The Month Of Paddy

Despite the fact that we spent March 17th in London's Big Chill Bar (Mulatu & Heliocentrics, Orbital, DJ Derek and Russell Howard at the festival by the way) and the rest of the week sweating out Guinness - this year's real St. Paddy in my eyes was Mr. Considine.

This is probably due to the fact that over the 3 weeks surrounding St. Patrick's Day, Channel 4 went and gave us the excellent Red Riding.

Now I'm not putting Considine's part on a pedestal as the entire cast were phenomenal.
Joining the Midlands De Niro we had relative newcomer Andrew Garfield and familiar face Mark Addy (keepin' it Yorkshire since "The Full Monty") as the main trio.
On top of this you've also got Sean Bean, Peter Mullen, Gerard Kearns ("The Mark Of Cain" and of course "Shameless") plus solid performances from Joseph Mawle and ... yeah pretty much the entire cast.

The reason why I'm bigging the Dead Man's Shoes star up so much stems from an article in the paper I read shortly before his episode of Red Riding was aired. I'd been a fan of his work with Shane Meadows plus his parts in "24-Hour Party People" and "Hot Fuzz" - but with America now taking a shine to him with projects such as "PU-239" (HBO) and "The Cry Of The Owl" (alongside Julia Stiles - hmm...) I worried he may have peaked too early and we'd watch both himself and his career turn ugly.

Nope. Far from. He was completely on point in the three-page broadsheet article. Described as humble and honest, it shone through as he addressed his interviewer as "Man" or "Brother" and talked about sensitive subjects such as the lows of being in the film industry:

"Yeah it's a bit annoying when I'm sat having tea at home with me family and someone bangs on our front room window shouting "YOU, YER CUNT!" in an elephant mask".

Hailing and still residing just outside of Burton-on-Trent, it only takes a few YouTube clips to confirm that you can take a lad out the North but you can't take the North out the lad.

Now the thing is, these two factors - Hollywood and Humbleness - got me thinking...
He's not let the fame go to his head, he obviously has a vast amount of diversity to use within his roles (Matlock-dwelling serial killer, American mis-understood stalker, Russian fugitive) so surely he'll take the Ray Winstone route and end up in a Scorsese-topping 3 hour epic to much acclaim.

Well, it turns out he is working with Scorsese in his next film.
Sorry, make that Scorzayzee. The film is a massive piss-take mocumentary / comedy, with Paddy sharing his guise with the title: "Le Donk". With Meadows camera following the life of a failed rockstar going for his second chance, the film (in association with Warp Films) is bound to be the indie film scene's "Bruno".

It seems as though he's the acting equivalent of, say, Madlib. Their portfolios range from gritty, homegrown productions, to neat and timeless shorts - right the way through to big-budget major releases. However, each one points out how passionate they about their art. Some are a success, some are middle of the road, some are failures (Julia Stiles film again - hmm...) but rather than any project being about the cheque, these are all done for the sake of just doing it.

So I'm quite happily set for another dose of England's finest. Depending on which gets released first, the hilarious "Le Donk" or the intriguing "King Of The Gypsies" - get set for a super-duper fuckin' dose!

Figure Of Wax | Waxy Deposits