Topic: The Day Shall Come

[FerriswheelBueller]

Yes Barley was better than 99% of stuff at the time.

Correct.

With Barley, the main issues were it a) wasn't very funny and b) the targets were incredibly easy. There was also only a very cursory attempt to build a consistent world around the crudely-drawn characters and that approach gets stretched very thin across 6 episodes.

Disagree.

For more... https://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,74507.0.html

[Suki Bapswent]

Yes Barley was better than 99% of stuff at the time.

Is that your ceiling? 'Other things that also existed at the same time'?

[object-lesson]

Really? Not sure what else he was supposed to do. Some sort of bizarre stunt probably would've drawn attention away from what he was trying to do with the film. I enjoyed him hitting the campaign trail, confidently doing interviews as himself etc. It also spread his name around the US to a larger degree which he deserves.

I would have liked Morris to have been a bit less cosy with his interviewers, like those two jerks he showed he had a very low opinion of afterwards. But maybe that would have lost him other opportunities to publicise. The interviews and publicity events were a bit comfy for me.

With Barley, the main issues were it a) wasn't very funny and b) the targets were incredibly easy. There was also only a very cursory attempt to build a consistent world around the crudely-drawn characters and that approach gets stretched very thin across 6 episodes.

All true. It was very ordinary and conventional I thought. I feel like Morris didn't want to repeat himself which is admirable, but it meant he did something that wasn't so interesting. From On The Hour to Blue Jam he was unique, a different world to anyone else.

[BlodwynPig]

Is that your ceiling? 'Other things that also existed at the same time'?

Pingu jumping out of the window >>> Rik Mayall falling out of window

[zomgmouse]

Just saw this - more thoughts later but I thought it was GREAT

[Bored of Canada]

Saw this last night at Melbourne International Film Festival.
Went down wonderfully with the audience.

Marchant Davis has a wonderful lead performance, and when we're with this community, it feels authentic in its own way.
It reminded me a lot of Paul Beatty's The Sellout, in a good way, and he shows real humanity and warmth to people suffering under structural outer worlds, much as Four Lions did, and the film really ends on the right note.

The film is pacey, and feels too happy to entertain. I've been thinking a lot of the kebab store scene with Waj in Four Lions, and how it was funny, and also tremendously sad. I don't think this has that moment.

This moves at such a clip. I think it plays well to a larger audience because of this and is more entertaining because of it.
I would have loved another 20 minutes, just a bit more around the ending. 

The final half shows the actual pointed truth of the whole matter, and I feel enforces why he should work for years on this project. Why it is an important work and why it should be made.
He talked to people in these situations, and there an interesting overlap with a documentary, (T)error, which I saw a few years ago at another festival in Melbourne, which I've now seen quoted by Marchant Davis as a partial inspiration in a promotional interview for the film.

Structural and Cultural Dimensions destroying worlds. Oppression of marginalised people being a feature of the design of society as it is today, and not a bug. 

It is an entertaining film, and I think it has a message that is powerful, but I feel with a little more space, it could have been something really special.

[Huxleys Babkins]

Trailer:

https://youtu.be/oqJyhh2PFBw

[13 schoolyards]

I also saw it last night at the Melbourne International Film Festival, though from where I was sitting the audience did stop to catch their breath a couple times

It was perfectly fine as far as I was concerned, though a step down from Four Lions (which was a step down from Morris' earlier work) in large part due to some shaky character stuff. Kendrick's character goes from "let's frame this chump" to "he's a chump, we shouldn't frame him" to "ok, maybe we should frame him if he's serious, which I just said he wasn't but ok", while Marchant Davis's character is mentally ill except when it would be awkward for him to be clearly mentally ill, which was odd as he didn't really need to be mentally ill at all for the story to work. Having the FBI be snarky bunglers for much of the film felt a little odd as well considering the blatantly evil shit they were openly doing.

In a way it might have been a better film if it wasn't trying so hard to be a comedy - the basic plot had some solid comedic developments and Morris knows how to write a comedy plot that escalates well (which a lot of comedy films struggle with), but his usual wordplay and surreal moments didn't always fit in well with the story as presented. That said, obviously part of the appeal here is making a comedy from material that doesn't seem suited to comedy; the opening with the initial FBI sting was hilarious and the rest of the film was just repeating that scene stretched over 80 minutes so by the time we reached the ending it played as tragedy.

It's fast-paced, there's hardly a dud scene in it and a lot of the jokes work. It's good, not great.

[zomgmouse]

To me the brilliance of the script is the way so much of it keeps revolving around nothingness, things not happening etc. The entire narrative ostensibly is structured around a climax involving weapon that does not fire, and so many of the key points centre around things being nonexistent or fake. Consistently funny and, especially towards the end, a surprising amount of heart. Not quite as sharp and punchy as Four Lions but a massively enjoyable and relevant comedy. The final photographic title cards really cement the seriousness of it all.

[Piggyoioi]

Just caught the trailer. I have little to no interest in checking this out.

[olliebean]

Some more info about it here, with extensive quotes from Chris Morris: https://www.chortle.co.uk/news/2019/08/07/43892/institutionalised_paranoia_has_corrupted_us

[FerriswheelBueller]

Release day is 9/27 in the US, surely Canada is being lumped in with them? Trying to find a place that is showing it

[EBGB]

The trailer is really disappointing.  But I've spent months following the slow release & the reviews, all of which have suggested a great piece of work.  Plus, obv., it's CM.  So I'm fully inclined to give it some slack until I get to see it in October. 

Can anyone tell me a reason why I might be wrong?

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

Yeah, that is one lousy trailer. It doesn't even give you a basic sense of what the film is about, it's just a load of people talking in rooms intercut with bits reminiscent of the training scenes from Four Lions. I'm sure the film is better than that, but what a way to undersell it.

[object-lesson]

Some more info about it here, with extensive quotes from Chris Morris: https://www.chortle.co.uk/news/2019/08/07/43892/institutionalised_paranoia_has_corrupted_us

The trailer makes it look pretty awful but that article makes it sound fascinating.

[Urinal Cake]

Yeah, that is one lousy trailer. It doesn't even give you a basic sense of what the film is about, it's just a load of people talking in rooms intercut with bits reminiscent of the training scenes from Four Lions. I'm sure the film is better than that, but what a way to undersell it.

Yes I don't really know how people are going to be persuaded to go and see it unless they love Anna Kendrick or they find a talking horse funny.

I hope this movie does well. It does seem to have an important message^TM. So far the impressions and reviews have been good but not outstanding but to an American and specifically a black or anti-government audience it might be something different enough to become something bigger than a cult hit.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

It's only just occurred to me that Morris will be back out on the promo circuit again, just as he was with Four Lions. A couple of late night US talk show appearances, perhaps? I would imagine that Colbert is a fan of Morris' work.

But please, God, I hope he isn't subjected to Marc Maron. Can you imagine? Painful.

"So who were your guys? Do you know Stewart Lee? I watched a coupla episodes of Brass Eyes on YouTube, and man that is some dark, crazy shit. Intense!"

[zomgmouse]

Solution: just don't watch trailers. The end.

[FerriswheelBueller]

"So who were your guys? Do you know Stewart Lee? I watched a coupla episodes of Brass Eyes on YouTube, and man that is some dark, crazy shit. Intense!"

This is worryingly accurate

[Glebe]

Ugh yeah that trailer is awful - but from what I gather it surely doesn't represent the film itself?

[object-lesson]

I hardly ever watch trailers, it's like being hit by shrapnel and you rarely get much of an impression of what the film is like. If it tuned out to be a barrage of fragmented images fired at high speed one on top of the other I doubt I'd like it much.

I don't go to the cinema so I suppose it'll be three or four months later that I'll be able to see this.

[EBGB]

Solution: just don't watch trailers. The end.

I was struck this summer by the trailer for the re-release of 'Kind Hearts and Coronets', AKA the best film ever made.  The trailer was shit.    I'm coming around to the idea that the better the film, the more awful the trailer. So on that basis this'll be legendary ...

[EBGB]

I don't go to the cinema so I suppose it'll be three or four months later that I'll be able to see this.

IIRC it's going to VOD on the same day as the US release.

[object-lesson]

IIRC it's going to VOD on the same day as the US release.

Oh excellent, thanks!

[olliebean]

I remember wistfully when trailers were aimed at people who were actually going to enjoy the film, rather than at people who the studio wants to trick into thinking they're going to enjoy the film.

[sponk]

It's only just occurred to me that Morris will be back out on the promo circuit again, just as he was with Four Lions. A couple of late night US talk show appearances, perhaps? I would imagine that Colbert is a fan of Morris' work.

But please, God, I hope he isn't subjected to Marc Maron. Can you imagine? Painful.

"So who were your guys? Do you know Stewart Lee? I watched a coupla episodes of Brass Eyes on YouTube, and man that is some dark, crazy shit. Intense!"

Maybe things have changed since 2008 but I don't know about Colbert being a fan.

One notable antecedent for The Colbert Report would seem to be Chris Morris's mid-1990s series The Day Today, but although Colbert remembers seeing and enjoying part of one Morris episode, he says it had no particular influence on his current show. He also knows about Alan Partridge, but has yet to see the man in action

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/3673509/Stephen-Colbert-the-second-most-powerful-idiot-in-America.html

[Rich Uncle Skeleton]

I was struck this summer by the trailer for the re-release of 'Kind Hearts and Coronets', AKA the best film ever made.  The trailer was shit.    I'm coming around to the idea that the better the film, the more awful the trailer. So on that basis this'll be legendary ...

Urgh it really was terrible wasn't it. I was worried my friend would see the trailer at the cinema and say "This is your favourite film that you've been telling me to check out for years? Fuck that."

I would have liked Morris to have been a bit less cosy with his interviewers, like those two jerks he showed he had a very low opinion of afterwards. But maybe that would have lost him other opportunities to publicise. The interviews and publicity events were a bit comfy for me.

Which one was this?

[chveik]

Opie & Anthony I reckon

[object-lesson]

That's the chap. I know doing publicity is difficult and you have to play the game a bit but he could have messed with them more, especially when they were doing that pukey rape by deception joke.

It would have been fun if he'd worked this into the conversation at the time:

...then I came across a theory which intelligence calls the “bunch of guys theory,” which defines how these Jihadi cells tend to work. I’ve just come off the Opie and Anthony show, I could turn those guys into a terrorist cell in a week. Bunch of guys, group dynamics in there, leaders, followers, and little bit of drive… maybe caused by a bit angst, and, you know, I’d need a copy of “The Lion King” as well, some radicalizing document just to concentrate the thoughts. A big narrative of good and evil, and off you go.

https://www.indiewire.com/2010/11/chris-morris-director-of-four-lions-talks-the-truth-about-absolute-evil-the-lion-king-121912/

[Mister Six]

The trailer wasn't good - if I didn't know what the film was about beforehand I'd struggle to figure it out - but it wasn't as catastrophic as implied upthread. At the very least the dinosaur horn, the "who's more likely to have the gun" line and the bit about informing on himself made me laugh. I worry that the trailer has pretty much exactly laid out the plot of the film, though.