Let us anticipate Chris Morris's jihadist satire "Four Lions"

Now very stoked for this after seeing this pic...
http://www.slashfilm.com/wp/wp-content/images/four_lions_one.jpg

i forget exactly where the CM backlash stood

but fuck 'em all, i'm psyched

p.s. seriously and sincerely fuck you if you hate on CM because of the virulence and quote-fervency of his more undergraduate-y fanbase, the guy is a fucking genius and he, baynham and ianucci made/make some of the best british telly ever, plus he did blue jam which is all-time

of course, this might be shit

http://www.whoateallthepies.tv/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/41792940.jpg

exactly.

i find chris morris awful (and it's nothing to do with his undergraduate fans, lj, and everything to do with his undergraduate sense of humour), but i am looking forward to this film. kevin eldon is a-ok with me.

here's some stuff about it from last year: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/wannabe-suicide-bombers-beware-chris-morris-movie-gets-goahead-1228152.html

world premiere at sundance in mid-january.

to describe the comedy in, say, 'blue jam' as 'undergraduate' is giving the youth of britain a bit too much credit IMO but hey

am still stoked

You were the person that said undergraduate.

to describe the comedy in, say, 'blue jam' as 'undergraduate' is giving the youth of britain a bit too much credit IMO but hey

reviving this thread when you're 30.

caek u r gay

he is LIKED by plenty of undergrads (and postgrads, and adults)...'blue jam' is definitely NOT an undergrad 'thing' like 'brass eye' is. even 'the day today' is more of an adult thing these days, altho that's got quite a lot to do with its age

much of the humour connected with chris morris is top-notch. have any of you heard 'why bother', some early interviews he did of peter cook, in character? fabulous stuff, and nary a word of it is breathed by yer average student comedy-geek

of course i've heard why bother. i went to oxford. and i did a science degree. why bother is practically on the entrance exam.

blue jam is the very essence of undergrad pseud comedy. i've said this elsewhere, but it is the grandchild of monty python (and i'm referring here to the shit bits of monty python, not the quotable bits, and not the films).

i was about 11-13 when on the hour and the day today were around and i found them hilarious. it's pretty silly and childish, which is fine with me. those shows are the least bad thing he did. and i'm not saying comedy that attempts to be clever is valueless, and stupid comedy is good. i'm saying that comedy that attempts to be clever but is not is literally the worst thing in the world.

enough hardman though. i will not lie: looking forward to the shitstorm this film will likely generate.

*weeps furiously*

did monty python have awesome psychedelic segues involving brilliant and often obscure pop music? i am not going to win this argument but you're selling Blue Jam short by miles. it's a lot harder-edged than shit python; it's also a lot more genuinely surreal and artistic. and moving. tbh YMMV and let's forget abt it

(there were like 2 people i knew at uni who loved 'why bother'...i think it was more of a thing in yr undergrad days maybe? i appreciate that up until recently you were surrounded by hateful clouds of the buggers)

brass eye is amazing...the idea that it's just goofball comedy is silly, it makes a complete mockery of british news and the way news is written. try watching the news after watching brass eye, it makes bad scripts leap out at you.

jam is really funny too, and not at all wacky or python-like. it's hit and miss but the best jam sketches are quite ambient, not laugh out loud funny just good ideas with good characters, well acted and well written, eg the school where the head teacher sells the kids drugs, the gp, the lazy parents, that actor is amazing.

i think caek is thinking of 'big train' when he says 'blue jam' fwiw

:p

big train was good

it had its moments. very occasionally. compared to most british sketch-comedy of this decade it's pretty damn good

brass eye is amazing...the idea that it's just goofball comedy is silly

just to be clear, i don't think this and didn't say it.

i agree that (blue) jam is not literally like monty python. what i mean when i say it's its descendant is it does the same comedy without the jokes thing (monty python's rare peaks notwithstanding). i know this reeks of ad hominem, but they were liked by almost exactly analogous audiences in their own times for a reason. the only real difference is that jam adds a collosal dose of pretension (in the truest sense of the word), or what lj calls "more genuinely surreal and artistic. and moving." ; )

haha caek what are your opinions on Monkey Dust again

lol bbc3

wouldn't get that kind of thing on BBC3 now tho perhaps

you keep me in check, good sir

(some monkey dust is still very good imo, some is very DO YOU SEE)

fine with this kind of DO YOU SEE

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digitiser

wish i'd been there for teletext's salad days

a magical, magical time

things i lost my shit to as a young teenager: cartoon violence on reeves and mortimer, cartoon violence on bottom (once i thought i'd die), digitiser pretty much every day.

Is this like the mods and rockers of lame student humour or something?

That was an xpost. I would never say a word against Bottom.

students did not like digitiser iirc

lemme guess the framley examiner is the grandchild of digitiser

i think so, yeah. bit after my time. a lot of stuff was indirectly influenced by it, i think. i just brought it up because of the "do you see" thing, which got its big break as an meme on digitiser, not because it's relevant in any way to this film. moving on ...

i hope this is good.

i don't really understand chris morris's comments about suicide bombers, they seem pretty dim to me (and he can be very, very strident), but he's not the only writer on this and... let's just hope.

never did see the mock tape clip of Morris dressed up as Bin Laden. spoke to the guys who filmed it but no idea if it was ever shown anywhere. i think Eminem beat him to the punch so it was canned.

http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f14/snouts/huss.png

should add I don't really care about this movie...didn't watch nathan barley either...but brasseye and to a lesser extent jam are classic

I bought Why Bother on CD on the first day of my freshers week in 1998.

Awesome shirts though.
http://www.newscientist.com/blog/shortsharpscience/uploaded_images/morris-726492.jpg

Mr. Morris says a few things

Sometimes reality was almost too ridiculous. Like the jihadi who disguised himself as someone from MI5 to try and trick his parents into letting him go to Pakistan. I heard a surveillance recording of two suspects in the middle of the night. These guys have had 600kilos of fertiziler in a lock up for two months. The 17 yr old wakes up the 20 yr old and says "brother - that fertilizer's not for gardening is it?"

article has disappeared :/

think it's playing for the first time in a couple of days?

yes, world premiere at sundance a week saturday

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/video/2010/jan/21/chris-morris-four-lions-sundance

I may be a fan-boy but that is tearfully funny.

hahahaha that was awesome

Terrifyingly funny.

r...really? That?

^^ This.

on my computer it cut out before the joke.

I may be a fan-boy but that is tearfully funny.

yes.

itt: lbzc, non-lbzc

buh?

First reports coming in. This is from Empire:

http://www.empireonline.com/empireblogs/under-the-radar/post/p755

A modern day Ealing comedy it says here.

Slightly wary appreciation from the editor of Channel 4's Storyville in the Guardian -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/24/chris-morris-four-lions

I think Iannucci said he liked it a lot, though.

and I must be the only person in the world that loves Nathan Barley. Like, really, really, really loves Nathan Barley.

uhhh, what?

"I think Iannucci said he liked it a lot, though."

pretty high praise from his lifelong friend and collaborator.

that Nick Fraser article makes me pretty sure i will see this though. liberal hand wringing about whether something was funny even after he'd laughed at it? probably one of chris morris's objectives tbf.

ITT: ultimate nerdy undergraduate fanboy defends cm by saying "don't be put off by the nerdy graduate fanboys"

btw, this looks... meh

how dare you accuse me of being an undergraduate

"half-success"?

Is this a new comedy trend?

http://www.seabrightproductions.co.uk/jtm.html

Oh wait that musical was first on in 2007. Not quite new then.

i don't see any indication that this film will be released anywhere, anytime, besides sundance

I'm sure ifc will pick it up in the U.S.

And of course it will get a release in the UK

i was thinking recently that the IFC channel should buy the rights to play nathan barley. they are going for this whole "we have shows" marketing lately, and they are mostly british licensed "programmes"

yah, they also made a big show of releasing in the loop last year.

ITL had american stars and is (so far as i can tell) less contentious. i think -- as someone who tried to get an article about it published stateside as long ago as this time 2009 -- that it was the great NY newspaper reviews in the summer that made it really take off. (my piece was turned down, then asked for a few months later.) ITL also fared better at sundance i think, and iannucci is better at self-promotion.

it may well not a theatrical release, but if that happens i'd be staggered if this didn't end up on festival direct. i don't have any specific information to back this up, but i have worked with acquisitions at ifc and was with them during the US release of ITL (our film cmae out with them at the same time), and i get the impression they look very favourably on less commercial british stuff at the moment.

at least someone is

(in the US)

also they seem to have a thing for contentious stuff at the moment (chaos reigns and the crazy repulsive violent winterbottom thing with hudson and affleck that they picked up last week), so it being controversial certainly isn't a problem per se.

having said that, they did announce a deal at sundance and this wasn't it. and as you say, if they don't take it then i can't see anyone else picking it up.

http://www.ifc.com/news/2010/02/chris-morris.php

ha, "Four Lions" does not yet have U.S. distribution.

yeah, great punchline : ) it will maybe show at tribeca in april btw. screenings are open to the public iirc.

unusually straightforward interview for morris, wouldn't you say nrq? do you think this is how he's going to do press for this film, or press in the U.S.?

idk... it's actually just that he doesn't do many. the others i've read (which are few) haven't been that different. i think he paints himself into a corner a bit, wrt ITL, jon stewart vs howard stern, etc. all of the 'on the hour' team felt similarly about route-one satire, *twenty years ago*, so i guess you could say he's staying true to that. iannucci was always the most prone to lapsing back into it (hence lee & herring line "you're not on the friday night armistice now, stu"). but i sort of feel morris would now be saying "actually littlejohn is right, and stewart lee is the real cunt". if you get me.

ha "Route 1".

in what context was that lee & herring line?

also festen was shit.

GTFO

whenever stewart lee said something political, basically.

Is satire dead?

No. It’s just changing a bit, and in a good way. And even old bad satire is certainly still with us unfortunately, clanking satire. As if you see the film Wag The Dog, or if you watch Rory Bremner you will see. I don’t like Friday Night Armistice, which I think, is old satire and is a bit clanking, but what we’re doing is silly but still satirical, as satirical as the most heavy handed impression of John Majors by Rory Bremner ever will be.

http://www.fistoffun.net/pressarticles/thriftfunnelinterview.html

Well, I didn’t. But then about a week ago I went to see a show at the Webshed café in London that Dave Green and Danny O’Brien do, and they did this live comedy review of new software. There were about 250 people in there and it was going out live on the Internet so it was really good.

god, i miss ntk.

xpost

I'm not sure bracketing Ianucci with Morris is actually as helpful as its obviousness might make it seem. I didn't like Friday Night Armistice all that much either, for the reasons that Stewart Lee says there basically, but I've always felt Morris has a harder, more imaginative, more classical approach to satire. It's not from the NTNON school of satire, which is kind of laughing satire, but more the vicious grin of say Wyndham Lewis or the savage indignation of Swift. I'm not saying that's not felt by Ianucci, but it just comes across less (the 'Fuck the politicians' thing Morris talks about in that interview).

With really high satire you've almost got this gnostic thing going on, the absolute reveling in vice and absurdity, with very little of the Horatian idea of correcting vice and promoting virtue - there's no smugness there, which I do detect a bit with Ianucci.

I hope that's not too obscure, I'm just mulling it over in my head.

We always ring (Baynham) up leaving messages on his ansaphone. We have a game to try and leave the sickest ansaphone message, which is always good fun. Perhaps one day we’ll release those as a record, except we haven’t recorded any of them, and they are much to offensive to ever go out for public broadcast or even for me to tell you them.

i would love to hear these.

great interview nrq. i love those two idiots.

iannucci is more of an enabler/producer figure than morris, and he does lapse back into radio four 6.30pm material too easily. don't know what morris does for money in lieu of that. there's quite a lot of brit surrealism in morris; blue jam is getting towards 'dark spike milligan' territory.

the lee/herring reunions on youtube are just yoga flame for all time.

xpost Definitely, I thought Blue Jam was pretty incredible, probably now the best thing he's done for me right now. So disembodied and strange, even the stuff that was actually relatively (very relatively) straighforward.

'dark spike milligan territory' =

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry_and_Chips

god, i miss ntk.

yes oh yes.

On Morris, yeah, he's in the line of stare-into-the-void, record/invent-chaos satire (which blurs into abrasive anti-aesthetic art, which isn't necc satirical), so even when he has a firm ethical purpose it tends to get lost in the maelstrom (cf Swift as rubbish defender of Anglicanism). Iannucci's better at uh civic engagement, but that'll always drift towards r4 smugness. He dodges that smugness surprisingly often tho'

DVD release

The Complete Series of Curry and Chips is due on 22 March 2010.

ruh-roh

ooh, who said that? Citation plz...

Swift's defence of Anglicanism is "hey at least it's not Catholicism/Anabaptism" which is kinda standard for the era and has some merit imo.

His defence of religion in toto is a lot hazier, but comes with the territory etc.

Yeah, his middle-way tradition/inspiration defence of Anglicanism is totally conventional, but it isn't exactly clear from Tale of a Tub - the messiness & invention makes it look like he's mocking everything. Hence accusations of blasphemy, stymied church career etc.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/146/426655670_00ca3260e1.jpg

Swift's thing is partly that his desire to correct abuses strays over party lines: he was too straight to be trusted even by his own "side". Couple that with genuine despair I think - accusations of misanthropy have been exaggerated since the 18th century but it's hard not to read Gulliver's Travels as "people are more or less idiots". I tend to think he's laughing when he thinks this but fine line really.

idk - he's happy to be a propaganda machine for the Tories 1710-1714, with expectation of advancement; that only really ends because of the Whig takeover. Tale of a Tub is before that, though, & is meant, I think, to be a make-his-name work - a funny defence of Anglicanism (so a position that no-one who mattered could disagree with), with a slightly random collection of extra attacks on hack writers, fops etc folded in (he was already quite old for an unknown writer, prob had a lot of stuff saved up). But the overload makes it look like it doesn't believe anything, and it isn't received warmly, largely.

That's all I mean by a rubbish defence - its audience didn't see it as a defence, and take it as an attack. & I guess that's where the loose parallel with Morris comes in too - the ostensible satirical aims of Brasseye (media, gullibility, stupidity) tend to get lost in the surface chaos & fun.

(And more or less agree on Gulliver's Travels - tend to read it as 'people are idiots, ridiculous and maybe a bit disgusting, but still worthwhile, just')

http://video.uk.msn.com/watch/video/four-lions-trailer/2trpus57

"a thrillingly fictional story which illuminates the radicalised British jihad and undermines the folly of western culture’s attempts to alienate them"

eh? trailer looks good though.

p.s. feeling homesick now btw.

still stoked

not a super tagline imo

Has this got a release date yet?

not afaik

7 may

Yay I'm excited. I saw a trailer and it looked pretty funny.

Trailer looks way more lol Britcom than what I would expect from Chris Morris - bumbling fools with technology etc. That said trailers aren't always that representative of the actual movie.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/mar/25/four-lions-chris-morris-review

^^^ reads like it was written by the same people who now write idolator

kind of weird that nowhere does he mention that it's a comedy

http://screenlit.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/photo.jpg

hahahahahahahahahahahaha

funny!

""Funny""
ILX

Trying to work out if the silhouettes of the 'four lions' is spelling something, but with no success.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/may/01/chris-morris-four-lions-interview

http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/exclusive/asses_den.php

He is giving many more interviews: also read a piece each from The Times and today in The Sunday Times

Four Lions film boycott urged by 7/7 families

Speaking as someone whose brother was murdered in his dreams by a razor blade-fingered maniac, I'm calling for a boycott of Hot Tub Time Machine.

What next, boycott war films urges people who knew someone who died in a war?

Gonna go and see this at the weekend.

Just got back from a late show of this; it's unlike anything I've ever seen. Without saying too much, I found it infinitely more sad than funny. Despite the fifteen "Funny"s across the poster, I actually only laughed at a couple of gags (which were slapstick in nature)... but it's a major achievement. A truly unique and complicated movie. How long until we're allowed to talk spoilers?

i didn't not laugh, but this isn't quite "there". there were a lot of laughers out loud, and people afterwards saying it was genius/the funniest thing ever, but it palpably isn't. most of the jokes were just stupid people doing stupid things and it certainly never did anything to offend/challenge its audience. and i kind of expected to be offended.

too many of the jokes were really phony anyway in a way i can't articulate -- maybe improvs left to run too long. the guy trying his ira voice? bullshit. the squat-jog or whatever? complete bullshit.

obviously there's a big change of tone during the film. but while the jokes dry up, what are they replaced by?

Yeah, you're bound to get a lot of people who are just dead set on finding this kind of thing hilarious. "Clapter" and all that.
It's weird - Morris does himself and the subject matter a huge disservice by playing so many of the characters as almost literally retarded (but you're right, the only offensive thing about many of those gags is that they're not at all funny). I kind of laughed at the squat jog scene though, with the guy throwing the bag at them. But that was slapstick.

I suppose I was really impressed by the high wire act of giving us a (mostly) standard three act structure and a "traditional" lead and then not doing what we are so trained to expect from those conventions.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2010/may/11/four-lions-chris-morris

p impressive rly, no stars at all unless you count julia davies, bald guy, and kevin eldon/mark heap

and 'cemetery junction' got the same money from 4x the screens + fell off hard, and that was distributed by universal iirc

Liked it fine, but yeah madness thinking this the best thing evarrr.

Some laughs, not loads; liked the family scenes best, especially Lion King/Jihad storytime - touching, funny, strange.

The tone shifts didn't break it for me, but are more of an annoyance if I go back over them too much - comedy of dumbness was ok for the most part, but he buy the peroxide in different voices was pushing it.

Felt like there was a script breakdown towards the end. Was that meant to be the London Marathon? It didn't feel like London, or the London Marathon. And one policeman calls it 'the fun run'. Effects of the bombs don't seem consistent or real (rather they seem needs-of-script driven) - isn't that where he should be hitting us a bit more viscerally?

I liked the look of it - used exteriors & landscapes nicely I thought, not willing to just be TV enlarged.

On Saturday the Picturehouse chain is doing a Q&A with Chris Morris and a screening: http://www.picturehouses.co.uk/News/Item/Chris_Morris_Q_A/

Felt really dissatisfied with the film afterwards, mainly due to my inability to get over the contradiction contained within the central premise.

The film spends the first hour or so ramming these guys' idiocy down my throat, and then expects me to believe they're capable of successfully manufacturing several sophisticated, mobile phone-activated bombs? Yeah, umm, no. Idiots don't make bombs that go off - see pants bomber, 21/7, times square moron etc etc - but I guess that would deprive the film of "impact"?

not only that, but the bomb expert dies well before the attack on the marathon right?

There's a great interview with Chris Morris on John Safran's radio show this week. It's on the podcast, 30 minutes in.

how much longer until a us distributor is announced? :/

it just won some kinda audience award at a festival iirc - probably bodes well. it doesn't strike me as remotely as cross-over-able as in the loop though.

It's more scandalous, so perhaps it doesn't need as much cross-over appeal.

This is a GREAT interview!

all i know is i did not receive adequate props for my contribution to this thread

Got to be a misprice surely. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Four-Lions-DVD-Riz-Ahmed/dp/B003M8OHVA/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1282679086&sr=1-1

taken to just telling people this film is racist, which it is, isn't it?

Have yet to see it

No.

this received its german premiere at the munich scifi and fantasy film festival last friday. i know because i couldn't get tickets and watched a-team instead.

at the munich scifi and fantasy film festival

hmm

not seen it, is it actually racist?

xp german humour i think

does killer inside me have a uk release date btw? stoked for that thread

the joke is that the terrorists are mindbogglingly stupid

they just keep on doing amazingly stupid shit

in the end you kind of feel chris morris cannot create a plausible muslim character

Unlike the real terrorists, who never lock themselves out of cars or light their underwear on fire?

Bits where the terrorists are stupid and and keep on doing stupid shit = classic.

Bits with the wife and child = dud.

Still not sure about the ending.

Not sure Chris Morris has ever actually created a plausible character full stop, which is fine except where he tries. I'm really not sure what they were trying to achieve with the Amira-from-Eastenders character.

Film has to *end*.

That's the ending, basically.

which is fine except where he tries.

yeah... this film is a mess mainly because we are meant to buy into the main guy's relationship with his family, and we can't

even then the humour was kind of OH NO, WHAT? I WAS SUPPOSED TO BLOW UP A *CAR*!? BUT I BLEW UP MY *PENIS* INSTEAD!! DERP

i bought the guy's relationship with his family.

rly? the wife being chill with him killing himself!? i thought that was str8 bs.

Well, it's sort of presented as a minor shock and then expected to be taken as is, I'll grant you that, but the film was operating from a heightened place from the get go with those two extremely stupid guys that it never bothered me. I suppose she's meant to represent the educated, middle class muslim that might sympathize with the cause, but I didn't think that was terribly important. Her/Their scene with the strict fundamentalist brother (or was it cousin?) was great.

One of my films of the year btw.

Her/Their scene with the strict fundamentalist brother (or was it cousin?) was great.

Yeah, I loved that scene. I didn't understand the wife, but I didn't disbelieve in the character. SOme people I just don't get in real life, and she seemed like one of them.

It's a film about people blowing themselves up for a cause they don't really understand, I don't think we should try to find a rational mindset amongst them. Plus, they had been thinking about this for months or years before the start of the film, in which time i'm sure she had her doubts and has been convinced?

Was it the guy's brother that was killed in an attack?

Brother ended up in a shipping container in a warehouse with an interrogator.

It's a film about people blowing themselves up for a cause they don't really understand, I don't think we should try to find a rational mindset amongst them.

i think they're quite plain about it? they're opposed to US/israeli 'imperialism' i think. morris could have been more explicit. but i'm not talking about rational responses, im talking about emotional ones. the wife seems to be a basically together person, and it makes no sense on any level that she'd be ok with the father of her child killing himself. what is the scene with the fundamentalist brother even supposed to mean? i get that he 'does nothing' while her husband is 'prepared to act', but if we're meant to take this scene seriously, it needs a better resolution than 'they chase him away with water pistols'.

'in the loop' was funny without being utterly far-fetched; this just felt badly confused.

http://theplaylist.blogspot.com/2010/09/alamo-drafthouse-launches-distribution.html

League also announced that the first film to be released under the distribution arm will be “Four Lions,” a comedy about the war on terror. It sounds like a risky first feature, but if any distributor would shell out a film like this it would be the Alamo. The film will take on a 10-city promotional tour with director Chris Morris in attendance. It will be released in New York, LA, and Austin (of course) and expand across the United States the following weeks.

I liked this a lot more than I expected to. And given that one of the major features of the film is dissonance I had no problem with the character of the wife - I guess I just thought of her in the style of the family in 'Metamorphoses'. And given that the security services were as bumbling as the terrorists I don't think racism was much of a problem. Maybe need to watch it again.

how much of this was culled from research? maybe there's an actual case of middle-class wife and kid being OK with it.

I finally saw this. Kind of underwhelmed.

what is the scene with the fundamentalist brother even supposed to mean? i get that he 'does nothing' while her husband is 'prepared to act',

It's about how the strongly religious but peaceful guy ends up paying for the sins of the 'less hardline religious but more violent intent guy.

that's, maybe, what the joke ending is about, with the lol-incompetent authorities locking him up

but what is that particular scene about? does the wife support her husband in his desire to kill himself and nameless others? evidently she's not a fundamentalist, so what's her deal?

"Oh let him have his little hobbies, gets him out of the house and out from under my feet, am I right, girls?"

I think it's like the old red indian belief in that if you die fighting for a just cause, you get to heaven and are there as your young/fit self.

Wether that fits with their true belief system, I don't know.

what is his cause, exactly? does she believe in it? even if she does, i reckon there's just maybe some shades of doubt.

Have the wives of the 7/7 bombers ever made any public statements?

The main guy feels aggrieved at the West for killing a family member in a bombing, so he hates the left.

I think the point is that there are different ways to see fundamentalism and extremism. There is a picking and choosing of elements of any religious text, as well as the interpretation of the passages about jihad etc in the kuran.

Lol 'Hermit Crab' mobile phone contract.

there's something about the 'this shipping container is under egyptian sovereignty' that feels like a true detail.

In that above Aussie interview with Morris, he cites all sorts of crazy real life stuff he was tempted to use. Truth is stranger than fiction, right?

Anyway, this movie. I think I would have liked it better as a proper 8-10 ep. series, but it's still awesome black comedy. The scene with the pious brother getting baited into a water gun fight is genius. As is the doofus blaming the broken car on Jewish car parts.

I agree, it would have benefited from slower pacing. As it stands it's still one of the most fascinating movies of the year. I'm surprised there hasn't been an uproar in the US yet.

no one has seen it in the US!

It is shockingly complex in its humor, the more I think about this. Like, in "Man Bites Dog," you're not really meant to feel any affection at all for the protagonist, and even then he's sort of kept at arm's (camera's) length. But there's something truly tragic about this one. And, of course, very funny, too, in a rueful sort of way.

Anyway, this movie is going to fly so far under the radar in the US that it might as well not exist. It's just too bone dry and black.

i need to re-watch it with subtitles, i feel like i missed 1/4 of the jokes

"It's just too bone dry and black."

I dunno -- if you parse out the sensationalist and sad bits, I think as pure comedy it functions on a much breezier and goofball level than say any of the Mike Judge's live-action comedies. I felt less "icky" watching this than say Harold and Kumar go to Gitmo, or any of the more hilarious episodes of 24

But the whole thing is sensationalist and sad! I mean, which is worse: rooting for them to fail or succeed?

it's stupid and mostly unfunny (not complex, jeez; definitely not tragic wtf) ymmv but fuiud

this was waste

basic shitty uk sitcom setup of a group of whimsical freaks alternately stupid/really stupid/stupid and paranoid etc

the viewer surrogate character (sort of self-aware and relatively approachable) talks about jihad with wife (nurse) and kid

if jihadis achieve anything it's to become unassimilable within the context of english sitcom logic

they're not nathan barley

the viewer surrogate character

ur doing it rong

one of the best of the year. don't let the fans throw you off.

even then the humour was kind of OH NO, WHAT? I WAS SUPPOSED TO BLOW UP A *CAR*!? BUT I BLEW UP MY *PENIS* INSTEAD!! DERP

― i am legernd (history mayne), Monday, 6 September 2010 15:22 (1 week ago)

"basic shitty uk sitcom setup of a group of whimsical freaks alternately stupid/really stupid/stupid and paranoid etc"

how is this shitty? can you think of any quality comedy that does not contain this setup?
and why aren't jihadis nathan barley? a troubling number of them are educated, middle-class, etc...

it's not that troubling or unusual, is it? the west european terrorists of the 1970s were almost exclusively educated and middle-class.

troubling because education and prosperity are apparently not deterrents, and also, the fearsome prospect of radicalized nathan barleys.

Someone's probably registering hipsterjihadis.com as we speak.

prosperity is a massive part of what 'provokes' yer modern terrorist. the baader-meinhof gang started out blowing up department stores. those muslim bros a few years ago had a problem with the arndale centre. in both cases, goes the theory, material riches have blinded us [the unthinking masses] to the light. and lots of educated people sort of agree with this imo -- the baader-meinhof group is basically indulged coz, 'hey, they read marcuse, they just went a little astray is all...'

iirc nathan barley actually had loads of basically 'hipsterjihadis'-type material.

I must have missed the penis blowing up in this.

Some of the film overlaps nicely with the new New Yorker piece on Kalid Sheik Muhammed. If ever there was a dude whose ideology wasn't nearly as fully formed as his desire to blow shit up ...

Though I wonder if my Yank perspective allowed me to enjoy it more. The U.S. "OMG, terrists!" stance is more hyperbolic than it is in the UK, plus we have a less ingrained sense/appreciation of irony. This film seemed like a nice antidote, though Morris could have made just as good of a movie about stupid American militiamen and Tea Partiers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSkik6EUQUc

and why aren't jihadis nathan barley? a troubling number of them are educated, middle-class, etc...

― Philip Nunez, Monday, 13 September 2010 15:41 (8 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

troubling because education and prosperity are apparently not deterrents, and also, the fearsome prospect of radicalized nathan barleys.

― Philip Nunez, Monday, 13 September 2010 16:55 (6 hours ago

this seems mistaken. there was a lot of surprise that uk born suicide bombers played cricket, as if that was incompatible with dull psychopathy and literalist piety. there are an awful lot of muslims who fucking hate ukusa, capitalism, jews etc but only a few who opt for martyrdom, so you'd think some sort of consideration of abnormal psychology is in order. the common line is that poverty in middle east / diaspora muslims induces psychotic fervour, but that seems rather glib, if i may say rather ~orientalist~ when al-qaeda's top ppl are a doctor and the son of a billionaire.

what has the response has been from the muslim media? reviews, bloggers, commentary, etc.

few duff jokes in this (stupid guy is stoo-pid!), but also some genuinely great lols, esp at the start. i like how it wasn't overly finger-wagging and didn't condescend the viewer. ultimately i'm glad it exists, though it could have been crafted better.

and why aren't jihadis nathan barley? a troubling number of them are educated, middle-class, etc..

The UK born 7/7 suicide bombers were not middle class or esp. well educated, they seemed like rather dull and ordinary and rather working class to boot. As do most of the other UK born would-be Jihadists.

prosperity is a massive part of what 'provokes' yer modern terrorist... those muslim bros a few years ago had a problem with the arndale centre.

has the arndale changed recently? i haven't been there in a few years but grew up in the area and can't imagine anyone equating it with 'prosperity' but wtvr

maybe that's why they had a problem with it

it has -- well, there are numerous arndale centres, but the ira blew up the manchester one and now there's a new one

n e ways, it represents consumerist/materialist/________ western culture, prosperity by most of the world's standard

ah okay, was thinking abt the arndale in wandsworth....

"The Arndale had been razed
Shop staff knocked off their ladders
Security guards hung from moving escalators"

From "The NWRA" by the Fall (1980)

Was talking about this in the pub the other day with someone who was convinced the wife was a pisstake of the Western view of the happy, supine Muslim wife. That might be true but even if so it wasn't a very good pisstake.

tbh i thought she was exactly what the film's white liberal audience wanted to see: a sassy, modern, muslim woman who takes the piss out of fundamentalists. she was the one non-mental muslim character, and our alibi if anyone said the film was a teensy bit racist/'islamophobic'. except that as i keep boringly reiterating, her attitude towards her husband just isn't humanly plausible.

In what way was her character "non-mental"?

i haven't seen it since it opened, but apart from being ok with her husband's plan (which as i say is the character's big flaw), she seems ok? not a fundamentalist, not a bomber.

I figured her complete dissociation between her husbands 'hobby' and the consequences of that action was her craziness. Like the rest of the characters, there's a lack of understanding about the surface cultural baggage of their radicalism/faith and it's ultimate meaning as an action. It's a film full of Rick from the Young Ones.

the aggro alexei sayle-looking dude was vyvian?

I guess so - I wouldn't take the metaphor too far.

I think the wife character was "the bit you are not supposed to understand"

The film was mostly "ha ha ha oh" but with a side order of "OK, I don't understand, really."

On Monday evening, British comedian Chris Morris will be the special guest on Too Much Information with Benjamen Walker. Join them as they talk about Morris's new film Four Lions, a satire about suicide bombers (cowritten with Peep Show creators Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain). 11/8, from 6 to 7 PM.

He's also a guest on Jimmy Fallon's show tonight.

Just saw this in the US. I was expecting basically DERP Dad's Army type stuff; was pleasantly surprised, even though it was kind of an uneven mix. The Barry character was pretty good, and I loved the discussion about whether a Wookiee or Honey Monster was a bear, stuff like that.
I do think there were a hell of a lot of UK-specific things that most merkins won't have got (Orange phone plans, Fathers 4 Justice, Rubber Dinghy Rapids) - we were certainly laughing in places that no-one else was.

Chicken Cottage joke was great but I don't guess a lot of Americans would understand it.

Saw this tonight, thought it was brilliant. Laughed so hard I couldn't breathe a number of times.

Friends and I, when we screw ourselves over in a really stupid way, refer to it as "bombing the mosque".

I was expecting this to be revived for the poppy-burning case.

Why?

This was funnier than I was expecting - Puffin Party was the lol of movie for me - and more tragic. And yeah the wife was a bit of an enigma but hey people are complex, large, contain multitudes, etc. I don't know how suicide bombers' partners feel, and if I did I probably wouldn't understand it.

The wife was really fit iirc.

And yeah the wife was a bit of an enigma but hey people are complex, large, contain multitudes, etc. I don't know how suicide bombers' partners feel, and if I did I probably wouldn't understand it.

has there ever been an in depth interview with a suicide bomber's wife? interested to hear thought process and reactions

probably not. as far as i can tell a lot of them share their husband's ideology.

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/889dqa/four-lions-making-of-oral-history-trivia

It's great this i read it lasy week.

I can heartily recommend these too; Morris finally debunking some old myths, gossiping and generally being in a pretty chipper mood about everything; Buxton seems to get the best out of him.

https://soundcloud.com/adam-buxton/ep-104-chris-morris-1

https://soundcloud.com/adam-buxton/ep105-chris-morris-2

Will read/listen! The director of brass eye cut together a film of outtakes & bts stuff that he toured as a live presentation rather than giving a conventional release, there were a lot of fascinating anecdotes - seems like it was a hell of a thing to put together

Have very little interest in Morris’s latest film that disappeared without trace