h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

A year or two ago a film was released in cinemas. This film was called "Brotherhood of the Wolf" and was made by a French film company.

Not only was it excellent, it showed ambition, flair, wasn't afraid to splash it's budget around, mixed a number of genres and still came across as French. I'm not the greatest fan of our friends across the channel a lot of the time, but I came away with a genuine respect for French cinemas ambition and willingness to take the best of Hollywood without merely copying it.

And then we have the British film "industry". A collection of tiny studios churning out micro-budget kitchen-sink dramas or cottoning onto one success and producing a rash of poor copies (see the Gangster films that came in the wake of "Lock Stock").

What is missing is everything I have seen in Continental cinema recently - ambition, budget, big ideas. The sad fact is that, like so many things in Britain today, we see American equivalents not as a challenge but as something to look at, go "coo, aren't them yanks great" and then resign ourselves and our "little island" to Hugh bloody Grant in another low-budget comedy in the hope that our "betters" across the Atlantic will like it again.

WEASELS!!!

Why can't we scrap all the low-budget rubbish, put our heads and our creativity together and make a few high-budget, ambitious cinematic films that will impress the world and (importantly) not be made solely to please an American audience. Funnily enough, I don't think our US friends will refuse to see a British film because it doesn't have a token American in it. Oh, and if we *do* decide to pour money into a film, best not make it something as dull as "Charlotte Grey" again, eh?