Cubs

Cubs, by Tom Harper... It doesn't get much worse than this. How does a film like Cubs receive such acclaim from so many institutions? Have any of them actually watched this film? This film is a piece of shit. A film so typical of Blair's Britain and the sort of accepted PC bullshit that has such a strangle-hold on the film industry, that it inspired me to begin this entire blog in the first place!

It stars Ashley Walters of 'So Solid Crew' fame as the gang leader of a pack of inner city fox hunters. I know! I can hear the groans at the mere suggestion that this might be a good idea for a film. Apparently this is a real phenomenon but who gives a fuck?

The casting is abysmal. Could they have found two more stage-school trained actors to play the parts of the unfortunate housing estate kids? This harks back to old British films where RADA trained actors from the home counties would play all the East End parts. It's like a bad episode of Biker Grove, its stench reeks of television drama made by dramatic workshops for kids.

Listen to what dim-wit Adrian Hennigan had to say about it on the BBC Film Network site:

"Starring Ashley Walters (Life & Lyrics) and Harry Eden (the Artful Dodger in TV's Oliver Twist), Cubs is a rites-of-passage short about urban fox hunting. That's right: urban fox hunting, complete with dogs, blooding ceremonies and distinctive dress codes (we can't wait to read the Countryside Alliance's review)" (cue winking emoticon ;-)

"Distinctive dress codes"? Is that all 'Dim-Wit' Hennigan could find to say about it?

Only when you hear plummy voiced Tom Harper being interviewed will you realise why fox-hunting might have struck him as good subject matter for a short film. After all, they say to write about what you know, and I bet Plummy Tom has been on a few hunts in his time. How he must have struggled with the idea, "How? How can I get the important issue of fox-hunting into an award winning film..? Aha! I know, set it on a council estate with a bunch of hoodies and a black leading role...Yes! They'll lap that up at the Film Council!"

And they did. They gave him money from the Pulse Digital Shorts Scheme, it won the BBC New Filmmaker Award, it won the BIFA short film award, (shame on you Raindance) it was shortlisted for the TCM prize, it won the fucking Soho Rushes competition! This is industry people who work in film and television every single day, and they judged it to be the best out there? I can only assume it was because every other entry was so poor. It was in the top three for the MySpace Movie Mash Up (thankfully not winning) and recently went to Sundance. I guess if you roll a small piece of shit down the side of a very large mountain, it's gonna pick up a lot of stuff on it's way back to down to the bottom.

Tom Harper claims his influences were films like City of God and La Haine. Fuck off. I know it's only Tom's first short film but there is no similarity whatsoever. Each of those films addressed real issues of poverty and were told with great originality and heart.

I am at a loss for what to say about this film. It does not move one emotionally. It is redundant. It says more about the people and culture that sponsored it than it says about anything itself.

Please watch it... arm yourself against your own bad ideas. Don't become another perpetrator of crime like Tom Harper.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/filmnetwork/A16624334