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Four Lions Opening Weekend

Started by Neil, May 10, 2010, 09:53:35 PM

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Neil

Four Lions has had an excellent opening weekend, which seems to have resulted in it opening in twice as many cinemas this coming weekend:

Quote from: http://twitter.com/rizmc/status/13741887742
Thanks so much for the support on #FourLions - we're doubling number of cinemas this weekend so tell ur mates to go see it! Overwhelmed. x

...or perhaps they were already scheduled, as the Belfast screenings aren't starting until the 14th.  Regardless, Four Lions seems to be selling tickets hand over fist.  As I write this, Duke Of Yorks cinema has just twittered that 'every single evening show of Four Lions has sold out' and they are 'turning away Chris Morris fans en masse.'  Here's the amount of cash the film has made over the weekend, courtesy of Splendor Cinema:

Quote from: http://splendorcinema.blogspot.com/2010/05/uk-box-office-7-9-may.html
Monday, 10 May 2010
Uk Box Office 7-9 May

This week IRON MAN 2 continues to reign, albeit with a 70% drop. NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET won't find much legs with such a weak opening, given that horror fans tend to come out on the first weekend. The nice surprise in the pack is Chris Morris' FOUR LIONS, which took a £5,146 screen average, not bad for a homegrown comedy from a TV writer/director.

1- IRON MAN 2 (£3,203,051)
2- NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (£1,340,704)
3- HOT TUB TIME MACHINE (£889,660)
4- FURRY VENGEANCE (£795,122)
5- BACK UP PLAN (£707,131)
6- FOUR LIONS (£591,838)
7- HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON (£516,327)
8- THE LAST SONG (£364,575)
9- DATE NIGHT (£333,164)
10- THE CLASH OF THE TITANS (£290,342)

If you've seen the film, join in with the discussion.  If you are not registered, then guest posting is turned on in Site Updates, so reply to this or one of the other update threads instead. 

Four Lions has also been trending almost constantly on the UK twitter trend...things, and the general reaction on there has been extremely positive.  The general buzz suggests that Morris has managed to cross-over to a larger, mainstream audience, without sacrificing any of the integrity of his work.  Four Lions is a brilliant first feature film, which tickles you with contradictions at every turn, and it's no surprise to see it doing so well.  More than that, it's (so far) managed to almost completely avoid any of the press fuss, by being scheduled to open the day after the general election.  A boycott was urged by relatives of 7/7 victims, although Radio 1 Newsbeat managed to find a relative who responded favourably to the film.  Which must have been a great disappointment to them.  One thing I've found quite bizarre, is the complaints from Morris fans who've been disappointed with Four Lions because it's 'not offensive enough.'  Do you actually enjoy comedy, or do you just like watching The Daily Mail get into a froth? 

Poster compo is still open, till this Friday.  Just email me telling me why I should give you a Four Lions poster - there are 4 unsigned posters, and 1 signed by Chris Morris up for grabs - waynecarr@gmail.com you can also enter using audio.  Just get creative. 

If you want to keep up with the latest press articles about Four Lions, then keep an eye on this thread - it is already a pretty comprehensive bunch of links to interviews with Chris Morris, and the Four Lions cast.  If you're posting your own articles in there, or sending them to me for inclusion, can you please link back to http://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk - in fact, can you just do that anyway, thanks.

Also use @cookdandbombd for far more frequent updates from me. 

Be sure to watch the production footage on http://www.four-lions.co.uk too, some wonderful material in there, and Morris actually letting people observe the creative process, and his approach to directing. 

An tSaoi

Does anyone have the revised list of cinemas?

Can't wait to finish this chunk of work and reward myself with another viewing. Tomorrow night if I'm lucky/work like a bastard. Great to hear it's doing so well.

Jonathan P

I REALLY wanted to like this film.

Chris Morris is clearly a genius and I've been looking forward to Four Lions for ages.  His work has been consistently amazing from the GLR days, through R1 to the present.  Hell - I didn't even hate Nathan Barley. 

But in the end - I was massively disappointed with Four Lions and didn't like it very much at all.  The problem wasn't a lack of controversy (couldn't care less about that aspect and this film will at least get people thinking about "difficult" issues), just that it wasn't very funny.  At all.  I didn't laugh.  Once.  Actually, that's a lie - I did laugh once but that was by mistake. 

For me (and this was the killer) the script was actually quite weak.  If I hadn't known beforehand that Morris had been involved, I'm not sure I'd have spotted it.  It was more like some anaemic wannabe self-consciously aping Morris's style but not quite getting it...  Other people have mentioned this, but I was actually BORED for long periods of Four Lions and this from my comedy hero?!  I almost felt guilty for not liking it more.  I really wanted to...

But what really ruined it for me (and others have mentioned this) was the audience - they made me hate almost everything about it.  The problem was that ever f**ker in the cinema laughed really really loudly at EVERYTHING whether funny or not.  Did my head in.  From pretty much the first second they were all guffawing at every line of dialogue and repeating lines out loud and it was horrible.  For this reason, I don't know how much of my reaction was to the film and how much to the audience.  There was an element of "look how cool I am with the subject matter - I'll laugh at EVERYTHING" and " God - see how much I GET Chris Morris" .  I suppose it's my own fault for watching it in Dalston on the opening night.  My mate watched it in Bradford with a only handful of others and loved it.  They apparently didn't laugh at every damn thing which happened on the screen - weird. 

This quote from The Observer sums it up: "watching it in a cinema full of middle-class white people killing themselves laughing at any hint of a gag was not an entirely comfortable experience."

I wish I'd waited for the DVD.

Lyndon

#4
"Reading about it on an internet full of people who automatically and incorrectly label things 'white' or 'middle-class' as an insult due to their insecurities and projections is not an entirely comfortable experience"

(edited for previous obfuscerationing)

Jonathan P

I think it's unlikely that anyone was incorrectly labelled white to be honest. 

Anyway, its all opinions Greavsie.  I was hugely disappointed.  Others were not.  There you go.

Jemble Fred


Shoulders?-Stomach!

I'm going to see it tonight. I hope I'm not distracted from the smug cloud eminating from the mainly smug white middle class people who will no doubt be stinking up the cinema with their smug liberal laughter.

I expect it will be an awful, awful experience, much different from real comedies like, for example, Dan In Real Life, where I was surrounded in the stalls by a smorgasboard of Sikhs, Muslims, Hasidic Jews, Pagans and Gay Black Prostitute Cripples who were all chuckling along politely in respectful concord, and occasionally murmuring 'aaaah, classic'.

Jemble Fred

Don't worry, Shoulders, I find the trick is to watch the cinema screen rather than sneering at my fellow punters. When I went to see the film in Bristol last Saturday it felt like they'd squeezed twice the legal number of people into the tiny seats, people of all ages, creeds and colours. And yes, they laughed at a lot more in the movie than I did, including at irritating 'catchphrase' crap like "Fuck Mini Babybel" which I was already a bit sick of before even watching the film. None of the above blinded me to Four Lions' virtues, though, or silenced the belly laughter when it was merited.

Quote from: Jonathan P on May 11, 2010, 12:48:34 PM
Anyway, its all opinions Greavsie.

Well quite, maybe it does work both ways. If I'd been in a public screening of Nathan Barley every inane child's chuckle triggered by the non-humour on screen would have called for knife-throwing.

Neil

It is really odd how some people can't tune out background noise - it's the same even with audio recordings, people will be very focused on the crowd response, rather than the material itself.  Being annoyed by other people laughing just seems so... precious, and beside the point.

Jonathan P

Neil - maybe you're right, but it killed Four Lions stone cold dead for me. 

What's odd is that I actually found Four Lions much more interesting as an exploration of ideas, attitudes and prejudices (where I think it really succeeded).  As a comedy, for me it totally failed to deliver - just didn't find it funny as above - but wouldn't it be boring if we all agreed.


Neil

Quote from: Jonathan P on May 11, 2010, 02:24:54 PMWhat's odd is that I actually found Four Lions much more interesting as an exploration of ideas, attitudes and prejudices (where I think it really succeeded).  As a comedy, for me it totally failed to deliver - just didn't find it funny as above - but wouldn't it be boring if we all agreed.

Absolutely - differing opinions always open up the debate, so I'd love to hear more.  It's good to hear you did get a lot out of it, because I think what it has to say about the human condition is fascinating, and what's most interesting for me about comedy, is being made to think.  Obviously, if you're not laughing at the same time, you're likely to feel your time was wasted.

Did you mind the reliance on physical humour? 

Jonathan P

 I didn't mind the reliance on physical humour at all.   TBH - I'm a big fan of the American Pie films (and how good is The Hangover?) - so clearly I have no problem with really crass juvenilia!  And don't get me wrong, I'm not classing Four Lions as "crass juvenilia".

I suppose the problem is Chris Morris and the fact that he has such pedigree.  This means (inevitably I suppose) that I judge his work by much higher standards than something by, say, Ricky Gervais.  He has created such amazing stuff in the past that the expectation for anything new becomes unbearably high.

And so maybe I would have liked Four Lions (as a comedy) if it had been someone else at the helm.  But for me Morris can do so much better than this.  I genuinely thought that the script was weak and that's what so disappointed me.

But leaving aside the lack of laughter generating from Jonathan P, it was a very interesting exercise.  Lots in there to mull over and images that have seared themselves into my cerebral cortex.  The family scenes with Omar and his son; his poignant, understated and dignified goodbye to his wife; the scene in which he ** PLOT SPOILER ** blows himself up; his brother's ultimate incarceration/interrogation.  All scenes handled with disarming tact and sensitivity. 

So what a shame I had to listen to some berk from Shoreditch (and he was) guffawing all over it with the emotional awareness of Roy Chubby Brown on crack. 

Film Cells

And whatever happened to us then??

Neil

Quote from: Neil on May 10, 2010, 09:53:35 PM
Four Lions has had an excellent opening weekend, which seems to have resulted in it opening in twice as many cinemas this coming weekend...

...or perhaps they were already scheduled, as the Belfast screenings aren't starting until the 14th. 

Can now confirm that it was indeed the success of the opening weekend, that has led to the doubling of screens this weekend.  Thank you to the person who passes me on this info, it's very useful, especially considering I still can't get Thinkjam to bother to send it to me directly. 

Neil

Quote from: Film Cells on May 12, 2010, 10:15:55 AM
And whatever happened to us then??

Latest fundingmentalism email said they'd be out sometime this month:

Quote from: Warp- P.S - Don't worry, we haven't forgotten about your film cells! To celebrate the film's release, they'll be sent out to you in May.

Film Cells


Neil

Quote from: Film Cells on June 01, 2010, 01:42:21 PM
So we never came - right?

I'm sure they'll arrive right after those posters I was promised for a giveaway.

JPA

Oh, forgot about the competition - that's a bit poor of them then.

An tSaoi

Absolute cunts. Is it worth chasing the down or is it better to write the whole thing off?

Neil

Already chased them up a few weeks ago, was told they'd be on the way in no time.  I hate having any kind of dealings with them, they singularly refused to put me on any of their Four Lions info lists, despite me even going to CM's agent at one point.  This all obviously increased the amount of time I had to spend hunting out the info myself.  They only bothered getting in touch regards the poster thing because they obviously wanted as many sites with Four Lions adverts posters on them as possible in the launch week.  Plus, I can tell you from my brief experience that PR people are hollow, hectoring, manipulative scum who alternate between trying to charm and bully you. 

Having said that, the film cells started turning up today, so I'm less pessimistic about there just actually not being any posters.  If they don't arrive, I'll print my own to fulfill the obligation.  Perhaps they'll arrive very shortly, if Morris has done one big massive signing sesh?  I'm sure they will, now.