So This Is This Is England

This is England is the latest film from Shane Meadows. If you want, you can see Meadows play darts with Mark Kermode this Saturday night on BBC2's The Culture Show. Kermode is clearly a dangerous man - it was while he was interviewing Werner Herzog that the sniper struck. And it was during his Five Live review of March of the Penguins that I almost broke my fist, foot and teeth on the radio.

I wonder if either Kermode or Meadows will get a dart stuck in their head, like Shaun, or in their back, like my sister? I'll have to tune in and see, I suppose. Quite exciting.

The trailer for This is England has now gone online at the website for the PR company responsible for flogging this film to the UK (and you can download it with a right-click, should you desire). Wot no Paddy Considine?

A Pub Shoe, Innit?

Tonight's Culture Show on BBC2 featured Mark Kermode playing pool with Danny Boyle, and a trailer for next week when he's going to play darts with Shane Meadows. I hope Michael Winner's getting better, they'll needing him at the fruit machine the week after, I expect.

Why are so many British filmmakers so bad? As fars as true greats go, wll, we've got Edgar Wright and Lynn Ramsey and... Garth Jennings... (of course, how could I forget Garth Jennings... doh!)...

Er... Um... there's always Richard Curtis. How many of you are going to agree with that? I love Curtis, but I know he's not a popular choice amongst bloggers and blog readers.

Some of the greatest directors of all time came from the UK: Alfred Hitchcock, Alexander Mackendrick and Alan Clarke (The Three Als) are amongst the very best from anyplace, at any time. And now?

I suppose there's Terry Gilliam. He's forfeit his US citizenship, so I think we can claim him now.

Maybe the fact that there's almost no film industry in the UK is part of the problem; maybe the fact that the prevailing British film culture is one of imitation is another.