Like many in her realm, Entertainment Weekly critic Lisa Schwarzbaum is close to apoplectic (“gobsmacked”) over last weekend’s DGA triumph by The King’s Speech helmer Tom Hooper. But perhaps, she adds, Hooper does merit exceptional recognition for his clever use of classical music in four important scenes.
“What were those DGA voters thinking?,” she writes. “My conclusion: They weren’t thinking; they were feeling. And they were feeling because of incalculable help provided to the director by two geniuses ineligible for an award in this or any other year to come. I’m talking, of course, about Ludwig van Beethoven and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Without them, The King’s Speech would be filled with much emptier words.”
