Monday, October 14, 2013

Hyde Park on Hudson [HD]



A Little Summer Music
Two noticeable aspects on this site - the paucity of reviews of this period piece film and the number of negative comments that seem to blanket the responses to this very quiet little recreation of a moment in history about which few may be aware. In many ways this film, as written by Richard Nelson and directed by Roger Michell, resembles a little European art film: the recreation of conditions in the USA in the post Depression era are remarkably apt and set a fine tenor for the story (including the musical score!). In the end this is a tale about how men in powerful places interrelate in moments of tension and how those same men have flaws both physical and in character that would weigh down ordinary fellows. But the story is about a particular summer in when Britain, on the brink of war with Hitler, visited America, hoping for Allied assistance in the war that was to become World War II.

The setting is the home away form the White House - Hyde Park on the Hudson, the...

PRESIDENTS AREN'T LIVE ACTION FIGURINES....... '
While I appreciate the expertise & execution of Mr. Solinas skilled review in his assessment viewing Hyde Park on Hudson as a boring biopic, ..... as one who was not alive during his administration, I appreciate the intimate "fly on the wall" look at one of this nation's (and the worlds) most iconic leaders - his strengths, fears, and foibles as the world approached its second world war. I can't help believe that most people would jump at an opportunity to witness or learn what it was like for those involved and what was going on behind closed doors at such a fateful time. The movie was supposedly based upon a book written by a distant cousin who came to assist him during those difficult times - only to become the latest object of his affections. It strips away the veneer that historic figures attain and shows such leaders are real people too - not iconic cartoonish live action figurines. They are subject to same physical & emotional challenges, desires, fears, and...

99% Fabrication; Read The Book Instead
I want to thank the producers of this god-awful film for sending me running to Geoffrey Ward's "Closest Companion," the edited version of Daisy Suckley's diaries and the Suckley-Roosevelt correspondence that tells the real story of their special friendship. Having read many accounts of the Roosevelt administration and New Deal, including bios of FDR (Kearns Goodwin, Smith) and Eleanor (Wieson Cook), I was looking forward to "Hyde Park on the Hudson" I admire Murray and Linney, whose talents are wasted on this turgid, maudlin soap opera that takes heaps and heaps of liberties with history, distorting the characters of all concerned -- Suckley, FDR, Eleanor and the Royals -- and depicting and conflicts that almost certainly did not -- as certain as we can be w/o having been there, which these producers most assuredly were not -- occur.

Suckley was an upper-crust Hudson Valley lady, a sixth cousin of FDR, who become his devoted companion and best friend. Although they had...

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