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?

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