Queen Elizabeth 2006

The Queen was the most roundly informative and entertaining recent film. Clint Eastwood’s two new movies, Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, bookend, for me, James Bradley’s book Flags of Our Fathers plus Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book on the Roosevelts during World War II and Don Keegan’s encyclopedia of that War and the Life magazine’s illustrated history (1951); in short, my random recent reading on that gigantic 20th century conflict. I also keep returning to The Iliad, despite its funny Greek alphabet. Yup, I’m a geek. Gunpowder accounts for the small differences between the Trojan war and World War II.

For seven lucky years I was step-dad to Jon Abrahams. Jon starred in Kids and went on to a successful career in film, as a second male lead in films starring the Wynans and Robert De Niro. But, as Lauren Bacall asserts, midnight for an actor is his 26th birthday. And this is the first year I saw Jon in no films.

And Elizabeth Taylor, they say, has Alzheimer’s. Who knows? She seems to be 27 film years old. If we see her again, it’ll be not Elizabeth the queen but Elizabeth the raree. But Clint Eastwood is older than Elizabeth, and the world looks forward to more of his work.