Four Lions Press Archive: Post British reviews/interviews etc here

[Neil]

For those of you who are a distance from Cockney London here's the Time Out article. TO is surprisingly easy to get for me even in Bradford. Oh it might be spoilery; I've not actually read it myself yet.

http://i42.tinypic.com/3c7x1.jpg

Hmmm that's actually come out a bit smaller than my original photo. Can't see to work out how to host a pic that's 1459x1094 on a free pic site. Oh well sorry for the size it's just about readable.

Thanks for the scan, looking forward to the big version.  The article is now on the Time Out website:

Chris Morris and the writers of 'Four Lions': interview
Chris Morris, Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong are the writers behind 'Four Lions', about a terrorist plot to bomb London. 'You can make comedy about anything,' they tell Mark Ellen
There'll be a poster campaign on the tube over the next week or so advertising 'Four Lions', the debut feature film by Chris Morris. At the top you'll get the single word 'funny' 15 times, credited to a wide range of media. 'Funny' – Daily Telegraph; 'Funny' – FHM; 'Funny' – The Onion; etc. In a pastiche of the now inescapable 'bomber squadron of stars' cliché, Morris just picked the one adjective each reviewer used. And 'Four Lions' is very funny indeed. Astonishingly funny in fact. On paper, it doesn't look too promising – a bunch of lads start a terrorist cell, plot a mass murder and, via a series of spectacularly botched manoeuvres, enter what co-writer and director Morris softly describes as 'a sad, fucked-up cul-de-sac of rubbish'. But the film achieves two extraordinary things. It sheds light on the kind of religion that would make anyone form a cell in the first place. And it mines a rich seam of comedy in the dynamic of the gang, looking at modern jihadism through the prism of farce.

Morris read a story three years ago about five jihadis planning to ram a US warship. They packed their launch with explosives. They stepped in. It sank. He found himself laughing. With credits that include 'Brass Eye', 'The Day Today' and 'On the Hour', he thought the subject had potential for satire and recruited two other writers, Jesse Armstrong ('In the Loop', 'The Thick of It') and Sam Bain (who, with Armstrong, writes 'Peep Show'). We're in the boardroom of a film distribution company in Soho and all three have just wandered in.

This seems the perfect team, the man behind 'Brass Eye' and the writers of 'Peep Show' and 'In the Loop' which look at the dark, claustrophobic workings of the male mind under pressure...
Sam Bain 'You've found a unifying factor!'

Jesse Armstrong 'Well, if Sam and I can do anything, we can write men arguing in those claustrophobic environments. But could we write some guys of different ethnicity, different religion and different cultural backgrounds? And we thought: Well, they're still basically blokes arguing.'

Chris Morris 'The Universal Male! We've ousted Martin Amis! I went to the high court and watched the Bluewater terrorist trial and got to hear a lot of MI5 surveillance tapes of the suspects, and you start to realise these people are klutzing around in a very average way – like men at stag parties or five-a-side football. Everyone reporting on it knew it was like "The Keystone Cops". There's a recording I heard where one guy says, "Hey bro, what's the date today?" And the other guy says it's the twenty-third. "So is tomorrow the twenty-fourth?" You wondered if they were stoned but the police said no.

'There's a bit where they're arguing about who's cooler, Bin Laden or Johnny Depp. You hear ridiculous things like, "My wife's really pissed off with you 'cos she made you these sandwiches and you didn't eat them and then you ate a load of chocolate spread. Hey, wouldn't it be brilliant if we pulled an airliner out of the sky? Yeah bro, that'd be fantastic! What's on telly tonight? Ah that Richard Littlejohn, I don't like him. When's Jeremy Clarkson on, he's brilliant?"

'You have to unload a lot of cultural and factual stuff to create a context for these – actually really normal – reactions between blokes. The one who wants to be leader, the thick one, the bullied type...'


I was surprised by how conventional the film's structure was: one clever guy surrounded by a troop of sheep-like idiots...
SB 'I suppose we found the character directing the cell to be the thing that sustains the film, really. Even with the other, slightly bigger jokes about religion, it all comes down to those characters. And they are a bunch of idiots – he's the stupid one, he's the smarter one, he's the arrogant one – but you can get a hook into people you wouldn't normally be able to hook into that easily by thinking about it in those comedy terms.'
CM 'Sam and Jesse are masters of that character comedy. And this film is obviously not a polemic. It's attacking things from a different way round.

'In that "Brass Eye" special [on paedophiles], there was a bit that never got made as it just didn't fit the kind of "Crimewatch"/David Jessel-bashing structure. It was a mini-documentary about a group who organised a sort of Paedo Pride Parade, the ninth Paedo Parade in Bournemouth or somewhere, a really sad bunch of people who were all in this house saying, "Oh dear, another brick with a load of shit on it thrown through the window!" They all wore these kind of trust-me trousers designed to disguise an erection. You imagine if you did organise a Paedo Pride march – "We got about 80 metres last year before we got beaten up!" – so it's a normalising joke.

'And I was a bit sad to lose it in a way, as I thought it gave you so much room to explore. "Four Lions" takes that kind of approach. Once we established that a cell is about character dynamics, we created the whole arc of the film. We could see it in three clear acts, but then we realised we'd left a few questions behind.'


What sort of questions?
CM 'Well, they're a bunch of blokes but they're not just a bunch of blokes. You have to understand something that seems, paradoxically, not to fit into a universal experience until you look at it this way. I mean – call me sick – but I remember going to a test match once and thinking: I could take this one out! There's a guy going round with this wheelbarrow thing full of beer, so... It is quite fun, walking around London. You start working up bomb plots. We came up with ten great ones. Sadly if we'd been brown and the room had been bugged, we wouldn't be sitting here talking to you now.'

JA 'Most Londoners are doing that in reverse anyway. When there's been a recent event there's a bit of you thinking: Is this place safe? Is this tube safe? But we discarded 98 per cent of those ideas trying to write the ending as it's not going to be funny seeing a tube train blow up. Because, sadly, we know too much what that's like.'

Spoiler alert

There must have been potential investors who said they couldn't get involved as it was too controversial?
CM 'Well, we wouldn't hear from them. The more dangerous kind of idiot is the one who'll put the money on the table in front of you and then, at the last minute, say, "Oh by the way, you can only have the money if you do this. Can't you reflect reality in other ways? After all, some bomb plots don't come off. Could they all survive?"

[close]

'And you sort of think: What on earth would be the point of that? You might as well make a film about absolutely anything. A machine could have chosen the subject. If you make a film like this you have to have consequences. Imagine "The Guns of Navarone" without actually blowing up the guns.'


What's your response to people who think you can't make comedy out of something whose subject is, essentially, mass murder?
JA 'You probably shouldn't see the film? You can make comedy about anything. It's about being sure-footed and having the correct point of view.'

CM 'Well you would say that as you wrote a comedy about people being ghastly to each other, and undermining and lying and being evil in every respect, and causing a war, skullduggery, backstabbing, viciousness, insult after insult, and a lot of dead people at the end of it. That's the film you did last year, isn't it? How funny. It's called "In the Loop".

'But it's like, what's funny about death? Perhaps the biggest laugh in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" is a man pulls out his sword and gets shot. He dies but we all laugh. I remember watching "The General", a Buster Keaton film, the climax of which is a massacre in a canyon, basically soldiers falling off a cliff and then blundering around in mud while they're shot to pieces by cannons and rifles. Ahahahaha! And Buster's doing some sort of routine around it. You can include these things.'


How do you calibrate the success of a project like this?
JA 'Calibrate? You mean like a big thermometer next to the church?'

CM 'Yes, we've got a target and when we hit that target – it's like a "Blue Peter" fundraiser – we've got various dares. If we get a million at the box office, Sam's going to run around in his chicken costume and Jesse's going to shoot someone in the leg!'

SB 'I suppose it's that Chris has achieved a tone that I'm proud to be associated with. It's good. We've done it, a fun film about terrorists. I just hope it gets a good reception.'

CM 'It's not like you think: What's the most difficult subject imaginable – terrorism – and then do it as a Nietzschean superman challenge. You've got a lot of rubbish thoughts buzzing round your head but this particular bee won't get out of your bonnet how ever many times you dismiss it. It's is a very dominating subject so it seems weird not to do something about it. You want to do something funny but the subject seems to suggest itself.'

Read our review of 'Four Lions'.

[The Boston Crab]

Haha, the line about Nietzchean superman challenge cracked me up. Great read.

[Neil]

It's clear that some good content is swallowed up in the Four Lions "British Screenings" thread, so I'll split more new 'uns.  This interview with Time Out is particularly good.

J
How do you calibrate the success of a project like this?

A 'Calibrate? You mean like a big thermometer next to the church?'

CM 'Yes, we've got a target and when we hit that target – it's like a "Blue Peter" fundraiser – we've got various dares. If we get a million at the box office, Sam's going to run around in his chicken costume and Jesse's going to shoot someone in the leg!'

[lipsink]

Not sure if it's been mentioned here or elsewhere but there's a review/short interview/strange Morris picture in this month's Uncut.

[Neil]

Stephen Armstrong interviews Morris and Riz Ahmed in today's Sunday Times.

How Chris Morris came to direct Four Lions

If anyone was going to satirise a cell of Islamic suicide bombers, it had to be the ultimate television prankster Morris

Stephen Armstrong

Chris Morris is media-shy in the same way stealth bombers are radar-shy. Although I have been writing about his adventures in satire since 1997, I have never actually met him. Once I interviewed him on the telephone about his Radio 1 sketch show, Blue Jam, and was warned: "Careful. He sometimes tapes interviews, you know. You might end up in a sketch." I have never quite managed to shake that nervous feeling since and feel slightly apprehensive standing in a smart Soho office, waiting to meet him.

When he does finally walk in, then, the shock is that he's, well, so genial and friendly. Tall — very tall — in jeans and a dark jacket, he shakes my hand with a ready, open smile and kicks off with a proper conversation, instead of quips or pleasantries. Indeed, by the counter on my recorder, it appears he talked to me for almost 15 minutes before we got round to the actual interview. Fortunately, I was the only one taping. As far as I know.

As the conversation unfolds, it becomes clear I am not the only person who has been faintly cautious when dealing with the creator of the subversive satirical shows The Day Today and Brass Eye. The Morris approach, after all, is to hoodwink and gull, to probe received wisdom and conventional pieties with a cattle prod and expose them as nonsense. In the Panorama-like spoof series Brass Eye, he suckered MPs into asking questions in the House about a nonexistent drug called cake; celebrities were persuaded to endorse bogus charities on air.

We are meeting to discuss Four Lions, his debut feature film, a comedy about British suicide bombers. He is accompanied by the film's star, Riz Ahmed. Indeed, it almost seems as if Morris accepts what he sees as pestering requests for a chat mainly because Ahmed also agrees to show up. They make a neat pair, with Ahmed's delicate features and cautious demeanour playing off Morris's lofty frame and cheerful confidence. Both are obviously furiously bright, thoughtful and funny, but given to social analysis of almost every choice they make.

When they first met, however, Brass Eye had gone before, and Ahmed was extra-wary. "I didn't really know that much of Chris's stuff, to be honest," the 27-year-old actor says, recalling their first meeting back in 2006. "My mate did, and he said, 'Be careful. This could be a Brass Eye wind-up.'"

Morris sighs. "That happened in auditions, too. It's payback time, isn't it? I went to the High Court doing research, and the broadcast-news journalists were convinced I'd gone there to 'do' them. Although, to be fair, there was the time I went to the Forest Gate demo, after those two guys were arrested and [one was] shot. Friday afternoon, after mosque, the local community stood on the street making their presence felt. Meanwhile, 50 mock-mujaheddin idiots assembled just outside the police station, with 50 journalists watching them. In the middle of the journalists was this guy who put up a painter and decorator's ladder to do his live report. I did actually take a picture on my phone. So it became true. I hadn't gone to take the mick, but..."

Ahmed chips in: "A couple of my mates have actually attributed that drug meow meow to you, you know. They thought it was a stunt, like 'cake' on Brass Eye."

Morris: "But we live in a time where all slang is stupid. Meow meow could be a shop, a restaurant, a drug, cat food..."

Ahmed: "A band..."

Morris: "Lady Gaga's songwriter..."

It was inevitable Morris would take on global jihad — where else would a satirist turn today? There's also the rich delight in the conflict it's likely to produce. The man has infuriated so many commentators over the years. Some of those same commentators have raged at the comedy industry's perceived satirical silence on Islam, presumably not going to the gigs of the excellent British Muslim stand-ups who have emerged in the past decade. Now, they have not only Morris's Four Lions to jibe at, but David Baddiel's recent film, The Infidel, as well.

For those who keenly follow Morris's work, Four Lions isn't a coruscating satire in the early-1990s vein. Nor is it the dark, twisted brain decay of Blue Jam or the short film My Wrongs 8245-8249 and 117. It's probably closest to the 2005 sitcom Nathan Barley, his artful demolition of hipster culture. Except that his self-obsessed, misguided, stumbling fools aren't media wanna­bes. They're suicide-bomber wannabes.

"I was reading about a plot to ram a US warship where the terrorists' boat sank," Morris explains. "You know the Hamburg cell was led by [the 9/11 terrorist] Mohamed Atta — but did you know that every time he formed an Islamic discussion group, he was so critical, he fired them all within a week? The unfathomable world of extremism seemed to contain farce. People got to training camps in the wrong clothes. They forget how to make bombs, they fight with each other — and fight again over who won the fight. They even talk about who's cooler, Bin Laden or Johnny Depp. The penny dropped. A cell of terrorists is just a bunch of blokes, like a stag night. Not a bad pressure cooker for jokes."

Spoiler alert

Four Lions thus assembles a bunch of four blokes, including a white Islamic convert and oddball nihilist, Barry; the gormless Waj; Hassan, a naive student; and the hapless Faisal, who can't blow himself up as his father is sick, so trains crows to fly bombs through windows. But this is no Whoops! Jihad. As in Dr Strangelove, Stanley Kubrick's controversial cold-war satire, the clowning bubbles up alongside sharp human drama and rigidly observed procedure. At the heart of this tragic arc is the curiously sympathetic leader of the cell, Omar, played by Ahmed.

[close]

"Dr Strangelove takes a lot of trouble to keep reminding you of reality," Morris explains. "That means that when things are silly, they are always in counterpoint. All of that stuff about switching on the devices in the bomber's cockpit — that's done like an instruction video. The assault on the airbase is just like a war film. Then you cut to Peter Sellers as Captain Mandrake, but you need the counterpoint. That's why, in Four Lions, Riz's presence is key."

Initially, Ahmed helped Morris with research. Having grown up in Wembley, with a father who worked for the Pakistani merchant navy, he is from a British Muslim background — although he is keen to avoid labels. "I've had policemen making racist comments and a knife held at my throat by skinheads when I was eight," he explains. "But it's about whether you let that define you. Being an ethnic minority in the UK can, to some extent, be about polishing that chip on your shoulder. That's not for me."

After private school and a degree in PPE at Oxford, Ahmed split his time between acting and being a DJ. As an actor, he appeared in Michael Winterbottom's film The Road to Guantanamo and the Channel 4 drama Britz. He also became Riz MC, forming music-industry connections that would help the Jesuit-educated, BBC-trained Morris to access elements of the Muslim community. "I was having trouble convincing a lot of people I wasn't a cop," Morris smiles. "It's quite sad that they think the only reason a white posh bloke should be interested in them is because I'm a policeman."

The two stayed in touch for years on the project. Morris researched extensively, attending trials, conducting interviews and employing many of the people he met. He read countless surveillance transcripts, talked to terrorism experts, imams, police, secret services and hundreds of Muslims. All the time, Ahmed thought he was, essentially, a noncredited research assistant: "We met in 2006, and I didn't go and see a casting director until the end of 2008." He shakes his head. "Basically, this project has taken the entire length of my acting career."

Spoiler alert

This casting leads to one of the strongest and most unsettling aspects of the film. Ahmed's Omar is a mass of contradictions: happily married to a modern Muslim wife, with a cheerful son, but a cocktail of resentments over the war on terror, globalisation, his dead-end job and a power struggle with Barry for control of the little cell. He blows his chance to join the Taliban, so invents a powerful sheikh who issues instructions for a deadly bombing campaign. Yet somehow Ahmed's dark stares and instinctive humanism make you root for him throughout. How, I ask, can you make a suicide bomber sympathetic?

[close]

"In the film Precious, you discover the heroine's dad had sex with her when she was one," Morris begins. "What do you find easier to understand, somebody who has sex with his one-year-old daughter, or a suicide bomber?" I concede his point. "That's step one on the way to where Omar is." He leans back with a slightly triumphant grin. "We wanted to do something realistic and not too obvious — having him see an Afghan school being bombed, for instance. Nobody does bad things while believing they're being bad. In [the 7/7 bomber] Mohammad Sidique Khan's martyrdom video, he's almost a Disney-like good dad. If you forget who he is and just listen, it could be a speech from Avatar — 'I'm never going to see you again. I'm going to go and fight the bad guys. It's going to make a better world. I would have loved to watch you grow up.'"

When Ahmed asked Morris about character motivation during rehearsals in the flat in Sheffield that served as the cell's fictional base, Morris gave him three words: soldier, father, prankster. "He explained that Omar is living life in a secret world — it's like having special security clearance," Ahmed says. "The stakes are really high, and the nine-to-five world is beneath him. It's all about the in-jokes, where nobody in the room is laughing, but you and your mates — who are in on the joke — walk off and go, 'Yessss!'" So, suicide bombers, I realise, aren't that unlike comedians who wind up the general public on television and get them to go along with daft stunts. Which, I am tempted to point out, is exactly what Morris did on Brass Eye.

Instead, feeling slightly awkward at the obvious question, I say, won't you offend some people?

Morris smiles at my stuttering: "Look at the way you asked the question. That tells you the answer, doesn't it? We've shown the film in Bradford, we've shown it in the USA: you'd have thought there'd be available raw nerves. We've road-tested this, and nobody's said it's not funny. They've wondered if they should have been laughing — but they found it funny." He sighs, looking back at the four years of work it has taken to get him here. "Drama has it easy," he reflects. "We did all the same stuff a drama has to do — and then we had to bloody well write a joke." To be fair, the way he says it, it makes me laugh.

Four Lions opens on Friday

This is very good:

"Drama has it easy," he reflects. "We did all the same stuff a drama has to do — and then we had to bloody well write a joke."

[Neil]

Maybe make this thread dedicated to interviews and press, and split off any particularly good ones. 

What I find most intriguing at the moment, is the way that Morris seems to be casually dismantling any kind of image the press has built up around him over the years.  Who knows if it's intentional or not, but he almost seems to be deconstructing Chris Morris.  The promtion for this film is meaning that he's talking about his work in an open and accessible manner, as often as possible, and even giving insight into his creative process with things like the latest out-take on the official site.  Some of this he's done before, but not to this scale.  I think he wants to draw a line underneath everything that's went before, and say right, we're doing this now.

He's meeting the very notion that this film could be dangerously offensive, in the best and only way possible; with a sense of bolshy, matter-of-fact pride.


Anyway...

Lions share

Close scrutiny of the impactful new poster for Chris Morris's film Four Lions rewards the reader with a rebuke. If you eye the credits at the foot of the sheet, amid the producers, writers and actors, there's the hidden line: "If you are reading this, find out what's wrong with you."

This is odd humour, even for Morris. It strikes me interested parties might rightly be looking in the small print for their own name. After all, the film-maker turned to fans for funding via a website called fundingmentalism, based at producers Warp Films.

The project, a comedy about jihadists, intially seemed too controversial for any traditional funder to touch, so Morris and Warp, the company behind indie successes such as Shane Meadows, began asking fans for small donations, from as little as £10, to get the early finances moving. Several established backers did eventually come forward and the fans' cash wasn't needed.

Anyone who did volunteer their pennies was sent email updates throughout the filming and I understand each has now been promised an "exclusive cell". I think he means a still from the film, rather than their own terrorist offshoot group, but you never know with Chris Morris.

[Neil]

This is quite funny - he makes some pertinent points (in a silly way at times "Way to miss the point, chumpos")), but then ends the article by conforming to the very sort of vague, almost nationalistic desire to be involved with something that the film itself explores.  Even the title of Four Lions pokes fun at people who use patriotism to feel like part of a gang.

Four Lions (15)
Verdict: suicide is painful...ly funny *****



JIHAD TO BE THERE: Arsher Ali raps on martyr vid
By Robbie Collin, 02/05/2010

DANGEROUS comedy? This column's all for it. I'd pay good money to see Justin Lee Collins perform on the edge of a spike pit.

But even if you like your laughs uneasy, Four Lions - the first feature film from satire lord Chris Morris - will make you wince. Cos this fatwa-in-the-making is a comedy about a gang of young British Muslims who become suicide bombers.


The film follows family man Omar (Riz Ahmed) and his thick mate Waj (Kayvan Novak) as they join forces with white Islamic convert Barry (Nigel Lindsay) and chemicals expert Faisal (Adeel Akhtar) to wage holy war against the "unbelieving kafir b******s" of the UK.


The wannabe bombers bumble their way through a Pakistani training camp, film a jihad tape (with bloopers), recruit a rapping fifth lion (Arsher Ali) who reckons he's the mujahideen Tupac, and hatch a plan to launch a terror attack on the London Marathon.


When Four Lions premiered at a festival in January, some reviewers complained that the mix of laughs and atrocities made them feel uneasy. Way to miss the point, chumpos.


Four Lions works brilliantly for that very reason. It's level-headed, well-researched stuff. And the writing, by Peep Show/In The Loop scribblers Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain, and Loop collaborator Simon Blackwell, is off-the-scale incredible.


There are no lazy jokes about 72 virgins and not a trace of the "ooh, aren't we edgy" smugness of Morris's last controversial project - the sharp but supremely wrong-headed Brass Eye paedophile special.


Nor is it anti-Islam. It's anti-stupidity. Although whether the legions of professional offence-takers spot this distinction or not remains to be seen.


This is brave and brilliant film-making - and a movie no country apart from Britain has had the wit, or balls, to make. Be proud of that.


OUT FRIDAY

[dfurnell]

Maybe make this thread dedicated to interviews and press, and split off any particularly good ones. 

Neil's pasted the ST article but it's worth nothing from the paper copy that Chris made the cover of the Culture section; oddly with the same pic Time Out used.

http://i39.tinypic.com/4h4baw.jpg

[dfurnell]

And for those of you who like collecting things here's a zip file with four pics in of the Time Out and Sunday Times articles in; these are the original size I took them in rather than being shrunk by various photo-uploading sites. If anyone spots other similar articles I do work in a library so should be able to get copies of things from various publications, so let me know by Private Message.

http://rapidshare.com/files/382767189/fourlionspress01.zip

[weirdbeard]

And for those of you who like collecting things here's a zip file with four pics in of the Time Out and Sunday Times articles in; these are the original size I took them in rather than being shrunk by various photo-uploading sites. If anyone spots other similar articles I do work in a library so should be able to get copies of things from various publications, so let me know by Private Message.

http://rapidshare.com/files/382767189/fourlionspress01.zip

Thanks.  What library do you work in, out of interest?  You wouldn't have access to the Time Out archive would you?[/hope]

[Little Hoover]

I read the review and interview in uncut, but didn't want to pay for it though, I just flicked through it in WHsmith. I will say it's spoilery as we've come to expect.

[dfurnell]

Riz Ahmed just twittered "Weds 7am BBC breakfast TV" so I assume this is plugging 'Four Lions'. At this rate maybe we will see Chris Morris on The One Show.

[Jemble Fred]

Riz Ahmed just twittered "Weds 7am BBC breakfast TV" so I assume this is plugging 'Four Lions'. At this rate maybe we will see Chris Morris on The One Show.

Maybe he could trade 'making short films about dogs' anecdotes with Paul Merton.

[dfurnell]

Two page article in today's Independent about Four Lions referenced on the cover.

UPDATE: I'd upload a jpg for you all but it'd mean embedding a massive file which might freak some people out so here's a zip file with the three relevant pages in. For those who don't know rapidshare is a free file sharing site; you can download and not have to register and so on.

http://rapidshare.com/files/383364289/fourlionspress02.zip

[dfurnell]

Riz Ahmed just twittered "Weds 7am BBC breakfast TV" so I assume this is plugging 'Four Lions'. At this rate maybe we will see Chris Morris on The One Show.

Hmmm... well apparently according to Richard Wiseman's Twitter they *are* going to be talking about 'Four Lions' on The One Show this evening. Whatever next!

[dfurnell]

Um did someone mention an interview with Morris in Uncut? Well here it is.... I suppose there could be some spoilers, so look out!

http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z56/tguk999/DSC01919r.jpg

There was a two-page review which I didn't copy. It wasn't very good, they didn't like it mainly as it was just funny. Oh well.

[sirhenry]

Review/discussion of Four Lions on Front Row on Radio 4 at 7.15 tonight (8 minutes time).

[sirhenry]

I wish I'd heard that before I talked to Neil about the film on CaB radio - I would have learned how the professionals avoid spoilers: "There was a bit with the police... where they got it wrong... I thought that was funny."

Good to know that they're as crap as me.

[Little Hoover]

Um did someone mention an interview with Morris in Uncut? Well here it is.... I suppose there could be some spoilers, so look out!

http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z56/tguk999/DSC01919r.jpg

There was a two-page review which I didn't copy. It wasn't very good, they didn't like it mainly as it was just funny. Oh well.

Thanks, there was a review (with many spoilers) as well, which I imagine people would be interested in, if you'd be kind enough to post them as well.

[dfurnell]

Thanks, there was a review (with many spoilers) as well, which I imagine people would be interested in, if you'd be kind enough to post them as well.

Hi Hoover yeah I read the review but thought it didn't really add anything. To put this in context I was stood up in Tesco taking pictures of the mag so I thought I'd not push it too much. So the interview is all I got. I guess some people like to collect everything which is fair enough, but I didn't fancy springing for a copy of the mag myself.

[Frankie]

Here's the rather charming accompanying image to this article, I thought I should scan it since it's been lying around for a month. Click for bigger.



Crappy scan but I had fun using PS's new healing tool on it ninjalike

[dfurnell]

The Adil Ray Show
Time: 07:00 to 10:00 (3 hours long).
When: Wednesday 5th May on BBC Radio Asian Network

Riz MC and Kayvan talk about Four Lions, that funny film about fundamentalism! To take part, text 81869 (network rates) or email adil@bbc.co.uk.

[Neil]

Can someone rip that? 

The One Show is now on iplayer, lots of hand-wringing - the bloke in the studio seems convinced it's based on 7/7. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00sbg0p/The_One_Show_04_05_2010/


Independent article with Bain and Armstrong

Time Out review

[Ambient Sheep]

I've never seen such blatant shit-stirring in all my life, I was shouting at the telly last night!!

At least they all admitted that none of them had seen it.  You might think that lawyer-arsehole would have taken the trouble to do so before going onto national TV and slagging it off, but nooooo...

[dfurnell]

The One Show was somewhat annoying; they are no better than ITV Calendar for banging on about it not having seen it. But at least the BBC are doing features about the film. There's been nothing I've seen on ITV nor, oddly, Channel 4. Unless Morris will pop up on Channel 4 News of course. Best get on Jon Snow's Twitter just in case.

[Dark Poet]

Kayvan Novak with Hawksbee & Jacobs (on talkSPORT), discussing Four Lions (and Facejacker):

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ON14TSYE

[Neil]

Thanks for that.

The cast on BBC Breakfast - good to see Nigel Lindsay and Adeel Akhtar doing press:

BBC News - Cast of Four Lions discuss controversial film

[Neil]

Last night I brought the press archive right up to date, and managed to dig out the original casting breakdown.  The 'fundingmentalism' emails are there too, and the earliest reports make for a good read now.

The Torygraph has today published Chris Morris's 10 Funniest Moments.

[JPA]

Go Callow.

[Neil]

Four Lions is currently trending on Twitter, lots of buzz building around the film.

NME review

Peter Whittle has published his review, and it's the same sort of wilfilly ignorant, point-missing guff as on The Review Show.