A thread for 'The Thick Of It' (and 'In The Loop' as well)

oh yeah and i remember the other one i mentioned above...willy banjo

that's enough spoilers, i've covered most of my massive thigh-slapping lols but nowhere near even a tiny proportion of my medium-to-substantial ones

just saw In The Loop here @ Tribeca fest; we don't know the show over here. Capaldi = genius.

good angry -- one might say enraged -- comedy.

(also one of the best Iraq war films. of course the scenario could be in the future, w/ Obama & Brown invading Pakistan)

well, at least I missed the show on BBC America, along w/ 300 million of my countrymen.

i can't remember my favourite line but it's basically jamie saying why play classical music when you can just have a badge saying 'i went to public school'?

Yeh, bit that got me was "it's just fucking ... vowels"

why do they have a SECOND ranting demonic Scot -- is he on the show too? are there many of them in yr central government?

I honestly don't think 80% of the Yanks who see this are going to get Capaldi's punchline "Don't ever call me English."

Second ranting Scot is the only other character kept verbatim from the TV series, and he's awesome, think the idea is that once you're spared Capaldi you're then faced with a slightly less nuanced but even more visceral barrage of Caledonian abuse...when Capaldi signed off a phone call "I love you" to him, it was in its quiet way one of the more delicious lines of the film

The New York press audience loved the filthiest lines. I nearly lost it when Capaldi called random Washington tourist lady a "vinegar-faced cumbag."

Never suspected that the next actor to match Joe Pesci in passionate comic profanity would be the sweet aide de camp from Local Hero.

so Tom Hollander (who reminds me of Gervais) was not on the show?

I was thinking that about Capaldi! 27 years between his defining roles...and in the other one, aye, he was pretty much diametrically opposed to this

Tom Hollander wasn't on the show, no. Speaking of which, the two-part special (each an hour long, so feature-length in all but name) was a masterpiece, almost on a level with this movie. God, they nailed it on the big screen, though.

my biggest laugh was probably for "on a subconscious level, maybe in some way, I was trying...to stop...the war"

Ditto.

My god, that was Capaldi in Local Hero?

Laffed non-stop all through this, but forgot all about it about 5 minutes after leaving the cinema. Gandalfini was good though.

Incidentallly, Ian Martin, the swearing consultant for TToI, has an hilarious column in the Architects Journal, of all places:
http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/the-critics/ian-martin/preserving-the-ruins-of-our-heritage-reviving-the-ruins-of-our-high-streets/5200866.article

well, at least I missed the show on BBC America, along w/ 300 million of my countrymen.

― Dr Morbius, Friday, April 24, 2009 4:21 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

no-one saw it in england either!! it was very low-budget, kind of a media-class cult almost.

in the series i think they introduced the second angry scot just for a gag: when toby/olly (chris addison) goes to work for capaldi, he finds the whole place teeming with the "caledonian mafia" and tells jamie "i thought you were going to be the *nice* scot"

swearing consultant?

I have to assume Capaldi's LH romance with the mermaid didn't work out. "Feck off, ya soggy bint!"

I'd call this merely top big-screen TV, a la The Simpsons movie, except that the fury of it does linger. I embrace its thesis that if you have a shred of faith in the US or UK government, you're a fucktard.

no-one saw it in england either!!

about to get a repeat in the .au - thank goodness we don't know = care about Langham's legals.

never got the specials though :(

I honestly don't think 80% of the Yanks who see this are going to get Capaldi's punchline "Don't ever call me English."

Yeh I think that's meant to be the case, at least from Gandolfini's confused look anyway. That other and other Scots-shoulder-chip stuff went down better in the Glasgow cinema I was in than anything since Braveheart.

both those bits got loads of applause at the Glasgow Film Festival. Most cheering in a cinema I've been in since the scientist was watching Man U v Celtic in the Day After Tomorrow.

Rebecca Front has been confirmed as playing the new Minister for Social Affairs & Citizenship in the new series. Which should be pretty cool.

A new TV series? Better make it quick before Cameron becomes PM.

iirc it's going to be about the run-up to the new election. which is pretty unlikely to be before june 2010. show will go out in the autumn.

btw it looks like all of Thick is on YouTube

Pretty sure Capaldi's character could go and work for the Tories without too much trouble.

Hmm, not sure about that myself. Narcissism of small differences to thread.

iannucci has made cryptic comments basically saying tucker would still be in the show if the tories won. he could just about go either way, though it'd be fun to see him working for the opposition.

can't remember how 'spinners and losers' (the most recent special) ended, but i think the party still needs a leader. tucker would want a part in that fight.

if there's a US version, Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel wd be an obvious template. Guy mailed an adversary a dead fish.

US version was tried by Mitchell Hurwitz but ABC killed it after seeing the pilot.

judging from sit down shut up maybe not such a bad move

I shared hearty lols with many of the lines mentioned (willy banjo, just vowels, etc), but also the dissing of I <3 Huckabees

And Anna Chlumsky wtf!!

"and fourthly you have a tiny fucking head"

"let's do lunch some time, we'll have a tete-a-tiny-tete"

no US film release til July.

Difficult Difficult Lemon Difficult

Reading this thread reminds me of how many hilarious moments there are in this film but... didn't think any of the American characters were funny esp. not James Gandolfini

didn't think any of the American characters were funny

What, not even Karen Clarke and her dental problems or 'Hanging' Chad?

The dental thing was funny and working out the defence costs on the child's toy calculator.

Steve Coogan wasn't funny either

You must be a hard man to amuse as Coogan's appearances got some of the biggest laughs at the showing I was at.

I don't know why it didn't work, getting Coogan to play Dom Passantino I mean

because if he watched porn it would end up on the register of members' interests got big topical lols

no kidding

but Capaldi vs Gandolfini was short, sweet and as awesome as any verbal duel I've seen on screen this decade

yep

not as good as the series but B+ film. silly little thing really but felt important that they all looked sans make-up.

fantasied about Tucker appearing in The West Wing afterwards

wish lord john marbury had made a cameo

gandolfini kind of phoned it in - i.e. the "bite heads off kittens" line he was kind of laughing apologetically which works if you have already established yourself as an utterly ruthless bastard but he hadn't really

pretty funny stuff but yeah it sure didn't feel like a movie

bisque

bisque?

bisque

yeah i find myself contrarily glad i never got to see this in theatres

ianucci's grasp of american speech patterns seemed a bit off - not wrong, but like his idea of it was a different level of stylisation away from the way the british ppl speak

this poster upthread otm:

"I like how it was a sort of logical extension of the Thick of It, ie here's what happens when this kind of petty venal politics is applied to something really life or death, and not a government injoke ministry of no obvious purpose"

― EMPIRE STATE HYMEN (MPx4A), Thursday, April 23, 2009 11:13 PM (2 months ago) Bookmark

but i don't think the ending quite nails what they're going for: i guess the general's last argument with the washington woman doesn't quite stand enough as a capstone on the pettiness of the last scenes with the brits. (like haha maybe his reasons for not resigning aren't shitty - the script seems ultimately uncomfortable with the character, with the whole zone of "i've been there" military anti-war rhetoric.)

Americans: it will be available to watch on IFC On Demand this month.

NYT interviews Iannucci and others.

be nice to our movie, america

Anyone been watching 'Getting On' with Jo Brand etc? Has a similar feel, not as lolsome but pretty well observed and all that. Has a couple of Thick of It people including Capaldi.

PS: Since 'In the Loop' came out I am incapable of referring to 'The Thick of It' by anything other than '*In* the Thick of It'. ?!

Saw Getting On tonight. Capaldi directs them! But it feels like they've gone "right, TTOI had lots of swearing, and was depressing, and everyone loved it. So let's do more sweary depressing stuff". And it ends up just being hard to watch, without being very funny at all.

Really loved 'Getting On', can't belive it's only 3 episodes long. Dr Pippa Moore is a genius character. Her polite, middle class niceness barely hiding a venal, careerist snob. The scene with the hamper basket was just jaw dropping in her brass neck. It is depressing but I still lol'd several times through the series.

None of what's in this will be any news to the UK crew but this Slate piece on Iannucci is actually the best mass-media piece I've seen over here on him and most everything he's done over the years.

Literally downloading it (the show, not the movie) right now. Just joined the box dot bz primarily for this show, pretty much impossible to find otherwise (in the US, at least).

Good articles, Ned. Happy to learn the word paraprosdokian.

Also: interview with Iannucci on the AV Club.