Sunday 9 September 2012

Being British

What a great year it has been for Britain; for Great Britain and for us British.

Being a complete movie nerd I am extremely excited by the characters that are currently being portrayed in major movie releases. Let's take a look:

Harry Potter last year broke records as the final movie pushed to the highest grossing chapter in the series. After that came the very successful theme park at Leavesden. Harry Potter lives on! http://www.wbstudiotour.co.uk/

Sherlock Holmes is enjoyable something of a renaissance with a brilliant BBC series, a top Hollywood blockbuster starring Robert Downey Jr and now a potentially good US remake starring Johnny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu in Elementary. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2191671/

Doctor Who is back on our screens and kicked off with a stonking episode featuring his greatest enemy, Asylum of the Daleks.

Judge Dredd, the fascist policeman from the pages of 2000AD gets his second screen outing in what looks like a gritty and violent realisation, more akin to the tone of the original stories. Karl Urban looks awesome in the title role yet there are concerns that it is too close to the plot of The Raid, even though they were filming at the time of the release. This looks good and great to see a British hero who is not eccentric, just tough.

The Sweeney is getting a major release and stars Ray Winstone in the old John Thaw part. A great 70's tv show can show a new audience what all the fuss was about.

James Bond returns in October for Skyfall which promises to be one of the best Bond movies yet. Daniel Craig is back; Judi Dench is back; Javier Bardem is the villain and we have the first appearance in the new series of Q.

Continuing the British theme, Batman was played by a Brit as was Bane, Alfred and Gordon.

Now we need to have The Avengers remade (as in Steed and Peel) and all will be well with the world.

But seriously, in the movie world us British should be proud of the characters that we have. In this year especially, our Queen's jubilee and the fantastic achievements of our sportsmen in the Olympics and Paralympics, we have an extremely good  reason to look at ourselves and sort of admit, very quietly and without too much undue fuss, yes, we're a pretty worthwhile country and we offer this world a lot of good things.

Whisper it, we are a little bit liked by others.

Now, put away the bunting!

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