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For those New Yawkers, final 2 days of Shane Meadows' Somers Town at Film Forum. (my blog review)
Meadows' Five Days Features manifesto
His recent film This is England included in Optimum's box DVD set This is Shane Meadows tackled the thorny taboos of rascism in the England. Voters in European polls recently delivered a damning verdict on Labour, with the party suffering its worst post-war election result and getting beaten into third place by UKIP. The poll also saw the BNP gain two MEPs - the first time the anti-immigration party has won seats at national elections.
Audience with a racist: Peter Victor meets the recently elected MEP Nick Griffin – and asks why the British National Party wants to throw him out of the country. Other subject links on page.
Profile of Nick Griffin in The Sunday Times
The Observer's Philip French suggested in his review of Kisses that it should be shown in a double bill with Somers Town. High praise.


British film-goers don't like British films and UK distributors can't get them into cinemas
Eight new London boroughs eligible for Film London’s film fund
Rebirth of the British art film: From Zidane to Hunger, British arthouse movies are coming thick and fast. Are we on the verge of a new new wave?
Pick up some smart art: Six young British artists to watch
Steve Lazarides: Graffiti's über-dealer
He launched Banksy’s career, made millions from celebrity clients, and founded three chic galleries. He tells Luke Leitch how, despite grumbling critics, the subversive spirit of street art has taken the establishment by storm
The next generation of YBAs: what does the future hold? "It is the college that gave the world Damien Hirst. Are today's Goldsmiths graduates aiming to shake up the world?"
On the trail of London’s buried river, the Fleet
Keats's London home reopens after major refurbishment
To the auction house: Virginia Woolf beach is sold for £80,000


The Contemporary Art Society and The Economist Group show Martin Sexton's Blow-Up (Sex with Karl Marx) in the Economist Plaza. "An oversize blown-up camera is sited on the plaza so that the lens reveals within snippets from Michelangelo Antonioni’s iconic 1960s film. This is watched over by a bust of Karl Marx reminiscent of the monumental bust at Chemnitz in former East Germany – a city that was until 2006 named Karl-Marx-Stadt. The interior of the camera is viewed as if in a peep show."
The Observer spotlit Joseph Losey
The Joseph Losey Collection from Optimum DVD sometime ago(a must see and some single discs available) and the BFI re-released, restored Accident on tour through August.
Sophia Loren and Richard Burton in Noel Coward’s Brief Encounter (the one from 1974) with a Richard Burton retro at the BFI Southbank in August.
Losey special issue of Sight and Sound
Tate Britain has been filled with the largest ever work of art to grace its galleries – a 250ft-long sculpture described by the organisation as being like a "scribble in space". Duveen Galleries - the central space in Tate Britain, The Independent article

Extraordinary artist and not that known outside Danish Euro circles Per Kirkeby is at Tate Modern. The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam held a awesome retrospective as long ago as 1996! He also created the only second ever visual film overture (Star Trek being the first) for Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark)
The American artist Jeff Koons discusses copyright and using images of Popeye in his first major UK show at the Serpentine Gallery - Dali influences and the power of personal iconography - BBC Radio 4's Front Row, The Times,
Jeff Koons: Not just the king of kitsch
The ever erudite Rachel Campbell-Johnston of The Times gives a 2 min video tour of the show.
Drawing up battle lines – art gallery takes on Wikipedia


In the Loop (is currently on release through IFC Films in New York) (my blog review)
Podcast with Peter Capaldi on Greencine
The London Box-Set (5 short films-no DVD extras) is another valuable Optimum re-release.
BBC Radio 4's The Film Programme has a discussion about Pool of London. Over the next six weeks on the same programme, the writer, actor and League Of Gentlemen member picks neglected classics from six decades of British cinema.
Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding, the principal members of the British comedy group the Mighty Boosh, kept their cool for the first 24 hours of their inaugural American tour this week
The Mighty Boosh Explains How British Comedy Is Created
Tears of a clown who will have to pay to entertain children
The day live music died: a new layer of government bureaucracy is threatening to pull the plug on pub rock.
Lost Peter Sellers films on screen after 50-year intermission- missing British comedies found in a movie mogul’s garage cinema are being restored for a new generation.

A very quiet coup for America with the DVD release by Athena of Playing Shakespeare by the Royal Shakespeare Company and its director John Barton.
A career interview with the late British Actor Leo McKern, "which happens to give a great many details and observations about the wonderful (and still underexposed) science fiction film The Day the Earth Caught Fire." (info thanks to DVD Savant)
The petit Brit label Bluebell Films just released British independent films Innocent Sleep and The Scarlet Tunic on DVD (not listed on their site but loads of other great stuff is.
Laurence Olivier's Richard III (1955) is out on Criterion DVD with commentary by playwright and stage director Russell Lees, joined by John Wilders, former Governor of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.

Torchwood has just aired on BBC America (New York Times review)and an interview with its Doctor Who creator, writer Russell T Davies - you can never not get excited about writing for TV listening to him.
Facets DVD in the States have just released a 2-pack of their Patrick Keiller Robinson in Space (1997) and London (1994). "Architect-turned-director Patrick Keiller crafted a pair of unique documentaries in which two fictional characters – the Narrator and Robinson – explore the good, the bad, and the ugly of England."
BFI DVD editions

Charles LeDray's Mens Suits: Savile Row meets the Borrowers at The Fire Station
The White Cube is wearing Gilbert & George with the Jack Freak Pictures (Mason's Yard and Hoxton galleries) and comprise the single largest series of work ever made by the illustrious British duo. The dominant pictorial element is the Union Jack
BBC Proms 2009: are the Proms too nice? Has British institution the BBC Proms mislaid its founding spirit? For the couch l'oeiloreille-auralists BBC Four broadcasts many of the concerts.

more Brit DVD's next time...