Wilbur Wants His DVD

wilbur.jpgOkay, I know we’ve got at least one Brit reading this thing regularly, so David, this one’s for you …

Before I latched on to my current Japanese movie fetish I had a bit of a thing going for the Danes and the Dogme 95 movement, thus I leapt at the chance to see a little film called Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself when it screened at last year’s Toronto Film Festival. Though it stars a nearly entirely Scottish cast the film was written by Anders Thomas Jensen, who was heavily involved with the original batch of Dogme films; financed by Lars Von Trier, who was a co-writer of the original Dogme manifesto; and directed by Lone Scherfig, still the only female Dogme director. So I was drawn in by the behind the scenes people, but the film itself totally, completely won me over with its biting black humor, excellent performaces and subtly beautiful – and completely non-Dogme style – cinematography. This, folks, is a great and widely overlooked film. It’s currently running in extremely limited release in the US – so limited I didn’t even realize it had happened until I spotted the reviews on Metacritic – so go see it if it’s playing anywhere near you and if you happen to be living in the UK, or have an all region capable DVD player, you can pick it up on DVD on April 19th.

If you want to know more about it, you can check out a more detailed review I wrote of it here, or Jason Morehead’s review here. Jason’s the man behind Opus, and you should be reading his stuff anyway. He won’t steer you wrong.

The trailer doesn’t do it justice, but you can see it here.

Comment with Facebook

2 thoughts on “Wilbur Wants His DVD

  1. Yeah, I’ve been looking forward to Shaun of the Dead a lot … the trailers make me laugh pretty hard. We’ve posted a couple things about it here …. pretty certain it will play in North America, but I haven’t seen a release date yet. Brit stuff generally crosses over fairly quickly …

    Last I heard on Bond they had a guy in mind. No name given, but apparently he’s Australian. It’s looking more and more like Brosnan won’t be doing another one. And Tarantino is actively campaigning to make a Bond film and being told no.

  2. I have heard of this film, though not seen it, i’m not sure it got a wide cinematic release in the UK. It is release on DVD on the 19th April, so may take a gander. A great British film just been released in the theatre here is Shaun of the Dead. Crap title, but it is great. It is described as a Rom-Com-Zom (romantic comedy zombie) and although is not a spoof, does pay homage to varies zombie films (Dawn of the dead being the obvious one). I mentioned this film in an earlier post, so sorry if im repeating myself. All magazines over here are raving about it, and knowing how well Brit humour goes down in Canada (you lot can understand Ironic much better than Americans) think you will like this. The film was written and stars Simon Pegg, who is part of the British “cool” comedy scene, with Ricky Gervais, Steve Coogan, the League of Gentlemen etc. He was in one episode of the Spielberg drama Band of Brothers as well. Anyway, im starting to sound like his Press officer now so I will depart. P.S. anymore news on the next James Bond?

Leave a Reply