Been anticipating this film release for the past year! Congratulations Shekhar, cast and crew!!

love,
North

Ed Gonzalez of Slant Magazine said it best!:

The way 'Elizabeth: The Golden Age' tells it, the Spanish Armada's defeat by the British Empire was the orgasm The Virgin Queen never had.

Too funny!

Dear Mallika,

There is a good chance that you are more likely to “get it” than most critics.

I remember way back when talking about Infinite Play having the POV of the Mysterious Force which is operating behind the scenes. The Mysterious Force is actually an intangible character in the plot.

It would seem that Shekhar did somewhat the same with the divine perspective. Many critics will not grasp this aspect of the film, unless they are aware of this aspect of life.

People when viewing history don't see how intelligence is orchestrating our evolution, and it sometimes results in things like war and conflict and barbarians from the North, and mixing of cultures. I wrote about the point that war in the past caused people to send their children to monasteries where they learned to read from the few on the planet that knew how. There was even a king that learned to read because of this. This speeded our evolution.

Divinity (Mysterious Force) is to Life
as
Director is to Film
(Everything in the scene is there for an intelligent reason)

I saw an add for the film and look forward to seeing it.

Dear Shekhar,

Recently while recouping from surgery, I watched "Elizabeth" and loved it. I saw the preview of your new movie in the theater. I am very motivated to see this film.

I am very proud of you! You are a very talented man. Good luck with it's opening.

Joanie

I keep seeing previews, and the sound doesn't seem so loud to me? I wonder, if theatre's have to turn down their output volume??

I saw previews again tonight.. countdown is ON!

Love,
North

Mallika--is it possible for you, to put an embedding code(such as the one for IB Banners) for Elizabeth-The Golden Age--bannerlink below the one you have on IB's main-page?

My ISP sucks, and the site just dies while loading..I would like to add the Banner onto my myspace profile page...

And.. have you thought of an answer to Shekhar's question of the week yet? : )

Love,
North

This is for Shekhar...

Dear Shekhar, on 30 Aug 2005, you wrote a short blog about work on Golden Age, that stated the historical premise for the film so simply, so starkly, that it was exciting to contemplate what the result would be. The blog is here: http://www.intentblog.com/archives/2005/08/the_golden_age.html

I saw Golden Age three times, and will get it on DVD. I liked it that much. Golden Age is well worth seeing. Except for the writing, the flaws are like the flaws in an emerald -- they add to the mystery of its beauty. The acting is great. The cinematography was very fine, the color and visual quality was superb overall, the costumes and settings magnificent, the sound was great, but... the dialog is sometimes simply ludicrous. There were a few times when the writing was so silly or weak it was a distraction.

If this were theatre, Golden Age would be getting raves. There is a luscious sketchy quality to your work that is easy to appreciate and is nicely supportive (in the sense of providing softly brilliant visual and narrative architectonics) of powerful, fluid acting like that of Blanchett, Owen, et al.

But film is a medium you can work and rework to get closer to perfection, and, oh, how lovely it would have been to see a more spartan approach to many things, so the luscious bits would have popped even more and told a more powerful, integrated story on film.

To show more clearly how bankrupt England was at this period in history, and how much of stretch it was that Elizabeth and her country should have succeeded at anything at all, given the odds they were up against, would have been valuable. That time of dark, heavy difficulties was the hidden force behind all the creativity that rose up in Elizabeth's time in the arts, politics, religion, commerce and war. That's what I was hoping to see in Golden Age. You prefigured it in the original Elizabeth, but it went mostly missing in Golden Age. I hope you'll tell the end of the Elizabeth story.

love, Heath