christoph404

To you and I these films seem like utter rubbish but sadly they seem to pull in large audiences, Scream 1 and 2 and 3 , Bourne Identity 1 and 2 , Final Destination 1 and 2 etc ,all very succesfull teenage films with largeley teenage characters. The fact is that these films and sequels are being made and distributed because there is a very large audience out there who are paying to go and see them. Many vetern actors and contemporary stars have pointed out that the film industry is now run by money men in suits who know absolutley nothing about film or its history and have not an ounce of creative or artistic thought in their heads, its all about the dollar and returns, there just doesn't seem to be any visionaries left in the industry at all which is a great pity I think.

Steve Crook

Most films are aimed at teenagers, simply because as a segment of the population they go to the cinema more than any other segment. So a film aimed at them will make more money

Steve

Steve Crook

The trouble is that they don't know any better because most of them have never seen any of the better, older films that we know & love

Steve

D Cairns

Well, I got into films as a teenager, and seeing Kevin Brownlow and David Gill's HOLLYWOOD series was important to me as a little kid. Comparing that to BRITISH FILM FOREVER is heartbreaking.

Actually, the film season is more interesting than John Patterson allows - NOOSE is a relatively obscure film, and no "classic", but pretty interesting and unconventional. He doesn't include many titles like that on his alternative list.

I'd have had JUGGERNAUT, CASH ON DEMAND, SWEENEY 2, HELL IS A CITY and ENDLESS NIGHT in my own list of underratyed thrillers. Romance and sex might be covered by THE KNACK, FIRST A GIRL, SAVAGE MESSIAH, BECKETT...

ChristineCB

I can't criticize an audience so young that they can't comparatively evaluate films. I spend an incredible amount of my film-going time with my mouth open as I discover one lost treasure after another that were made decades before I was born. These set my standard for film-tolerance a lot higher than it's ever been before, and I don't validate anyone's argument against my having improved entertainment stands.

I just think the financiers ought to consider David-Lean-calibre films as an investment not for a one or two year ROI, but for decades and decades.

This author's point of "clichéd choices" rings true to some degree, and I'm certainly guilty of listing several clichéd and obvious Brit-Film choices for my local festivals. I listed some of them because I know they'll bring in a large audience even though they're not my favorites - so I'm completely guilty of the "conspiracy to commit clichéd choices" charge.

But other films he listed are plain good. They were good from Day 1. They're good 30, 40 and 50 years later. Good is good. If he wants to lie and dismiss "Good" as a mere "cliché", then that's his lie and his shameful guilt.

Our distributors told us that they're finding more and more new prints of old films for the first time in decades, and always following that film's DVD release. Cliché doesn't really apply to those - these are now rarely-seen choices, or in some cases, never seen since original release.

Aaryk Noctivagus

An ignorant ignorant commentator who's only redemption lies in an aspect of truth among the bile being spewed over genius.

We may be overfamiliar with these movies, but that is not a good reason to despise them and their Directors. It is true an opportunity has been missed to rediscover long lost classics... and we can weep about that while appreciating the skill of the men behind the over-watched movies, surely!

Aaryk Noctivagus

Get ye to a Nunnery!

batman

I'll see you there Wolfgang .... I like the Bourne books and I enjoy the films too ....

Bats.

"Boom boom a baby .... Banham Zoo .... Banana pants! Hahahaha"

penfold

Two comments illustrating what I wanted to say about the piece....we in this forum, like it or not, are the anoraks on the subject of British cinema. Not everyone else is....and it is to those people that the series and the accompanying season is aimed at; we can wince at some sweeping generalisations, or at the style, or at some obvious choices....because we are fair way to being experts in the field already......but let's, like Aaryk and Christine have a bit of humility here...we were not always thus....there will be many watching, some young, some not, to whom this season will be revelatory; I'm not claiming that BFF is in the class of Kevin Brownlow's Hollywood - great, and yet when you really get into silent cinema, still imperfect - but for some people it may still serve the same function, of being an eye-opener, a seminal moment where they get an inkling of what is out there to be discovered.
We on this forum spend a deal of time bemoaning the lack of british films, 30's, 40's, Black and white, being shown on terrestrial TV these last few years; (try being a silent film addict, by the way) so let's give at least one cheer for the BBC for coming up with the idea and putting on a decent mix of films...of course they're mostly familiar to us .....but to many others they're a first opportunity....let's hope a few grasp it like we did when we were wide-eyed late-teens and early 20's....

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

Fellwanderer

Well said, Penfold - quite agree

I had a lengthy reply to this but it suddenly disappeared and I'm off to the Penrith Potfest now so it will have to wait until this evening.

All the best
FELL

A signature is no substitute for a life

Cheeky Bob

Talking of Brownlow, it's well worth watching the fifth episode of the otherwise magisterial Cinema Europe: The Other Hollywood, about British cinema - where he commits precisely the sins we're accusing others of, favouring prejudice over evidence!

As for The Bourne Ultimatum, it's directed by Paul Greengrass, one of the most interesting British directors currently working - not least for the way he's managed to take a quintessentially British genre (TV drama-documentary) and graft it onto big-budget Hollywood films with surprisingly little compromise. Good profile in today's Observer.

Foster twelvetrees

I very much doubt a series like this will convert any or indeed any non-fans. It's simply not good enough. It's the same argument as the one about the attrocious Robbie Williams album Swing While You're Winning will convert young fans to Sinatra and proper singers I'm afraid, created more from hope than evidence.

Nick Dando

They're pretty brazen about drugs in your neck of the woods, aren't they! Anyone for the Carlisle Coke Carnaval? Or the Heysham Heroin Hoedown?

Nick

ChristineCB

Yes, true. The strangest part is that I still love so many of the fairly awful Hammer '60s films. Acting isn't very good, stories are sometimes banal and pacing creates too many slow parts. But the gawdy costuming and colorations of the sets gives the films a vibrancy and energy often greater than other factors.

And since so many are period pieces, I can easily check all negative criticism at the door and enjoy wherever the filmmakers finally go.

I don't think there are many of those films that would actually be 'better' than most of the boring or bad films I've seen in the last 15 years. But I enjoy them a lot more, and I have no idea why. It's not "nostalgia" because I've seen most of those in the same "last 15 years", too. I don't think they're better, but I don't judge them for "goodness" - I only seem to judge them on "fun" and "excitement". Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Michael Gough - they all have a license from me to impress me merely by showing up, I guess.

batman

I agree ... that's why I like the Bourne films ... the first one was a slightly different take on the super spy film and the second one took it slightly further again ... Greengrass brought an edgy, nervy style to the proceedings which enhanced the action rather than (as some say) detracted from it. I find it quite annoying that many people who praised the new Bond film for it's 'grittier' style still slag off the Bourne films, which are just as good.

Bats.

"Boom boom a baby .... Banham Zoo .... Banana pants! Hahahaha"