Last Sunday
Apr. 24th, 2010 04:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
redfiona99My friends D and R were down in Leicester having just come back from a year and a bit in Australia and New Zealand. Despite having only spent one night in Leicester since coming back they found out one piece of interesting information that I didn't. The Phoenix, the local arty cinema, do a sunday breakfast plus a film for £8. Now, not only is this good value, but they cook the fried eggs properly i.e. solid.
So we caught up, I have now have a few more stories pinched from friends that I can entertain the mothership with, and thankfully Australia didn't try to kill them (much).
The film was also good.
Crying With Laughter - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1349478/
Because it's a good film but it's ever so much not first thing on a Sunday fare.
The main character is a comedian called Joey Frisk, played brilliantly Stephen McCole. He's every jerk of a best friend you ever had, and the film does that balancing act very well, because he's exasperating, and yet you want him to succeed, depending of course what your definition of succeed is.
The other thing I really liked was the secondary characters, because normally in films like this, for the part where the lead character reaches rock-bottom, all his friends have to leave him. But in this they don't. I'm not sure whether my favourite bit is when Vince, the MC at the club where Joey spends most of his time, knocks a pile of coke out of Joey's hand in an attempt to sober him up, or where Maggie, Joey's manager, after having bailed him out of jail, explains that he can't crash on her sofa because her husband will go mad because he thinks that Joey is a waste of space. Joey frequently is, but his manager still believes in him.
That's another thing I liked about it, in keeping with the general atmosphere of everyone being very human, there were no shrill harpies. This is a film where the lead character is divorced and his manager, who keeps having to tell him to buck his ideas up, is also a woman, and neither of them come off as unsympathetic. Glory be!
The ex-wife's boyfriend is also not drawn in villains colours, because Joey's never met him and expects to hate him at first sight when he does meet him, finds someone he'd be perfectly happy to go and have a pint with. Although with Joey, that's not saying much.
There are a few points, particularly towards the end of the kidnapping and revenge plot (which I'm trying not to spoil so sorry about the vagueness) where I think the director loses control of the situation a little (it's one of those scripted but improvised films, if you know what I mean) but he drags it back reasonably well, and I think that's just first time director issues more than anything else.
So yes, go to your local indie cinema or equivalent and see it if you can because the lead performance by Stephen McCole is one of the best you'll see this year, and that by the way, is a promise.
Actually, for the Leicestershire peeps, I like the Phoenix revamp, much though I loved the dear old shack, but have fun finding the entrance, they've hidden it. As advanced warning, add an extra 5 minutes on when you're trying to get there just to find it.
So we caught up, I have now have a few more stories pinched from friends that I can entertain the mothership with, and thankfully Australia didn't try to kill them (much).
The film was also good.
Crying With Laughter - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1349478/
Because it's a good film but it's ever so much not first thing on a Sunday fare.
The main character is a comedian called Joey Frisk, played brilliantly Stephen McCole. He's every jerk of a best friend you ever had, and the film does that balancing act very well, because he's exasperating, and yet you want him to succeed, depending of course what your definition of succeed is.
The other thing I really liked was the secondary characters, because normally in films like this, for the part where the lead character reaches rock-bottom, all his friends have to leave him. But in this they don't. I'm not sure whether my favourite bit is when Vince, the MC at the club where Joey spends most of his time, knocks a pile of coke out of Joey's hand in an attempt to sober him up, or where Maggie, Joey's manager, after having bailed him out of jail, explains that he can't crash on her sofa because her husband will go mad because he thinks that Joey is a waste of space. Joey frequently is, but his manager still believes in him.
That's another thing I liked about it, in keeping with the general atmosphere of everyone being very human, there were no shrill harpies. This is a film where the lead character is divorced and his manager, who keeps having to tell him to buck his ideas up, is also a woman, and neither of them come off as unsympathetic. Glory be!
The ex-wife's boyfriend is also not drawn in villains colours, because Joey's never met him and expects to hate him at first sight when he does meet him, finds someone he'd be perfectly happy to go and have a pint with. Although with Joey, that's not saying much.
There are a few points, particularly towards the end of the kidnapping and revenge plot (which I'm trying not to spoil so sorry about the vagueness) where I think the director loses control of the situation a little (it's one of those scripted but improvised films, if you know what I mean) but he drags it back reasonably well, and I think that's just first time director issues more than anything else.
So yes, go to your local indie cinema or equivalent and see it if you can because the lead performance by Stephen McCole is one of the best you'll see this year, and that by the way, is a promise.
Actually, for the Leicestershire peeps, I like the Phoenix revamp, much though I loved the dear old shack, but have fun finding the entrance, they've hidden it. As advanced warning, add an extra 5 minutes on when you're trying to get there just to find it.
