Cool Britannia

“Le Donk,” a film about a roadie, Donk (played by Paddy Considine) who tries to make Nottingham rapper Scorz-Ayz-Ee (played by himself) premieres June 23 at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

The Arctic Monkeys make a cameo in the highly anticipated release.  The band and about 50,000 fans receive help from the duo in the film.

“A couple of months back I was asked to get involved with shooting a film with the Arctic Monkeys at their Old Trafford concert happening over the weekend of July,” Director Shane Meadows said on his official message board.

“I  didn’t really see myself making a concert film on a par with ‘Woodstock,’ so declined, but after talking to Paddy about how gutted I was that we have never made anything with the character Donk, the penny dropped and I realized that we had a golden platform for ‘Le Donk’ staring us in the face,” he said.

The comedy cost 30,000 pounds to film and is mostly improvised. If you miss it in theatres, be sure to watch for the DVD in September.

Check out the trailer here:

Alex James of Blur, jazz musicians Ronnie Scott and George Melly as well as pop star Lilly Allen are the new faces of a clever marketing campaign from the National Portrait Gallery. The images appear all over England showcasing facts you may not know about each persson. Allen for example, “Vocalist. Lyricist. Florist.”

The campaign is to entice younger people to enjoy and appreciate the impressive collection of work stored inside the National Portrait Gallery.

Watch out for the “Take Another Look” campaign.