The fun : MISFITS - TV series

Misfits, 2010

Created by Howard Overman

Nationality : British

 Let’s switch to something more fun now. Misfits is a British TV series, about 5 young people, stuck in a community service programme.

One day, they’re hit by a thunderbolt. After a few weird days, they find out they now have superpowers, but also that they are not the only ones who do.

I love this series for several things. First of all, the accents, especially Kelly’s (Lauren Socha), the “chav”. Then, I love it for Nathan’s (Robert Sheehan) quotes, but there are so many, it’s better if you just look up at this video :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAFYUJNxDvE

I love it for the song of the title song by The Rapture : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVFDl8qicPY

And finally, I love it for the fact that most of the time, the characters happen to have the dumbest superpowers you could ever think of. I’m not going to spoil it by telling you Nathan’s, as it happens to be pretty cool but a mystery until the last episode of season 1.

The super powers depend on the personality of the person who has them. For example, Alisha (Antonia Thomas) used to … seduce a lot of guys : her “super power” makes anyone who touches her very, very horny. At first, she enjoys it, but then, she found out she can’t control it at all and any guy she touches basically wants to rape her.

There’s a guy who can control milk, Nathan’s stepfather who loved his dog when he was little, turns into this same dog at night, Kelly is a rocket-scientist, a girl who can make people’s hair fall out, and another girl who can make men’s penis fall off… Those obviously lead to the funniest situations.

For me, this shows how simple English humour can be and also shows the fact that it is made of the simplest ideas (simple by the fact it is totally unexpected and it gives you the feeling the screenwriters were doing drugs while writing).

But….

Now, if you seek tragedy in there, you might just find it. The characters are fun, but none of them has a happy life. Nathan has problems with his mum as he hates her new boyfriend (and she actually kicks her son out). Kelly is very lonely, as for Simon (Iwan Rheon) : we never see their families. Alisha has problems with boys, she’s pretty sad about it as she realizes she’s just a toy. And Curtis (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) was a successful runner, but was caught with drugs by the police, ending his career.

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The series continues but Nathan, the main character in the two first seasons now left, as he wants to try to succeed in films instead. His replacement was Joseph Gilgun, who played Woody in This is England (Britain…a small world *sigh*), who happens to be as crude and rude as Nathan.

But now, Alisha and Simon, “the melon fucker” (Nathan’s words, not mine) also left the series after the third season…It’s a shame. People still cry about Nathan’s departure, if characters just continue to leave like that, this series, which managed to be classic after one season, might just be having its last moments…

The Bad : THIS IS ENGLAND - Shane Meadows

This is England, 2007

Directed by Shane Meadows

Nationality : British

Box Office (France) : 166735 spectators 

Prices : Jury’s Price, Cannes 1993

This is England takes place in 1983. It is the story about a boy, Shaun, 12 years old whom you can see in the background of this blog. He lives with his mum, as his father died in Falklands War. He is lonely, but eventually, he meets Woody and his bunch of friends, all skinheads, and  then hangs out with them. 

(Meeting with Woody : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaGgk7A_-2k)

He then enjoys the world of parties, alcohol, smoking, dating...Everything is fine until Combo who used to be a member of the band, comes out of prison. Older an d most of all racist, he splits the group in two. Shaun follows him as he managed to brainwash the little boy, after a speech about the war in which his father died "for nothing" he says. And I shall stop here as I don't want to spoil the end for the people who haven't seen it yet.

There is a certain atmosphere in the movie that I love, it makes you very anxious as you’re feeling and fearing something bad is going to happen, and it usually does.

I like this movie because it shows another side of skinheads. Being a skinhead used to be a way of dressing, it was also related to the music they were listening to (ska, soul), and most importantly, they did not claim to have a certain political view. The movie is actually partially autobiographical, Shane Meadows became a skinhead himself when he was 12.

Later on, when the movement became worldwide, the skinhead trend changed, and are now considered as part of the “extrême droite” activists. And this is what Combo embodies in the film.

Once again, quite a subject, which, by telling this particular story about a boy, shows the atmosphere in some parts of England after the Falklands war and also under Margaret Thatcher’s mandate as Prime Minister, England empovorished by her and with a high rate of unemployment, and some of the reactions it caused (racism, nationalism…).

(parenthesis)

Thomas Turgoose, the actor who interprets Shaun is breath-taking. He is amazing, touching … The movie is dedicated to his mother, Sharon Turgoose, who died in 2006. I thought that the scene he cries about his dad's death in the film,  saying he misses him is even more touching knowing that and makes his performance even more impressive, for a twelve-year-old without any experience in acting

For the love of art...and of series :

For the ones who love Shane Meadows’ work, and particularly This is England, you will be happy to know he made a sequel to his movie. Same characters, same esthetic, but with a plot enlarged to all the different characters. It’s a « short series » and at the moment there is « This is England 86 », which happens 4 years after the film, and “This is England 88”, two more years after that and “This is England 90” should be ready by the end of the year or in 2013. The music is also very good, as you can see in the titles of the first episode :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trR4hb9PGcY

I personnaly love them, but there are pretty tough so don’t watch them alone… Enjoy !

 

The bad : RAINING STONES - Ken Loach

Raining Stones, 1993

Directed by Kenneth Loach

Nationality : British

Box Office : ….

Prices : Jury’s Price, Cannes 1993

The particularity of Ken Loach, for me, is that he manages to insert jokes inside almost all of his movies, that represents for me the “British humour”. As if he wanted to show this quality we attribute to English people : the fact that they generally are very optimistic, even when things get rough (for what we see in his films).

Loach’s movies are almost documentaries as they are very realistic, the actors are non-professional, all the sets are real locations. The accents, the weather are very representative of  how we think of England (London excluded).

 

To come back to the humour in Loach’s movies, if you watch the trailer of his film Raining Stones (on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnkJmYo6sjE ), you’ll almost think it’s a comedy, until you see at the end the dramatic plot and how things finally end up turning bad.

The opening scene with the two men you see in the picture, chasing a sheep (so they can kill it and sell it on the black market) is to me, one of the funniest in the whole movie. They're almost burlesque as they are falling down, yelling and swearing while the sheep bleats.

Jokes aside, it shows the quest of a man who’s going to spend the whole movie trying to get enough money to buy his daughter the dress she deserves for her First Communion. A simple plot which brings a deeper and dramatic one in the end : the father, devoted to his family, to his religion, ends up in some bad situations as he tries to raise the money he needs (borrowing money from dangerous people, etc.). He’s not only doing this out of love, but also out of pride, which makes him risk everything (example : his family will be threatened by the men he borrowed money from).

Still, I painted a pretty dark picture, but the amazing thing, is that you will always manage to laugh at least once during the movie, which is categorized as a “dramatic comedy”.