Hadn't seen This Is England till recently. It is fantastically good, and fantastically real. Still haven't seen the Tv-mini-series updates, but Jesus, the original is great. Shane Meadows is a genius. He made Dead Man's Shoes as well, which I recommend. Not as interesting politically and socially, but then again, it sort of is. In Dead Man's Shoes the war is wholly absent, foreign, never named, and remains an unknown quantity to those left at home, until they recieve the harsh judgement of the returning soldier.
Saw Ratcatcher years ago, but sadly on a black and white telly, which really, really didn't do it any justice at all. I have been in half-built houses like the one he travelled a long-ish way to fantasize in, and kind of felt the same way.
I like coming of age films. A little-known and impossible to find one is "Leaving", written by Daniel Boyle, about three boys leaving school in Greenock, to face the future Thatcher had created for them in Scotland - which was no future at all. It has a classic classroom scene. From the days when belting pupils was acceptable, so an angry teacher was seen as a clear and present danger to the pupil.
ANGRY TEACHER: "WHAT was the NAME of Nebuchadnezzar's WIFE, BOY!"
SCARED PUPIL: ".... Was it ..... Mrs. Nebuchadnezzar?"
Anyway, I was deeply moved by This Is England (the anti-charismatic void of nothingness that the professional National Front spokesperson embodies is spot on) but I still think this mash-up of Combo's rant is funny, if heartbreaking:
"The universe is 40 billion light years across and every inch of it would kill you if you went there. That is the position of the universe with regard to human life."
On a more sober note - the guy playing the NF's Martin Webster-style character here is simply fantastic. A complete blackhole in terms of personality, with a corresponding lack of stirring rhetoric or emmotion - just the very basics. It would be funny if it wasn't (almost) real:
"The universe is 40 billion light years across and every inch of it would kill you if you went there. That is the position of the universe with regard to human life."
A very RI scene from the six-parter G.B.H. by Alan Bleasdale. Shame about the sound and video quality, I had to do silly things to capture it. G.B.H. seems a bit more dated and a lot less subtle than how I remembered it, but still very effective (and surprisingly hilarious at times).
I like how they got across the fact that even the Trotskyite communists (actually MI5 agents) and the working-class "leftist" council leader are all racist to one degree or another, and mostly unaware of it themselves.
"The universe is 40 billion light years across and every inch of it would kill you if you went there. That is the position of the universe with regard to human life."
I really haven't watched a great deal of telly for a very long time, but that was a good one.
Oh aye, it was brilliant. Especially Michael Palin's angry doctor, though the scenes featuring him are a bit long to post up. I don't watch telly now either, all my favourite shows are from a long while back, or else are available online someplace.
Hammer of Los wrote:Back to Batman;
I put this quote elsewhere but I like the scene so much.
It really makes me chuckle;
...
...Speechless... Maybe that's the look James Holmes was going for?
"The universe is 40 billion light years across and every inch of it would kill you if you went there. That is the position of the universe with regard to human life."