Brassed Off (DVD)

Brassed Off was shown the other evening on More 4 and as there was not much else on I thought I would give it a go and I was so glad I did. It is a beautiful emotional film which will call on a whole range of emotions as you watch it! I felt that it was two hours watching which was time very well spent. 'Brassed Off' is a film set in the early 1990s at a time when there was a lot of political unrest and Margaret Thatcher, the then prime minister, was not very popular amongst the working classes. A major reason for this was the relentless push to close the coal pits, putting countless miners out of work with very few prospects of finding new ...  Read the complete review

Filmed on location in Yorkshire, Brassed Off is a feel-good British film. It tells the story of miners from Grimley Colliery who have been through the miners' strike of 1992 and are feeling the effects. On top of all that it looks as though the mine is going to close. There seems no point in keeping the Colliery Band going and they start to lose interest in it. Then, along comes the first lady member, the gorgeous Gloria (Tara Fitzgerald). Interest is heightened and members start coming back to practise. She manages to get them interested in the National Championship and gets childhood sweetheart Andy, played by Ewan McGregor, interested in her again. ...  Read the complete review

I was living abroad when this film came out and so didn’t have much of an idea of what it was about. In fact, the only reason I got round to watching it was because someone lent me a copy and reading the blurb on the back of the DVD reminded me of the lady who used to serve us coffee in the common room at university in Durham. Marie was her name. She and her husband ran a small convenience store during the Miner’s Strike in the 80s and kept many a family going by allowing them to run up a tab. Once the strike was over though and everyone began to slowly get back on their feet, Marie and her husband went bankrupt. Her husband later died of heart problems. She was a ...  Read the complete review

The phoenix of the British film industry rose again in 1996 with this great film about the lives of miners caught up in the strikes and closures of the pits back under Maggie and chums. The film, part love story and part "Little people come out on top" is a very much favoured part of my video collection. Plot: ----- The strikes are on, Grimley colliery looks fit to close and the members of the pit's brass band are worried for their futures. The band's conductor, Danny (played by Pete Postlethwaite) wants them to be the best, as they were when he was playing way back, and believes that the music they play and the tournaments ...  Read the complete review

I’ve lived in Lincolnshire now for 18 months. So much so that I now consider myself to be an honorary northerner. Now, beforeyou start, I know that there are bound to be some pedantic folks out there who will state quite categorically that Lincolnshire is not ‘oop north’, but as I live a mere twenty miles from the picturesque South Yorkshire resort of Doncaster, please, please, PLEASE grant me a touch of artistic licence. Thanks! Now, as an honorary northerner there are some things that I haven’t achieved yet and I feel that I should list these at the start: 1- I haven’t grown a prize-winning leek 2- I haven’t got a flat ...  Read the complete review