Attack The Block World Premiere news

Attack the Block will hold it's World Premiere at SXSW in March, 2011


I'm almost a day tardy with this if you don't follow my Twitter feed but hey, I'm good deal closer to the area than usual.

South By Southwest is a very cool festival that started so small in the music capital of Texas and grew into one of the most coveted markets at which to be presented and to attend. Duncan Jones' Source Code is opening the festival with it's own world premiere. It'd be nice to think the Big Talk team will be in town to rock along to that too.

I'm not entirely sure of the process involved with achieving this but I'm going to go with the notion that what the organisers have seen of Attack The Block must have impressed them considerably to schedule it like this as one of their Midnighters. Whilst I momentarily comfort my broken soul that I can't afford be there, I'm heartened by the thought that it will get some amazing exposure and buzz that could lead to a speedier worldwide success than might have originally been planned. At the moment, that thrill is outweighing any gloomy idea that it will make Joe even less accessible and available for secret radio station noodling.

It's also doing the Markets at Berlinale this week.

Spare a little thought for me and my endeavours to view this film with as little pre-cog as possible. I anticipate an overload of information from this and you'll have to forgive me if I don't pass all of it on and comment about it. I'd also appreciate it if people didn't direct spoilers at me. I know I can't hope to sustain this for the entire two months between SXSW and the UK release date but I'm going to try my best. That said, there's a sweet SXSW blog here.

Obviously, I know this much:

Attack The Block (UK) HDCAM1080i 87 minutes
Director: Joe Cornish
Producer: Nira Park, James Wilson
Cast: Jodie Whittaker, John Boyega, Alex Esmail, Franz Drameh, Leeon Jones, Simon Howard, Luke Treadaway, Jumayn Hunter, Adam Leese and Nick Frost
Screenwriter: Joe Cornish
Cinematographer: Thomas Townend
Editor: Jonathan Amos
Music: Basement Jaxx and Steve Price
A funny, frightening action adventure movie that pits a teen gang against an invasion of alien monsters. It turns a tower block into a sci-fi playground. It’s inner city versus outer space.
(World Premiere)

Of course, I don't mind reading stuff like this piece from The Guardian about street casting.

Cornish is a big fan of street casting. "You're casting unknowns because you want an authenticity that a professional actor may in fact find it harder to give; you want their realness," he says. "They told us as much about the script as we could tell them. They advised us on costume, on language; we used them as a kind of resource to make sure the film was credible to people of their age."

Whilst on the subject of cast, I hope you're catching the beautiful Jodie Whittaker in Marchlands on ITV at the moment.

John Boyega is in a Red Button offshoot of Being Human playing a bully called Danny Curtis.

Franz Drameh was caught on video at the London premiere of Paul, namechecking Attack The Block and Leeon Jones was there too.



This lady got a "Just Coming" from Joe! I guess he was more prepared for it in a red carpet situation. Attack the Block is getting name checks from Nick as he tours with Paul.

One last bit of trivia: The editor of Little White Lies posed as a hoodie for the next issue.

This post was mainly intended as a joyous celebration of Joe's success but while I'm here, there are a couple of other things to mention.

Adam always seems to maximise his time when he's in the big city and on Wednesday he recorded an episode from the second series of Matt Lucas' "And The Winner Is". There's a picture of him with Matt and Rory Bremmer here but they could be anyone!

Adam did an amazing set at the Tabernacle last night for Feature Spot. His Photoshop went a bit wonkaloid and that led to the most hilarious, interactive madness which he handled beautifully, adding so much to the evening. John of BBC 6Music Blog designing fame and Basil rushed to his rescue but with his usual, adorable humility, he seemed to feel this had somehow lessened the value of the evening. He couldn't be more wrong. It made it very special. At one point he offered to refund £5 to everyone (which one unhelpful audience member suggested should be more like £7 - unfair because Jonny Sweet and The Persuassionists' own Nick Mohammed were very good value) but settled with the offer of a gratis show for anyone who left their email address on his table. Without exception, I am sure everyone thought it was an exceptionally brilliant night but the offer of a freebie and another chance to see Buckles was too much to pass up so lots of people left scraps of paper on his table.

The hilight of the evening was Adam's perfectly rendered, live musical précis of Black Swan for anyone who can't spare the time to go and see it. I do hope more people get the chance to see him do this. I'm sure he'll try to squeeze into the Leicester BUG. He also did the "wot is buk" reading that I missed from BUG23 so my life was complete.

Several minutes past curfew the crowd also persuaded him to do a live version of his RATATOUILLE (THE RAT CONTROL THE COOK.

Do you remember Adam and Joe's interview with GETS! man, Dandy Sakano in Go Tokyo? Of course you do. For some reason that only the Consultants of Comedy can reveal, he is relaunching his career in Dundee because it erm, sounds like his name.

This post wouldn't be complete without a bit of off-piste nonsense so here's a bit about Edgar Wright buying the "S" from the Somerfield in Wells. He also accepted a banana for directing a film.

A full version of External World by David OReilly (of Meebox credits fame) is on the nets now.

'Our' very own Ben Mercer is performing in Hoxton next month.

Friend of the show, AmberGambler made a new mix last week too.


This bit of Wiki silliness made me laugh at a particularly low moment last week.

Pithy blogpost titles are for people with a lisp

Get your fiddling fingers out and pay attention to this call-to-arms from Little White Lies. Their next issue will feature Attack the Block and if you've been silly enough to pass this publication by at your newsstand thus far, I can tell you it'll be a collectors item......just like every other issue. You can have your own custom-built rocket included if you get your sticky fingers organised now!

It's been a testing week for those of us with Attack The Block search alerts. One tiny, teeny little tweet sent the machine into the far reaches of the blogalaxie and it returned to our atmosphere with all kinds of space junk. I won't link anything. There are lengthy paragraphs out there based entirely upon these few words:

It would seem that Basement Jaxx and Stevie Price are in charge of the score which should be a wickles solution.

On 30th December, the beautiful Ritzy Cinema hosted a screening of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, introduced by Edgar Wright and he came back for a Q & A afterwards. There are some pictures here with thanks to James Kent. One can only imagine he spent the interim period watching telly and snacking on Caramac round at Joe's house because the silly, long fella snuck in to get a taste of what it might be like when he has to do the same.

Edgar also hosted a pre-recorded 6Music show on New Year's Day. For some of it, he was joined in the studio by his blood and ice-cream chums, Nick Frost and Simon Pegg. Even three of them couldn't fill the links on their own so they called the professionals. The professionals were too hung-over to help so they had to get Joe on the phone. You can hear the resulting bed-bound waffle here. I can't be arsed to look but if you were interested, I'm sure you'd find some kind of fan portal that has preserved the entire show for your enjoyment. It was ruddy good.

Lewis King made a Spotify list for many of the tracks played.

Last night, Edgar implied that he might get writing on the final part of his trilogy but a couple of days earlier, Ant-man was on his mind.

The Incredible Suit is looking forward to Joe's film. I couldn't work out a pattern for the order he put these films in so I can only suppose it's relative to the amount of excitement generated in his suit. Otherwise they're in dry cleaning ticket sequence which would amount to the same thing, probably.

If you're near any of these venues and can catch this short you'll be treated to a little bit of Adam's voice. There are no less than five showtimes at Sundance. If Adam gets going with his Twitter account again, perhaps we can ask him a bit more about it. It was directed by the awesome Meebox credit maker, David OReilly.

Adam Buxton, reptile keeper, has named a meerkat after his brother, which is nice. Mate, if you're the same Adam Buxton with that Twitter account, can you get in touch with @AdamsBigMixtape?

There's an additional BUG Röyksopp Special on Feb 11th though it's all but sold out. There will be more tickets released nearer the time and it should be a wickles night with Röyksopp DJing in the Benugo Bar afterwards. Don't forget to check for gig info here.

This is from 2008 but I just noticed Adam signed the Knock2Bag guest book back then.

A couple of Adam related items are going fairly cheaply on Amazon at the moment here and here.

It would seem Adam may have found somewhere warm to take the family over the festive break. This was posted in Adam's YouTube comments which he has to sanction so I presume he's happy putting this info out there.
We can only imagine how many diseases he contracted and issues he dealt with during the flight and his stay. In the old days, he would have spread that kind of information out over six or seven 6Music links and probably built a Text The Nation topic around one of the saucier events.

Whilst on the subject of Adam going on holiday, don't forget to keep an eye out for the Guardian in a couple of weeks.

There are still 18 podcasts up at 6Music although I thought they were only going to be around for 30 days. They have kept Adam and Joe bobbing around in the top 10 comedy episodes for a couple of weeks.

Another old XFM show was unearthed a couple of weeks ago. You can find more details here.

Foxtrot Studios are attempting to profit from Adam and Joe. It would be remiss of me not to mention it but hmmm. EDIT - the app seems to have disappeared now.

Twitter flutters

The #lametofame hashtag brought some amusing results from Amanda Gardner and Sam Bowman.
I'm not a great fan of scanning mags for the internet while they're still on the newsstands but Leeon Jones tweeted this, bless 'im. He tweeted this too!
I guess Dom works in post production.
Nick Frost seems to be dipping his toe back in the muddy birdbath of Twitter again.
Robbie spotted this Kill Boggins poster in Great Titchfield Street.

Any Other Business

Terry Alderton has been able to get on with his primary function now that Vampire Weekend have eased up on their touring.*

If you're not familiar with these reviews then erm, familiarise yourself. Same goes for this.

This is just odd.

Mine's a triple.

*Reference from the Glastonbury 2010 Band Facts

BUG 14 at the BFI

This is a cheat.
After the tension of the Teddington Studios outing which was fired with dire possibility that two mis-matched worlds might collide and even implode, I did not want to take any chances. I couldn't risk being caught in the act of playing with my Tiny Adam and Joe in the presence of the fine jumble of hair and other tissue so perfectly assembled into the glorious real form of Adam Buxton. Furthermore, I like to maintain my anonymity & with so many A&J fans around, that might have been tricky and yes, you can say it - embarrassing.

As previously mentioned, the South Bank is a regular haunt (as my next entry may well substantiate) so I took the precaution of grabbing an appropriate shot last time I was there. Whilst I can appreciate this is a bit of a cod thing to do, I wanted to make an entry in this blog to mark another mind blowing evening of sensory overload. I was overcome by those kind of laughs that make your shoulders vibrate way beyond any amount of time that is appropriate. I felt like a wind-up toy that couldn't stop. It's a shame I don't have more time to comment on the evening so I might come back and add a few thoughts to this later.............but history relates that I rarely return to a blog entry.
What other BFI event would still be so rapturously received if it started 30 minutes later than advertised? They had an unresolved problem with the wi-fi and a couple of sound issues (ouch!) but it was still superb fun. I guess they will have sorted the problems by next week's "repeat". If it wasn't sold out, I'd be tempted to go along again but that would be a certifiable act, wouldn't it?

I HAVE come back with a link to Adam's Blog that he updated early on Saturday evening. I forgot to mention he was almost clean-shaven last night. I know this will dissapoint some fans but he looks motherable in any guise, to me.

I hope this doesn't upset any copyright fineprint - I've scanned the BFI sheet from the night. You'll have to click to enlarge.