Weekend Brits.

"On 30 April 1978, more than 80,000 people took part in a 'Rock Against Racism' carnival in Victoria Park, east London," writes Patrick Sawer in the New Statesman. "Who Shot the Sheriff?, a documentary by Alan Miles that will be screened at the Glastonbury Festival this summer, shows how the movement was sparked by an Eric Clapton concert in Birmingham in 1976 at which, to the dismay of black fans such as the future author Caryl Phillips, the guitarist urged his audience to back Enoch Powell's anti-immigrant stance." Recollections of RAR from the likes of Billy Bragg and others follow.

Updated through 4/22.

Kevin Maher talks with Stephen Graham, "the nervous one in TV's Band of Brothers, the funny one in Guy Ritchie's Snatch, the tough one from Scorsese's Gangs of New York, and the aggressive one in Arctic Monkeys' promo video for their song When the Sun Goes Down. And now, thanks to a role in what is undoubtedly the best British movie since Trainspotting, Stephen Graham, star of This is England, is about to become, simply, the One."

In the Guardian, Shane Meadows remembers the 80s: "As a kid growing up in Uttoxeter, Staffs, it was a time of great music, brilliant fashion and a vibrant youth culture that makes today's kids look dull and unimaginative by comparison. It was also a time of massive unrest when British people were still prepared to fight for the stuff they believed in. My new film, This Is England, is about all of these things.

Also, Beryl Bainbridge on Distant Voices, Still Lives: "After a lapse of almost 20 years, I am still mesmerised by its originality of structure, its use of music, its attention to detail."

"The Wind That Shakes the Barley is [Ken] Loach's best movie," declares Charles Mudede in the Stranger. "If any criticism is to be leveled at Loach's new film, it's not on the grounds of his simplistic moralizing but on these other grounds: the film's stunning landscapes, handsome actors, and cozy interiors dominate the content. The political message is here reduced to the function of being nothing more than a stage for the real star: the exceptional beauty of Ireland itself."

"British Airways cut a cameo by Richard Branson from its in-flight version of the latest James Bond film and blurred out the tail fin of a Virgin Atlantic plane seen in the movie." D'Arcy Doran reports for the AP.

Earlier: "This Is England. And Englishness."

Updates, 4/22: The Independent asks Meadows and This Is England producer Mark Herbert "to pick their favorite young [British] actors, writers, directors and producers, and to tell us why we might soon be seeing their names up in lights."

Chris Sullivan talks with Meadows for the London Times, Bernadette McNulty with Thomas Turgoose, "the 15-year-old star of This Is England," for the Telegraph.

Also in the Telegraph, Sheila Johnston talks with Terence Davies about a film that had a profound impact on him when he was a teen: "'It was extremely brave to make the film at a time when homosexuality was still a criminal offence. Changing the law took another six years. But I think Victim helped: it was part of a general move towards being more liberal.' Did it make Davies feel militant himself? 'Well,' he replies wryly, 'Dirk Bogarde making a stand in the Inner Temple was a bit different from being the youngest of 10 in a working-class family in Liverpool.'"

Back to the Independent: "The films of Terence Davies remain a unique, marvellous anomaly in British cinema," writes Jonathan Romney. "Released in 1988, his first feature Distant Voices, Still Lives had some sort of a context then: it echoed a lineage of British films about working-class life, but also had some kinship with the deeply personal, poetic (and more explicitly avant-garde) films of Derek Jarman and contemporaries. Now re-released, Davies's feature strikes you as not having dated at all - partly because it was never 'of its time' - but also as a melancholy instance of a path opened up in British cinema, and barely followed since."

Posted by dwhudson at April 21, 2007 2:01 PM