A2 Media StudiesUnit G325: Critical Perspectives in Media

Section B: Contemporary Media Issues

One question to be answered from a choice of six topic areas offered by OCR. There will be two questions from each topic area.

The topic areas require understanding of contemporary media texts, industries, audiences and debates.

In advance of the examination and, through specific case studies, texts, debates and research of the students’ choice, students should prepare to demonstrate understanding of the contemporary issue. This understanding must combine knowledge of at least two media and a range of texts, industries, audiences and debates, but these are to be selected by the centre / student.

The assessment of the response will be generic, allowing for the broadest possible range of responses within the topic area chosen. Each topic is accompanied by four prompt questions, and students must be prepared to answer an exam question that relates to one or more of these four prompts.

There should be emphasis on the historical, the contemporary and the future in relation to the chosen topic, with most attention on the present. Centres are thus advised to ensure that study materials for this unit are up to date and relevant.

In order to be fully prepared for the specific requirements of the question, the material studied by students must cover these three elements:

Historical – dependent on the requirements of the topic, students must summarise the development of the media forms in question in theoretical contexts.

Contemporary – current issues within the topic area. Future – students must demonstrate personal engagement with debates

about the future of the media forms / issues that the topic relates to.

In addition, students will need to offer a balance of media theories, knowledge of texts and industries and personal engagement with issues and debates. For example, a student studying British Cinema for ‘The Media and Collective Identity’ should discuss theories of film representation and realism in relation to the history of British cinema, a range of British films from recent years, funding, Government and industry practices, and offer a critically informed point of view on how Britain is represented to itself and to the wider audience at the present time.

Media and Collective Identity

1)How do the contemporary media represent nations, regions and ethnic / social collective groups of people in different ways?

2)How does contemporary representation compare to previous time periods?

3)What are the social implications of different media representations of groups of people?

4)To what extent is human identity increasingly ‘mediated’?

Focus:Representation of Britishness through the mediums of Cinema and Television in the UK and US

Case Studies: Hollywood representations of Britishness National Representations of Britishness Regional identity in British films Television Drama and Sitcom representation of

Britishness Audience driven representations of Britishness-

audience gratifications Challenging and reinforcing ideologies through

representations of Britishness Representation of different social periods in the UK

Scheme Of Work

SH: The construction of a National Identity through Television

RG: The representation of Britain through Film

1. Introduction to the Unit Introduce the unit and explain the format of the exam. In exercise books get students to print the key outline which they will be focusing in on over the next period of study:

Media and Collective Identity1) How do the contemporary media

represent nations, regions and ethnic / social collective groups of people in different ways?

2) How does contemporary representation compare to previous time periods?

3) What are the social implications of different media representations of groups of people?

4) To what extent is human identity increasingly ‘mediated’? Elicit students’ knowledge of the key concept of representation- they should think back to their AS unit (TV Drama and Representation) and bullet point why we study the concept of representation in the Media. Ask them to think about how representation has an impact on our society and their lives in particular. Move onto hegemony and ideologies.

Introduction to British Cinema What does British Cinema mean today? Elicit students’ knowledge of British film- what do they think of when they think of this? What have they seen, what have they enjoyed or not enjoyed etc…Look at the UK film council’s (www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk) definition of a British Film- explore the areas surrounding this including inward features, co-productions, domestic films. http://www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk/media/pdf/g/g/Jan-Sept_2009_Production_Report.pdfThis link takes you to a report for the production of films in the UK Jan-Sept 09.Screening: Cinema 16 (collection of short films from British films makers- any combination to engage students)

Dominant Ideologies in Society- hegemony and the creation of social values

Historical Development of British Cinema- competition and dominance of Hollywood since the Golden Age. Identify the key studios. Wikipedia has a detailed article on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_the_United_KingdomScreening: Singing In The Rain (Focus on the Hollywood Studio system as a factory like production line)

How new Media technologies have impacted on our society and our identities

British Studio films in the 30s and 40s- explore the key players in the development of British cinema; Rank Organisation, Ealing Studios, Powell and PressburgerScreening: The Red Shoes, Powell and Pressburger, 1948 (Focus on how this film has influenced many directors most notable Scorsese, and how this is one of the BFIs top 10 UK films http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BFI_Top_100_British_films)

Representation of Britain through British TV Drama focus: Soap Operas

Screening: Eastenders, Coronation Street, Hollyoaks, Emmerdale

Social Realism in British films- explore the influence of social realism in the development of UK cinema, look at the 50s and 60s films, British New Wave cinema and the Angry Young Men movement at the time, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_sink_drama.Look at how this has carried through the decades to more contemporary examples such as the work of Shane Meadows and Mike Leigh, to last year’s Canne’s Film Festival’s Jury Prize Fish Tank, Andrea Arnold 2009 Screening: Secrets and Lies, Mike Leigh 1996 and Fish Tank, Andrea Arnold 2009

Representation of social demographics and class in Britain through British TV Drama focus

Screening: Shameless

Funding of British Cinema- issues with budgets, distribution, star systems, US power through vertical integration. Government initiatives and the UK Film Council. Film Four and the BFI. Discuss the future of the film industry in the UK- there is a lot of information on this on the UK film council’s website. Students should also look at developments in digital distribution which will support the UK industry. Warp Films could be used as a case study for this (http://warp.net/films). Screening: An early Shane Meadows film possibly Twenty Four Seven, Shane Meadows 1997 (Focus on the low production values compares to glossy Hollywood star vehicles- discuss how important star presence is in films)

Exploration of historical representations of Britain through the early Reithan days of television

American funded British films- focus on a case study of Richard Curtis and his filmography. Look at the notion of his creation of ‘Curtisland’ (see Observer article March 09 http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/mar/22/richard-curtis-the-boat-that-rocked ). Discuss the ideologies which are at play in his films- what kind of hegemony is he creating and why.Screening: Love Actually, Richard Curtis 2003

Representation of Britain through British sitcoms

Screening Only Fools and Horses, Keeping Up Appearances, The Royle Family, The Office, Gavin and Stacey

Audience Gratifications- exploration of why there are so many different representations of Britain in UK cinemas. Discuss how different representations offer audiences different gratifications. Link into various audience theories (Richard Dyer especially useful here, alongside the more basic Blumier and Katz Uses and Gratifications)Screening: Kidulthood, Noel Clarke 2006 (Focus on the representation of London which this offers compared to the Curtis London. Also link to the gratifications which it offers a contemporary urban audience)

Practice Essay writing for the exam- drawing together the two strands and producing written responses

Representation of Britain in British films. Explore the various representations of Britain on offer in British cinemas. Look at the films which have been commercially and critically successful over the past two decades, and examine the representations which they offer, and how these feed into or prevent the success of particular films. This follows on from audience gratifications, therefore the theories should be tied in with these films.Screening: Dirty Pretty Things, Stephen Frears 2002(Focus on immigration and underclass in the new millennium UK, this would be interesting to compare anti-immigration articles from the Daily Mail)

Practice Essay writing for the exam- drawing together the two strands and producing written responses

Representation of Britain in American films. Following on from the previous work on British representations, explore the very different representations which major Hollywood studios have produced of Britain. Look at the hegemony which is presented through these, and how key American ideologies are injected into these films. Working Title (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Title_Films ) is an interesting production company to look at with the premise that their parent company is Universal Studios.Screening: The Holiday, Nancy Meyers 2006 (Focus on the archetypical picture postcard representation of Britain/England and the ideology of the American Dream)

Section A of the Exam- Reflection on the advanced portfolio

Exploration of social identity in British films; examine how class and social demographics are represented in British films. An interesting contrast can be drawn with American films where the main focus is generally on anyone can be anything, whereas in contrast many UK films are

focused on how people are prisoners in their class/social grouping and can not escape these (interesting comparison to be drawn with the British sitcom genre and class prisoners)Screening: My Name is Joe, Ken Loach 1998 (Focus representation of social demographics and British class consciousness at the turn of the century) compare with the American funded Full Monty, Peter Cattaneo 1997 (Fox Searchlight Pictures) and Billy Elliot, Stephen Daldry 2000 (a combination of backing including Working Title and StudioCanal) which both whilst exploring the hardships of the lower classes in Thatcher Britain offer the audience an optimistic ending which echoes the American Dream

Final exam preparation Exploration of regional identity in British films. Students should look at how the medium of film feeds into the construction of a national identity for many people. Reflecting back on the different areas of representation students should be encouraged to discuss what different identities are mediated by different genres/directors/specific filmsScreening: Trainspotting Danny Boyle 1996 and Twin Town, Kevin Allen 1997 (Focus on the

ResourcesResources

British Cinema: Cultural Factors

There are many factors which contribute to the limited success of British films. One of the most obvious is the global dominance of Hollywood- as its smaller cousin the British film industry is often left in the shadow of the power house that is Hollywood with its glitz and glamour and array of A List celebrities (as celebrity culture achieves a religious like following it could be argued that the power of the star vehicle is only going to get stronger and stronger!)

Key points when examining the limited success of British films:

• The relatively low status of film within British culture especially compared with most of the rest of Europe (compare studying Media to English Literature!)• An ‘undeveloped’ UK audience in terms of interest in a diversity of films• A weak distribution sector• An exhibition sector which offers a lower return to distributors (around 40%) than in other countries. Possibly because of high land prices, cinemas in the UK must show higher revenue per screen rates than in other countries. The expansion in screens built is coming to an end, but the UK is still ‘underscreened’ compared to France and Spain.• The UK audience attends cinema screenings less frequently than in other English speaking countries.

How many successful British Films can you name?

What do you think is the key to making a successful British film?

British Filmmakers and Filmmaking Traditions

The creative talent employed by the British film industry faces a number of restraints and ‘institutional factors’ that influence how films are made. Some of these derive from the cultural factors and the low status of film in British culture generally. For example, theatre and television are relatively highly regarded in the UK compared to film. British actors are far more likely to be trained for the theatre. In Europe, the UK is ahead of Germany in cinema visits per person but well behind Spain and France.

British writers are likely to gain more prestige from writing a successful television drama series than for scripting a successful film. As a consequence, it might be argued that it is more difficult to produce the kinds of film stars who grace Hollywood films or to develop a professional film scriptwriting industry along Hollywood lines.

Familiar arguments about British cinema that might arise from the theatre background are:• British films are more ‘talky’ and less about movement• The acting is less fluid and spontaneous than in Hollywood

Having theatre and television as cultural resources for film production is not necessarily a bad thing and a number of recent successful films have seen UK theatre directors at the helm of two high profile films in American Beauty (US 1999, director Sam Mendes) and Billy Elliot (UK 2000, director Stephen Daldry). The theatrical background obviously helped with the excellent performances given by the actors, but it would be possible to mount an argument about how other aspects of the film

narrative were handled. (Billy Elliot also had a first time scriptwriter, the award-winning radio writer, Lee Hall).

British films are perhaps more likely to be produced with this kind of ‘imported talent’ because of the relatively small number of graduates from the National Film School and the difficulties they face in getting a first job. Again, by comparison, American and French film schools produce more graduates who appear to get more opportunities. Before the establishment of the Industry Training Body, Skillset, in the early 1990s, ‘training’ for the film industry was almost non-existent (crafts were learned ‘on the job’ – a job obtained often through nepotism or working up from being a ‘runner’). It is now being formalised, but the British industry still has some way to go to match other film industries. The career route for aspiring filmmakers is likely to take them through television or advertising before an opening in film becomes available. It is also likely that many British films will be made with funding from television companies with a view to a television screening soon after the theatrical release. This strong television and advertising link has led to two charges about the effects on British film:

• The scale and ‘look’ of British films is often ‘televisual’ rather than cinematic;• Directors trained in advertising are more likely to produce ‘glossy’ and stylish films, possibly devoid of substance.

You will notice that these charges are to some extent contradictory – are British films visually dull or too frenetically busy? The charges are certainly worth investigating – might it be true that Ridley Scott’s art school and advertising background is evident in his films? But what about Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast and those Guinness ads)? Note also that two of the most ‘cinematic’ of British directors, Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, The Beach) and Michael Winterbottom (Welcome to Sarajevo, Wonderland), both came out of television.

Introduction

In the early 1980s, when less than 50 British films were produced each year and UK cinema audiences were still heading for 1984’s all-time low attendance figures, many commentators thought that the British film industry was dead.

In the late 1990s, following the success of a series of high profile films across the world, Screen International could claim that the British industry was the second most important in the world. In 2001, after the threatened Hollywood actors’ strike had caused the cancellation of a handful of American films being made in Britain, the cry was ‘doom!’ once more. The withdrawal of Channel 4 and Granada from large scale film production emphasised this trend, but in 2002-3 confidence returned with the international success of Bend it Like Beckham and 28 Days Later, and on a smaller scale, Dirty Pretty Things and The Magdalene Sisters.

These sudden changes in fortune and periodic crises have been common in the UK since the establishment of studios in the 1920s and given the nature of the British industry, they are likely to continue into the foreseeable future. The instability of British filmmaking can be explained in one word – ‘Hollywood’. Sharing a language with the most successful international film industry is both a blessing and a curse. Since the 1920s when the Hollywood studios became established as the dominant force in cinema across the world, they have been active in the UK, making films in their own or rented studio facilities, distributing American (and some British) films and building cinemas to ensure the films are shown. At the same time, the studios have lured British talent – actors, writers, directors, cinematographers etc. – across the Atlantic to Hollywood itself.

Audiences have colluded in this process. By the 1930s it was obvious that working-class audiences in Britain preferred American to British films. There have been periods when ‘home grown’ British films have done particularly well at the box office, but the long term bias is firmly in favour of Hollywood. In recent years the domination has been almost total. In 2003, 81% of all UK admissions were for American financed films and a further 15% were for joint US/UK productions. ‘British-financed’ films without American involvement took less than 3% of box office.

In practice, it is difficult to distinguish between ‘British’ and ‘American’ filmmaking. Consider some of the biggest ‘British’ films of the last ten years: The Full Monty, Notting Hill, Billy Elliot. All of these films benefited from Hollywood money – crucially they were all distributed by the Hollywood studios, as if they were American films. For the record, The Full Monty was technically an American film, financed directly by Fox Searchlight, one of the film divisions of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. Notting Hill was originally a production supported by the European ‘major’ distributor, Polygram, but that company was then sold to the American major, Universal. Billy Elliot counts as a genuinely ‘British film’, but it was distributed by the largest Hollywood distributor in Europe, UIP.

“The country of origin of a film is irrelevant. Why should we be bothered if all the films at our

cinemas were made in the USA?”

What is a British film?

“What is a British film?” This isn’t just an academic question. In the UK as in the rest of Europe and elsewhere, governments are aware of the need to support ‘indigenous production’ for economic, social and cultural reasons. The total ‘spend’ on films in the UK is over £5 billion. (Most is spent on satellite and cable film channels, followed by video/DVD retail, cinema tickets and finally video rental.) Every time you go to a UCI or Showcase cinema to see a Hollywood blockbuster, much of £5-10 spent on ticket and popcorn etc. finds its way back to an American company. Fortunately, Paramount and Universal then spend some of that money making a film in the UK. Overall, the British film industry does not have a negative effect upon the balance of payments (as domestic industries do in some other European countries). The UK film and television industry, in terms of UCI Cinemas are owned jointly by Paramount and Universal. Showcase is owned by National Amusements – the private company that owns Paramount. The deficit of profits is arguably more a problem of ‘UK film culture’ since earnings are mostly related to American cultural product. Since 2000 the UK Film Council has been developing a new means of tracking the work of the UK film industry. In 2003 it produced the first Statistical Handbook, giving unprecedented access to a wide range of statistical material on audiences, production, distribution and exhibition from 2002.

The UK Film Council has built on the work of the British Film Institute in categorising UK film production. It suggests the following three categories for ‘British films’ in 2003:

Category No of productions Value of production (£mill)1. Domestic UK features 44 2702. Inward features 30 7293. UK co-productions 99 159Total 173 1,158

A ‘domestic feature’ is a film shot in the UK with a majority financial stake from UKfunders. Such films are most likely to have British cultural content as well. ‘Inwardfeatures’ are films shot in the UK but with majority funding from outside the UK,usually from Hollywood. This definition includes Harry Potter films, James Bond,Lara Croft etc. ‘Co-productions’ have long been a major element of European filmproduction and the most likely locations and funding partners for UK co-productionsare Ireland and France as well as Canada. Funding issues It is evident from the figures above that ‘domestic features’ and ‘UK co-productions’ have average budgets far lower than the Hollywood films that shoot in the UK. (44 films for a total of £270 million gives an average of around £6 million – in practice, a small number of bigger budget films means that the majority of domestic features have budgets of £3 million or less). (The UK Film Council tracking ignores features costing less than £500,000.) In itself, a low budget is not necessarily a ‘bad thing’. Some of the films made with budgets around £2-5 million have been highly praised and have had successful international distribution. But this is most likely to happen only if they are

picked up by a Hollywood distributor. Many domestic features will fail to find a release at all or will eventually go straight to video or to television. When domestic features (and the majority of co-productions) are released they will struggle to get a ‘wide release’ of more than 30 prints. ‘Inward features’ are likely to be treated by the Hollywood distributors as Hollywood films and these will receive full ‘blockbuster’ release support (i.e. 250 plus prints and a substantial P&A budget).

Distribution

The real problem for British films is not finding the money to make them, or at leastnot to make low budget films. The problem is to get them shown. Hollywood filmsare always going to take precedence in the multiplex. Although most UK cinemachains are now in UK or European hands (only Showcase remains American), theculture of multiplex film exhibition in the UK and the support given by the Americandistributor means that American films are always going to attract big audiences. Themoney spent on promoting Hollywood releases in the UK (£1 million plus for bigfilms) is way beyond the financial resources of British distributors.

There is a link between funding and distribution in the sense that a British ‘studio’with enough clout to fund a string of ‘medium budget’ films would also be likelyto have some clout as a distributor. This was certainly the case with Polygram (aDutch owned company with a film division largely based in the UK). At the time ofIn 2002, The Film Council announced a special fund to support the release of 20 non-mainstream films each year. An Education Fund was also announced in order to help develop audience understanding, but progress has been slow. The success of Bend it Like Beckham shows how difficult it is to be dogmatic about subject matter.The title was changed to the ‘UK Film Council’ in 2003. A report in the Guardianof 13 November 2003 detailed how one of the original franchise holders, DNA Films has used Lottery funding to make a deal with Fox Searchlight (the division of 20th Fox responsible for ‘independent’ productions) for partnership in future productions. This has received UK Film Council support. Its takeover by Universal in 1999 (which was more to do with the music interests of its parent company than with film as such) Polygram was in the process of setting up in North America as a ‘mini-major’ and had competed successfully with the Hollywood majors in the UK. Before Polygram, twosmaller companies, Goldcrest in the 1970s and Palace Pictures in the 1980shad failed to ‘stay the course’. The last time British studios had effectively competed was in the 1950s when ABPC and Rank (the then owners of the ABC and Odeon cinema chains) and the independent British Lion had successfully run Elstree, Pinewood and Shepperton studios and acted as major distributors.

Ancillary markets

Revenues generated by feature films are not confined to the UK and North American box office. Significant revenues can also be earned in other cinema markets, especially in Europe. Unfortunately, European film industries do not publish box office information in quite the same way as the industries in the UK and North

America. Therefore it is difficult to research the success of British films in Europe. For the more high profile films, however, it is evident that UK films can earn as much, or even more, revenue in France, Germany, Spain and Italy as in their ‘home’ market. This explains why several British companies regularly enter co-productions with European partners. As an EU member nation, the UK stands to benefit from substantial European funding for ‘Audio Visual’ productions. However, it is fair to say that the British film industry overall still tends to look towards Hollywood rather than Europe as potential partners. The majority of the money earned by many UK films will come from television broadcasts (satellite, cable and terrestrial) and from the video market (although, again, poor distribution on video limits this potential). Television has always been a strong sector for UK audiences and without television support, especially from Channel 4 and its commitment to making films, the British industry may well have died in the 1980s.

Movie Studios

When people refer to “Hollywood movies" they are usually referring to those produced by one of the major motion picture studios which have dominated the industry since the 1920s. Although there are many other centres of movie production around the world (notably Bollywood - Mumbai) the Hollywood studios have tended to dominate. There are many reasons for this - the historical (they were churning out motion pictures while the rest of the world was fighting WWI) and economic (they are part of huge media groups which own most of the world between them). In the beginning, back in the 1920s & 30s, each studio was known for specialising in certain types of movie - the MGM musical, the Warner Bros gangster pic - but such distinctions have long since disappeared.

History

It is important to have some sense of the history of the Hollywood studios. From the 1920s till the 1950s they were an efficient factory system that churned out a product (movies) on a production line (the Hollywood and Burbank backlots). Film-making, although very much a craft, was a regular job with regular hours. Within the studio system you just turned up for work, whether you were a camera operator, a director, a writer or a star, and got on with whatever project the studio told you to do that day. Although this stifled some people's creativity, it was a wonderful environment in which to learn and polish skills. And there were some great characters around - on both sides of the camera.

Hollywood Today- Today the main studios are

Sony-ColumbiaWarner Bros20th Century FoxUniversalDisneyDreamWorksMGMParamount

These companies have the power to finance, produce, distribute and exhibit a feature film.

Globalisation of Movie Industry

What globalism?While U.S. films are box office successes across the world, the opposite is not true. Outside of New York (and, to a lesser degree, Los Angeles), it is becoming increasingly rare to see anything but the two or three highest profile foreign language films screened for even a week. There aren't enough screens available for all the films that are out there. Many of the former art houses were bought out by chains, then discarded when it became clear that they could never be big moneymakers for them. Even highly commercial foreign films have fewer sympathetic venues. It's not from a lack of material - there are now more independent and foreign-language films made than ever, but a lack of available

shelves.

You might think that the large chains, with lots of quasi-empty screenings, would take a chance. But Just as Bud, Miller and Coors push all but a few imports and mictobrews off the supermarket beer shelves, so too the big studios push smaller movies out of the cineplexes. It's true that you can still get imported beers in a thousand varieties in specialty beer stores and liquor markets, but you'll have less luck finding the latest Polish or Belgian film. Foreign-language films generally make less money than the most ho-hum Hollywood release. The few weeks of release aren't time enough to build an audience, and no one is trying. It's a lot easier to stock the brands that have a big marketing budget and/or automatic mindspace. We call this phenomenon "elbowing".

This leads to the Catch-22 of movies going unreleased because there's not enough public interest, whereas there's no public interest because the films haven't been released and therefore written about. True, there are always a few non-major-studio films that do well (Life is Beautiful, The Full Monty, Crouching Tiger). But these are a tiny portion of the many films produced abroad never make it on the shelves. on average only one foreign art movie really succeeds in any given year..For most of the distributors who used to import art films, the problem runs even further down the line. These days, few broadcasters are buying --especially if the film is in a foreign language. This is something of a mystery. With the explosion of television channels you'd think there would be more, not fewer, opportunities to screen such movies. Whatever claims there are for the new globalism, there are few shelves available on any channel for foreign films in the U.S. Foreign DVDs suffer much the same fate.

Like the studios, the movie chains are only focused on blockbusters. And unless a film has a chance to be a megahit, there's no interest. So in spite of lots of empty seats at the cineplex and more screens than ever, foreign films haven't much of a chance.

Movie Studio Oligopoly

The studio oligopoly Basically, the top six Hollywood studios that control around 90% of the US film business. All the real independents together have an inconsiderable share of the market, and most of them have to work with or through a major studio to get national release.

Of course, oligopoly in the movie industry is nothing new. Up until the 1950s, most of the current motion picture companies were parts of then current eight-company "studio system" oligopoly, though relative power has changed and some of the names have changed. In fact you can argue in some sense that the current oligopoly is less powerful, because in the 1948 Supreme Court "Paramount Decision": which ruled against film industry vertical integration and forced studios to divest themselves of their theaters. The terms have changed somewhat (owning theaters is not all that tempting a risk for most studios, in any case), but the oligopoly is still pervasive.

Most of the major studios are now divisions of gigantic international media empires. Some of them, like Universal studios, have been bought and sold several times. DreamWorks and MGM/UA were exceptions until recently, when DreamWorks was sold off to Paramount (once part of Viacom) and MGM was bought by Sony.

Former independents like Miramax and New Line keep getting to look more like the conglomerates that own them. Should any new studio have some real success, it will be more than likely swallowed up as well. Animator Pixar, which threatened to end its run as a production studio for Disney, was recently snapped up by that company . The biggest independent movie of 2005 was Lion's Gate "Saw II," a slasher film that was #21 in sales at 78 million. Only one other film from an independent made the top fifty. The one company likely to give the big studios any kind of a contest is Weinstein Company, founded by the former creators of Miramax.

Below are players by rank year 2005 as reported by industry watcher Box Office Mojo. In the year 2005, total US box office has amounted to $8.6 billion in sales, a 6% decline ciomapred to 2004.

2005 results by studio

Company Studios% share of

market# of releases

Time-Warner Warner Brothers, New Line, Warner Independent 20.4 29

News Corp. 20th Century Fox, Fox Searchlight 15.3 18

Paramount (was Viacom) Paramount, DreamWorks, Paramount Classics 15.1 25

Sony Sony, Columbia, Screen Gems, MGM, Sony Classics 12.5 32

DisneyBuena Vista, Miramax, Touchstone, Hollywood Pictures, Pixar

12.5 11.4

Universal (General Electric)

Universal, Focus 11.4 19

Less than! 3%: Lions Gate, Dimension/Weinstein, IMAX

The relative rank of the top companies varies from year to year, often depending on one or two blockbusters. Note that these percentages aren't absolute, in that a number of releases are now joint ventures between two studios or more. For example, while Fox was the studio with release credit for Titanic, in fact, it was a joint venture with Viacom.

Basically, all the major studies offer a new theatrical release every two to three weeks. The films that they deem major get the royal treatment in terms of marketing and distribution. The others get the leavings. Disney and Time Warner issue more films because of their "independent" subsidiaries, which specialize in smaller, prestige films.

While the movie-making industry has a looser oligopoly concentration than many other businesses at present, it is remarkable how similar the studios all are. Executives, stars, writers, and directors jump from one studio to another. By and large, the movies are pretty similar within a few well-tried genres. As we've noted above, the studios sometimes join in backing movies. They all face exactly the same task -- getting their films on the shelves and then pulling in the audiences.

It's no surprise that the people who run the studios share exactly the same culture and the same view of the world. Religious conservatives have been howling about this for years. But it's not a Jewish or gay conspiracy. It's just what happens in any oligopoly over time. It is true that you could reshuffle the management and the scheduled releases of virtually all the major studios and no one would ever notice. Once unique entities like New Line and Miramax are looking more and more like studios that have absorbed them.

Taken from www.oligopolywatch.comFunding issues

It is evident from the figures above that ‘domestic features’ and ‘UK co-productions’ have average budgets far lower than the Hollywood films that shoot in the UK. (44 films for a total of £270 million gives an average of around £6 million – in practice, a small number of bigger budget films means that the majority of domestic features have budgets of £3 million or less). (The UK Film Council tracking ignores features costing less than £500,000.) In itself, a low budget is not necessarily a ‘bad thing’. Some of the films made with budgets around £2-5 million have been highly praised and have had successful international distribution. But this is most likely to happen only if they are picked up by a Hollywood distributor. Many domestic features will fail to find a release at all or will eventually go straight to video or to television. When domestic features (and the majority of co-productions) are released they will struggleto get a ‘wide release’ of more than 30 prints. ‘Inward features’ are likely to be treated by the Hollywood distributors as Hollywood films and these will receive full ‘blockbuster’ release support (i.e. 250 plus prints and a substantial P&A budget).

The financial dilemma

British filmmakers face a number of problems in deciding what kinds of films to make. Most of these are problems associated with the size of the UK market compared to the American market. In simple terms, should filmmakers aim to produce films for the UK market alone, or should they go for America and the international market? This simple question, which has faced the British industry since the 1920s, is infact extremely difficult to answer. Throughout the history of the British Cinema, the success of occasional British films abroad has tempted producers to go for the big market. Invariably, they have been unable to sustain this policy for long and many production companies have overreached themselves and collapsed. This is as true of the 1990s and the 2000s as for previous decades. Why is the decision so difficult?

Budgets

We’ve seen from UK Film Council that budgets vary. Average budget for ‘domestic features’ = £6.0 million Promotional spend on these films (estimate) = £0.1 millionTotal £6.1 million

Average budget of ‘inward features’ = £24.0 millionPromotional spend (in the UK, as part of international spend) = £1 millionTotal £25 million

Average budget of Hollywood films generally = £36 millionPromotional spend (in the UK, as part of international spend) = £1 millionTotal £37 million

There is clearly a huge gulf between these figures. Any UK producer aiming for a large budget from UK sources alone is unlikely to be able to raise much more than £5 million. To compete with Hollywood probably means gaining access to American money and partnership with a Hollywood studio.

Sample budgets in 2000 The Hole (domestic feature) £4.16 millionHarry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (inward feature) £90 million

What does the budget pay for?

• Stars – a major Hollywood star adds several million pounds to the budget,but also attracts the audience. Angelina Jolie, Brendan Fraser, Nicolas Cageand Gwyneth Paltrow all worked on Hollywood films in the UK in 2000.• Script development funding. Hollywood spends as much on getting the scriptright as British films spend on the whole production.• Shooting time and the possibility for reshoots.• Elaborate camera work (cranes, helicopter shots etc.) stunt work.• Digital effects.• Music rights to popular songs

All these factors ‘show’ on the screen, they help create the exciting gloss of a Hollywood production. British films can’t compete on this level, unless there is a ‘major’ British studio capable of spending (and risking losing) around £200 million per year (i.e. making ten films at £20 million each). This hasn’t been the case since the 1970s. (Filmmaking in the UK is relatively expensive compared to new studios inAustralia etc. – another factor working against UK producers) So, the choices for British producers are:• make low budget films targeted at mainstream British audiences, hoping that the ‘peculiarly British’ subject matter will attract overseas audiences who will see the films as ‘unusual’. A low budget film could cover costs by careful sale of rights in the UK and Europe. Anything earned in the US is then a bonus. (The Magdalene Sisters is a good example.)• make low budget films for a niche ‘arthouse audience’ in the UK and abroad. (Lynne Ramsay’s Morven Callar is a recent example.) Each of these actors would expect to earn a fee of $5 million or more.• look for partners in Europe and/or America and aim more clearly for an ‘international audience’.If the last option is selected, a further dilemma arises. Should the film remain ‘British’ and be ‘true to itself’, or should it take out difficult British features such as local accents and dialects, politics and cultural pursuits (audiences in America are unlikely to respond to stories about football or cricket or ‘strange’ social issues, for example)? The history of British films since 1990 is littered with failed attempts to work within these options or to break out. There have also been some conspicuous successes. Government intervention in funding and support There is a long history of government intervention in film production in the UK. Traditionally this has been in the form of small scale grants towards commercial films and funding for art or cultural cinema’ in which the grant is a much larger proportion of the budget. By the late 1990s, there was a general recognition that public funding needed a re-think and the new Labour government in 1997 promised to be more ‘film friendly’. The Film Council was set up in 2000 to re-organise government support for British films and to oversee the use of Lottery Money in film production. The Arts Councils of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland had been putting money into films for some time (the BFI also funded low budget films, but this role has been taken over by the Film Council) and in 1997 the new monies available through the National Lottery saw the development of three ‘Lottery Franchises’ with around £30 million available for each of three private production companies, the Film Consortium, DNA Films and Pathé Pictures. This money was spread over a number of features and shorts with a

maximum of £2 million going to any single film. Theoretically, this Lottery Money is an investment, but by 2000, from the £100 million invested, only some £10 million hadbeen returned to the investors (i.e. public funders). Given the high level of criticism in the press, the Film Council announced that future funding would be on a more ‘business-like’ basis. But this begs the question – how should public money be spent? A cultural project might be acceptable if public money ensured that certain kinds of ‘cultural’, ‘art films’ were produced, especially if they helped new talents to emerge and gain experience. What would be the point in putting public money into a venture which if it was an obviously ‘commercial’ project would find American or European private funding anyway?

In 2004, the UK film industry was stunned when then Chancellor Gordon Brown announced that a tax scheme with valuable benefits to film production was to be withdrawn. Some film productions were abandoned before a new scheme was announced. Film finance is a very complicated process and it often relies on indirect support in the form of tax ‘breaks’. These allow producers to claim the whole production budget (and more) as tax relief – i.e. a reduction on tax bills for their other activities. In effect, the UK government provides 15-20% of the budget. This is a highly simplified version of what happens, but it is a good example of what is known in the industry as ‘soft money’. Hollywood tends to be scornful of European filmindustries and their reliance on ‘soft money’. Americans of course use ‘hard money’ – but in the UK they are as keen to get involved in soft money schemes as anyone else.

Realism

One of the major factors in both the production of British films and their receptionby audiences and critics is the legacy of ‘realism’. This is worthy of a major debate,needing more space than is available here. The status of realism as an approachto filmmaking in Britain goes back to the 1930s when the ‘British DocumentaryMovement’ was the first example of a significant British film movement to berecognised by critics outside Britain. Documentary gave the British film industryprestige and this was further boosted during and just after the Second World Warwhen British feature films learned from the documentarists how to shoot on locationand how to use ‘authentic’ props and costumes etc. In the late 1950s, the industrywould go further and use more realistic dialogue (and a wider range of actors). Sincethen ‘British realism’ has become associated with two types of films:

• ‘costume’ or ‘period’ films displaying a very high level of ‘authentic detail’ – e.g.films based on 19th century ‘classic novels’ or more modern novels about the1930s and 1940s. This is an issue of ‘surface realism’, recreating period detail, andis recognised by some audiences as a mark of ‘quality’

• ‘social realist’ films dealing with recognisable social problems, filmed in ‘real’locations, often using some form of ‘documentary style’ camera and an avoidanceof any notions of ‘glamour’ or false ‘prettiness’.

To many older and more middle-class audiences, and certainly for many audiencesoverseas, these two types of films are what British cinema is all about. The approaches are epitomised for these audiences by the period adaptations of Merchant-Ivory productions and the films of Ken Loach or Mike Leigh. Such recognition perhaps works in the opposite way for UK working class audiences (who usually prefer Hollywood films). They may well steer clear of both period films and social realism. Nevertheless, ‘popular British films’ such as gangster and comedy films may still be influenced by a general British feeling for realist detail and it is certainly true that determinedly ‘fantastic’ or expressionist filmmakers in the UK have had to work harder to gain critical acclaim. In one sense, the critical support for realism alone could be seen as a reflection of a narrow film culture. Genres in British Cinema The idea of a ‘popular British Cinema’ suggests a ‘genre cinema’ and there is certainly a tradition of genre production in Britain. The 1930s and the 1950s were the strongest periods for genre production. With large audiences and competing British studios, these periods saw production in several traditional genres:comedy thriller melodrama costume horror gangster crime war musical In number terms, comedy has always been most important next to the thriller, a rather loose term covering crime, gangster, spy etc. Since 1990, with no British studio as such, genre production has been hard to find. Instead, there have been brief ‘cycles’of similar films that draw upon some of the ‘repertoire of elements’ of establishedBritish genres. ‘Social comedies’ like The Full Monty, romantic comedies like NottingHill and gangster/comedy films like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels can belocated in this way.

Recently there has been a revival of the British horror/science fiction film with 28 Days Later and the comedy/horror Shaun of the Dead. Whilst the comedy cycles are always likely to regenerate, it may be the case that the late 1990s gangster cycle has now run out of steam (but then Layer Cake has been successful in 2004).

The current most commercial genre, at least in the low to medium budget sector, is arguably horror. Other genre groupings might include the ‘social problem’ film and the youth picture (often the same film!) which developed in the late 1950s and continue to be a strong element in British film and television. The social problem film utilises something of the social realist approach outlined above and the youth picture has tended to draw upon popular music culture as well as other more traditional genre elements. The ‘heritage film’ is a grouping that began to be recognised during the 1980s and is associated with the Thatcher period of Conservative government. A key film was Chariots of Fire (1981) which appealed to a nostalgia for former British glories and sought to entice by attention to the kind of period detail outlined above as part of a ‘surface realism’. Heritage films were generally seen as ‘reassuring’ and were opposed to some of the harsher and bleaker 1980s films which owed more to the ‘real’ social Michael Winterbottom’s films present a good case study for aesthetics in British cinema. Although feted internationally and highly praised by more knowledgeable critics, his films have failed to find mainstream audiences or to please more mainstream critics Each Winterbottom film is different in look and feel, utilising new techniques. Has this kind of polarity survived the end of the Thatcher period? Is the ‘heritage film’ a relevant category for the 1990s and into the 21st century? Some British film scholars are now referring to films like Elizabeth (1998) as a ‘post heritage’ film – a new kind of film that addresses historical material in less traditional ways.

Representation issuesGrouping contemporary British films according to ideas about genres and aesthetics such as realism should help in developing ideas about representations. Most specifications for film and media studies ask students to address ‘changing representations’ over the period in question. Which representation issues are likely tohave arisen since 1990?

ClassDespite protestations to the contrary (by ‘classless’ politicians), class distinctionremains a central and often structuring feature of many British films and also helps toexplain some aspects of audience behaviour. It is difficult not to see Notting Hill andKevin and Perry Go Large as targeting different audiences. This doesn’t mean thatclass difference works in the same way during the 1990s as it did in previous decades. The success of films like The Full Monty, Brassed Off and Billy Elliot, suggests a shift in ideas about working class life, and particularly male working class life. Similarly, the continuing success of Richard Curtis’ very middle-class films, such as Notting Hill or Bridget Jones, could be related to the changing structure of the UK cinema audience (which is predominantly ABC1)

GenderIn a ‘post feminist’ era of career women and ‘ladettes’ as well as ‘post industrial’ men,it might be expected that representations of both men and women will have changed.It might also be reasonable to look for the impact of more women becoming involvedin film production and the extent to which this might affect both the choice of filmsubjects and the presentation of female characters. Has their been a significant change in the creative personnel of British Cinema? The big story for women must be the success of Gurinder Chadha with Bend It Like Beckham and Bride and Prejudice. In commercial cinema, Sharon McGuire has also had a success as director of Bridget Jones’ Diary, but has yet to complete a second feature. The follow-up to Bridget Jones sees something of a revival in fortunes for Beeban Kidron, who first emerged in the late 1980s. In art cinema, Lynne Ramsay (Ratcatcher, Morvern Callar) has to some extent overtaken Sally Potter (Orlando (1992), The Tango Lesson (1997)) as a critical favourite. Antonia Bird, whose last film, Hamburg Cell (2004) was first shown on UK television to critical acclaim, has arguably the most interesting CV since 1990. For many women (indeed for many men), the major difficulty is how to follow up a critically acclaimed first film with a second (e.g. Carine Adler after Under My Skin (1997)).

EthnicityDuring the 1990s the UK continued to develop into a multiracial and multicultural society. Formerly immigrant communities became second and third generationBlack and Asian Britons. Towards the end of the 1990s the arrival of a diverse rangeof refugees contributed further to the ethnic mix. Have these developments been noticeable in the British films produced? Without looking too closely, it is immediatelynoticeable that African and Caribbean Britons have been less visible as filmmakers inthe 1990s than in the 1980s. The high profile of Bend It Like Beckham suggests thatAsian Britons might have fared better. Certainly Asian audiences in the UK have been able to see an increasing number of Hindi language films from India in UK cinemas – will this help Asian British filmmakers? What is noticeable is that the multiracial nature of the UK is primarily an aspect of life in London and other major cities and Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Brenda Blethyn in Secrets and Lies (1996), a film that showed that a middle aged woman could become a star, but that a British Black actor would have more trouble finding other starring roles, no matter how well she performed in this film.

Britishness

Devolution of power to the ‘home nations’ and the consequent establishment ofdifferent national identities within the UK has raised questions of both ‘Britishness’and ‘Englishness’, the latter not having been addressed directly before in quite thesame way. In production terms, UK funding policies, and cultural policies generally,have attempted to shift productions away from the South East as the sole producingcentre. New studio facilities are being promoted in Wales and Scotland and cities likeLiverpool have been successful in attracting a wide range of productions for locationshooting. At the same time, the British film industry in the 1990s returned to the 1960s in terms of the direct involvement of Hollywood studios and stars. What does the presence of Gwyneth Paltrow and Renée Zellweger portraying ‘English’ characters in high profile films mean for representations of ‘Englishness’? Is it any different than British actors like Rachel Weisz or Catherine Zeta Jones playing Americans in other Hollywood films?

The UK Film Council is the Government-backed lead agency for film in the UK

ensuring that the economic, cultural and educational aspects of film are

effectively represented at home and abroad.

Who we are: We're the Government's strategic agency for film in the UK.

Why we're here: We're here to help make the UK a hub and natural home for

film in the digital age: a place with a diverse and vibrant film culture and a

flourishing, competitive film industry.

What we do: We work closely with the Government and the film industry –

offering policy advice about industrial, economic and cultural issues affecting

film. We make policy and provide funding.

Where our funding goes: Every year we distribute around £27 million from the

National Lottery and £27 million from the Government to support: script

development, film production, short films, film export and distribution, cinema,

film education, culture and archives, festivals and audience support schemes.

We fund First Light, Skillset, the British Film Institute and several regional and

national screen agencies.

Our four key aims:

1. Build a competitive film industry with the creativity and skills to succeed

2. Stimulate greater choice for film audiences

Widen opportunities to learn about film and encourage more people to use them

3. Promote UK film around the world

Our policy priorities:

Develop film education and media literacy.

Support film culture and archives.

Promote the relationship between UK film and UK broadcasters.

Encourage inward investment into UK film.

Support international co-production.

Combat piracy.

Build diversity and inclusion in UK film.

Improve digital access to film.

What the UK Film Council Fund

Script development, film production, short films, film distribution and export, film education, festivals, skills development, national and regional film agencies.

Script development

Script quality can make or break a film. Our Development Fund provides £4

million a year to support the development of high quality, commercially viable

screenplays. Funded screenplays include Brideshead Revisited and How to Lose

Friends and Alienate People.

Film production

We support the production of British feature films through two funds.

The Premiere Fund provides £8 million a year to finance production of popular,

mainstream films, for example St. Trinian's,Stormbreaker, Severance, Miss

Potter and Becoming Jane.

The New Cinema Fund releases £5 million a year to innovative film-makers,

helping to back movies like Red Road, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, This is

England and London to Brighton.

Short films

Short films can help new film-makers break into the mainstream. Our New

Cinema Fund supports several short film schemes. Finance provided through

the scheme has allowed Andrea Arnold (Wasp, Red Road), Duane Hopkins (Love

Me or Leave Me, Better Things) and other directors to move from shorts to full

features.

Film distribution and export

We want to widen the choice of films shown at UK cinemas. Our Prints and

Advertising Fund provides £4 million a year to support the distribution of films

that might otherwise not be shown widely, among them, The Curse of the

Golden Flower, Volver and Tell No-One.

Our export funding helps to sell and finance the screening of British films

around the world.

Cinema

To help make 'going to the pictures' an even better experience we've invested

in 240 digital cinema screens across the UK. We also provide improvement

grants to independent cinemas.

Film education, culture and archives

We promote knowledge about film through a range of funding schemes,

including our , Archive Fund and First Light.

Festivals and audience support schemes

Stimulating greater audience choice is one of our four key aims and supporting

film festivals is a great way to do this. We also fund myfilms.com – a useful film

information website.

Skills

We provide £6.5 million a year to Skillset to support a national film skills and

training strategy.

National and regional film

We provide around £8 million a year to national and regional film bodies,

supporting their efforts to build a clear film strategy and provide financial

support for a wide range of film related activities.

Shane Meadows is a self-taught, British film-maker who hails from the Midlands in the UK. He was born in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, UK on 26th December 1972.

After dropping out of school before reaching his O-Levels, Shane Meadows originally set out to become an infamous, criminal mastermind of legendary proportions. Things didn't go to plan however. After being caught buying a stolen set of limited edition John Lowe darts, and later admitting to stealing and eating an egg-custard tart from the local Sainsbury's, it was clear that he just wasn't cut out for the hardened criminal underworld. The final straw came when criminal charges against him were read out in court and laughter could be heard from the gallery and the judge's bench. The charge was for theft of a breast pump from Boots the chemist. It was after this humiliation that Shane put his breast pump pilfering days behind him and began to put his energy into film-making.

In 1994, Shane's first step into the world of film making was to volunteer his services to the Nottingham based Intermedia Film and Video Ltd. The arrangment was that he would be allowed to borrow camcorders and use editing equipment in return for him working there for free. Shane asked friends and family to get involved in his video experiments, but they were understandably quite wary at first.

After Shane had put together a couple of short videos that he had made entirely on his own, many of his friends watched them and became sufficiently impressed to want to become involved in future video shorts. As their enthusiasm grew, they were soon making nearly one new short film every month.

With a growing catalogue of short films, Shane and his friends soon became frustrated that there were no real festivals or venues in which to screen their films. This frustration lead to them setting up there own mini event. The event was called 'Six of the Best' and was held every couple of months in an old local cinema. Anyone could bring along a short film they had

made, and for a small fee have it screened to a small audience. The event grew in popularity and eventually became an international video festival called 'Flip Side'.

The first of Shane's short films to grab the attention of the film-industry was 'Where's The Money, Ronnie?'. The acclaim won by this short lead to Shane being given a shot at making a documentary for Channel 4's 'Battered Britain' series. The film was called 'King of the Gypsies' and was a short documentary about Bartley Gorman, a bare-knuckle boxer born in Uttoxeter and a man that Shane had known for many years. A full length feature of Bartley Gorman's story is still the dream project that Shane is waiting to get underway.

From the Channel 4 documentary, Shane got the money to make 'Smalltime'.

Originally to be titled 'Left', Smalltime was a prime example of Shane's philosophy for aspiring film makers. Stick to what you know, and you won't go far wrong.'Left' was written in Shane's lunch breaks while he was volunteering at Intermedia Film and Video in Nottingham, and was originally simply written as a basis for improvisation. Smalltime won acclaim at a number of European film festivals and garnered enough favourable attention from potential future investors and distributors that Shane soon had the chance to make his first full length feature film. Twentyfour Seven.

From Twentyfour Seven through to This Is England, Shane has continued to make heartfelt films that attract an ever growing collection of fans. Sadly however, the critical acclaim and success of his films at various festivals throughout the world has yet to be reflected in box office takings. Because of this he still remains a somewhat unfamiliar name to most cinema-goers. Differing reasons for the lack-lustre box office performance of his films can be sighted. The blinkered un-willingness of the majority of modern film-goers to watch a black and white feature (Twentyfour Seven), or the lack of film prints available for screening (A Room for Romeo Brass opened with only ten prints nationwide) and more obviously, the small budget for the promotion of his films (most Hollywood releases in the UK have promotional budgets that exceed the entire budget of one of Shane Meadow's films). Thankfully this trend seems to be coming to an end with the success of This Is England at the UK box office!

As well as still returning to short films, Shane is still keen to share his knowlege and experiences with new film makers. After a Room For Romeo Brass, Channel 4 approached Shane to create a video masterclass for budding film-makers. The result was the brilliantly exuberant 'Shane's World', a collection of short films and film making advice. Shane's own no-budget productions not only entertain, but are also there to inspire.

http://www.shanemeadows.co.uk/- for more info and links to videos etc…

Why is Shane Meadows' ordinary England so extraordinary?

Shane Meadows has made his name capturing everyday provincial England with clarity and wit. So why is he the only English director doing it?

Meadows' England ... Thomas Turgoose in This is England

While British cinema may not provide an excess of reasons to be cheerful, in my house at least a new film from Shane Meadows is one. This is England could be described as Meadows' first period drama, set as it is in the bleak days of 1983 amid the fall-out of the Falklands War and the brief cultural supremacy of Roland Rat. But even knee-deep in historical detail, Meadows retains his ability to maintain his focus on his abiding subject - the real England.

Ever since breaking through with Twenty Four Seven a decade ago, Meadows has kept his gaze fixed firmly on his native east Midlands. His characters watch the days pass on low-rise estates less iconically dystopian than drab, where in lieu of career options there's the army, where the local crime-lords are just small-time scumbags and where unbroken homes raise eyebrows. Meadows Country is one of kickings outside chip shops, decrepit vans and, among it all, fleeting moments of hilarity and heartbreak. The stuff of everyday English life, in fact - and yet utterly alien to many of our film-makers.

Most of us have our theories as to why Meadows' accounts of suburbs and small towns have such novelty value in the ersatz world of British movies. Personally, I put it down to the class filter that dominates the industry. Whatever the cause, the result is that only Pawel Pawlikowski (director of My Summer of Love and Last Resort) appears to share his understanding of the kinds of average English mise-en-scénes Julia Roberts is unlikely to ever want to adorn. Andrea Arnold will presumably join their ranks once she makes a film set, unlike her fine debut Red Road, south of the Scottish border.

But it's not just his films' authenticity that makes Meadows a rarity - simply setting them in the provinces is enough to see to that. Recently users here were invited to name their favourite London films, and the list that ensued was long and diverse: portraits of grimy Dalston and leery Soho, bedsit-filled South Kensington and pre-regeneration Docklands. In every case, the location was vital to the tenor of the movie in question.

Start listing English classics set outside the capital with just as strong a local flavour, however, and inspiration soon runs dry (or mine did, anyway). What's striking about Meadows' movies in this context is how London is scarcely even referenced. But as soon as I began to scribble down what I think of as the great, quintessentially English films, what I found was that almost all were either set in London or had at least one narrative foot in the capital.

Indeed, the longer I went on, the more it seemed that in the best English movies, you only end up in the provinces should circumstance oblige you to get out of London: a city-centric thread that runs from The 39 Steps through Brighton Rock, Dead of Night, Get Carter, Radio On and Withnail and I, and into the present with the clammily gripping London to Brighton.

Of course, there have been great movies set in regional England before Shane Meadows, but fewer than one might expect. The bulk of them date from the late 50s to the late 60s: the era that brought forth everything from Billy Liar to Kes. Step beyond that timeframe and instances are more scattered (Alan Clarke's Rita, Sue and Bob Too, Peter Chelsom's Funny Bones, the Liverpudlian section of Alex Cox's Three Businessmen) before the next batch of adaptations of literary classics and airbrushed feel-goods for the American market.

But why are Meadows' ordinary lives still so exotic in British film? Does all inspiration really stop at the exits of the M25? Are there truly no stories to tell among England's cul-de-sacs and shopping centres? I find the idea hard to accept - but until the next Shane

Meadows emerges from the outskirts of Carlisle, or Hastings, or Newcastle, Coventry, Sheffield or Exeter, the evidence may continue to suggest so.

An 18 for This is England? This is an outrage

Shane Meadows argues his new film has been landed with a certificate which will mean those who need to see it most will not be able to.

It's almost two years since we started shooting This is England and at last the film is nearly out, hitting cinemas here this weekend. I suppose it's my most personal film to date as the main character, Shaun Fields is loosely based upon me at a time in my childhood. Shaun is a 12 year-old growing up in Thatcher's England when Rubik's Cubes, Doc Martens and political upheaval were all the rage. Shaun gets involved with a local skinhead gang after his father dies in the Falklands war and This is England tells of the repercussions that follow.

Everything has been going brilliantly. Last autumn the film won the special jury prize at the Rome Film Festival and best film at the British Independent Film Awards (BIFAs), beating BAFTA winner The Queen. Thomas Turgoose, who plays Shaun, won the best newcomer award at the BIFAs too. We've had some amazing press and great reviews and everything was looking really positive. Then, earlier this year, we heard that the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) had decided to give the film an 18 certificate for its use of "realistic violence and racist language". This means that the film is now unavailable to the audience it will benefit the most.

It's like I've somehow overachieved. By having one piece of violence and one piece of really acute verbal violence I've managed to get an 18 certificate, whereas someone else can slay thousands of people in a single film and that's OK. To be honest I don't understand it because, yes, the film is affecting but I think it's something that someone of 15 can cope with. It's not like it's a film about the 80s that has no value; it's incredibly relevant politically. It's as much about Iraq as it is about the Falklands. It's as much as about England in 2007 as it is about England in 1983.

The good news is that Bristol city council has overturned the BBFC's decision, giving the film a 15 certificate. We're hoping that more councils will follow shortly as there is a lot of support for the movie and incredulity at the BBFC verdict. Whether or not it will be accessible to the audience who need to see it the most remains to be seen.

Release Campaign for This is England

1) Festival showingsBerlin Film Festival (July 2006); Karlovy Vary Film Festival (July 2006); Rome Film Festival (August 2006); London Film Festival (October 2006); Seattle International Film Festival (June 2007) etc.(‘Best Film’ at Independent British Film Awards; ‘Special Jury Award’ at Rome Film Festival)

2) Reviews for This is EnglandTime Out, October 25th 2006“Shane Meadows has another winner on his hands”; “… underlines Meadows' position as one of Britain's most important filmmakers.”The Times, April 26, 2007“compelling drama”; “… how familiar the landscape is almost 25 years on”; “This is England is by far his most personal and powerful testimony”;

The Guardian, April 27, 2007“… a sad, painful and sometimes funny story”; “This is a violent subject, and these are violent people”; “Meadows is a real film-maker with a growing and evolving career, and with his own natural cinematic language”

The New York Times, Nov 24th, 2008“A modest, near flawless gem”; “brilliant opening sequence”reelviews.net (undated)“This Is England is insightful and informative”; “the movie does an excellent job … illustrating how easily hatred can be fostered in the young”

3) Cinematic ReleaseThen into cinemas – 62 nationwide; expanded to 150 cinemas by fourth week. Competed with Spiderman 3 in release week, grossed over £1million – unusual for independent British film.Very difficult getting into large cinema chains (Vue & Cineworld: 2 largest British cinema chains)

“BLOCKBUSTER films Mamma Mia and The Dark Knight helped boost Cineworld’s recent box office sales, the cinema chain said yesterday. Steve Wiener, group chief executive, said the results

“demonstrate the resilient nature of the business, particularly in the current economic climate”. He said the sales boost would help offset higher second half costs, including rising utilities bills, as well as the impact that the rescheduling of the new Harry Potter film to summer 2009 would have on the fourth

quarter. Cineworld, which has 75 cinemas and 775 screens across the UK, said it also stood to benefit in the final quarter from a strong film line-up, including High School Musical 3 and James Bond:

Quantum of Solace.”

3) Website onlinePromotes film; ‘extras’ – actually really limited; merchandise minimal – t-shirt artwork is to be printed by users and applied to their own blank shirts

4) Then onto sell through (DVD)With related advertising campaigns (print, broadcast etc)

5) And then broadcastOn Channel 4/Film 4 of course…

Discuss the issues raised by an institution’s need to target specific audiences within a media industry

There are many issues raised by an institution’s need to target specific audiences within the medium of film. These include securing funding for a project, developing an effective marketing strategy, having a clear identity and motivation for the audience and creating distribution for the product so that it reaches its intended audience. I will explore how each of these factors affects my case study institution of Warp Films.

Warp Films is a small budget film production company based in Sheffield with just three full time employees. It has recently enjoyed huge critical success with the films of Shane Meadows, building on the success of the longer established music label of the same name.

One of the biggest issues for small independent companies is their ability to fund expensive film projects. By collaborating with a range of different companies Warp Films have been able to draw in additional funding. Film Four, with its own well established critical reputation for innovative British film brings the advantage of a multi channel platform in supporting Warp Films projects. Its dedicated film channel and its terrestrial channel (C4) offer Warp an audience well after their films have been shown at the cinema. Both channels offer audiences who are film literate and enjoy more challenging socially realistic British film.

Another collaborator with Warp is the UK Film Council through their regional companies EM Media and Screen Yorkshire. Together they produce distinctively non-metropolitan film such as Dead Man’s Shoes and This Is England. This fulfils the UK Film Council’s mission statement to “stimulate greater choice for British audiences” and creates a symbiotic relationship that allows Warp to produce a film while UKFC fulfils its remit to make British film that might not be produced by purely commercial companies.

Given that Warp is competing with major Hollywood institutions such as Warner Brothers that spent half the total film budget for the Pirates franchise on marketing it needs alternative methods of coming to the attention of its core audience. Warp Films product rarely penetrate a large proportion of national cinemas, This Is England started in 62 cinemas in its first weekend and grew to 150. By the standards of British independent film this would be considered a very wide release, especially when it directly competed with Spiderman 3 on release weekend.

Use of new media, such as the internet is another part of Warp’s strategy. Websites for the production company, as well as individual films, promote their film product to a target audience who are likely to be younger and IT literate. The website for This Is England shows the limitations of a small budget production company. Although it promotes the soundtrack for the film (featuring horizontally integrated content from Warp Records artists such as

Clayhill and Aphex Twin) it can only offer the simplest forms of merchandise. Rather than offering t-shirts or baseball caps with lines from the film it offers artwork ready for printing by users on their home colour printers and applying to their own plain t-shirts. This low budget method may be successful in promoting the production company’s content and especially appeal to an audience who reject hegemonic ideals of large Hollywood studios. The niche audience for these films might well feel the gratification of superiority ….

A clear identification of the audience is essential for any media institution. Graham Burton’s theory of defining audiences by their media grouping is very helpful here. Warp Films products are generally aimed at an audience who are already very aware of independent British film, enjoy small budget British drama and social realism and read publications such as more left wing national broadsheets like The Independent and The Guardian. This means that when reviewed in these publications many readers are also the target audience of the film.

Warp is not well positioned when distributing its content to the audience. Unlike other vertically integrated film production companies it relies on a separate company (Optimum Releasing) to distribute its content to cinemas. Warp films often start at film festivals (Berlin, Rome, Seattle etc) and are then reviewed in national and specialist film press. Such reviews, when positive, form a major part of the film’s marketing strategy. This Is England (2006) was favourably reviewed in Time Out (another likely read of the target audience), stating Meadows had “another winner on his hands” and in The Guardian “… a sad, painful and sometimes sorry story.” As the media grouped target audience (Burton) would include broadsheet readers such reviews can be very powerful. The core audience would also enjoy the sorts of independent material that would be recognised at film festivals, so the prominent marketing on the poster, DVD cover and websites of awards such as ‘Best Film’ at the British Independent Film Awards would be very useful for the institution to reach their target audience.

Overall, Warp Films has to compete on an uneven playing field with other larger production companies with their vertically integrated distribution operations. Working with tiny production and marketing budgets means that the company have to be innovative and use non-mainstream methods such as the film festival circuit.

The British film industry and Hollywood

Films with a British dimension have had enormous worldwide commercial success. The top seven highest-grossing films worldwide of all time have some British historical, cultural or creative dimensions: Titanic, two episodes of The Lord of the Rings, two Pirates of the Caribbean and two Harry Potter movies. The first culturally American film on the list, Star Wars at number 8, was filmed principally in the UK. Adding four more Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings films, plus three about a Scottish ogre in British fairy tale setting (Shrek), and about two-thirds of the top twenty most commercial films, with combined cinema revenues of about $13 billion, had a substantial British dimension.

The British cinema market is too small for the British film industry to successfully produce Hollywood-style blockbusters over a sustained period. As such, the industry has not been able to produce commercial success internationally in comparison.

The British film industry consequently has a complex and divided attitude to Hollywood. On the one hand Hollywood provides work to British directors, actors, writers, production staff and studios, enables British history and stories to be made as films, and opens up the US and world markets to a limited participation by some in the British film industry. On the other hand, the loss of control and profits, and the market requirements of the US distributors, are often seen to endanger and distort British film culture.

Taken from Wikipedia.org

Ealing Stuidios hiring documentary film makers to add realism to their filmsHaving released DVDs of all the familiar Ealing titles, Optimum is now bringing out largely forgotten ones like this pair that resulted from Ealing boss Michael Balcon hiring documentary film-makers during the Second World War to bring a new realism to the studio's output.

Nine Men, the feature debut of documentarist Harry Watt, director of Night Mail (1936), is a morale-raising propaganda entertainment set in North Africa but shot on a Welsh beach. Character actor Jack Lambert, then serving as an army officer, plays a tough training sergeant inspiring a platoon of recruits by recalling how nine gallant soldiers (a regional cross-section including Ealing stalwart Gordon Jackson) held off a numerically superior Italian force in the Libyan desert.Charles Crichton's semi-documentary Painted Boats is a quieter affair, both realistic and lyrical, about life on England's canals and a romance between a boy and a girl from rival barge families. Poet Louis MacNeice wrote the eloquent commentary, the graceful photography is by Douglas Slocombe.

Observer Article, March 2009

A shiny, happy place, relaxed about the filthy rich, insatiable in its optimism, in love with happy endings, and very New Labour. Welcome to Curtisland ...Richard Curtis's star rose with Tony Blair and the buzz of cool Britannia. But on the eve of his new film The Boat That Rocked - and as New Labour sinks beneath the waves - Tim Adams wonders if Curtis is sinking with it

If you want to make a case for Richard Curtis as the emblematic film-maker of the New Labour years, you can start with an uncanny coincidence. Four Weddings and a Funeral - a film that features a sudden Scottish heart attack and the eventual unlikely romantic triumph of a gauche former public schoolboy - was released in Britain on the day after Labour leader John Smith died, 13 May 1994. (I went to see it a couple of weeks later at the Screen on the Green in Islington, London; just up the road Blair and Brown were dividing the spoils in the restaurant Granita.) The film immediately seemed to catch a mood. Death and romance were already in the air; Major's Tories were waiting for their last rites; things could only get better.You can't separate atmospheres out, quite, or see where one begins and another ends, but certainly in that summer of its genesis you could find some of New Labour's shiny, happy geography in what we have come to know as Curtisland. Four Weddings located a different kind of Britain to any that had been filmed before. It was neither kitchen-sink gritty nor carry-on smutty. It was an apolitical place, full of can-do possibility, obsessed with the educated middle class, perfectly relaxed about the filthy rich, much more in love with sentiment than ideas, and insatiable in its optimism; it was also in thrall to the idea of happy endings. This mixing of realities seemed like a two-way process. Curtis's inspired initiative for charitable giving in Africa, Comic Relief, which had begun a decade before, could hardly have been more Blairite in its simplicity. It concerned itself not with ideology or history or politics, but made a direct emotional appeal; it was messianic about fun and celebrity: have a laugh, resurrect a career, save the world.As the Blair years unfolded, so did Curtisland become more populous. Looked at one way, Britain became the broken-home and teenage-pregnancy capital of Europe; looked at another, it was the subject of ever more feel-good, confetti-strewn, loved-up films. If

they were not always from Curtis's pen, then at least they followed his winning formula: About a Boy and Jack and Sarah and (God help us) Wimbledon, among many others, featured men trapped in the eternal adolescence of Curtis's world, beset by the question of "to shag or not to shag", before eventually growing up and finding that love is all around us. It wasn't just men. Bridget Jones's Diary was the creation of Curtis's old friend from Oxford, Helen Fielding (it was Fielding who had originally insisted on putting a funeral in among the scripted four weddings; Curtis, as terrified as Blair of the downbeat, had until then imagined it as Four Weddings and a Honeymoon). Curtis returned the compliment by making Bridget Jones an authentic Curtisland movie.Bridget herself, dippy and solipsistic, exercising her democratic duty to shop, was high on New Labour from the beginning. Election night in 1997 had been a kind of epiphany: "Cherie Blair is fantastic. You see she, too, would probably not fit into tiny bikinis in communal changing rooms. She, too, has not got snooker ball bottom yet somehow is able to obtain clothes which encompass her bottom and still make her look like a role model. Maybe things will change under Blair, who will order all clothes shops to start producing clothes which will fit attractively over everyone's arses. Worry, though, that New Labour will be like having a crush on someone, finally being able to go out with them and then when you have your first row it is cataclysmically awful. But then Tony Blair is the first prime minister I can imagine having voluntary sex with..."This kind of sentiment seemed to travel well; Curtis mastered the knack of making the parochial international. He could open his blue front door in Notting Hill and sell the idea of it around the world. Curtisland was among the least "cool" products of Cool Britannia, but it was always perfect for export; Britain was suddenly a sunny, witty, self-deprecating, charming kind of place, a Doris Day film by the Thames in which it was forever Christmas. It was perhaps no coincidence that the plots of Four Weddings and Notting Hill hinged on the infatuation of tongue-tied British males with worldly American glamour. Much like Blair's Labour party, the films told audiences across the Atlantic almost exactly what they wanted to hear about the old country.It was also inevitable that Hugh Grant would eventually play a version of Tony Blair (in Love Actually) even shallower than the original; one who would make bad jokes about special relationships just as the country was mired in war. There was a strange coincidence of dates there, too. In the week that film was released George W Bush visited the "real" prime minister, and was treated to an authentic fish and chip supper in Sedgefield, Durham, a photo opportunity that cost about £1m to stage and required the removal of net curtains from all the windows in Blair's constituency, for security reasons. A dinner that you could not have made up.Curtis, never wholly dictated to by plausibility, also imagined such a meeting, but in terms that were beyond the bounds of possibility.

He had his British and American presidents share a press conference in which Prime Minister Grant denounced his counterpart as a bully - although admittedly not because he assumed his compliance in an illegal war, but because he had witnessed the president make a pass at the object of his own desires, Natalie the Downing Street tea lady (Martine McCutcheon).This prompted a real-life response from Blair in a conference speech, protesting that the reality of the relationship with America was necessarily more complicated than anything in a Richard Curtis film (you're telling me). The implied criticism of Blair in Love Actually, was in any case balanced by another piece of rhetoric which might have come directly from the prime minister, at least in his vicar of St Albion mode. The opening of the film made the defining statement of Curtisland philosophy, his considered response to 9/11: "Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport," Grant's character says. "General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that love actually is all around us..."Curtis subsequently did not have to restrict his policy ideas to his films. In 2005, as a spokesman for Live8, he was able to set part of the agenda for the G8 summit that Blair hosted at Gleneagles. And, a couple of years later, when Blair eventually called it a day, it was Curtis who scripted the most memorable part of his valediction - the prime minister's appearance opposite Catherine Tate on Comic Relief set the tone of his legacy: "Am I bovvered?"The sychronicity between New Labour and its favourite film-maker continues into the Brown era. When Gordon Brown holidayed on the Suffolk coast, the closest reality to Curtisland that England has to offer, the writer donated his personal trainer. Curtis subsequently hosted a dinner party in which he teasingly sat Brown opposite the man who played him in Stephen Frears' The Deal, David Morrissey. It was perhaps no surprise that, in the words of Vince Cable, Brown went from "Stalin to Mr Bean in a matter of weeks".And the blurring of Curtisland and reality has not stopped there; Curtis's new film, his first cinema release for six years, once again triumphantly captures the political moment: it is the tale of the sinking of a ship of fools. Having been there at the birth of New Labour, Curtis provides the perfect metaphor for its demise.Viewed in this way, The Boat That Rocked, a distinctly un-seaworthy retelling of the story of Radio Caroline - partially saved by the usual roster of Curtis's gags - is one of the sharpest pieces of political satire you are likely to see this year. It puts together a gang of

egotists still high on the ideals of the 60s, documents their schoolboy rivalries, their infatuation with their own power and hipness, pitches them against a moralising government (in the shape of Kenneth Branagh and Jack Davenport), and watches them go down beneath the waves still playing the same old songs. What starts as the best of times, ends up as the TitanicJust because this is ostensibly a period piece does not make it any less authentically Curtis-esque. You can tick off the landmarks as you go along. Hopeless floppy-haired young man in love (in the form of Hugh Grant-substitute Tom Sturridge): check. Seriously eccentric, slighty pervy room-mate ("Thick Kevin"): check. Preposterous wedding (complete with comedy rings): check. Bill Nighy playing oldest swinger: check. Rhys Ifans playing fool: check. Sudden bursts of ironic expletives in any potential lull: check. Happily, Curtisland is a place where anything can be recycled.One of the things you come away from the film with, apart from a dizzying sense of déjà vu, is the realisation that it is a brave man who tries to salvage his directorial reputation with a romantic farce set on a leaky boat. Curtis is nothing if not positive in his thinking, however. Having proved pretty comprehensively in Love Actually that he was no director, he repeats that trick. Another trait Curtis seems to share with Blair is the admirable virtue of a thick skin. He took some awful stick for Love Actually: the New York Times suggested it was a bag of trash right down to its neatly tied ending. But the more he is rubbished the stronger his conviction appears to grow. He won't take no for an answer.In this respect, Curtis sees himself as an eternal optimist in a sea of pessimists. He tends to look his critics in the eye. "I don't have a very cynical set of friends," he said recently. "Cynical people believe everyone else is cynical. They regard non-cynical people as simply ultra-cynical. Supposed non-cynical people are merely pretending to be non-cynical in order to make money from other cynical people. So cynics who watch Love Actually think it is a cynical attempt to make money. No amount of evidence could prove to them that it ever had anything to do with goodwill. All I would do is encourage people with a cynical frame of mind to get on with it. Cynics Nose Day hasn't raised any money yet."One unique thing about Curtis's career is that we have come to see him, the scriptwriter, as the creator of Curtisland, a reversal of the natural order of cinema: his directors - Mike Newell in Four Weddings, Roger Michell in Notting Hill - barely got a look in. What the later films reveal is that though Curtis may have been an endless source of inspired one-liners and "goodwill" - a trick he learned at Oxford when he started writing revues for his contemporary Rowan Atkinson - it was his collaborators who were able to put these lines in the mouths of consistent characters as well as plausible caricatures.Curtis is a reluctant interviewee, but one of the occasions he did open up was in an onstage discussion at the Directors Guild with his

wife (and sharpest editor) Emma Freud. In response to the question of how he came to write films he responded with a clear sense of his limitations. "I practised by being a sketchwriter and then a writer of sitcoms," he said, "a particular craft at making little three-minute sections of things funny, and I took that skill on to movies: so I've tried to put in as many funny bits as possible and make them resemble a plot. I had a very lucky break when I asked Mike Newell to do Four Weddings and a Funeral. Mike is a serious, beautiful person, a wonderful director. What he succeeded in doing is to hide the fact that the original script read much more like a series of sketches."Roger Michell did something similar in Notting Hill, but when Curtis was left to his own devices in Love Actually, his directorial debut, the whole stubbornly stayed in its discrete three-minute parts. There was no uniformity of tone, no sense that these stories of lovers belonged with each other or had any existence beyond the confines of the film. There was no such thing as Curtisland society (however unlikely a concept that had always been: only Curtis could write a movie about Notting Hill, London's most diverse borough, and not feature a single black face in it).Curtis has talked in the past of Robert Altman being his hero as a director for the way he could juggle a dozen storylines in Short Cuts or Nashville and give them a sense of shared purpose. For all of his gifts, Curtis does not have that particular genius. The fracturing is even more pronounced in The Boat That Rocked, which veers wildly in tone between college skit and big-budget disaster movie. It has its share of funny set pieces, but everyone seems to have a different film in their head. Philip Seymour Hoffman, never less than brilliant, tries to invest his character - an ageing DJ - with something like an authentic life (much as Emma Thompson did in Love Actually), but that just highlights the fact that no one else really bothers. Branagh contents himself with barking the name of his underling - "Twatt" - for comic effect. Nighy curls his thin lips; Ifans does his seedy thing. Every so often the action cuts to the living rooms of a place that is not quite Britain, where gaggles of nurses and frustrated posses of schoolgirls dance round their wirelesses.One of the explanations for this absence of belief in the authenticity of Curtisland perhaps is to be found in the writer's biography. Curtis was born in New Zealand, the son of a Unilever executive. He grew up in exapatriate style in Stockholm and Manila before attending Harrow, where he became head boy, and Oxford, from which he took a first in English. This charmed life may have been full of the idea of England, but it did not contain much of England itself. Perhaps that is why Curtisland can sometimes seem a collection of postcards, or something imagined from a story that his mother once told him. In Four Weddings, this was a virtue; it lent London a fairytale quality. By repetition, it has come to seem ever more contrived.In truth, even in the early days Curtis was never a great soloist. The

first series of Blackadder, which he wrote on his own, was nowhere near as precise as those that followed, on which he collaborated with Ben Elton. Without a partner, he seemed too much like himself - a chirpy McCartney without a rebarbative Lennon. "All you need is love" has been a mantra of the films; but he also used to get by with a little more help from his friends.This desire to be a one-man band, and not just a writer of scripts, appears to be born of an unlikely immodesty. There was a likable kind of humility about the scale of Four Weddings - the production team at Working Title scraped the barrel to be able to afford Andie McDowell - but as the budgets have grown, so, apparently, has Curtis's sense of what he is capable of. Somewhat like Blair, he seems to feel he is a pretty straight guy, but also a lone positive voice. He seems to want his films to evangelise the idea that the world is nowhere near as grim as most film-makers like to think. "I really do believe that there is a tremendous amount of optimism, goodness and love in the world and that it is under-represented. But if you do feel it and experience it then you should write about it..." This is, he argues, an inherited trait, something he shares with his father. "I think 'sentimental' is a complicated word," he has said. "A lost word. What is wrong with being touched by what goes on around you? I am very touched by what is good and true. It's a family characteristic. It was very true of my dad in his final years. Whenever he talked of an act of kindness I can remember the tears in his eyes. And I can't help being emotional when I come across something kind, when I find how warm people can be."It is admirable, that faith, but when translated wholesale to movies it borders on sanctimoniousness. You imagine the films that Curtis would love to make are updates of Frank Capra, comedies that make grown men cry. But it is hard to imagine a film further removed from It's a Wonderful Life than, say, Love Actually - despite all the Christmassy bonhomie. Jimmy Stewart's happiness comes through struggle and defeat; he learns something about himself, he is faced throughout the film with genuine choices. Curtis does not have the capacity for such hard thinking. The only struggle in Curtisland is between the constant lure of irresponsibility and self-pity, and the possibility of Cupid striking to solve everything. Despair is rarely a possibility, only awkwardness or embarrassment; Hugh Grant's most obvious struggle is to complete a sentence.If anything, The Boat that Rocked takes that shallowness into uncharted waters. We are not required to care, really, about any of the characters. Love may be all around them, but it never develops much beyond a teenage crush. No one is seen to build anything, or work at anything; they just try to convince themselves over and over again that this is the time of their lives. In that, too, you might say, it is also very much a product of its time.

Tim AdamsThe Observer, Sunday 22 March 2009