The AFI Fest isn’t generally used to launch awards campaigns, or debut serious Oscar contenders, or unveil movies that’ll take the critics by storm.
But AFI Fest 2010, which with its eight-day and 80-odd screenings is considerably smaller than Los Angeles’ other main festival, the Los Angeles Film Festival, is giving Angelenos a chance to see a few contenders, a spate of acclaimed foreign films and a handful of big stars – and they can do so for free thanks to fest sponsor Audi, at least if they have the patience and the luck to navigate the AFI Fest’s famously ineffective mess of an online ordering system.
For the industry, and for the awards game, AFI Fest serves as a chance to remind viewers (and voters) of films that had generally been unveiled previously at Toronto or Telluride or Venice or Cannes. And occasionally a movie can use AFI to reinforce the idea that it’s bound for glory – a situation that may well have happened Friday night at the AFI Fest gala screening of “The King’s Speech.”
Director Tom Hooper’s deft, sure-handed telling of the relationship between Britain’s King George VI and his Australian-born speech therapist (Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush) played as fast, as funny and as touching at Grauman’s Chinese Theater at it had in Toronto and reportedly in Telluride. And with a number of Academy members in attendance, the packed screening and ensuing ovation reinforced that Harvey Weinstein had good reason to be beaming as he stood at the entrance to the Weinstein Company’s post-screening party at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.
The screening was preceded by a salute to Hooper, Firth and Rush (above) and a brief Q&A conducted by Leonard Maltin. Rush was the surprise guest of sorts: he was originally supposed to be detained in Hawaii filming the fourth installment in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” saga, until the schedule unexpectedly gave him 48 hours off.
At considerable expense to the Weinstein Company, Rush made it to Los Angeles in time for the gala, where a clip package of scenes from his films had been thrown together in a couple of hours to accompany more considered tributes to Hooper and Rush. Pity, then, that Maltin only aimed one question in Rush’s direction during his rather pro forma Q&A.
At that Q&A, both Hooper and Firth puzzled over the film’s strong reception by the limited number of U.S. audiences who’ve seen what might appear to be a quintessentially British story, dealing as it does with royal succession on the eve of World War II.
“Deep in the DNA of the American people is the story of standing up to the British king,” said Hooper, who won acclaim for his HBO miniseries “John Adams,” which dealt with the American revolution and its aftermath.
Brits are not quite as monarchy-centric as Yanks might assume, added Firth.
