I was lucky enough to get my hands on a copy of In The Loop tonight, one of the funniest, wittiest and well written films I have seen all year. The story is set in the days before the UN vote on involvement in a war in the Middle East, and the government officials and advisers who are either for or against this war. One of the many integral characters is the aid to the Prime Minister, a rabid individual reminding me of Ari Gold in Entourage, who travels between the U.S and Britain cleaning up the mess of one of their officials who has trouble 'walking the line' with the media. A U.S official, on the other hand, uses this poor sap for their own agenda. Armando Iannucci who directed and co-wrote the script, based this film on his well known TV show The Thick Of It (which I have never seen but intend on seeking out), and this television influence is clear throughout the film in both it's cinematography and snappy dialogue. Even if your political knowledge is limited like mine, the characters and humour carry this film beautifully. James Gandolfini as one of the generals is just superb (for example the scene with the kiddie laptop) and if you're a huge fan of The Sopranos, it's still hard to ignore how suited he is to a role such as this. I highly recommend In The Loop to anyone who appreciates intelligent humour with a political edge.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Another excuse to postpone writing: A good film!
I was lucky enough to get my hands on a copy of In The Loop tonight, one of the funniest, wittiest and well written films I have seen all year. The story is set in the days before the UN vote on involvement in a war in the Middle East, and the government officials and advisers who are either for or against this war. One of the many integral characters is the aid to the Prime Minister, a rabid individual reminding me of Ari Gold in Entourage, who travels between the U.S and Britain cleaning up the mess of one of their officials who has trouble 'walking the line' with the media. A U.S official, on the other hand, uses this poor sap for their own agenda. Armando Iannucci who directed and co-wrote the script, based this film on his well known TV show The Thick Of It (which I have never seen but intend on seeking out), and this television influence is clear throughout the film in both it's cinematography and snappy dialogue. Even if your political knowledge is limited like mine, the characters and humour carry this film beautifully. James Gandolfini as one of the generals is just superb (for example the scene with the kiddie laptop) and if you're a huge fan of The Sopranos, it's still hard to ignore how suited he is to a role such as this. I highly recommend In The Loop to anyone who appreciates intelligent humour with a political edge.
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I'll check it out. 'The Thick Of It' is fucking great, incidentally.
ReplyDeleteThe writing is good, but like me you use too many commas. You're putting them in every time you would pause if you were speaking out loud, but you're not speaking out loud.
Some commas can be removed with no effect, some can be made redundant with improved sentence structure or bracketing.
I know this probably isn't the kind of feedback you wanted, it's just something I've had trouble with in the past and I thought you might want to know what has worked for me.
Funnily enough I agree, I've been told this in my writing classes by many different people, and try to use it as little as possible =P Then again if you read someone like Stephen King his work is littered with brackets and commas (which we were brainwashed into believing is a sin.) But either way thanks for the comment =)
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