Showing posts with label Frank Harper. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Frank Harper. Show all posts

Tuesday, 31 August 2010

Twenty Four Seven (Shane Meadows, 1997)

"You have to go to court now, or they'll come here and they won't you to court, they'll take you straight to jail."

Introduction

Having garnered positive praise from the English press - a five-star review in Empire - Twenty Four Seven managed to pick up a bunch of awards. This small-scale, rugged Nottingham-based film was the real starting point for Shane Meadows. Though Shane Meadows has directed Small Time one year prior, Twenty Four Seven was what placed him in the public spectrum and got him the clout to then move onto A Room For Romeo Brass two years later. He cast Bob Hoskins as the lead actor alongside well-known Brit-Actor Frank Harper - whilst the majority of the young lads were up-and-coming actors - who'd have thought that after Twenty Four Seven, the actors would establish themselves in British television - such as Emmerdale, Coronation Street, The Lakes and little James Cordon became exceptionally successful with Gavin and Stacey ... but less successful with Lesbian Vampire Killers.

A Simple Story with a Complex Community

The story shows Darcy (Bob Hoskins) as a community man trying to get the tear-away youths to actually take part in something - so he sets up a boxing club. So far, so good. It is Shane Meadows writing -alongside regular collaborator Paul Fraser. His writing explores more than the rise of this boxing club -

Monday, 30 August 2010

A Room For Romeo Brass (Shane Meadows, 1999)

"I knew there and then that there was a spirit in the room and it was trying to attack me. So what unfolded then was a fight between me and this unseen entity."

Introduction

So, to continue with a celebration of films by Shane Meadows, we move onto the film that propelled me to actually commit to this blog-a-thon of sorts. I was travelling to Birmingham to see young Richard and thought, 'Hey - I should watch another film from the Shane Meadows boxset I was given' so, with Sarah inserting the right earbud into her ear, I placed the left earbud into my own and as we travelled the Chiltern service between London and Birmingham we watched A Room For Romeo Brass. And, as previously stated, this simply confirmed how great a filmmaker Shane Meadows is...

Before Secondary School, Before Life ...

We follow Gavin (Ben Marshall) and Romeo (Andrew Shim from This is England) as they muck about as young boys do. Romeo has a broken family, whereby his Father has left his family and his Mother and sister