why are 'british' films shit?

I'm gonna let this one slide cos I'm a lazy man but srsly guys the next Brit Gangster flick that comes out I'ma beat the director to death okay guyz?

Vinne Jones stars as Noodle, an internet hardman with a brutal grudge against shit british gansgter film directors. Directed by Guy Ritchie.

When I was in a band some dude in the local paper said I looked like Gazza so rong leading man rilly

what are the funniest british movies ever made? it's occurred to me that 'in the loop' might genuinely be the funniest.

blah life of brian blah withnail and i blah ealing blah blah blah.

No way am I pushing a dinghy out into the tsunami-laden waters of ILXors sensayuma. Brian and Grail are v. funny tho. Nuts in May too, tho not properly a movie I suppose.

I have this fundamentalist notion that funny ought to mean "makes you properly laugh til you hurt", tho, so on that level I don't think most funny films are funny.

I agree. Shaun of the Dead is a modern classic, but that's beyond just the laffs.

Maybe not an obvious choice, but there are many moments of sublime comedy in A Room For Romeo Brass. And it's a brilliant film as well.

x-post - damn straight NV, Nuts In May is hilarious.

Well, my favourite movies (the two late Bunuels with long titles) are only occasionally thigh-slapping laugh-till-cry funny, but have a fundamental, all-knowing humour to them, which makes them profoundly funny IMO (the wit of a man who has lived on a mountain for 80 years), but yeah I'm kinda going more for the outright lols here.

In The Loop made me laugh harder than any other British movie ever. And was the most I've laughed in a cinema.

Ooh, would like to see Romeo Brass and Nuts In May now!

Shaun Of The Dead is very good for almost an hour, very lame for 40 minutes imo.

Paddy Considine's debut in ARFRB is completely beyond my pitiful powers of description - if you've not seen it then the dvd is four quid on Amazon at the moment, for the price of a pint it's an absolute steal.

I'm deeply agnostic on SotD precisely cos I think it's free of belly-lols. But I like lots of comedies that don't make me lol, especially old comedies that tend to be excused by the shifting fashions of what's funny.

Simon del Desierto has got Bunuel's best proper lolz I think.

Gregory's Girl still has its moments. I think Britannia Hospital had some rich, bleak lulz but it's been a long time. The Likely Lads is probably the best sitcom to movie conversion but rollicking laughs is never really that show's point.

I've just gone thru a list trying to remember anything else but jaysus there's been a lot of slightly warm feeling minor smirk shite made in this country.

Gregory's Girl still has its moments.

oh fuck I forgot Local Hero!!!!!

altho Local Hero is one of those not-laughing-a-lot-but-very-good comedy movies to which you allude

I like to think of "Comedy" in a broader Shakespearean sense and "funny" in a "I am actually laughing" sense.

yeah, that works. also means that those bunuel movies are comedies. awesome.

(obscure object might well be a tragedy, come to think of it...gah, definitions)

LJ if you get a chance to see Nuts in May you shd also try and find Jack Rosenthal's 70s classic Another Sunday and Sweet F.A. which features the internal monologue of a severely depressed Sunday league referee iirc.

:D :D :D awesome

A lot of Britain's best 60s/70s/early 80s movies were shot as Play for Today made for TV dealies basically.

wait isn't ARFRB about a psycho dude? considine wasn't funny in that, he was terrifying! iirc.

A Fish Called Wanda? Haven't seen it in years though, so maybe it's actually shit.

Don't rate most of Wanda but maybe the Michael Palin (?) offing random pets scenes are good?

Those are definitely the bits that stick in my mind, pretty funny performance by Palin.

iirc 'wanda' is pretty funny.

>wait isn't ARFRB about a psycho dude?

Sure you're not thinking of Dead Man's Shoes? Considine goes full psychopath in that, his turn in ARFRB is menacing at times but not really terrifying.

no im thinking about the one with the disabled kid... it's been a while but my recollection is considine was scary. n e way he is very good.

'hot fuzz' is pretty fuckin funny.

Considine's kid brother in Dead Man's Shoes is disabled. One of the main kids in ARFRB has a bad back, but that's about it.

Jack Rosenthal's 70s classic Another Sunday and Sweet F.A

See also P'tang, Yang, Kipperbang.

'hot fuzz' has its moments but isn't a top-rank comedy by any means imo

xp Although, again, it's not lough out loud funny. Last British film I saw that made me laugh out loud was Oh, Mr Porter!

Next train's gone!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBMHU1BJXCw

"I'm Alright Jack" isn't bad fwiw but we're getting into Tweeling territory here

Nothing wrong with that.

Love I'm Alright, it's got some pretty sparky/direct satire compared to a lot of the Ealings plus one of Sellers' toppest performances and one of the saddest lines of all time: "I see from your particulars you was at college in Oxford. I was up there meself. I was at the Balliol summer school in 1946. Very good toast and preserves they give you at tea time, as you probably know."

And obv I will rep for all of the Powell & Pressburger comedy-ish movies above pretty much anything else but again comedy not lollery.

It's a long while since I saw it but I remember it being pretty good (re: IAJ).

AMOLAD is a very good film.

are we ignoring carry on, or

far prefer hot fuzz to shaun of the dead

think it's severely underrated. the only thing i don't like is the big gun battle but considine effing kills it in that film.

hot fuzz gets kinda better as it goes along, sotd gets worse, so i'm biased towards hot fuzz...need to see it again but it brings a few lols and hey timothy dalton!!!!1

I'm so glad someone posted the Will Hay clip above because I found Will Hay films (esp. Oh, Mr. Porter!) really funny when I was a child and I still do. I also like Norman Wisdom, too, although he can be unfunny at times.

THE REBEL w/ Tony Hancock is my nomination for the funniest British film

but considine effing kills it in that film

remember being really pissed off by his turnaround at the end, seemed like a cop-out

SOTD beats it (and most 00s comedies) for me

Late last year I finally saw some early Anthony Asquith - Shooting Stars, Underground, and A Cottage on Dartmoor. I was blown away, particularly by the latter which is easiest to find in the States. It's clearly the equal of contemporary Hitch and a galaxy far, far away from, to answer the thread title, shit.

where did you see 'em?

have been doing a phd partly about this guy.

im glad his stuff is coming back out, but the commentary on it so far has been off-base, saying, "hey, it wasn't just hitchcock!" basically, it was common practice since about 1930 till 19?? to say, "british cinema is shit -- except hitchcock and asquith!"

Well, depending on how one finishes 19??, there's Powell too.

To answer your question, while prepping for a course on Brit cinema, I raided a colleague's collection.

With some slight reservations, I like Murray Smith's piece on Dartmoor.

I've seen Hindle Wakes but it didn't hit me as hard as those Asquiths (sounds like the title of the next 6ths album). Would love to see some Stoll Film Company titles or something like Palais de Danse. Have you seen any?

The earliest films are amazing too - Hepworth, Williamson, Mitchell/Kenyon (whose films I never expected to be so intoxicated by but again wow), etc.

And on into the 1930s and beyond. Current obsessions: Gracie Fields, the amaaaaaaazing Tod Slaughter, The Ghost Camera, every Gainsborough melodrama I've seen so far (about five), several positively jaw-dropping 1960s musicals, etc.

Very shit - Cliff Richard musicals

Well, depending on how one finishes 19??, there's Powell too.

yeah. he began to get recognized only in the 1960s – 70s really, is when he had his first retrospective shows. hitch and asquith were seen as dudes upholding the great tradition, ie "russian cutting". now people are beginning to recognize their contemporary thorold dickinson too.

murray smith's piece is interesting -- i haven't read it since i started my phd, which has been about getting rid of the bias towards 'close up' magazine. it wasn't the only source of intelligent ideas about film in the 1920s. im hoping to write about 'underground' and asquith's own writing when the dvd drops n e way.

I've seen Hindle Wakes but it didn't hit me as hard as those Asquiths (sounds like the title of the next 6ths album). Would love to see some Stoll Film Company titles or something like Palais de Danse. Have you seen any?

the real insurmountable problem is that practically everything from the 1920s was destroyed. bits and bobs turn up. but the director who was seen (including by asquith) as the best of the bunch, george pearson -- almost nothing survives. this partly accounts for the low standing of british cinema. truffaut simply didn't have a clue. wonder if he'd even seen any powell.

The earliest films are amazing too - Hepworth, Williamson, Mitchell/Kenyon (whose films I never expected to be so intoxicated by but again wow), etc.

i think every country had its mitchell/kenyon tbh! another sad loss, going on accounts, is all the action films from the 1910s. but that's before my period and the names escape me.

v. impressed you can see all that stuff. i'd have difficulty in the grossly underfunded UK.

my phd, which has been about getting rid of the bias towards 'close up' magazine.

Fascinating! I've been reading about The Film Society and understand that literature was handed out at some screenings. Would love to see what was written.

The only Thorold Dickinson film I know of is Gaslight so I'll seek out more.

Yeah, Truffaut, no cigar for you.

I've been reading about The Film Society and understand that literature was handed out at some screenings. Would love to see what was written.

haha! the phd is also about getting rid of the FS bias! i mean, it's good that that work has been done. buuut it skews things to just have those two, which has been the pattern for ~80 years.

they did a programme at each screening -- actually there was a bootleg of the programmes published by arno (NY) in the 1970s.

basically: it ran from 1925-39, eight times a year. the most important thing it did was show the big russian montage films, starting in 1928, most of which were banned. it is usually credited with showing the other major "art-house" movements of the era, but this is wrong. almost every important german film had commercial distribution. it's basically credited with making possible art-house cinemas, which were established in london, basically, between 1928–35. that case is more complicated.

n e way, asquith was distantly involved with it. it's claimed hitchcock was involved with it. but thorold dickinson really was: he ran the backstage stuff, programming, etc. eisenstein came over in 1929 and gave lectures: thorold dickinson and asquith (contemporaries at oxford) attended. dickinson got in a fist-fight with dziga vertov a few years later.

dickinson's best films (imo) are 'next of kin' (war film) and 'secret people' (kind of like hitchcock's 'sabotage'. the latter has just come out on dvd, with 'the queen of spades' -- which scorsese reps for, and has done an intro on the dvd for.

kevin, you are also better placed to see things like terence fisher's early hammer quota quickies, which are available on dvd in the usa, but not in the uk

v. jealous that hkm got to write some of the booklet material for the BFI's release of HEROSTRATUS, a film i have been obsessed by for years, ever since i saw this grotesque still reproduced in prob the first film reference bk i ever owned:

http://wpcontent.answers.com/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/0a/Herostratus_Pressbook.jpg/180px-Herostratus_Pressbook.jpg

also keen to own the relase of peter watkins' PRIVILEGE in the same series, as well as the lindsay shonteff and pete walker exploiters - shame these discs don't have commentaries, tho