator of his own success.

The real-life brothers banter as the end credits run.

Mark Wahlberg as Micky Ward: Wahlberg elected to star in the film due to his friendship with Ward, with whom he shares an inner-city working class Massachusetts upbringing in a family with eight siblings. Wahlberg also was a huge fan of Ward's, calling him a "local sports hero". The actor was also attracted to the film's central theme, an ordinary person in "an against-all-odds story", which he previously explored in Invincible (2006). To mimic Ward's habits and mannerisms, Wahlberg had him "on set, watching me every single day". During pre-production, the Ward brothers temporarily moved into Wahlberg's home. To add to the film's realism, Wahlberg refused a stunt double and took real punches during the fight scenes, which resulted in him nearly getting his nose broken a couple of times. Wahlberg underwent a strict bodybuilding exercise regimen, dedicating over four years of training to obtain a muscular physique to convincingly play Ward. "The last six movies I did I was also secretly preparing for The Fighter at the same time", the actor continued, "so I would leave three hours early for work and go to the gym and spend three hours there. I would bring the trainers with me on every movie that I did." His uncertainty over the film's development was overruled by his persistence to get the film made. "There were certainly times where I would wake up at 4:30 in the morning, you know, my trainer would ring the bell, and, 'Oh God', I'm like, 'I better get this movie made'. You know, 'Kill somebody if I don't get this movie made.'" Wahlberg hired Freddie Roach as his boxing trainer, helping the actor model Ward's specific fighting style. The last two years of Wahlberg's training resulted in the construction of a "dream gym" in his house for daily use, with a personal boxing ring. He received additional boxing preparation from Manny Pacquiao.

Christian Bale as Dick "Dicky" Eklund: After both Brad Pitt and Matt Damon dropped out due to scheduling conflicts, Eminem was talked to and considered for the role of Eklund, but he ultimately wasn't cast due to recording conflicts with his music. Wahlberg suggested Bale for the role after meeting the actor at a preschool their daughters both attended. Given Eklund's drug addiction, Bale had to lose weight, which he found easy as he had lost 63 pounds in 2003 for The Machinist (2004). Bale researched the part by taking notes on Eklund's mannerisms and recording conversations for the character's distinctive Boston accent. Director David O. Russell believed Bale's task involved far more than mimicry. "Dicky has a whole rhythm to him, a music. Christian had to understand how his mind works." Russell and Eklund were both impressed by Bale's dedication to staying in character throughout filming. Bale went on to win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor at the 83rd Academy Awards for his performance.

Amy Adams as Charlene Fleming, Ward's real-life girlfriend and wife: Russell said of the actress: "There are very few things that a director can have at his disposal better than an actress who's dying to break type and is extremely motivated to break type. Amy was extremely motivated to play a sexy bitch, and that's who the character of Charlene is. ... She said: 'As long as it happens between action and cut, I'll do anything." And I said: 'That's my kind of actress.' I loved that she had that attitude." Adams was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at the 83rd Academy Awards.

Melissa Leo as Alice Eklund-Ward, mother of both fighters and their seven siblings, all sisters. Leo won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at the 83rd Academy Awards.

Jack McGee as George Ward, Micky's father.

Frank Renzulli as Sal Lanano

Mickey O'Keefe as himself, a Lowell, Massachusetts police sergeant who was Ward's real-life trainer. O'Keefe, who had never acted, was hesitant at first, but Wahlberg told him he could do it because as a police officer, he has to act and think fast on his feet.

Jenna Lamia as Sherri "The Baby" Ward

Bianca Hunter as Cathy "Pork" Eklund

Erica McDermott as Cindy "Tar" Eklund, one of Mickey and Dickey's sisters

Sugar Ray Leonard as himself, making a cameo appearance as a guest commentator at the Ward/Mungin match

Kate O'Brien as Mickey's sister, Phyllis Eklund

Alison Folland as Laurie Carroll, Micky's ex, who she shares a daughter Kasie

Scout Productions acquired the life rights of boxer Micky Ward and his brother, Dick Eklund, in July 2003. Eric Johnson and Paul Tamasy were also hired to write the screenplay, which was rewritten by Lewis Colick. In an interview with producer Todd Lieberman, he revealed that rapper Eminem fresh off the success of (2002) was originally the first choice for the role of Micky Ward, however Eminem turned the offer down. Matt Damon was also considered for the role of Micky Ward. Mark Wahlberg joined the production in early 2005, with the intention of doing Ward's life story "justice. We don't want to do any over-the-top, unrealistic fight scenes." Paramount Pictures, the United States distributor of the film, hired Paul Attanasio to rewrite Collick's draft in February 2007 in an attempt to emphasize the themes of brotherhood and redemption. Hoping to start production in Massachusetts in June 2007, Wahlberg had Martin Scorsese read the screenplay, hoping he would direct. Scorsese turned down the offer, finding the Massachusetts-setting redundant after having finished The Departed (2006). The actor cited Scorsese's Raging Bull (1980) as an influence for The Fighter, but Scorsese was not interested in directing another boxing film. Darren Aronofsky was hired to direct in March 2007, with Scott Silver rewriting the script in September 2007. Paul Attanasio was also brought in as a script doctor to work on the film prior to shooting.

"I've seen every boxing movie ever made. I'm also a huge fight fan. I fought a little bit when I was younger. Nobody in my opinion, and some of the greatest movies ever made - you talk Raging Bull and I saw 30 times - but the fighting just wasn't as realistic as what we hope to achieve and accomplish in this movie."

Production proceeded with filming set to begin October 2008 and Christian Bale replaced Brad Pitt. By then Aronofsky had dropped out to work on MGM's RoboCop (2014), followed by (2010). Wahlberg and Bale chose David O. Russell as Aronofsky's replacement. Wahlberg had also starred in Russell's Three Kings (1999) and I Heart Huckabees (2004). Aronofsky was given an executive producer credit for his contributions on The Fighter, and was enthusiastic to have Russell as the director. In April 2009, Relativity Media stepped up to entirely finance the film, selling the international distribution rights to the Weinstein Company (TWC) a month later. The Fighter began principal photography on July 13, 2009, on an $11 million budget in a 33-day shooting schedule, which was half the budget that Paramount was working with. The production utilized Massachusetts' film tax credits to cover parts of the film's cost.

Principal photography took place on location in Ward's hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts. Its boxing matches were shot at the Tsongas Center at UMass Lowell, and gym scenes at Arthur Ramalho's West End Gym, one of the real-life facilities where Ward had trained. The boxing-match footage was created "in big, choreographed sections that were taken directly from [video of] Micky's actual fights", said Russell. "And we used the actual commentary from [HBO's] Larry Merchant, Roy Jones Jr., and Jim Lampley." Russell used "[t]he actual cameras from that era. [They were] a sort of Beta [video-format] camera that gave a very certain look, and we actually hired the director from HBO and his crew who had done those fights" to replicate them shot-for-shot.

The film has Ward on a losing streak coming into the 1988 Mike Mungin fight. In reality, Ward was 18-1 and on a four-fight winning streak when he fought Mungin. Ward's four-fight losing streak actually took place in 1990-91.

In the film, Ward is knocked down in round six of the Neary fight. In reality, Ward was not knocked down in that fight.

The film has Ward's career record as 30-7, with 20 KOs, as he fights Neary. In reality, his record at that time was 34-9 with 25 KOs.

The film depicts Ward taking a severe beating in the Mungin fight. In reality, the fight went the full ten rounds and Mungin won by very narrow decision: 96-93, 95-94, 95-94.

In the film, during Ward's fight with Alfonso Sanchez, which took place on April 4, 1997, Ward's entrance song is "The Warrior's Code" by Dropkick Murphys. However, that song was not released until 2005 on their album of the same name.

To promote the film, Wahlberg appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated and Men's Fitness, and Bale on , in November 2010. An advanced charity premiere took place in Lowell, Massachusetts, the setting of The Fighter, on December 9, a day before the film's scheduled national release.

The Fighter was released in a Blu-ray/ DVD/Digital Copy combo pack and standard DVD in the United States on March 15, 2011.

Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives The Fighter a rating of 91% based on reviews from 253 critics, with an average rating of 7.80/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Led by a trio of captivating performances from Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, and Amy Adams, The Fighter is a solidly entertaining, albeit predictable, entry in the boxing drama genre." Metacritic gives the film an average score of 79 out of 100, based on 41 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Sports Illustrated dubbed the film the best sports film of the decade, and "one of the best since Martin Scorsese backlit Robert De Niro's Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull". Richard Corliss of TIME Magazine named Christian Bale's performance one of the Top 10 Movie Performances of 2010, saying "In a little festival of tart, savory performances, notably from Melissa Leo as the boys' mother and Amy Adams as Micky's girlfriend, Bale shines the brightest, because he knows that no character, however depraved his status, is only a monster. He finds beauty in the beast".

The Fighter had grossed $93.6 million in United States & Canada and in other territories it collected $35.5 million, for a worldwide total of $129.1 million; the film made a profit over its $25 million budget.

The film received seven Academy Award nominations, winning two with Best Supporting Actor for Bale and Best Supporting Actress for Leo, marking the first film to win both awards since Hannah and Her Sisters in 1986. The film was nominated for six Golden Globe Awards: Best Picture (Drama), Best Actor (Drama) for Wahlberg, Best Supporting Actress for Leo and Adams, Best Supporting Actor for Bale, and a nomination for Best Director for Russell. The film received three Chicago Film Critics award nominations: Best Supporting Actor for Bale, and Best Supporting Actress nominations for Adams and Leo. Bale won a Satellite Award, the Critics' Choice Award, the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor, and the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actor. Leo won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress.

In 2011, Wahlberg was involved in developing a sequel, The Fighter 2, which would focus on the legendary fight trilogy between Ward and Arturo Gatti. In 2013, Jerry Ferrara signed on to play Gatti. In 2015, producer Todd Lieberman came out with a statement the sequel is far from over.[citation needed ]

1. ^ "THE FIGHTER (15)". British Board of Film Classification. December 21, 2010.

2. DeBruge, Peter. ^ The Fighter (review). Variety, November 10, 2010

3. ^ The Fighter (movie details), Film Journal International "Blue Sheets"

4. ^

5. ^

6. ^

7. ^

8. ^ Lovece, Frank. "Winning Combination: Mark Wahlberg and David O. Russell Champion 'The Fighter'", Film Journal International, December 3, 2010

9. Savard, Rita. ^ "'The Fighter' Comes Home", Lowell Sun, December 10, 2010

10. ^ "Cindy A. Cooper - View Obituary & Service Information". Cindy A. Cooper Obituary.

11. Driscoll, Anne (December 20, 2010). ^ "Did You Spot Conan O'Brien's Sister in The Fighter?". People.

12. ^

13. ^ "Eminem Was the First Choice for Mark Wahlberg's Role in 'The Fighter,' Producer Reveals". The Hollywood Reporter. February 17, 2023.

14. ^ "Paul Attanasio Bio". iMDB.

15. Taylor, Drew (December 2, 2010). "Exclusive: Darren Aronofsky Talks Natalie Portman's Terrors & Metamorphosis' in 'Black Swan'". indieWire. Archived from the original on January 6, 2011.

16. ^

17. ^ Nikki Finke (February 13, 2011). "OSCAR MOGULS: Brad Grey Q&A". www.deadline.com. Now on The Fighter, Paramount was developing it and then pulled out. Relativity comes in and cuts the budget by half.

18. Sackowitz, Karen. ^ "Blood, Sweat, Cheers: Lowell gym helps youths learn boxing, confidence, and it stars in a new movie", The Boston Globe, June 10, 2010. WebCitation archive.

19. ^ The Fighter at Rotten Tomatoes

20. ^ The Fighter at Metacritic

21. ^ Corliss, Richard (December 9, 2010). "The Top 10 Everything of 2010 - Christian Bale as Dickie Eklund in The Fighter". TIME. Archived from the original on December 13, 2010.

22. ^ "Awards for 2010". National Board of Review of Motion Pictures. Archived from the original on June 12, 2010.

23. Tuesday, December 14, 2010 (December 14, 2010). "The 68th Annual Golden Globe Awards NOMINATIONS | OFFICIAL WEBSITE of the HFPA and the GOLDEN GLOBE AWARDS". Goldenglobes.org.

24. ^ Stephen Schaefer. "Surprises amid the 83rd Oscar nominations".

25. ^ "'The King's Speech' leads BAFTA Film Awards with 14 nominations". June 23, 2023.

26. ^ "Critics' Choice Awards".

27. ^ "The 17th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards".

28. ^ Kroll, Justin (October 3, 2013). "Jerry Ferrara to Play Boxer Arturo Gatti in Biopic (EXCLUSIVE)". Variety.

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The Fighter is a 2010 American biographical sports drama film directed by David O. Russell, and stars Mark Wahlberg (who also produced), Christian Bale, Amy Adams, and Melissa Leo. The film centers on the lives of professional boxer Micky Ward (Wahlberg) and his older half-brother and former boxer Dicky Eklund (Bale).

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The King's Speech is a 2010 historical drama film directed by Tom Hooper and written by David Seidler. Colin Firth plays the future King George VI who, to cope with a stammer, sees Lionel Logue, an Australian speech and language therapist played by Geoffrey Rush. The men become friends as they work together, and after his brother abdicates the throne, the new king relies on Logue to help him make his first wartime radio broadcast upon Britain's declaration of war on Germany in 1939.

Seidler read about George VI's life after learning to manage a stuttering condition he developed during his own youth. He started writing about the relationship between the therapist and his royal patient as early as the 1980s, but at the request of the King's widow, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, postponed work until her death in 2002. He later rewrote his screenplay for the stage to focus on the essential relationship between the two protagonists. Nine weeks before filming began, the filmmakers learned of the existence of notes written by Logue that were being used by his grandson Mark and Peter Conradi as the basis of a book, and were granted permission to incorporate material from the notes and book into the script.

Principal photography took place in London and around Britain from November 2009 to January 2010. Hard light was used to give the story a greater resonance and wider-than-normal lenses were employed to recreate the Duke of York's feelings of constriction. A third technique Hooper employed was the off-centre framing of characters.

The King's Speech was a major box office and critical success. It was widely praised by film critics for its visual style, art direction, screenplay, directing, score, and acting. Other commentators discussed the film's representation of historical detail, especially the reversal of Winston Churchill's opposition to abdication. The film received many awards and nominations, particularly for Colin Firth's performance, which resulted in his first Academy Award for Best Actor. At the 83rd Academy Awards, The King's Speech received 12 Oscar nominations, more than any other film in that year, and subsequently won four, including Best Picture. Censors initially gave it adult ratings due to profanity, though these were later revised downwards after criticism by the makers and distributors in the UK and some instances of swearing were muted in the US. On a budget of £8 million, it earned over £250 million internationally.

At the official closing of the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley Stadium, Prince Albert, Duke of York, the second son of King George V, addresses the crowd with a strong stammer. His search for treatment has been discouraging, but his wife, Elizabeth, persuades him to see the Australian-born Lionel Logue, a non-medically trained Harley Street speech defects therapist. "Bertie", as he is called by his family, believes the first session is not going well, but Lionel, who insists that all his patients address him as such, has his potential client recite Hamlet's " To be, or not to be" soliloquy while hearing classical music played on a pair of headphones. Bertie is frustrated at the experiment but Lionel gives him the acetate recording that he has made of the reading as a souvenir. After Bertie's father, King George V, broadcasts his 1934 Royal Christmas Message, he explains to Bertie that the wireless will play a significant part in the role of the royal family, allowing them to enter the homes of the people, and that Bertie's brother's neglect of his responsibilities make training in it necessary. The attempt at reading the message himself is a failure, but that night Bertie plays the recording Lionel gave him and is astonished at the lack of stutter there. He therefore returns for daily treatments to overcome the physical and psychological roots of his speaking difficulty.

George V dies in 1936, and his eldest son David ascends the throne as King Edward VIII. A constitutional crisis arises with the new king over a prospective marriage with the twice-divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson. Edward, as the supreme governor of the Church of England, cannot marry her, even if she receives her second divorce, since both her previous husbands are alive.

At an unscheduled session, Bertie expresses his frustration that, while his speech has improved when speaking to most people, he still stammers when talking to David, at the same time revealing the extent of Edward VIII's folly with Simpson. When Lionel insists that Bertie himself could make a good king, Bertie accuses Lionel of speaking treason and quits Lionel in anger. Bertie must now face the Accession Council without any assistance.

Bertie and Lionel only come together again after King Edward decides to abdicate in order to marry. Bertie, urged ahead by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, ascends the throne as King George VI and visits Lionel's home with his wife before their coronation, much to the surprise of Mrs. Logue when she comes upon Queen Elizabeth having tea at her dining room table. This is the first time that she learns who her husband's patient has been.

Bertie and Lionel's relationship is questioned by the King's advisors during the preparations for his coronation in Westminster Abbey. The archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang, brings to light that George never asked for advice from his advisors about his treatment and that Lionel has never had formal training. Lionel explains to an outraged Bertie that at the time he started with speech defects there were no formal qualifications and that the only known help that was available for returning Great War shell-shocked Australian soldiers was from personal experience. Bertie remains unconvinced until provoked to protest at Lionel's disrespect for King Edward's Chair and the Stone of Scone. Only at this pivotal moment, after realising he has just expressed himself without impairment, is Bertie able to rehearse with Lionel and complete the ceremony.

As the new king, Bertie is in a crisis when he must broadcast to Britain and the Empire following the declaration of war on Nazi Germany in 1939. Lionel is summoned to Buckingham Palace to prepare the king for his speech. Knowing the challenge that lies before him, Lang, Winston Churchill, and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain are present to offer support. The King and Logue are then left in the broadcasting room. He delivers his speech with Logue conducting him, but by the end he is speaking freely. Preparing to leave the room for the congratulations of those present, Logue mentions to the King that he still has difficulty enunciating w and the King jokes back, "I had to throw in a few so they'd know it was me."

As the Royal Family step onto the palace balcony and are applauded by the crowd, a title card explains that Logue, who received the Royal Victorian Order for service to the Crown, was always present at King George VI's speeches during the war and that they remained friends until the King's death from lung cancer in 1952.

Colin Firth and Helena Bonham Carter as the Duke and Duchess of York

As a child, David Seidler developed a stammer, which he believes was caused by the emotional trauma of World War II and the murder of his grandparents during the Holocaust. King George VI's success in overcoming his stammer inspired the young Seidler, "Here was a stutterer who was a king and had to give radio speeches where everyone was listening to every syllable he uttered, and yet did so with passion and intensity." When Seidler became an adult, he resolved to write about King George VI. During the late 1970s and 1980s he voraciously researched the King, but found a dearth of information on Logue. Eventually Seidler contacted Valentine Logue, who agreed to discuss his father and make his notebooks available if the Queen Mother gave her permission. She asked him not to do so in her lifetime, and Seidler halted the project.

The film's producers broke etiquette by hand-delivering Geoffrey Rush the script. Rush eventually produced the film as well as performed in it.[10]

The Queen Mother died in 2002. Three years later, Seidler returned to the story during a bout of creative work inspired by a recovery from cancer. His research, including a chance encounter with an uncle whom Logue had treated, indicated he used mechanical breathing exercises combined with psychological counselling to probe the underlying causes of the condition. Thus prepared, Seidler imagined the sessions. He showed the finished screenplay to his wife, who liked it, but pronounced it too "seduced by cinematic technique". She suggested he rewrite it as a stage play to focus on the essential relationship between the King and Logue. After he had completed it, he sent it to a few friends who worked in theatre in London and New York for feedback.[citation needed ]

In 2005, Joan Lane of Wilde Thyme, a production company in London, received the script. Lane started talking with Simon Egan and Gareth Unwin of Bedlam Productions, and they invited Seidler to London to rewrite the play again, this time for the screen. Together, Lane and Bedlam Productions organised a reading of the play in Pleasance Theatre, a small house in north London, to a group of Australian expatriates, among whom was Tom Hooper's mother. She called her son and said, "I've found your next project".

Instead of trying to contact his agent, Lane asked an Australian staff member to hand-deliver the script to Geoffrey Rush's house, not far away from hers in Melbourne. Unwin reports that he received a four-page e-mail from Rush's manager admonishing them for the breach of etiquette, but ending with an invitation to discuss the project further. Iain Canning from See-Saw Films became involved and, in Gareth Unwin's words: "We worked with ex-chair of BAFTA Richard Price, and started turning this story about two grumpy men sitting in a room into something bigger." Hooper liked the story, but thought that the original ending needed to be changed to reflect events more closely: "Originally, it had a Hollywood ending ... If you hear the real speech, he's clearly coping with his stammer. But it's not a perfect performance. He's managing it."

Colin Firth's performance earned him a BAFTA and an Academy Award, among other accolades

The production team learned - some nine weeks prior to the start of filming - of a diary containing Logue's original notes on his treatment of the Duke, which was in the process of being turned into a non-fiction book by Logue's grandson Mark and journalist Peter Conradi, titled The King's Speech: How One Man Saved the British Monarchy. Striking an agreement with the authors, they then went back and re-worked the script to reflect what was in the notes and the book. Some lines, such as at the climax, when Logue smiles and says, "You still stammered on the W" to the King, who replies, "I had to throw in a few so they would know it was me" were direct quotations from Logue's notes. Changes from the script to reflect the historical record included Michael Gambon improvising the ramblings of George V as he signed away authority, and the decision in the opening scene to dress the Duke in an overcoat rather than regal finery.

Seidler thought Paul Bettany would be a good choice to play King George VI, while Hooper preferred Hugh Grant, though both actors declined the offer. Once they met with Firth and heard him read for the part, Seidler and Hooper were convinced of his suitability for the role.

The UK Film Council awarded the production £1 million in June 2009. Filming began in December 2009, and lasted 39 days. Most was shot in the three weeks before Christmas because Rush would be performing in a play in January. The schedule was further complicated by Bonham Carter's availability: she worked on Harry Potter during the week, so her scenes had to be filmed during the weekend.

The film depicted both regal opulence and scruffy, depression-era London. On 25 November 2009 the crew took over the Pullens buildings in Southwark and gave it the appearance of a street from 1930s London. Large advertisements for (among other things) Bovril and fascism were added to walls, and grit and grime to streets and buildings. To reproduce London smog of the time - thick enough that cars might need guidance from someone walking ahead - so much artificial smoke was used that fire alarms were triggered.

On 26 November, a week's filming with Firth, Rush, and Jacobi began at Ely Cathedral, the location used for Westminster Abbey. The production had asked for permission to film in the Abbey but were denied due to the demands of tourism. Though Lincoln Cathedral is architecturally a closer match to the Abbey, they preferred Ely, a favoured filming location. Its size allowed them to build sets showing not just the coronation, but the preparations before it.

Lancaster House, an opulent government-owned period house in London, was rented (at £20,000 per day) for interior scenes of Buckingham Palace. The 1936 Accession Council at St. James's Palace, where George VI swore an oath, was filmed in the Livery Hall of Drapers' Hall. The room, ornate and vast, met the occasion: the daunting nature of the new King's responsibilities was shown by surrounding him with rich detail, flags and royal portraiture.

The crew investigated Logue's former consultation rooms, but they were too small to film in. Instead, they found a high, vaulted room not far away in 33 Portland Place. Eve Stewart, the production designer, liked the mottled, peeling wallpaper there so much that she recreated the effect throughout the entire room. In his DVD commentary, Hooper said he liked Portland Place as a set because it felt "lived in", unlike other period houses in London. The scenes of the Duke of York at home with his family were also filmed here; showing the Prince living in a townhouse "subverted" expectations of a royal drama.

The Pullens buildings with a 1930s advertisement

The opening scene, set at the closing ceremony of the 1925 British Empire Exhibition at Wembley Stadium, was filmed on location at Elland Road, home of Leeds United, and Odsal Stadium, home of Bradford RLFC. Elland Road was used for the speech elements of the prince stammering his way through his first public address, and Odsal Stadium was selected because of the resemblance of its curved ends to Wembley Stadium in 1925. The crew had access to the stadium only at 10 pm, after a football game. They filled the terraces with inflatable dummies and over 250 extras dressed in period costumes. Live actors were interspersed to give the impression of a crowd. Additional people, as well as more ranks of soldiers on the pitch, were added in post-production with visual effects.

Other locations include Cumberland Lodge, Harley Street, Knebworth, Hatfield House, the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, Queen Street Mill Textile Museum in Burnley, and Battersea Power Station, which doubled as a BBC wireless control room. The final cut of the film was completed on 31 August 2010.

In developing his portrayal of George VI's stammer, Firth worked with Neil Swain, the voice coach for the film. His sister, Kate Firth, also a professional voice coach to actors, proposed exercises the King might have done with Logue, and made suggestions on how to imagine Logue's mix of physical and psychological coaching for the film.[citation needed ]

In addition, Firth watched archive footage of the King speaking. In an interview with Allan Tyrer published by the British Stammering Association, Swain said: "[It] was very interesting while we were working on the film just to think tonally how far we could go and should go with the strength of George's stammer. I think a less courageous director than Tom [Hooper] - and indeed a less courageous actor than Colin [Firth] - might have felt the need to slightly sanitise the degree and authenticity of that stammer, and I'm really really pleased that neither of them did." In May 2011 Firth said he was finding traces of the stammer difficult to eliminate: "You can probably hear even from this interview, there are moments when it's quite infectious. You find yourself doing it and if I start thinking about it the worse it gets. If nothing else it's an insight into what it feels like."

The film's original music is composed by Alexandre Desplat, which consisted of a sparse arrangement of strings and piano. The London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Terry Davies, limited orchestral score by only adding oboe and harp in one cut, to convey the character of the king, while also using single note to represent the stickiness of the King's speech. Old microphones extracted from the EMI archives, specially made for the royal family, had been used to record the score, to create a dated sound.

The use of the 2nd movement (Allegretto) of Beethoven's 7th Symphony, played during the broadcast of the 1939 radio speech from the film's climax, was played as a temp track added by editor Tariq Anwar. Desplat did not want to change the track and defended Anwar's suggestion, as the theme has a universal quality. Hooper further remarked that the stature of the piece helps elevate the status of the speech to a public event. The score album also featured Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Marriage of Figaro overture. The score was nominated for several awards, including Best Original Score at the Oscars, Golden Globes, and BAFTAs, winning the latter award. The score also won a Grammy at the 54th Grammy Awards.

Tom Hooper operating a camera on location at Queen Street Mill Textile Museum, Lancashire

Hooper employed a number of cinematic techniques to evoke the King's feelings of constriction. He and cinematographer Danny Cohen used wider than normal lenses to photograph the film, typically 14mm, 18mm, 21mm, 25mm and 27mm, where the subtle distortion of the picture helps to convey the King's discomfort. For instance, the subjective point of view shot during the Empire exhibition speech used a close up of the microphone with a wider lens, similar to the filming technique used for one of the Duke's early consultations with a physician. In The New York Times, Manohla Dargis wrote that the feeling of entrapment inside the King's head was rendered overly literal with what she believed to be a fisheye lens, though in these scenes the wider lenses were used. Hooper also discussed using the 18mm lens, one he likes "because it puts human beings in their context".

Roger Ebert noted that the majority of the film was shot indoors, where oblong sets, corridors, and small spaces manifest constriction and tightness, in contrast to the usual emphasis on sweep and majesty in historical dramas. Hooper used wide shots to capture the actors' body language, particularly that of Geoffrey Rush, who trained at L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris and "is consequently brilliant in the way he carries his body". Hooper widened his scope first to capture Rush's gestures, then full body movements and silhouettes. The approach carried over to Firth as well. In the first consultation scene, the Duke is squeezed against the end of a long couch framed against a large wall, "as if to use the arm of the sofa as a kind of friend, as a security blanket?" Martin Filler praised the "low-wattage" cinematography of Danny Cohen's, as making everything look like it has been "steeped in strong tea".

At other times, the camera was positioned very close to the actors to catch the emotion in their faces: "If you put a lens 6 inches from somebody's face, you get more emotion than if you're on a long lens 20 feet away," Cohen said in an interview. Hooper sought a second subtlety while filming the first consultation room scene between the two men, having placed the camera 18 inches from Colin Firth's face: "I wanted the nervousness of the first day to percolate into his performances," he said.

Historical dramas traditionally tend to use "soft light", but Hooper wanted to use a harsher glare, which gives a more contemporary feel, and thus a greater emotional resonance. To achieve the effect, the lighting team erected huge blackout tents over the Georgian buildings and used large lights filtered through Egyptian cotton.

Several events in the film did not happen, or were exaggerated. The visual blog Information is Beautiful deduced that, while taking creative licence into account, the film was 74.4% accurate when compared to real-life events, summarising: "Some nips and tucks of the historical record, but mostly an accurate retelling of a unique friendship".

The filmmakers not only tightened the chronology of the events to just a few years but even shifted the timeline of treatment. The Duke of York actually began working with Logue in October 1926, ten years before the abdication crisis, and the improvement in his speech was apparent in months rather than years as suggested by the film. When he was dispatched to Australia to open their new Parliament House in Canberra in 1927, the Duke gave numerous speeches during the journey and performed well despite Logue not accompanying him on the trip. He wrote to Logue from the Caribbean, "You remember my fear of 'The King'. I give it every evening at dinner on board. This does not worry me any more." Of his speech opening Parliament it was observed that he spoke "resonantly and without stuttering".

Robert Logue, a grandson of Lionel, doubted the film's depiction of the speech therapist, stating "I don't think he ever swore in front of the King and he certainly never called him 'Bertie'". Andrew Roberts, an English historian, states that the severity of the King's stammer was exaggerated and the characters of Edward VIII, Wallis Simpson, and George V made more antagonistic than they really were, to increase the dramatic effect.

Christopher Hitchens and Isaac Chotiner have criticised the film for failing to indict the appeasement of the era or to portray Edward VIII's sympathetic attitude to Nazi Germany. The Guardian also corrected the portrayal of Stanley Baldwin as having resigned due to his refusal to order Britain's re-armament, when he in fact stepped down as "a national hero, exhausted by more than a decade at the top". Stanley's grandson, Earl Baldwin, was particularly unhappy with this film due to its factual distortions and portrayal of his grandfather as a dithering fool who misunderstood Hitler's intentions.

Hugo Vickers, an adviser on the film, agreed that the alteration of historical details to preserve the essence of the dramatic story was sometimes necessary. The high-ranking officials, for instance, would not have been present when the King made his speech, nor would Churchill have been involved at any level, "but the average viewer knows who Churchill is; he doesn't know who Lord Halifax and Sir Samuel Hoare are."

Hitchens and Chotiner also challenged the film's portrayal of Winston Churchill's role in the abdication crisis. It is well established that Churchill encouraged Edward VIII to resist pressure to abdicate, whereas he is portrayed in the film as supportive of the Duke of York and not opposed to the abdication. Hitchens attributes this treatment to the "cult" surrounding Churchill's legacy. In a smart, well-made film "would the true story not have been fractionally more interesting for the audience?", he wondered.

Martin Filler acknowledged that the film legitimately used artistic licence to make valid dramatic points, such as in the probably imagined scene when George V lectures his son on the importance of broadcasting. Filler cautions that George VI would never have tolerated Logue addressing him casually, nor swearing, and the King almost certainly would have understood a newsreel of Hitler speaking in German. Filler makes the larger point that both the King and his wife were, in reality, lukewarm towards Churchill because of the latter's support for his brother during the abdication crisis.

Commenting on the film's final scene on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, Andrew Roberts has written, "The scene is fairly absurd from a historical point of view - Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill were not present and there were no cheering crowds outside Buckingham Palace." However, Roberts praises the film overall as a sympathetic portrayal of the King's "quiet, unassuming heroism [...] The portrayals by Firth and Bonham Carter are sympathetic and acute, and the movie's occasional factual bêtises should not detract from that."

The film had its world première on 6 September 2010 at the Telluride Film Festival in the United States. It was screened at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival, on Firth's 50th birthday, where it received a standing ovation and won the People's Choice Award. The cinema release poster was re-designed to show an extreme close-up of Firth's jaw and a microphone after Hooper criticised the first design as a "train smash". Tim Appelo called the original, air-brushed effort, which showed the three leads, "shockingly awful" though the new one "really is worthwhile".

The film was distributed by Transmission Films in Australia and by Momentum Pictures in the United Kingdom. The Weinstein Company distributed it in North America, Germany, Benelux, Scandinavia, China, Hong Kong, and Latin America. The film was released in France on 2 February 2011 by Wild Bunch under the title Le discours d'un roi.

The film was initially given a 15 certificate by the British Board of Film Classification, due to a minute-long scene where Logue encourages the King to swear, which he could do without stuttering. At the London Film Festival, Hooper criticised the decision, questioning how the board could certify the film "15" for bad language but allow films such as (2010) and Casino Royale (2006) to have "12A" ratings, despite their graphic torture scenes. Following Hooper's criticism, the board lowered the rating to "12A", allowing children under 12 years of age to see the film if they are accompanied by an adult. Hooper levelled the same criticism at the Motion Picture Association of America, which gave the film an "R" rating, preventing anyone under the age of 17 from seeing the film without an adult. In his review, Roger Ebert criticised the "R" rating, calling it "utterly inexplicable", and wrote, "This is an excellent film for teenagers."

In January 2011 Harvey Weinstein, the executive producer and distributor, said he was considering having the film re-edited to remove some profanity, so that it would receive a lower classification and reach a larger audience. Hooper refused to cut the film, though he considered covering the swear words with bleeps. Helena Bonham Carter also defended the film, saying, "[The film] is not violent. It's full of humanity and wit. [It's] for people not with just a speech impairment, but who have got confidence [doubts]." After receiving his Academy Award, Colin Firth noted that he does not support re-editing the film; while he does not condone the use of profanity, he maintains that its use was not offensive in this context. "The scene serves a purpose", Firth states. An alternative version, with some of the profanities muted out, was classified as "PG-13" in the United States; this version was released to cinemas on 1 April 2011, replacing the R-rated one. The PG-13 version of this film is not available on DVD and Blu-ray.

In Great Britain and Ireland, the film was the highest earning film on its opening weekend. It took in £3,510,000 from 395 cinemas. The Guardian said that it was one of the biggest takes in recent memory, and compared it to Slumdog Millionaire (2008), which, two years earlier, earned £1.5 million less. The King's Speech continued a "stunning three weeks" atop the UK Box office, and earned over £3 million for four consecutive weekends, the first film to do so since (2010). After five weeks on UK release, it was hailed as the most successful independent British film ever.

In the United States The King's Speech opened with $355,450 (£220,000) in four cinemas. It holds the record for the highest per-cinema gross of 2010. It was widened to 700 screens on Christmas Day and 1,543 screens on 14 January 2011. It eventually made $138 million in North America overall.

In Australia The King's Speech made more than A$6,281,686 (£4 million) in the first two weeks, according to figures collected by the Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia. The executive director of Palace Cinemas, Benjamin Zeccola, said customer feedback on the film was spectacular. "It's our No.1 for all the period, all throughout the country. ... I think this is more successful than Slumdog Millionaire and a more uplifting film. It's a good example of a film that started out in the independent cinemas and then spread to the mainstream cinemas."

Of the film's net profit, estimated to amount to $30-40 million (£20-25 million) from the cinema release alone, roughly 20% was to be split between Geoffrey Rush (as executive producer), Tom Hooper and Colin Firth, who were to receive their bonuses before the other stakeholders. The remaining profit was to be split equally between the producers and the equity investors. The UK Film Council invested £1 million of public funds from the United Kingdom lottery into the film. In March 2011 estimated that the return could be between fifteen and twenty times that. The council's merger into the British Film Institute means that the profits were to be returned to that body.

As the actor of the year in the film of the year, I can't think of enough adjectives to praise Firth properly. The King's Speech has left me speechless.

The King's Speech has received widespread critical acclaim, with Firth's performance receiving universal praise. Bonham Carter and Rush were also widely praised with both going on to win BAFTAs and receiving Academy Award nominations. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 94% based on reviews from 297 critics; the film's average rating was calculated as 8.60/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "Colin Firth gives a masterful performance in The King's Speech, a predictable but stylishly produced and rousing period drama." Metacritic gave the film a weighted score of 88/100, based on 41 critical reviews, which indicates "universal acclaim". CinemaScore reported that audiences gave the film a rare "A+" grade. gave the film five stars out of five, commenting, "You'll be lost for words." Lisa Kennedy of The Denver Post gave the film full marks for its humane qualities and craftsmanship: "It is an intelligent, winning drama fit for a king - and the rest of us", she said. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times awarded the film a full four stars, commenting that "what we have here is a superior historical drama and a powerful personal one." Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave four stars out of five, stating, "Tom Hooper's richly enjoyable and handsomely produced movie ... is a massively confident crowd-pleaser."

Manohla Dargis, whilst generally ambivalent towards the film, called the lead performances one of its principal attractions. "With their volume turned up, the appealing, impeccably professional Mr. Firth and Mr. Rush rise to the acting occasion by twinkling and growling as their characters warily circle each other before settling into the therapeutic swing of things and unknowingly preparing for the big speech that partly gives the film its title," she wrote. The Daily Telegraph called Guy Pearce's performance as Edward VIII "formidable ... with glamour, charisma and utter self-absorption". Empire said he played the role well as "a flash harry flinty enough to shed a nation for a wife." The New York Times thought he was able to create "a thorny tangle of complications in only a few abbreviated scenes". Hooper praised the actor in the DVD commentary, saying he "nailed" the 1930s royal accent. Richard Corliss of magazine named Colin Firth's performance one of the Top 10 Movie Performances of 2010.

Allociné, a French cinema website, gave the film an average of four out of five stars, based on a survey of 21 reviews. , which characterised the film as the "latest manifestation of British narcissism" and summarised it as "We are ugly and boring, but, By Jove!, we are right!", nevertheless admired the performances of Firth, Rush, and Bonham Carter. It said that, though the film swept British appeasement under the carpet, it was still enjoyable.

Slovenian Marxist philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek has incorporated the film into his critique of ideology by describing it as " reactionary," interpreting the king's stutter as evidence that he "displays a minimum of common sense, experiencing the stupidity of seriously accepting that one is king by divine will" and claiming that "the task of the Australian voice-coach is to render him stupid enough to accept his being a king as his natural property." Žižek thus interprets the king's stutter as a case of what is referred to in Lacanian psychoanalysis as " symbolic castration."

Queen Elizabeth II, the daughter and successor of King George VI, was sent two copies of the film before Christmas 2010. newspaper reported she had watched the film in a private screening at Sandringham House. A palace source described her reaction as being "touched by a moving portrayal of her father". Seidler called the reports "the highest honour" the film could receive.

The British Stammering Association welcomed the release of The King's Speech, congratulating the film makers on their "realistic depiction of the frustration and the fear of speaking faced by people who stammer on a daily basis." It said that "Colin Firth's portrayal of the King's stammer in particular strikes us as very authentic and accurate." The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists welcomed the film, and launched their "Giving Voice" campaign around the time of its commercial release.

Disfluency advocate Jonah Lehrer called the film "an inspiring tale" and praised its portrayal of the troubles suffered by Firth's character. However, Lehrer and other advocates criticized the film's depiction of stuttering as a result of emotional repression and childhood trauma. The treatment performed by Rush's character also drew criticism. Lehrer did admit it was a necessary artistic license: "[the film] would have been a rather tedious piece of entertainment if the climactic scene involved Logue telling the monarch that his primary motor cortex was to blame."

Science journalist Jeremy Hsu wrote that the film "mainly succeeds by tackling the social stigma that surrounds stuttering." However, similar to Lehrer, he disapproved that it perpetuated myths about the condition, namely its relationship with childhood trauma and overly strict parenting.

Columnist Jane Ahlin praised the film as it "brings out of the shadows a common problem figuring into the lives of children and adults from every culture around the world." At the same time, she stated, "heartwarming though the movie The King's Speech is, as someone who married a stutterer and is the mother of a stutterer, I'm not sure it does anything to put myths about stuttering to rest." She criticized the depiction of family and social dynamics as causes of the condition, as well as the portrayal of stutterering as connected to emotional or psychological problems.

Hooper and Firth in January 2011; each received multiple award nominations for their work

At the 83rd Academy Awards, The King's Speech won the Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Director (Hooper), Best Actor (Firth), and Best Original Screenplay (Seidler). The film had received 12 Oscar nominations, more than any other film in that year. Besides the four categories it won, the film received nominations for Best Cinematography (Danny Cohen) and two for the supporting actors (Bonham Carter and Rush), as well as two for its mise-en-scène: Art Direction and Costumes.

At the 64th British Academy Film Awards, it won seven awards, including Best Film, Outstanding British Film, Best Actor for Firth, Best Supporting Actor for Rush, Best Supporting Actress for Bonham Carter, Best Original Screenplay for Seidler, and Best Music for Alexandre Desplat. The film had been nominated for 14 BAFTAs, more than any other film. At the 68th Golden Globe Awards, Firth won for Best Actor. The film won no other Golden Globes, despite earning seven nominations, more than any other film.

At the 17th Screen Actors Guild Awards, Firth won the Best Actor award and the entire cast won Best Ensemble, meaning Firth went home with two acting awards in one evening. Hooper won the Directors Guild of America Awards 2010 for Best Director. The film won the Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Best Theatrical Motion Picture at the Producers Guild of America Awards 2010.

The King's Speech won the People's Choice Award at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival, Best British Independent Film at the 2010 British Independent Film Awards, and the 2011 Goya Award for Best European Film from the Academia de las Artes y las Ciencias Cinematográficas de España (Spanish Academy of Cinematic Art and Science).

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The King's Speech is a 2010 historical drama film directed by Tom Hooper and written by David Seidler. Colin Firth plays the future King George VI who, to cope with a stammer, sees Lionel Logue, an Australian speech and language therapist played by Geoffrey Rush.

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The Departed is a 2006 American epic crime thriller film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by William Monahan. It is both a remake of the 2002 Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs and also loosely based on the real-life Boston Winter Hill Gang; the character Colin Sullivan is based on the corrupt FBI agent John Connolly, while the character Frank Costello is based on Irish-American gangster and crime boss Whitey Bulger. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, and Mark Wahlberg, with Martin Sheen, Ray Winstone, Vera Farmiga, Alec Baldwin, Anthony Anderson and James Badge Dale in supporting roles.

The film takes place in Boston and the surrounding metro area, primarily in the South Boston neighborhood. Irish Mob boss Frank Costello (Nicholson) plants Colin Sullivan (Damon) as a spy within the Massachusetts State Police; simultaneously, the police assign undercover state trooper Billy Costigan (DiCaprio) to infiltrate Costello's mob crew. When both sides realize the situation, Sullivan and Costigan each attempt to discover the other's identity before they are found out.

The Departed was a critical and commercial success, receiving acclaim for its direction, performances (particularly of DiCaprio, Nicholson, and Wahlberg), screenplay, and editing. It won several accolades, including four Oscars at the 79th Academy Awards: for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Film Editing. It remains Scorsese's only personal Oscar win. The film also received six nominations each at the 64th Golden Globe Awards and the 60th British Academy Film Awards, and two nominations at the 13th Screen Actors Guild Awards.

In the 1980s in Boston, Irish Mob boss Frank Costello introduces himself to a young Colin Sullivan.

Many years later, Sullivan has been groomed as a spy inside the Massachusetts State Police (MSP) and joins the Special Investigation Unit (SIU). Another police academy recruit, Billy Costigan, is selected by Captain Queenan and Sergeant Dignam to go undercover as a criminal.

Costigan serves a term in prison to set up his cover and further commits a series of crimes. Sullivan begins dating Madolyn Madden, a psychiatrist. Costigan draws the attention of Costello, who later recruits Costigan into his organization. Over the next year, Costigan becomes increasingly involved in the organization. His mental state declines but Queenan and Dignam convince him to continue. Costigan begins having appointments with Madolyn.

The MSP and Costello realize there is a mole in their respective organizations and task Costigan and Sullivan to find them. Meanwhile, Costigan learns that Costello is a protected FBI informant. Costigan shares his discovery with Queenan. Costigan and Madolyn have an affair.

One night, Costigan follows Costello into an adult theater and witnesses him giving Sullivan an envelope containing information of his crew. Costigan is instructed to get a visual ID of Sullivan but he is unable to get a good look at his face. When Sullivan realizes that he is being followed, he accidentally stabs a man and flees. Queenan advises Sullivan to follow Costello to find the MSP mole. Costigan calls Queenan and sets up a meeting to end the undercover operation, but Sullivan has Queenan followed, lying to the other officers that Queenan may be the spy. Sullivan also calls in Costello's gang to the meeting location.

When Costello's men arrive, Queenan helps Costigan escape before being thrown from the building to his death. This causes a firefight between police and Costello's men. Angered by Queenan's murder, Dignam attacks Sullivan and is suspended. Timothy Delahunt, one of Costello's henchmen who was wounded in the gunfight, tells Costigan that he knows he is the rat before he succumbs to his wounds. Sullivan looks through Queenan's belongings and learns that Costello is an FBI informant after reading Queenan's notebook. A news report reveals that Delahunt was an undercover officer for the Boston Police Department, but Costello suspects the police department made up the claim so he would stop looking for the mole. Deciding to turn on him, Sullivan directs the MSP to tail Costello, and a gunfight erupts, killing most of Costello's crew. Sullivan confronts a wounded Costello, who admits to being an FBI informant. They exchange gunfire, and Sullivan kills him.

His assignment finished, Costigan goes to Sullivan to reveal his undercover status, still unaware of the other's true identity. After Sullivan goes to another room, Costigan notices the same envelope from the theater on his desk. Costigan realize that Sullivan was Costello's mole, and escapes. Shortly after, Sullivan returns to find Costigan gone, and realizes that he now knows his true identity. He deletes Costigan's records from police computers. Costigan visits Madolyn, who has revealed that she's pregnant to Sullivan but not to Costigan knowing that Sullivan may not be the father, and hands her an envelope, instructing her to open it if something happens to him. She receives a envelope in the mail from Costigan. Inside is a CD of Costello's recorded conversations with Sullivan. Scared that Costigan has revealed their affair, she listens to the taped conversations and leaves Sullivan. Costigan arranges to meet Sullivan on the rooftop of the building, where Queenan was killed, then arrests him. Costigan calls Trooper Brown, an acquaintance from the police academy, but Brown pulls a gun on Costigan when he arrives, unsure who is telling the truth.

Costigan says that he has evidence tying Sullivan to Costello, and Brown lets him go down the elevator. Upon reaching the lobby, Costigan and Brown are killed by Trooper Barrigan, a friend of Sullivan's who reveals himself to be another spy working for Costello. Sullivan shoots Barrigan dead, allowing him to out Barrigan as the mole while removing suspicion from himself.

At Costigan's funeral, Sullivan and Madolyn stand by his grave. As Madolyn silently cries, Sullivan realizes that they were involved. He attempts to talk to her, but she ignores him. When Sullivan arrives home, Dignam is waiting for him inside and shoots him in the head before he leaves.

Martin Scorsese, the director of the film, in 2010

In January 2003, Warner Bros., producer Brad Grey, and actor/producer Brad Pitt bought the rights to remake the Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs (2002) from Media Asia for $1.75 million. William Monahan was secured as a screenwriter, and later Martin Scorsese, who admired Monahan's script, came on board as director.

In March 2004, United Press International announced that Scorsese would be remaking Infernal Affairs and setting it in Boston, and that Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt were slated to star. Pitt, tentatively scheduled to play Sullivan, later declined to play the role, saying a younger actor should play the part; he decided to produce the film instead. Scorsese's associate Kenneth Lonergan suggested Matt Damon, who grew up in Boston, for the part of Sullivan, and Scorsese asked Jack Nicholson to play Costello. Robert De Niro was approached to play Queenan, but De Niro declined in order to direct The Good Shepherd instead. Scorsese would later say that De Niro turned down the role as he was not interested. Ray Liotta was approached for a role in the film, but declined due to a commitment to another project.

Nicholson wanted the film to have "something a little more" than the usual gangster film, and screenwriter Monahan came up with the idea of basing the Costello character on Irish-American gangster Whitey Bulger. This gave the screenplay an element of realism-and an element of dangerous uncertainty, because of the wide-ranging carte blanche the FBI gave Bulger in exchange for revealing information about fellow gangsters. A technical consultant on the film was Tom Duffy, who had served three decades on the Boston Police Department, particularly as an undercover detective investigating the Irish mob.

The Departed was officially greenlit by Warner Bros. in early 2005 and began shooting in the spring of 2005. Some of the film was shot on location in Boston. For budgetary and logistical reasons many scenes, in particular interiors, were shot in locations and sets in New York City, which had tax incentives for filmmakers that Boston at the time did not.

Film critic Stanley Kauffmann said that for The Departed, Scorsese "was apparently concerned with the idea of identity, one of the ancient themes of drama, and how it affects one's actions, emotions, self-knowledge, even dreams." Kauffmann, however, did not find the theme conveyed with particular effectiveness in the film. Film critic Roger Ebert compared Costigan and Sullivan's seeking of approval from those they are deceiving to Stockholm syndrome. Ebert also noted the themes of Catholic guilt.

In the final scene, a rat is seen on Sullivan's window ledge. Scorsese acknowledges that while it is not meant to be taken literally, it somewhat symbolizes the "quest for the rat" in the film and the strong sense of distrust among the characters, much like post- 9/11 U.S. The window view behind the rat is a nod to gangster films like Little Caesar (1931), (1932), and (1949). The film's penultimate scene at Costigan's funeral, when Madolyn walks straight past Sullivan and out of camera without looking at him, is a visual quotation of the famous closing scene from The Third Man.

Throughout the film, Scorsese uses an "X" motif to foreshadow death in a manner similar to Howard Hawks' film (1932). Examples include shots of cross-beam supports in an airport walkway when Costigan is phoning Sgt. Dignam, the lighted "X" on the wall in Sullivan's office when he assures Costello over the phone that Costigan is not the rat, the taped windows of the building Queenan enters before being thrown to his death, behind Costigan's head in the elevator before he is shot, and the carpeted hallway floor when Sullivan returns to his apartment before being shot by Dignam at the film's end.

The Departed grossed $132.4 million in the United States and Canada and $159 million in other territories for a total gross of $291.5 million, against a production budget of $90 million.

The film grossed $26.9 million in its opening weekend, becoming the fourth Scorsese film to debut at number one. In the following three weeks the film grossed $19 million, $13.5 million and $9.8 million, finishing second at the box office each time, before grossing $7.7 million and dropping to 5th in its fifth week.

As per the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 91% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 287 reviews, with an average rating of 8.30 out of 10. The site's critics consensus reads, "Featuring outstanding work from an excellent cast, The Departed is a thoroughly engrossing gangster drama with the gritty authenticity and soupy morality we have come to expect from Martin Scorsese." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 85 out of 100, with 92% positive reviews based on 39 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.

Entertainment Weekly ranked it on its end-of-the-decade "Best of" list, saying: "If they're lucky, directors make one classic film in their career. Martin Scorsese has one per decade (Taxi Driver in the '70s, Raging Bull in the '80s, Goodfellas in the '90s). His 2006 Irish Mafia masterpiece kept the streak alive."

Roger Ebert gave the film four stars out of four, praising Scorsese for thematically differentiating his film from the original. Online critic James Berardinelli awarded the film four stars out of four, praising it as "an American epic tragedy." He went on to claim that the film deserves to be ranked alongside Scorsese's past successes, including Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas.

Andrew Lau, the co-director of Infernal Affairs, who was interviewed by Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily, said: "Of course I think the version I made is better, but the Hollywood version is pretty good too. [Scorsese] made the Hollywood version more attuned to American culture." Andy Lau,one of the main actors in Infernal Affairs, when asked how the movie compares to the original, said: " The Departed was too long and it felt as if Hollywood had combined all three Infernal Affairs movies together." Although Lau said the script of the remake had some "golden quotes", he also felt it had a bit too much profanity. He ultimately rated The Departed eight out of ten and said that the Hollywood remake is worth a view, though according to Lau's spokeswoman Alice Tam, he felt that the combination of the two female characters into one in The Departed was not as good as the original storyline.

A few critics were disappointed in the film, including J. Hoberman of the Village Voice, who wrote: " Infernal Affairs was surprisingly cool and effectively restrained for HK action, but Scorsese raises the temperature with every ultraviolent interaction. The surplus of belligerence and slur reach near- Tarantinian levels-appropriate as he's staking a claim to QT's turf."

The film appeared on many critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2006. Carrie Rickey of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal, Ruthe Stein of the San Francisco Chronicle, and Steven Rea of The Philadelphia Inquirer named it one of the top ten films of 2006. Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times named it the best film of the 2000s.

1st - Richard Roeper, Ebert and Roeper

1st - Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

1st - Rene Rodriguez, The Miami Herald

1st - Scott Tobias, The A.V. Club

1st - Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York

1st - Philip Martin, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

1st - James Berardinelli, ReelViews

2nd - Chris Kaltenbach, The Baltimore Sun

2nd - Adam Kempenaar, Filmspotting

2nd - Keith Phipps, The A.V. Club

2nd - Mike Russell, The Oregonian

2nd - Richard James Havis, The Hollywood Reporter

3rd - Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter

4th - Glenn Kenny, Premiere

4th - Marc Savlov, The Austin Chronicle

4th - Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune

4th - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

5th - Empire

5th - Kevin Crust, Los Angeles Times

5th - Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly

5th - Stephen Hunter, The Washington Post

6th - Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post

6th - Jack Mathews, Daily News

6th - Nathan Rabin, The A.V. Club

6th - Ty Burr, The Boston Globe

7th - Nathan Lee, The Village Voice

7th - Noel Murray, The A.V. Club

7th - Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle

8th - Michael Sragow, The Baltimore Sun

9th - Claudia Puig, USA Today

9th - Desson Thomson, The Washington Post

9th - Michael Rechtshaffen, The Hollywood Reporter

At the 64th Golden Globe Awards on January 15, 2007, The Departed won one award for Best Director ( Martin Scorsese), while being nominated for five other awards including Best Picture, Best Actor ( Leonardo DiCaprio), Best Supporting Actor ( Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg), and Best Screenplay ( William Monahan).

At the 79th Academy Awards on February 25, 2007, The Departed won four Academy Awards: Best Picture ( Graham King), Best Director (Martin Scorsese), Best Film Editing ( Thelma Schoonmaker), and Best Adapted Screenplay Writing (William Monahan). Mark Wahlberg was also nominated for the Best Supporting Actor award for his performance, but he lost to Alan Arkin for his role in Little Miss Sunshine.

The film marked the first time Scorsese won an Oscar after five previous losses. Many felt that he deserved it years earlier for prior efforts. Some felt he deserved it for his prior nominations and the win was described as a "Lifetime Achievement Award for a lesser film". Scorsese himself joked that he won because: "This is the first movie I've done with a plot."

At the 11th Satellite Awards on December 18, 2006, The Departed won awards for Best Ensemble, Motion Picture, Best Motion Picture, Drama, Best Screenplay - Adapted (William Monahan), and Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Leonardo DiCaprio). In 2008, it was nominated for the American Film Institute Top 10 Gangster Films list.

The Departed was released by Warner Home Video on DVD in 2007. The film is available in a single-disc full screen (1.33:1), single-disc widescreen (2.39:1) edition, and 2-disc special edition. The second disc contains deleted scenes; a feature about the influence of New York's Little Italy on Scorsese; a Turner Classic Movies profile; and a 21-minute documentary titled Stranger Than Fiction: The True Story of Whitey Bulger, Southie and The Departed about the crimes that influenced Scorsese in creating the film, including the story of James "Whitey" Bulger, upon whom Jack Nicholson's character is based. The film will be released on Ultra HD Blu-ray on April 23, 2024.

The film score for The Departed was written by Howard Shore and performed by guitarists Sharon Isbin, G. E. Smith, Larry Saltzman and Marc Ribot. The score was recorded in Shore's own studio in New York State. The album, The Departed: Original Score, was released December 5, 2006 by New Line, and produced by Jason Cienkus.

Scorsese described the music as "a very dangerous and lethal tango" and cited the guitar-based score of Murder by Contract and the zither in The Third Man as inspiration.

Although many of the key characters in the film are dead by the end, there was a script written for a sequel. This was ultimately shelved due to the expense and Scorsese's lack of interest in creating a sequel.

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The Departed is a 2006 American epic crime thriller film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by William Monahan. It is both a remake of the 2002 Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs and also loosely based on the real-life Boston Winter Hill Gang; the character Colin Sullivan is based on the corrupt FBI agent John Connolly, while the character Frank Costello is based on Irish-American gangster and crime boss Whitey Bulger.

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Midnight in Paris is a 2011 fantasy comedy film written and directed by Woody Allen. Set in Paris, the film follows Gil Pender ( Owen Wilson), a screenwriter, who is forced to confront the shortcomings of his relationship with his materialistic fiancée ( Rachel McAdams) and their divergent goals, which become increasingly exaggerated as he travels back in time each night at midnight.

Produced by the Spanish group Mediapro and Allen's US-based Gravier Productions, the film stars Wilson, McAdams, Kathy Bates, Adrien Brody, Carla Bruni, Tom Hiddleston, Marion Cotillard, and Michael Sheen. It premiered at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and was released in the United States on May 20, 2011. The film opened to critical acclaim and is considered one of Allen's best films in recent years. In 2012, it won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and the Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay. It was nominated for three other Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director and Best Art Direction.

In 2010, Gil Pender, a successful but disillusioned Hollywood screenwriter, and his fiancée Inez are in Paris vacationing with Inez's wealthy, Republican parents. Gil is struggling to finish his debut novel, focusing on a man who works in a nostalgia shop. Inez dismisses his ambitions as a delusional dream and encourages him to stick with lucrative screenwriting. By chance, they meet Inez's friend Paul, who is described as both pedantic and a pseudo-intellectual, and his wife Carol. Paul speaks with great authority but questionable accuracy on the highlights of Paris, even contradicting a tour guide at the Musée Rodin, where he insists his knowledge of Rodin's relationships is more accurate than the guide's. Gil finds him annoying, yet Inez adores him.

A night of wine tasting gets Gil drunk, and he decides to walk the streets of Paris to return to the hotel; Inez goes off with Paul and Carol by taxi. Gil stops to get his bearings, and at midnight, a 1920s car pulls up beside him. The passengers, dressed in 1920s wardrobe, urge him to join them. They hit a party for Jean Cocteau attended by notable people of 1920s Paris: Cole Porter, his wife Linda Lee Porter, and Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald. Zelda gets bored and encourages Scott and Gil to leave with her. They first head to Bricktops, where they see Josephine Baker dancing, and then to a cafe where they run into Ernest Hemingway and Juan Belmonte. Zelda gets upset when Hemingway says her novel is weak, so she heads with Belmonte to St. Germain, followed by Scott, who doesn't like his wife with the matador. After discussing writing, Hemingway offers to show Gil's novel to Gertrude Stein. But as Gil exits the building to fetch his manuscript from his hotel, he returns to 2010: the bar with the 1920s literati is now a laundromat.

The next night, Gil wants to share with Inez his time-travel experience. But she ditches Gil before the clock strikes midnight. When it does, the same car returns; Gil joins Hemingway on his way to visit a friend. Gil is introduced to Gertrude Stein and other friends- Pablo Picasso and his lover Adriana-at her apartment. Adriana and Gil are instantly attracted to each other. Stein reads aloud the novel's first line:

'Out of the Past' was the name of the store, and its products consisted of memories: what was prosaic and even vulgar to one generation had been transmuted by the mere passing of years to a status at once magical and also camp.

Adriana says that she is hooked and that she has always had a longing for the past, especially the Belle Époque.

Gil continues his time travel for the next couple of nights. Inez is unimpressed with the boulevards and bistros and Gil's disappearing, while her father is suspicious and hires a private detective to follow him. Adriana has her time with Picasso and Hemingway, and eventually Gil, although he is conflicted by his attraction to her. Gil explains his inner conflict to Salvador Dalí, Man Ray, and Luis Buñuel, but as surrealists, they find his claim about coming from the future normal. Gil later suggests the plot of the film The Exterminating Angel to Buñuel, which he doesn't understand.

Inez and her parents are traveling to Mont Saint Michel while Gil meets Gabrielle, an antique dealer and fellow admirer of the Lost Generation. He buys a Cole Porter gramophone record from her and later finds at a book stall by the Seine Adriana's diary from the 1920s, which reveals that she was in love with him. Reading that she dreamed of receiving a gift of earrings from him and then making love to him, Gil tries to steal a pair of Inez's earrings to give to Adriana, but is thwarted by Inez's early return to the hotel room. So, Gil buys earrings for Adriana.

Returning to the past, he finds her at a party and tells her, "I sense there are some complicated feelings you have for me." He takes her for a walk, they kiss, and he gives her the earrings. While she's putting them on, a horse-drawn carriage comes down the street, and a richly dressed couple inside the carriage invite Gil and Adriana for a ride. The carriage transports the passengers to the Belle Époque, an era Adriana considers Paris's Golden Age. Gil and Adriana go first to Maxim's Paris, then to the Moulin Rouge where they meet Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Gauguin, and Edgar Degas. Gil asks what they thought the best era was, and the three agree it is the Renaissance. The excited Adriana is offered a job designing ballet costumes and proposes to Gil that they stay, but Gil, upon observing that different people long for different "golden ages," realizes that despite the allure of nostalgia, any time can eventually become a dull present, so it's best to embrace your actual present. Adriana, however, decides to stay in the 1890s, and they part ways.

Gil rewrites the first two chapters of his novel and retrieves his draft from Stein, who praises his progress as a writer and tells him that Hemingway likes it but questions why the main character has not realized that his fiancée (based on Inez) is having an affair with the pedantic character (based on Paul).

Gil returns to 2010 and challenges Inez. She admits to having slept with Paul, but disregards it as a meaningless fling. Gil breaks up with her and decides to move to Paris. Amid Inez's pique, Gil calmly leaves, after which Inez's father tells her and her mother that he had Gil followed, though the detective has mysteriously disappeared. It is revealed that the detective found himself in the Versailles of Louis XIV and is last seen fleeing from the palace guards amid threats of "Off with his head!"

Walking by the Seine at midnight, Gil bumps into Gabrielle; he offers to walk her home after it starts to rain. They learn that they share the love of Paris in the rain.

Main Cast

Owen is a natural actor. He doesn't sound like he's acting, he sounds like a human being speaking in a situation, and that's very appealing to me. He's got a wonderful funny bone, a wonderful comic instinct that's quite unlike my own, but wonderful of its kind. He's a blond Texan kind of Everyman's hero, the kind of hero of the regiment in the old war pictures, with a great flair for being amusing. It's a rare combination and I thought he'd be great.

-Woody Allen, in production notes about the film

This is the second time McAdams and Wilson co-starred as a couple; they did so before in 2005's Wedding Crashers. In comparing the two roles, McAdams describes the one in Midnight in Paris as being far more antagonistic than the role in Wedding Crashers. Allen had high praises for her performance and that of co-star Marion Cotillard. Cotillard was cast as Wilson's other love interest, the charismatic Adriana.

Carla Bruni, singer-songwriter and wife of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, was recruited by Allen for a role as a museum guide. There were false reports that Allen re-filmed Bruni's scenes with Léa Seydoux, but Seydoux rebuffed these rumors revealing she had an entirely separate role in the film. Allen also shot down reports that a scene with Bruni required over 30 takes: "I am appalled. I read these things and I could not believe my eyes ... These are not exaggerations, but inventions from scratch. There is absolutely no truth." He continued to describe Bruni as "very professional" and insisted he was pleased with her scenes, stating that "every frame will appear in the film."

Allen employed a reverse approach in writing the screenplay for this film, by building the film's plot around a conceived movie title, 'Midnight in Paris'. The time-travel portions of Allen's storyline are evocative of the Paris of the 1920s described in Ernest Hemingway's 1964 posthumously published memoir A Moveable Feast, with Allen's characters interacting with the likes of Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, and uses the phrase "a moveable feast" in two instances, with a copy of the book appearing in one scene. Allen originally wrote the character Gil as an East Coast intellectual, but he rethought it when he and casting director Juliet Taylor began considering Owen Wilson for the role. "I thought Owen would be charming and funny but my fear was that he was not so Eastern at all in his persona," says Allen. Allen realized that making Gil a Californian would actually make the character richer, so he rewrote the part and submitted it to Wilson, who readily agreed to do it. Allen describes him as "a natural actor". The set-up has certain plot points in common with the 1990s British sitcom Goodnight Sweetheart, and the 2021 film Last Night In Soho.

Principal photography began in Paris in July 2010. Allen states that the fundamental aesthetic for the camera work was to give the film a warm ambience. He describes that he likes it (the cinematography), "intensely red, intensely warm, because if you go to a restaurant and you're there with your wife or your girlfriend, and it's got red-flecked wallpaper and turn-of-the-century lights, you both look beautiful. Whereas if you're in a seafood restaurant and the lights are up, everybody looks terrible. So it looks nice. It's very flattering and very lovely." To achieve this he and his cinematographer, Darius Khondji, used primarily warm colors in the film's photography, filmed in flatter weather and employed limited camera movements, in attempts to draw little attention to itself. This is the first Woody Allen film to go through a digital intermediate, instead of being color timed in the traditional photochemical way. According to Allen, its use here is a test to see if he likes it enough to use on his future films.

Allen's directorial style placed more emphasis on the romantic and realistic elements of the film than the fantasy elements. He states that he "was interested only in this romantic tale, and anything that contributed to it that was fairytale was right for me. I didn't want to get into it. I only wanted to get into what bore down on his (Owen Wilson's) relationship with Marion."

The film opens with a -minute postcard-view montage of Paris, showing some of the iconic tourist sites. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times describes the montage as a stylistic approach that lasts longer than necessary to simply establish location. According to Turan, "Allen is saying: Pay attention - this is a special place, a place where magic can happen." Midnight in Paris is the first Woody Allen film shot entirely on location in Paris, though both Love and Death (1975) and Everyone Says I Love You (1996)[unreliable source ][unreliable source ] were partially filmed there.

Filming locations include Giverny, John XXIII Square (near Notre Dame), Montmartre, Deyrolle, the Palace of Versailles, the Opéra, Pont Alexandre III, the Sacré-Cœur, the Île de la Cité itself, and streets near the Panthéon.

The Sony Classics team decided to take a lemon and make lemonade. They obtained a list of reporters who were invited to the junket and sent them press notes from Midnight in Paris, encouraging them to ask Wilson questions about the Allen film during the Pixar media day. Wilson happily complied, answering queries about his character in Paris that provided material for a host of stories. Sony Classics also got a hold of Wilson's schedule of TV appearances to promote Cars 2 on shows like Late Show with David Letterman, then bought ad time for Paris spots on the nights when Wilson was a guest.

-Patrick Goldstein, Los Angeles Times

The film is co-produced by Allen's Gravier Productions and the Catalan company Mediapro and was picked up by Sony Pictures Classics for distribution. It is the fourth film the two companies have co-produced, the others being Sweet and Lowdown, Whatever Works and You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger.

In promoting the film, Allen was willing to do only a limited amount of publicity at its Cannes Film Festival debut in May. Wilson was already committed to promoting Pixar's , which opened in late June, several weeks after Allen's film arrived in cinemas. Due to these challenges and the relatively small ($10 million) budget for promotion, Sony Classics had to perform careful media buying and press relations to promote the film.

The film's poster is a reference to Vincent van Gogh's 1889 painting The Starry Night.

The film made its debut at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday May 11, when it opened the festival as a first screening for both professionals and the public; it was released nationwide in France that same day, Wednesday being the traditional day of change in French cinemas. It went on limited release in six theaters in the United States on May 20 and took $599,003 in the first weekend, spreading to 944 cinemas three weeks later, when it went on wide release.

Midnight in Paris achieved the highest gross of any of Allen's films in North America, before adjusting for inflation. The film earned $56.3 million in North America, overtaking his previous best, Hannah and Her Sisters, at $40 million. Documents from the Sony Pictures hack revealed the film turned a profit of $24 million.

As of 2016, Midnight in Paris is the highest-grossing film directed by Woody Allen, with $151 million worldwide on a $17 million budget.

Midnight in Paris received critical acclaim. On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 93%, based on 224 reviews, with an average rating of 7.81/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "It may not boast the depth of his classic films, but the sweetly sentimental Midnight in Paris is funny and charming enough to satisfy Woody Allen fans." The film has received Allen's best reviews and score on the site since 1994's Bullets Over Broadway. On Metacritic, the film has a score of 81 out of 100, based on 40 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".

The film received some generally positive reviews after its premiere at the 64th Cannes Film Festival. Todd McCarthy from The Hollywood Reporter praised Darius Khondji's cinematography and claimed the film "has the concision and snappy pace of Allen's best work".

A. O. Scott of The New York Times commented on Owen Wilson's success at playing the Woody Allen persona. He states that the film is marvelously romantic and credibly blends "whimsy and wisdom". He praised Khondji's cinematography, the supporting cast and remarked that it is a memorable film and that "Mr. Allen has often said that he does not want or expect his own work to survive, but as modest and lighthearted as Midnight in Paris is, it suggests otherwise: Not an ambition toward immortality so much as a willingness to leave something behind-a bit of memorabilia, or art, if you like that word better-that catches the attention and solicits the admiration of lonely wanderers in some future time."

This is Woody Allen's 41st film. He writes his films himself, and directs them with wit and grace. I consider him a treasure of the cinema. Some people take him for granted, although Midnight in Paris reportedly charmed even the jaded veterans of the Cannes press screenings. There is nothing to dislike about it. Either you connect with it or not. I'm wearying of movies that are for "everybody" - which means, nobody in particular. Midnight in Paris is for me, in particular, and that's just fine with moi.

Richard Roeper, an American film critic, gave Midnight in Paris an "A"; referring to it as a "wonderful film" and "one of the best romantic comedies in recent years". He commented that the actors are uniformly brilliant and praised the film's use of witty one-liners.

In The Huffington Post, Rob Kirkpatrick said the film represented a return to form for the director ("it's as if Woody has rediscovered Woody") and called Midnight in Paris "a surprising film that casts a spell over us and reminds us of the magical properties of cinema, and especially of Woody Allen's cinema."

Midnight in Paris has been compared to Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), in that the functioning of the magical realism therein is never explained. David Edelstein, New York, commended that approach, stating that it eliminates, "the sci-fi wheels and pulleys that tend to suck up so much screen time in time-travel movies." He goes on to applaud the film stating that, "this supernatural comedy isn't just Allen's best film in more than a decade; it's the only one that manages to rise above its tidy parable structure and be easy, graceful, and glancingly funny, as if buoyed by its befuddled hero's enchantment."

Peter Johnson of PopCitizen felt that the film's nature as a "period piece" was far superior to its comedic components, which he referred to as lacking. "While the period settings of Midnight in Paris are almost worth seeing the film ... it hardly qualifies as a moral compass to those lost in a nostalgic revelry," he asserts.

Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal acknowledged the cast and the look of the film and, despite some familiarities with the film's conflict, praised Allen's work on the film. He wrote, "For the filmmaker who brought these intertwined universes into being, the film represents new energy in a remarkable career.".

Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian, giving the film 3 out of 5 stars, described it as "an amiable amuse-bouche" and "sporadically entertaining, light, shallow, self-plagiarising." He goes on to add that it's "a romantic fantasy adventure to be compared with the vastly superior ideas of his comparative youth, such as the 1985 movie The Purple Rose of Cairo." In October 2013, the film was voted by the Guardian readers as the ninth best film directed by Woody Allen.

More scathing is Richard Corliss of , who describes the film as "pure Woody Allen. Which is not to say great or even good Woody, but a distillation of the filmmaker's passions and crotchets, and of his tendency to pass draconian judgment on characters the audience is not supposed to like. ... his Midnight strikes not sublime chimes but the clangor of snap judgments and frayed fantasy."

Quentin Tarantino named Midnight in Paris as his favorite film of 2011.

The film was well received in France. The website Allocine (Hello Cinema) gave it 4.2 out of 5 stars based on a sample of twenty reviews. Ten of the reviews gave it a full five stars, including , which praised the film's evocation of its themes and said "one leaves the screening with a smile on one's lips".

The William Faulkner estate later filed a lawsuit against Sony Pictures Classics for the film's bit of dialogue, "The past is not dead. Actually, it's not even past," a paraphrasing of an often-quoted line from Faulkner's 1950 book Requiem for a Nun ("The past is never dead. It's not even past."), claiming that the paraphrasing was an unlicensed use of the estate. Faulkner is directly credited in the dialogue when Gil claims to have met the writer at a dinner party (though Faulkner is never physically portrayed in the film). Julie Ahrens of the Fair Use Project at the Stanford University's Center for Internet and Society was quoted as saying in response to the charge, "The idea that one person can control the use of those particular words seems ridiculous to me. Any kind of literary allusion is ordinarily celebrated. This seems to squarely fall in that tradition." Sony's response stated that they consider the action "a frivolous lawsuit". In July 2013, a federal judge in Mississippi dismissed the lawsuit on fair use grounds.

The soundtrack was released on December 9, 2011, and released on Blu-ray and DVD on December 20, 2011.

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Midnight in Paris is a 2011 fantasy comedy film written and directed by Woody Allen. Set in Paris, the film follows Gil Pender ( Owen Wilson), a screenwriter, who is forced to confront the shortcomings of his relationship with his materialistic fiancée ( Rachel McAdams) and their divergent goals, which become increasingly exaggerated as he travels back in time each night at midnight.

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Hugo is a 2011 American adventure drama film directed and produced by Martin Scorsese, and adapted for the screen by John Logan. Based on Brian Selznick's 2007 book The Invention of Hugo Cabret, it tells the story of a boy who lives alone in the Gare Montparnasse railway station in Paris in the 1930s, only to become embroiled in a mystery surrounding his late father's automaton and the pioneering filmmaker Georges Méliès.

Hugo is Scorsese's first film shot in 3D, about which the filmmaker remarked, "I found 3D to be really interesting, because the actors were more upfront emotionally. Their slightest move, their slightest intention is picked up much more precisely." The film was released in the United States on November 23, 2011.

Hugo received 11 Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture), more than any other film that year, winning five: Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, and Best Visual Effects. It was also nominated for eight BAFTAs, and won two, and was nominated for three Golden Globe awards, earning Scorsese his third Golden Globe Award for Best Director. Despite receiving acclaim from critics, the film was a box office failure, grossing just $185 million against its estimated $150 million budget.

In 1931 Paris, 12-year-old Hugo Cabret lives with his widowed father, a clockmaker who works at a museum. Hugo's father finds a broken automaton - a mechanical man created to write with a pen. He and Hugo try to repair it, documenting their work in a notebook. When his father dies in a fire, Hugo goes to live with his father's alcoholic brother, Uncle Claude, who maintains the clocks at Gare Montparnasse railway station. When Claude goes missing, Hugo continues maintaining the clocks, fearing that Station Inspector Gustave Dasté will send him away if Claude's absence is discovered. Hugo attempts to repair the automaton with stolen parts, believing it contains a message from his father, but the machine requires a heart-shaped key.

Hugo is caught stealing parts from a toy store, and the owner, Georges, takes his notebook, threatening to destroy it. Georges's goddaughter Isabelle suggests that Hugo confront Georges and demand it back. Georges proposes that Hugo work at his toy store as recompense, and after some time he might return the notebook. Hugo accepts and commences work, in addition to his job maintaining the clocks. Isabelle and Hugo become fast friends, and Hugo is astonished to see she wears a heart-shaped key, given to her by Georges. Hugo shows her the automaton, which they activate with the key. It draws a scene from the film A Trip to the Moon, once described to Hugo by his father. Isabelle identifies the drawing's signature as that of " Georges Méliès" - her godfather. She sneaks Hugo into her home, where they find a hidden cache of drawings, but they are discovered by Georges.

Several days later, at the Film Academy Library, Hugo and Isabelle find a book about the history of cinema that praises Méliès's contributions. They meet the book's author, René Tabard, a film expert who is surprised to hear Méliès is alive, as he disappeared after World War I along with the copies of his films. Excited at the chance to meet Méliès again, René agrees to meet Isabelle and Hugo at Georges's home to show his copy of A Trip to the Moon.

Finding the heart-shaped key on the station railway tracks, Hugo drops down to the track to retrieve it, and is run over by an out-of-control train that smashes through the station. He wakes up from the nightmare, but hears an ominous ticking emanating from himself, and discovers he has been turned into the automaton. Hugo wakes up again: it was only another nightmare.

At Georges's home, his wife Jeanne allows them in after René recognises her as Jeanne d'Alcy, an actress in many of Méliès's films. They play the film, waking Georges, who is finally convinced to cherish his accomplishments rather than regret his lost dreams. Georges recounts that, as a stage magician, he was fascinated by motion pictures and used film to create imaginative works through his Star Film Company. Forced into bankruptcy after the war, he closed his studio and sold his films. He laments that even an automaton he built and donated to a museum was lost; Hugo realizes it is the one he has repaired.

Hugo races to the station to retrieve the automaton, but is caught by Gustave, who has learned of Claude's death. Gustave threatens to take Hugo to the orphanage. Hugo runs away but drops the automaton on the tracks. He jumps down to retrieve it and is almost run over by a train, but Gustave saves him and the automaton. Georges arrives and tells Gustave, "This boy belongs to me."

Some time later, Georges is named a professor at the Film Academy, and is paid tribute through a showcase of his films recovered by René. Hugo and his new family celebrate at the apartment, and Isabelle begins to write down Hugo's own story.

Michael Pitt, Martin Scorsese, Johnny Depp and Brian Selznick have cameo roles.

GK Films acquired the screen rights to The Invention of Hugo Cabret shortly after the book was published in 2007. Initially, Chris Wedge was signed in to direct the adaptation and John Logan was contracted to write the screenplay. The film was initially titled Hugo Cabret. Several actors were hired, including Ben Kingsley, Sacha Baron Cohen, Asa Butterfield, Chloë Grace Moretz, and Helen McCrory. Jude Law, Ray Winstone, Christopher Lee, Frances de la Tour, and Richard Griffiths later joined the project. Hugo was originally budgeted at $100 million, but ran over with a final budget between $156 million and $170 million. In February 2012, Graham King summed up his experience of producing Hugo: "Let's just say that it hasn't been an easy few months for me-there's been a lot of Ambien involved".

Principal photography began in London on June 29, 2010; the first shooting location was at the Shepperton Studios. The Nene Valley Railway near Peterborough also lent their original Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits rolling stock to the studio.

In August 2010, production moved to Paris for two weeks. Locations included the Sainte-Geneviève Library, the Sorbonne (where a lecture hall was converted into a 1930s cinema hall) in the 5th arrondissement, and the Théâtre de l'Athénée and its surrounding area in the 9th. High school Lycée Louis-le-Grand served as the film's base of operations in Paris; its cafeteria served 700 meals a day for the cast and crew.

The film's soundtrack includes an Oscar-nominated original score composed by Howard Shore, and also makes prominent use of the Danse macabre by Camille Saint-Saëns and Gnossienne No. 1 by Erik Satie. Additional music was provided uncredited by French pianist and composer Jean-Michel Bernard. The singer Zaz performs on track 20, "Cœur volant".

All music is composed by Howard Shore.

The film was theatrically released on November 23, 2011, by Paramount Pictures, premiered at the NYFF on October 10, 2011, and was released on DVD and Blu-ray on February 28, 2012, by Paramount Home Entertainment. Hugo has grossed $34.3 million in home video revenue.

The backstory and primary features of Georges Méliès' life as depicted in the film are largely accurate: He became interested in film after seeing a demonstration of the Lumière brothers' camera; he was a magician and toymaker; he experimented with automata; he owned a theatre ( Théâtre Robert-Houdin); he was forced into bankruptcy; his film stock was reportedly melted down for its celluloid; he became a toy salesman at the Montparnasse station, and he was eventually awarded the Légion d'honneur medal after a period of terrible neglect. Many of the early silent films shown in the movie are Méliès's actual works, such as Le voyage dans la lune (1902). However, the film does not mention Méliès' two children, his brother Gaston (who worked with Méliès during his film-making career), or his first wife Eugénie, who was married to Méliès during the time he made films (and who died in 1913). The film shows Méliès married to Jeanne d'Alcy during their filmmaking period, when in reality they did not marry until 1925.

The automaton's design was inspired by the Maillardet's automaton made by the Swiss watchmaker Henri Maillardet, which Selznick had seen in the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, as well as the Jaquet-Droz automaton "the writer". A portion of the scene with Harold Lloyd in Safety Last! (1923), hanging from the clock, is shown when the main characters sneak into a movie theater. Later, Hugo, like Lloyd in Safety Last!, hangs from the hands of a large clock on a clock tower to escape from a pursuer.

Several viewings of the film L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat are portrayed, depicting the shocked reaction of the audience-although this view is in doubt.

Emil Lager, Ben Addis, and Robert Gill make cameo appearances as the father of Gypsy jazz guitar, Django Reinhardt, the Spanish surrealist painter, Salvador Dalí, and the Irish writer James Joyce, respectively. The names of all three characters appear towards the end of the film's cast credit list.

The book that Monsieur Labisse gives Hugo as a gift, Robin Hood le proscrit (Robin Hood the outlaw), was written by Alexandre Dumas in 1864 as a French translation of an 1838 work by Pierce Egan the Younger in England. The book is symbolic, as Hugo must avoid the "righteous" law enforcement (Inspector Gustave) to live in the station and later to restore the automaton both to a functioning status and to its rightful owner. The particular copy given to Hugo looks like the 1917 English-language edition (David McKay publisher, Philadelphia, United States) with cover and interior illustrations by N.C. Wyeth, but with "Le Proscrit" added to the cover by the prop department. The film also depicts the Montparnasse derailment, when at 4:00 pm on 22 October 1895, the Granville-Paris Express overran the buffer stop at its Gare Montparnasse terminus.

In their confrontation with the Station Inspector, Isabelle claims she named her cat after the famous poet Christina Rossetti, as Isabelle then begins to recite the first lines of Rossetti's poem "A Birthday". Near the end of the film, Georges is in a discussion about the origins of filmmaking, and he and Jeanne mention the "cave pictographs in Niaux". This is a reference to the Cave of Niaux archeological site, which feature ancient wall paintings that are thought to be made 17,000 to 11,000 years ago.

Hugo earned $15.4 million over its Thanksgiving weekend debut. It went on to earn US$73,864,507 domestically and $111,905,653 overseas, for a worldwide gross of $185,770,160. Despite praise from critics, Hugo was cited as one of the year's notable box-office flops. Its perceived failure was due to competition with Disney's The Muppets and Summit's Breaking Dawn Part 1. The film was estimated to have had a net loss of $100 million. Producer Graham King said that the film's box-office results were painful. "There's no finger-pointing-I'm the producer and I take the responsibility," he said. "Budget-wise, there just wasn't enough prep time and no one really realized how complicated doing a 3D film was going to be. I went through three line-producers because no one knew exactly what was going on. Do I still think it's a masterpiece that will be talked about in 20 years? Yes. But once the schedule started getting out of whack, things just spiraled and spiraled and that's when the avalanche began."

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an approval rating of 93% based on 227 reviews, with an average rating of 8.3/10. The website's critical consensus reads, " Hugo is an extravagant, elegant fantasy with an innocence lacking in many modern kids' movies, and one that emanates an unabashed love for the magic of cinema." Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 83 out of 100, based on 41 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four out of four stars, saying that the film "...is unlike any other film Martin Scorsese has ever made, and yet possibly the closest to his heart: a big-budget, family epic in 3-D, and in some ways, a mirror of his own life. We feel a great artist has been given command of the tools and resources he needs to make a movie about-movies." Peter Rainer of The Christian Science Monitor gave it a "B+" grade and termed it as "an odd mixture: a deeply personal impersonal movie" and concluded that " Hugo is a mixed bag but one well worth rummaging through." Christy Lemire said that the film had an "abundant love of the power of film; being a hardcore cinephile (like Scorsese) might add a layer of enjoyment, but it certainly isn't a prerequisite for walking in the door" besides being "slightly repetitive and overlong". Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune give it three stars and described it as "rich and stimulating even when it wanders," explaining "every locale in Scorsese's vision of 1931 Paris looks and feels like another planet. The filmmaker embraces storybook artifice as wholeheartedly as he relays the tale's lessons in the importance of film preservation." Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal said that Hugo "visually [...] is a marvel, but dramatically it's a clockwork lemon".

Hugo was selected for the Royal Film Performance 2011 with a screening at the Odeon, Leicester Square, in London on 28 November 2011 in the presence of the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall in support of the Cinema and Television Benevolent Fund. Richard Corliss of named it one of the Top 10 Best Movies of 2011, saying that "Scorsese's love poem, rendered gorgeously in 3-D, restores both the reputation of an early pioneer and the glory of movie history-the birth of a popular art form given new life through a master's application of the coolest new techniques". James Cameron called Hugo "a masterpiece" and that the film "had the best use of 3D [he] had seen," surpassing even his own acclaimed films.

Top-ten lists

The film appeared on the following critics' lists of the top-ten films of 2011:

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Hugo is a 2011 American adventure drama film directed and produced by Martin Scorsese, and adapted for the screen by John Logan. Based on Brian Selznick's 2007 book The Invention of Hugo Cabret , it tells the story of a boy who lives alone in the Gare Montparnasse railway station in Paris in the 1930s, only to become embroiled in a mystery surrounding his late father's automaton and the pioneering filmmaker Georges Méliès.