On Sunday, it comes down to this. In the (royal) blue corner, King George VI. In the other blue corner, with the tasteful white sans-serif typeface is Facebook’s (so-depicted) dark overlord, Mark Zuckerberg.
The formbook seems to be with the 20th century story, even if that formbook is not entirely to be trusted. The Facebook movie won Best Film at the Golden Globes and Tom Hooper picked up the Director’s Guild Award. At the weekend, the roles are expected to be reversed, with The Social Network helmsman David Fincher hot favourite to win Best Director, but The King’s Speech tipped to land Best Picture.
On the face of it, The King’s Speech and The Social Network couldn’t be more diametrically opposed. Justin Timberlake, for one, was hardly likely to pop up alongside Derek Jacobi and Michael Gambon.
On second look, the two films share some idiosyncratic similarities.
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Not the obvious ones, such as loads of pre-Oscars plaudits and a socially awkward protagonist. That could be said of The Fighter, Black Swan and even True Grit. Here are six unusual factors which align the two films: If you know the history You may wish to quibble with the portraits of both George VI and Mark Zuckerberg. Colin Firth’s King George is very much a thou-shalt-not-pass war-time leader of stoicism and strength. In what was known as "real life" before the movie producers got involved, George VI was seen as much more open to the idea of appeasement and not so close to Churchill, as the films suggests. Various commentators from Christopher Hitchens to Pub Landlord Al Murray have pointed this out. With The Social Network, dissenting voices from those portrayed are easy to find as the major players walk amongst us. They even promote new question-answering site Quora, in the case of FB co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. (Zuckerberg’s take on the film is only a click away from this, too. His main point: he didn’t invent the site to get girls, as he’s dated the same girl since before Facebook was born.) Patronage of their subject matter In a show of good sportsmanship, Zuckerberg invited some of his staff to an early screening. And when Jesse Eisenberg hosted Saturday Night Live, Zuckerberg popped in, prompting a comment of “Awkward!” from show regular Andy Samberg. Queen Elizabeth II, who is brought to the screen by Freya Wilson (sister Margaret is played by Outnumbered’s Ramona Marquez), has let it be known that she is a fan of Tom Hooper’s movie. Once she let that be known, so did shy and retiring producer Harvey Weinstein, to anyone who may have missed the news. Unlikely charity beneficiaries The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists have press released their good wishes for the film. As have Gareth Gates and Stirling-based speech therapy programme The McGuire Programme. Screenwriter David Seidler has highlighted the Michael Palin Centre for Stammering Children. The unlikely charity recipients of The Social Network were schools in Newark. Zuckerberg, possibly unrelated to his public image the film had given him which was somewhere between Colonel Gaddafi and El Hadji-Diouf, made the $100m donation live on Oprah. Left-field Madonna connection Fincher directed Madge's era-defining videos, Express Yourself and Vogue. Timberlake, the film’s Sean Parker, duetted with her. And Her Madgesty has made her directorial debut proper (after the little-lauded Filth and Wisdom), with a biopic of Wallis Simpson. W.E. has had its chips ever-so-lightly drizzled on by The King’s Speech and its largely unsympathetic portrayal of Edward’s missus. The writer went “method” for the part The two films are propelled in the main part by special and distinctive scripts. Both Seidler and Aaron Sorkin should win in different Screenplay categories for Original and Adapted, respectively. Childhood stammerer Seidler wrote to the Queen Mother herself for permission to write a play, which became a screenplay, of the story. The Queen Mum agreed, but he had to wait decades until after her passing as she requested. And Sorkin created a virtual writers’ workship in 2008 via his own Facebook page which he had to ask his researcher to set up as he claimed he was too technologically inept. 2011 Status: Award-laden. To be this good at film-making, takes Sega The games company based a game around the third Alien movie, directed by Fincher. Hooper made an ad for Sega but unlike the Alien 3 game, his commercial featured Right Said Fred and some dancing grannies.We need your support. Please donate to The Caledonian Mercury
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