why are 'british' films shit?

as for brit flicks, this comes from an old, angry version of me. ive calmed down now. i wonder what i would have thought of love actually back then.

but i am confused as why current output is so gangster-orientated. i am monumentally bored with this topic, which is why i have never seen godfather, goodfellas etc. i might see kidulthood i suppose, but thats about it.

theres loads of good british films obviously. i think that we are not very prolific in putting out good ones, there tends to be maybe 1 or 2 a year, as opposed to other countries which have a higher scoring rate i think.

Only Clive James (and he's Australian).

the bbc2 thing which aired last night on british thrillers was without doubt the worst programme of all time.

i figured it would be bad so i, get this, didn't watch it.

i did watch Daredevil tho...

Didn't see it, but was Helen "I'm a right cockney gangster" Mirren as ludicrous as she sounded on the advert for it?

i'm supposed to watch this sort of thing, for college, like.

helen mirren was one of the less annoying interviewees. the revelation that her grandparents ran tings in the london gangland of the 1940s was interesting.

generally, though, i could do without richard bacon's views on 'the long good friday'.

the problem was it felt pressure to be celebratory. why not just admit that british cinema has been mostly a load of rubbish. 'the third man' isn't really british.

What I miss most are the really visionary british films - the kind made by the likes of Powell & Pressburger, Nick Roeg, Peter Greenaway, even Ken Russell.

What's worse than Hugh Grant is the ghastly influence of Ken Loach - all that fucking worthy, downbeat, dour, social realism.

You can't get a film funded in the UK now if it doesn't feature an asylum seeker being preyed on by paedophiles via grainy CCTV. What's worse is you always doubt the sincerity of the intentions behind these films as you know that they're conceived to ensure all the correct boxes are ticked on the Lottery Fund application forms.

"Issues" films. Bleh.

that's why you find a private investor

Or not, as appears to be the case.

not sure if the lottery fund even exists. but it tended to fund brit gangster films and shitty romcoms, not loach material.

loach et al often get money from abroad. i'm not mad keen on him but there's nothing wrong with films about asylum-seeking paedos or whatever.

roeg is okay, but fuck greenaway and russell. p&P are from a very different era.

> the bbc2 thing which aired last night on british thrillers was without doubt the worst programme of all time.

was ok up until Mona Lisa. plus they gave away the end of shallow grave which i have had on video (ie vhs) for about 10 years and still haven't watched.

all the pre-60s stuff was rubbish. all they had to say about hitchcock was 'some themes familiar from his more famous american films were present in his british films.' everything else was overfamiliar.

best spoiler complaint ever (xp)

"but fuck greenaway and russell."

the devils is a great film.

he did some interesting things (as did greenaway) but so has loach; and as a whole i'd go with loach's body of work over russell's.

http://the88s.blogsome.com/images/if.jpg

british, 'british' and not shit = out on DVD this week.

hurrah!

Peter Greenaway is great

i'm an american and i have to say, I love all your movies about coal miners going up against margaret thatchers.

Strike?

I was just kidding - the "coal miners during Thatcher years" British indie film is kinda cliche here

Frogman OTM, The Devils made me weep. Russell can fuck around inconsequentially as long as he likes, he gets a pass for that one film.

Also, there was once a time in my life when Greenaway was a household god. I'll still go to the wall for Drowning By Numbers, The Cook..., and especially The Falls. Never did get to see that Tulse Luper feature he made a couple years back.

http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,2149012,00.html

aight, you know what, fuck it, alex cox otm. it has been a travesty, this "summer of british films".

Get Carter was made in 1971. I was a teenager then, and can assure the promoters of this depressing vision that, despite strikes and IRA atrocities, Albion was a long way from skid row. When I went to college, the government paid for it. I incurred no debt. The state owned the water pipes, the reservoirs, the airline, the lecky, the telephone system and the railways, which ran on time and were reasonably cheap. We weren't engaged in two wars of colonial aggression. Muslims weren't our enemies. And the weather was great!

SAM TYLER WAS RIGHT

UK needs to start making good music again first, then we can talk about film.

he even undermines his own argument there a bit -- ira atrocities were pretty thin on the ground in '71, and nothing was happening on the mainland then.

it's possible for a musician to make a living by selling in the UK market with minimal penetration elsewhere. this is basically impossible with film, and the idea of strictly "british films" has been pretty iffy since, oh, the first world war.

"death at a funeral" is being billed as a british film, i notice, despite being clearly directed by an american (frank oz)

aren't simon pegg / nick frost films and guy ritchie gangster romps, regardless of merit a rebuttal to that nrq?

don't think so. 'hot fuzz' was financed by universal (or whoever working title is a subcontractor for). 'lock, stock' *possibly* was done outside of the system, but 'snatch' would have had been done with the US market in mind.

I didn't know that you read The Guardian.

Also, this thread makes me wonder what happened to Peter Mullan? As a director, I mean.

Wot no love for Thunderpants?

(Srsly - it's really good! And Rupert Grint can act his little socks off - far more than the other guy in that slightly more famous series of films he's been in lately).

Maybe this is why?

Too impatient to train as an actor, and having briefly tried the traditional route of castings and pumping connections, Fucilla decided to buy his way in.

Soon Phil Davis, Paul Kaye and MC Harvey of So Solid Crew were on board, too...

Phil Davis' optimism is a joy.

"Sometimes a film looks fantastic. Everyone's excited and talking about the genius of this and that, how it's going to be a masterpiece, and it turns out to be poop. And sometimes the opposite is true. It seems to be a complete nightmare, but then it all comes together. And no one would be more pleased than me if that happened to The Big I Am."

what underpinned Fucilla's ambition, friends and workmates agree, what made him stand out from every other fantasist and wannabe, was self-belief and a monumental ego

errr

Phil Davis, Paul Kaye and Steven Berkoff

Enjoy the work of these 3 dudes

a young thug's brutal coming of age

oh fuck off

The opening sentence alone!

Brixton-born City trader Robert Fucilla had succeeded in everything he had put his hand to, from selling oil to backing British hip-hop acts, and believed his Italian ancestry gave him a shot at being a British Al Pacino.

It's like the only logical response is "Wow, I hate you."

Also:

"Madsen was to wear silver shoes, Berkoff an aqua blue latex suit. All the stylistic things were coming off."

I'm reading this and all "Wait...it's a superhero movie now?"

DPT is grebt but it's also a very "keep these spaces liminal!" film

now that i’ve settled down i have had to admit it is not really a movie for kids

but yes it is full of liminality isn’t it - a minicab backroom, a hotel kitchen, an airport, an shared apartment with only one key, a mortuary… the river styx is even invoked at one point

the way the gang joined up at the end to pull off a plan made me think of kaurismaki