I guess Chavez is busy, because now Ahmadinejad is hitting on Emile Lahoud.

(via the Sandmonkey)

From Stephen Holden’s review of the new film The Queen [Elizabeth II], starring Helen Mirren:

In writing the character of the queen, Mr. Morgan said, he thought of his own mother, of the same generation and similar in her essential beliefs. “To do a hatchet job would have felt like matricide,” he said.

“My mother is uncomplaining, stoic, never sees a doctor, would be in incredible pain and never mention it, thinks aspirin is decadent, walks around turning the lights off and wears clothes that are 30 years old,” he said. Such an attitude contrasts with the “narcissism and intolerance of pain of our generation, to whom happiness is a God-given right,” he said.

“The queen never shouts or moans,” he said in a telephone interview, “and in the end that was what really won me over, despite all my nascent republican instincts.”

Indeed, the Queen is part of the “Greatest Generation,” and never misses an opportunity to commemorate those who sacrificed, without fanfare, during World War Two. Her grandson has had rather a more light-hearted view of that conflict. However, I’m going to see it in order to be able to wallow in the misery of the Royals.