British Films

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/11277564

A Frenchman who also worked in the United Kingdom and the United States, Le Prince's motion-picture experiments culminated in 1888 in Leeds, England. In October of that year, he filmed moving-picture sequences of family members in Roundhay Garden and his son playing the accordion, using his single-lens camera and Eastman's paper negative film. At some point in the following eighteen months he also made a film of Leeds Bridge. This work may have been slightly in advance of the inventions of contemporaneous moving-picture pioneers, such as the British inventors William Friese-Greene and Wordsworth Donisthorpe, and was years in advance of that of Auguste and Louis Lumière and William Kennedy Dickson (who did the moving image work for Thomas Edison).

Wikipedia

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/11262504

Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark's folk horror Starve Acre has confirmed its UK release date.

The film, which premiered at last year's BFI London Film Festival to critical acclaim, will arrive in cinemas in the UK and Ireland on September 6.

Set in rural England in the 1970s, Starve Acre stars Smith and Clark as Richard and Juliette, respectively. Their idyllic family life is turned upside down when their young son starts acting out of character.

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Discussing the film in a press statement, director Daniel Kokotajlo (Apostasy) said he’s a "sucker" for English folk tales like Starve Acre, which are able to "put a spell" on viewers with their "attitudes and strange sensibilities".

The filmmaker continued: "It's not just horror; it ends up in a weird, off-kilter place. It can be uncomfortably quiet and sensitive, then suddenly it slaps you in your face with its oddballness. That was the aim of this film: to create a mood of nervousness.

"Making an audience nervous results in a whole range of reactions: tears, screams or giggles. It's my idea of cathartic fun.

"Starve Acre also taps into a timeless fear that feels more relevant than ever: the idea that returning home, to nature, and regressing into childhood, is a big mistake.

"The film removes the nostalgic, rose-tinted glasses and shows us that there are dark things, long-buried superstitions, awaiting our return."

cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/movies/t/993157

Mike Leigh, the veteran director of “Vera Drake,” “Another Year” and “Happy-Go-Lucky,” will be honored at Malta’s Mediterrane Film Festival with its Career Achievement Golden Bee Award.

Leigh will also host a masterclass at the festival, the second edition of which is taking place June 22 to 30 in Malta’s capital city of Valletta. The director, who has earned seven Oscar nominations and won the Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or for 1993’s “Naked,” will be in conversation with Adrian Wootton, chief executive of Film London and the British Film Commission.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/10934427

EXCLUSIVE: The new 28 Years Later trilogy from director Danny Boyle and Sony Pictures is gaining momentum, and some serious star power. Sources tell Deadline that Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Ralph Fiennes have boarded the first pic, a sequel to the original 28 Days Later.

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Deadline recently broke the news that the studio has already tapped Candyman director Nia DaCosta to helm the second part of the trilogy, and that the plan is to shoot both films back to back. As for the three newest cast members, the studio is clearly showing it means business, adding star power instead of going the lesser-known-actor route like in previous installments

Avatar and Titanic director James Cameron has backed proposals for a new film studio.

In a letter to Buckinghamshire Council the Oscar winner told the authority he was impressed by the plans for Marlow Film Studios, which propose that the premises be built on the site of a former quarry.

Mr Cameron said the studio could be a base for his company Lightstorm3D and potentially host a training centre for creatives working with 3D technology.

In October councillors deferred their decision on the studio to 2024, despite the site being recommended for refusal by planning officers.

The committee said it wanted more time to further consider greenbelt and highways issues linked to the A404.

When you consider the pantheon of comedies with exclamation marks in the title, the quality quotient runs from the sublime Safety Last! and — all hail the king — Airplane! to the piss-poor Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes! and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. Curtis Vowell’s Seize Them! sits somewhere in the middle of the pack, a sweary, enjoyable medieval romp that hits and misses in equal measure but gets by on appealing actors and its unapologetically puerile spirit.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/10503609

Alex Garland is expected to write the scripts for all three of the 28 Years Later movies, but apparently didn’t want to direct them. Danny Boyle will only be directing the first one. For the second film, possibly titled 28 Years Later Part 2, he’ll be passing the helm over to Candyman and The Marvels director Nia DaCosta. Production on DaCosta’s sequel will begin immediately after Boyle wraps filming on his. They wanted to have the sequel director signed on before filming on the first movie begins, as they want to “make sure each director is on the same page in regard to the story while also having time to bring their own vision to life.”

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While doing the press rounds for Oppenheimer last year, Murphy told Collider, “I was talking to Danny Boyle recently, and I said, ‘Danny, we shot the movie at the end of 2000.’ So I think we’re definitely approaching the 28 Years Later. But like I’ve always said, I’m up for it. I’d love to do it. If Alex [Garland] thinks there’s a script in it and Danny wants to do it, I’d love to do it.“ Despite the fact that Murphy is willing to reprise the role of Jim and is on board 28 Years Later as an executive producer, we still haven’t heard confirmation that he’ll actually be in the movie. While talking to Josh Horowitz on the Happy Sad Confused podcast a couple months ago, Murphy said (with thanks to Coming Soon for the transcription), “It’s for (Danny Boyle and Alex Garland) to speak about, I suppose, but I think it’s been brewing for a while. The first movie was so important for me, as an actor. I love working with those guys. Alex has an idea. And Danny directing is just huge. Watch this space.”

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While we wait to hear for sure if Cillian Murphy is or isn’t in the movie, other casting rumors have been floating around. According to industry scooper Daniel Richtman, Jodie Comer (Killing Eve) and Charlie Hunnam (Sons of Anarchy) are in talks to play the lead roles. Details on the characters they might be playing are, of course, being kept under wraps.

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There was a bidding war over the distribution rights to the 28 Years Later trilogy, with Warner Bros. and Sony emerging as the final competitors – and Sony taking the win in the end. According to The Hollywood Reporter, “Each movie will have a budget in the $60 million range but it’s unclear how goalposts or compensation may have changed during the high-stakes negotiations. A theatrical release was of great import to the filmmakers.” Sony had an edge in this race due to the fact that it’s headed up by Tom Rothman, who used to be at Fox and worked with Boyle on eight different movies there. Release dates have not yet been announced.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/10284037

Shaun Of The Dead will return to cinemas later this year to mark the 20th anniversary of the iconic British comedy.

The iconic comedy – which starred Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as two no-hopers navigating a zombie apocalypse in Britain – arrived in cinemas 20 years ago today (April 9).

Now, it’s been confirmed that Universal will treat audiences to another slice of fried gold when the film returns to cinemas at an unconfirmed date later this week.

Hello, I'm looking to purchase this film. Unfortunately, it looks to be unobtainium. Does anyone know where one may get a copy?

The BBFC has carried out its first major audience research for five years.

Viewers now want "a more cautious approach" to sex scenes that are on the border of a 12/12A and a 15, it said.

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The research also indicated that audiences were happy for classification to be more lenient towards some sex references at the border of 15 and 18, especially in comic contexts

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The organisation also found that people are now more concerned about depictions of violence on screen.

It said that in future, a higher rating may be required for violence across all age ratings.

When it comes to drugs, the research suggested that audiences have become more relaxed about depictions of cannabis use and solvent misuse than before.

The BBFC said it would therefore take a less restrictive approach to such content.

Conversely, the survey suggested parents are concerned about the normalisation of bad language, especially terms with sexual or misogynistic connotations. Such language may now also require a higher age rating.

Two new features show a Britain in the throes of social fissures that feel both uncanny and emblematic of existential threat. There’s The Kitchen, directed by Kibwe Tavares and Daniel Kaluuya, which takes gentrification to its logical conclusion as London’s final social housing estate struggles to survive. And The End We Start From, directed by Mahalia Belo, showing a single mother’s quest to raise her child while the nation is overcome by biblical flooding, uneasily reminding audiences of Britain’s dilapidated and dangerous infrastructure. But the modern cinematic benchmark for this apocalyptic turn remains Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men (2006).

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As the years have passed since Children of Men’s release in 2006, it has only felt more real. Cuarón said that he simply looked at the visible trends in Britain at the beginning of the 21st century and predicted where they would go. While it hardly disturbed the box office upon release, almost 20 years later, Children of Men is widely cited as one of the best films of the Noughties. With its themes of ecological collapse and pandemic disease, the film became a cultural touchpoint during the Covid lockdowns, as scores of online commentaries declared: “It’s like living in Children of Men.” Were they wrong?

“The truth was,” writes Danny Dorling in Shattered Nation: Inequality and the Geography of a Failing State (2022), “the state was falling apart, with rising resentment in the ‘peripheral regions and nations’, a fall in Conservative support in the Home Counties, a tacit acceptance of huge levels of inequality as normal, and a general floundering about in the dark as one crisis morphed into the next.” Dorling, a geographer, applies his deceptively simple (but revealing) mode of analysis to Britain’s national decline, drawing on empirical studies to argue that the nation “shatters” when it fails to realise its full, messy existence. For Dorling, Britain’s high point of equality was 1973, and the country has been in free-fall ever since.

Speaking to Dorling, you sense his hope that things have to get better despite the observable reality around us. “I actually think it’s quite likely, because, historically, when a state in Europe does this badly and gets to this point, normally things do turn around. Unfortunately, it’s very slowly, so it could take 20 or 30 years, so it could feel quite bad for some time to come.

The Zone of Interest has won the best international film Oscar at the Academy Awards, which are currently taking place in Los Angeles.

An adaptation of Martin Amis’ novel of the same title, and directed by British film-maker Jonathan Glazer, The Zone of Interest has largely German and Polish dialogue and therefore qualified for the award. It was the third British film to be nominated in the category (following the predominantly Welsh-language films Hedd Wyn in 1993 and Solomon & Gaenor in 2000), and the first to win.

When the puerile comedy bombed, the film-makers blamed the critics and the Tories blamed the UK Film Council. Twenty years on, we reassess the legacy of a cinematic pariah whose champions include Stewart Lee and Mike Leigh

Seen any good films lately? Then let us know.

28 Years Later, the hot package from director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland, has landed at Sony.

The Culver City-based studio has come out on top after a protracted bidding war to win the rights to the sequel package to the 2002 horror classic 28 Days Later.

Director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland have reunited to write and direct the sequel, which also comes with a Part 2, to be written by Garland. Boyle would only direct the first project, with the sequel’s director to be determined at a later stage. Cillian Murphy, whose career was launched thanks to the original movie, is also returning, as an executive producer. The Oppenheimer star could also possibly act in the project, although details are being quarantined.

“I’ll say this, it’s not about if but when we will do something, which we will do because we’ve already started talking about it.

Pegg continued: “Edgar came over to my house last year and we started kicking ideas around. It’s not going to be another sort of Cornetto film in that those movies were specifically genre riffs, which addressed the idea of the collective versus the individual.

Paul Eastwood stars in a film about Brexit and an end-of-pier show, but sadly died before it was finished.

Been go the cinema this month? Caught a movie on the telly? Dusted off an old VHS? Then tell us about it.

This genuinely put the shits up a few generations of Brits back at the tail end of the Cold War. Still gives me chills today.

An Irish-British co-production, out today on physical media.

Described as:

Andrew Legge’s found-footage sci-fi feature debut portrays sisterly love and independence in an alternative, ever potentially fascist Britain

The Observer reviewed it saying:

The debut film from Irish director Andrew Legge is a pacy, thrillingly inventive found-footage mockumentary that purports to show the invention, in 1940, of a machine that can intercept television and radio broadcasts from the future. The device is named Lola in honour of the mother of the machine’s creators: two sisters, Thomasina (Emma Appleton) and Mars (Stefanie Martini). And at first, Lola is a portal to new artistic and cultural frontiers. But then, as the second world war escalates, the machine becomes part of the war effort, at considerable cost to future generations: an alternative fascist reality swallows the future that the women had glimpsed.

Information:

• Wikipedia
• IMDb
• Letterboxd
• Trakt
• Rotten Tomatoes

Buy at:

• Amazon UK
• HMV

So what films did you see in the last week?