Camel, elephant, or bison? Oh my.

An extended trailer for Queen of the Desert was released last week and I wouldn’t be the ‘forensic fan’ I am unless I did a frame by frame analysis for you, our dear readers.

In an interview clip shown on Danish TV,  Damian Lewis does a spot on impression of Werner Herzog’s description of this film.

This film is like a camel, and an elephant and a bison on top of a donkey, and I’m the donkey. But together we will make a wonderful movie.

So Herzog is the donkey, but who are the camel, elephant and bison? Believe it or not, the trailer coupled with some background reading may provide some clues!

Continue reading “Camel, elephant, or bison? Oh my.”

Queen of the Desert, some notes

As a “hyper-engaged” fan, one truly enters a state of mourning when one’s favorite is no longer on one’s screen. We know what he’s working on now: American Buffalo on stage in London’s West End. And we (the royal we) know we won’t be able to see him unless the play comes to the States and the stars align for us to get to where it’s playing. (Damianista IS seeing the play though, lucky so-and-so she is…so stay tuned for her story on seeing Damian as Teach, live). And we know his next project to start filming June is Billions on Showtime. So there we are with what’s he doing now and what he will be doing soon.

Now for what he has already done and what hasn’t made it to screen yet. We know that Damian Lewis has completed several films that are waiting on distribution. A film recently announced to have a U.S. distributor and set for limited release in September is Queen of the Desert, the story of Gertrude Bell, the female counterpart to that great explorer who got not one but two (or possibly more? ) films made about him, T.E. Lawrence, who we know as Peter O’Toole’s first, then Ralph Fiennes’ (and now Robert Pattison’s) Lawrence of Arabia. This post will be some theorizing on what we may be seeing in the film Queen of the Desert. Hopeful, longing, desirous theorizing, much like the letters Gertrude Bell (played by Nicole Kidman) exchanged with Charles Doughty-Wylie (played by Damian Lewis) for the few years of their problematic courtship. Continue reading “Queen of the Desert, some notes”