Thursday, 27 November 2008

British films

One of my media teachers once told us that "The British film industry is famous and unique for its amount of films which are about ordinary people". I gave this some thought, and although I can think of a few films like this, such as Bridget Jones' Diary or Love Actually, I can think of far more revolving around other things, mainly crime.

To see if I can prove this hypothesis right or wrong, I have decided to take samples from all of 2008's British films, and another selection from films all over the world, and compare the amount of them with ordinary people as the main character(s).

Wikipedia has given me this list of British films, although it admits that some may be crossovers.

Yes means that the film is about ordinary people; no means that is is not about ordinary people.
Bear in mind that these opinions are all subjective

British

Adulthood - No
Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging - Yes 
The Bank Job - No 
Be Like Others - Yes
Brideshead Revisited - No
Cash and Curry - No
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian - No
A Complete History of My Sexual Failures - Yes
The Cottage - No 
The Duchess - No 
The Escapist - No 
The Grind - No 
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - No 
How to Lose Friends & Alienate People - Yes 
Quantum of Solace - No 

4/15

From this list, 27% are about ordinary people.

Other

Other films, chosen at random from this wikipedia page. To select films, I shut my eyes and touched the screen, and took the film closest to my finger. Coincidently, they were all American, although considering the amount of American films in comparison to most other contries, this is not too surprising.

Cloverfield - Yes 
Teeth - Yes 
Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins - No 
Smart People - No 
Kiss the Bride - No 
Postal - No
Twilight - No 
Extreme Movie - No
Morning Light - No 
Choke - No
Hounddog - Yes 
Body of Lies - No
What Just Happened - Yes 
The Family That Preys -No 
Beer For My Horses -No

4/15

From this list, 27% are about ordinary people.

As both selections; "British" and "other" show the same amount of films about ordinary people (27%), I can assume that the hypothesis is false.

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