Picturenose

Striking back against the Empire

Ken Loach’s controversial, Palme d’Or-winning study of Republicans v the Brits in 1920s Ireland raised the hackles of several well-known UK critics (who, customarily, didn’t feel the need to actually see the film) as well as Irish commentators. It’s normally a sign that an artist has got something right when he angers both sides of a debate and claims of bias seem moot when a film comprises such lyrical beauty, steadfast portrayals and a marvellous, articulate script.

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The best of British
This is getting silly. Revisiting this film on St George’s Day was a curious inversion of time and space. Wait a minute here…the English/British aren’t supposed to be that good at anything any more, declinism fuelled by lack in the NHS and public services, the Millennium Dome, the scandalous Olympic overspend. It is thus perhaps perverse (or maybe salutary) to stand up and shout for two plasticine models as the vessels of greatness, but Wallace & Gromit refuse to be anything but standfasts for standards in 21st-century UK.

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A policeman’s lot is quite a gruesome one
Another slab of in-your-face comic genius from Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and many of the usual suspects from Spaced.

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Copper-bottomed comedy
Messrs Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright are fast becoming the benchmark for what it means to be funny – comic actor and writer Pegg first paired up with writer/director Wright for the sensational Spaced sit-com, and they have subsequently worked together on the marvellous ‘not with a bang but a belly-laugh’ zombie pastiche, Shaun of the Dead (2004).

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