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*** Official Film Thread ***

Watched angel heart for the first time today. Thought it was really good. As soon as i saw de niros nails got the gist. But very well done.
 
First time watching office space - It summed up working any kind of low wage office job brilliantly. From the condescending scales of “management” to the banal small talk. Although I hadn’t seen the movie before, it felt so familiar (yes I get that’s the idea of things being intentionally relatable).

The printer scene sang directly to my heart, those machines are pure evil.
 
The British film industry will take a huge knock if Film4 is privatised, which looks grimly likely, now that the Culture Secretary, Nadine Dorries, plans to sell off its parent company, Channel 4, to an as-yet-unknown buyer.

This will remove one of the crucial pillars of independent financing from the UK film sector (the other two being the BFI and BBC Film). Film4 will presumably still exist – but in what form? Commercial priorities are all-but-guaranteed to take precedence over everything the brand used to stand for.

The company’s greatest commercial successes have sprung from an attitude of risk-taking, not laying up. It may be widely assumed that Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) and Trainspotting (1996) – both co-productions – were hits on a plate, but this wasn’t the case. Both launched stars rather than relying on them; many said Irvine Welsh’s novel was unfilmable, until Danny Boyle proved otherwise; Richard Curtis only had one movie script (1989’s The Tall Guy) to his name.

This is the pattern with almost everything Film4 has achieved since its foundation in 1982, when the company’s first film, Walter, aired on Channel 4. The career of that film’s director, Stephen Frears, would be nurtured under this banner and reach a peak with My Beautiful Laundrette (1985). That film’s star, Daniel Day-Lewis, would build his profile in A Room with a View (1985), another Film4 co-production, which would net the company a Best Picture nomination and propel Merchant Ivory (via Howards End [1992], another jewel in the crown) into their golden age.

As this brief flurry through a mighty back-catalogue proves, no retelling of the story of British cinema over my lifetime is possible without Film4. If you pull it out, like a firmly wedged Jenga block, the castle comes crumbling down. Without its helping-hand funding, you can forget about many of Britain’s Oscar nominations; all sorts of careers would never even have begun.

“I don’t think I would have a career without Film4,” admitted Trainspotting’s producer, Andrew Macdonald, last year to Screen International. “I think you can add to that a lot of the collaborators I have worked with: John Hodge and Danny Boyle with Shallow Grave and Trainspotting, Kevin Macdonald with The Last King of Scotland, Alex Garland with Ex Machina. The list goes on and on.”

Two titans of the younger generation have turned to the company again and again: Steve McQueen (Hunger, Shame, 12 Years a Slave, Widows) and Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, The Favourite). Not one of these films had a whiff of “sure thing” about them, yet one (The Favourite) would score 10 Oscar nominations, and another (12YAS) would garner nine and win Best Picture.

Reflecting on Film4’s achievements prompts a nostalgia that wouldn’t be painful if Dorries wasn’t planning on cashing all this in. The profit that British viewers have reaped from the titles above goes far beyond the merely financial. And the great worry is that, with Film4 in private hands, every consideration will now be dragged down to one level alone: the bottom line.
 
Danishfurniturelover said:
The British film industry will take a huge knock if Film4 is privatised, which looks grimly likely, now that the Culture Secretary, Nadine Dorries, plans to sell off its parent company, Channel 4, to an as-yet-unknown buyer.

This will remove one of the crucial pillars of independent financing from the UK film sector (the other two being the BFI and BBC Film). Film4 will presumably still exist – but in what form? Commercial priorities are all-but-guaranteed to take precedence over everything the brand used to stand for.

The company’s greatest commercial successes have sprung from an attitude of risk-taking, not laying up. It may be widely assumed that Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) and Trainspotting (1996) – both co-productions – were hits on a plate, but this wasn’t the case. Both launched stars rather than relying on them; many said Irvine Welsh’s novel was unfilmable, until Danny Boyle proved otherwise; Richard Curtis only had one movie script (1989’s The Tall Guy) to his name.

This is the pattern with almost everything Film4 has achieved since its foundation in 1982, when the company’s first film, Walter, aired on Channel 4. The career of that film’s director, Stephen Frears, would be nurtured under this banner and reach a peak with My Beautiful Laundrette (1985). That film’s star, Daniel Day-Lewis, would build his profile in A Room with a View (1985), another Film4 co-production, which would net the company a Best Picture nomination and propel Merchant Ivory (via Howards End [1992], another jewel in the crown) into their golden age.

As this brief flurry through a mighty back-catalogue proves, no retelling of the story of British cinema over my lifetime is possible without Film4. If you pull it out, like a firmly wedged Jenga block, the castle comes crumbling down. Without its helping-hand funding, you can forget about many of Britain’s Oscar nominations; all sorts of careers would never even have begun.

“I don’t think I would have a career without Film4,” admitted Trainspotting’s producer, Andrew Macdonald, last year to Screen International. “I think you can add to that a lot of the collaborators I have worked with: John Hodge and Danny Boyle with Shallow Grave and Trainspotting, Kevin Macdonald with The Last King of Scotland, Alex Garland with Ex Machina. The list goes on and on.”

Two titans of the younger generation have turned to the company again and again: Steve McQueen (Hunger, Shame, 12 Years a Slave, Widows) and Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, The Favourite). Not one of these films had a whiff of “sure thing” about them, yet one (The Favourite) would score 10 Oscar nominations, and another (12YAS) would garner nine and win Best Picture.

Reflecting on Film4’s achievements prompts a nostalgia that wouldn’t be painful if Dorries wasn’t planning on cashing all this in. The profit that British viewers have reaped from the titles above goes far beyond the merely financial. And the great worry is that, with Film4 in private hands, every consideration will now be dragged down to one level alone: the bottom line.
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Worked at channel 4 for a number and was there when film 4 launched. I worked in the main building in victoria though. Their building was in charlotte street.
 
Thoroughly enjoyed Mark Rylance’s latest tour-de-force in The Outfit up Cineworld last night, so nice to watch a film which didn’t rely upon CGI and also weighed in at under 2 hours!

 
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