Ten-year Oliver Burton’s story is heartbreaking. Without getting into all of the details, the young boy has Down’s syndrome and has battled a variety of other cancers, leading up to a recent diagnosis of terminal spine and bone marrow cancer. Throughout all of it, though, his family has tried to make Oliver as happy as possible, so when Queen Elizabeth II couldn’t or wouldn’t fulfill his dream of having tea with her at Buckingham Palace, they got him the next best thing.

Actually, in my opinion, it’s the better thing, but they took Oliver to the Gielgud Theatre to watch Dame Helen Mirren perform as the Queen in The Audience. And after the play, Mirren remained in character as she welcomed Oliver backstage to join her for tea, as the other cast members participated in costume. They even let Oliver meet the corgis.

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Helen Mirren cursed out a group of drummers from a gay pride parade over the weekend, all while dressed in full stage costume as Queen Elizabeth II. She’d been onstage performing The Audience at the Gielgud Theater when the drummers, part of a parade promoting a gay and transgender festival, stopped right outside the theater. That’s when Mirren came out and gave them a good talking to, reportedly dressed in pearls and a tiara. One of the gay drummers described it as “the most fabulous thing I have ever seen.” (Okay, I made up that quote, but it feels true).

The scene, as described by Dame Helen to The Daily Telegraph, played out on Saturday evening as the noisy band of carnival-style entertainers promoted London’s As One In the Park gay music festival while Dame Helen was on stage in The Audience, for she which earned an Olivier Award last week.

Dame Helen said: “I’m afraid there were a few ‘thespian’ words used. They got a very stern royal ticking off but I have to say they were very sweet and they stopped immediately.

“I felt rotten but on the other hand they were destroying our performance so something had to be done.”
“The drumming just slowly got louder and louder and then settled right outside the stage door. There was just a thin wall between drumming and the theatre so it was unbelievably loud on stage. Paul Ritter and I could hardly hear each other speak and the audience couldn’t hear us speak at all.”

Minutes later, during the interval, the drummers suddenly fell silent as Dame Helen appeared from the stage door, evidently not amused. Mark McKenzie, who organised the parade, said: “Not much shocks you on the gay scene. But seeing Helen Mirren dressed as the Queen cussing and swearing and making you stop your parade – that’s a new one.”

Mr McKenzie claimed that Dame Helen had even given one of the parade promoters a regal tap around the head. [Telegraph]

What are “thespian words?” Words that someone else writes? Anyway, not all the drummers were so happy to quiet down, with one describing the scene in a hilarious BBC man-on-the-street interview:

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As has been previously and unanimously agreed upon by everyone in the world, RED 2 is the most anticipated sequel of 2013, and it should already be awarded all of next year’s Academy Awards. But even with everyone on this planet in absolute agreement on that – with the lone exception being Vince, because he only watches movies that have the word “Movie” in the title – Summit Entertainment has still released a second trailer in case there were people living deep in the rain forests who hadn’t decided if they’d see it on the opening weekend or not.

Bruce Willis returns as Frank Moses, as he and Marvin Boggs (John Malkovich) must enlist the help of a Russian scientist (Anthony Hopkins) who has been locked up for 32 years to recover a bomb that he built during the Cold War. The only problem is that he’s batsh*t looney tunes now, which should lead to even more zany adventures for this gang of old farts teaching the new generation of assassins a thing or two. And this time Helen Mirren has been enlisted to stop Frank, which has left us with some wonderful GIFs.

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“And you’re not coming back, Richard Dreyfuss, because you were shot in the head.”

Some unnamed people around here like to make fun of a movie like RED, because it featured an ensemble cast of older actors as former CIA agents and international spies, and that’s just goofy because Viagra jokes and broken hips, LOL! So forgive me if I’m a little more enthusiastic than a certain someone else today, because RED, which starred Bruce Willis and John Malkovich as retired CIA killers, is one of my favorite movies of the past few years, and I will stop whatever I’m doing and watch it whenever it’s on cable.

So when the trailer for RED 2 was released in January, I was extra excited, because Anthony Hopkins is joining the crew of old farts, and it allowed me to wonder if they’re going to bring back Brian Cox as Ivan Simonov (he’s not listed on the sequel’s cast) and maybe use some suspended disbelief to tell us that Morgan Freeman didn’t really die.

Well, good news for me, because Summit Entertainment is moving up RED 2’s release date from August 2 to July 19 because I’ve been a good boy this year.

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All the stars are back for Red 2, which loses director Robert Schwentke and picks up Dean Parisot, who did both the delightful Galaxy Quest and the virulently unfunny train wreck, Fun with Dick and Jane. And what is a sequel to Red if not a perfect showcase for an auteur?! I kid, of course. So between this, Bullet to the Head, The Last Stand, the six Expendables movies, etc., we really don’t get tired of watching 60-year-olds shoot stuff, huh? I wonder if John Malkovich will get his bullets switched with his Viagra pills before a big assassination with the Japanese. So much wackiness would ensue! It’s weird to me that Tarantino makes a movie about slavery and never stops getting asked about “normalizing violence,” yet every year, at least 20 of these “(INSERT STAR HERE) is a spy” movies come out where the entire trailer is nothing but sanitized murder, and no one bats an eye. My guess is that by the time a reporter actually puts pen to paper, she’s forgotten the entire movie even existed.

Oops, I meant to say THIS LOOKS GREAT! BRUCE WILLIS IS FUN! HURPITY DING DONG PEW PEW!