In the Loop News

Alan Carr and Michael McIntyre have topped the list of nominations for this year's British Comedy Awards, with three each.

Thursday, 4pm - A SATIRICAL and politically astute film which focuses on the war in Iraq will feature in Grantham tomorrow .

This article was published on guardian.co.uk at 11.27 GMT on Wednesday 18 November 2009.

Just one in a million is likely to A enjoy A Masayuki Miyano's laugh-free sex A comedy, says Catherine Shoard Stretched thin a Lala Pipo The title is a mistranslation of someone's remark that Tokyo contains an awful lot of people.

It's a bland, faintly pointless slice of sentimentality, suggesting comedy isn't Ang Lee's strong suit, says Peter Bradshaw Period fun a Kelli Garner, Demetri Martin, and Paul Dano in Taking Woodstock.

Ripping off someone else's act in such obsessive detail that it counts as a mixture of creative larceny and stalking, says Peter Bradshaw There is hommage .

The political satire In the Loop has swept the board at the Scottish Baftas. The spin-off from the BBC TV series The Thick of It won three awards for best actor, best director and best writing.

Film star Robert Carlyle beat Dr Who actor David Tennant to scoop the best acting performance in television for a male in the Bafta Scotland awards.

From The Vicar of Dibley to Father Ted , the calling of the cloth has produced comedy gold.

If you instinctively distrust our global leaders, and think even less of the bureaucratic mandarins who prop them up, the biting and darkly funny British satire In the Loop is pure comfort food.

Here's a subject that really could have used a Stanley Kubrick or a John Frankenheimer or a Robert Altman.

So, The Thick of It is back , and Malcolm Tucker still looks like a stoat with a cattle prod stuck up its backside.

The 13th Canberra International Film Festival runs from 28 October until 12 November.

Come time travelling with Film Weekly as this week's edition ranges over the state of the British film industry in the noughties to the funny side of life under a dictator in Romania in the 80s, also taking in a review of a coming-of-age tale set in 60s London.

The Audacity Of Hype: Bewilderment Sleaze And Other Tales Of The 21st Century by Armando Iannucci is published by Penguin, priced A 20.

Andrea Arnold's "Fish Tank" leads the pool of nominations announced Monday for this year's British Independent Film Awards with eight spanning all major categories.

IT IS envisaged as a celebration of the cream of Scotland's cinema and television talent a ' even though there are no film actresses shortlisted and two of the films regarded as the best of the year do not have distribution deals.

TV's most creative pottymouth is back in The Thick Of It. But how will Malcolm Tucker cope with a female minister? Original spin: Peter Capaldi as Malcolm Tucker There are those who believe that the movements and decisions of our current government are as pointless as the rearrangement of deckchairs on the Titanic as it sank into the icy depths ...

With a general election approaching, the return of Armando Iannucci's invective-filled political satire couldn't be better timed, says Gerard Gilbert BBC What is particularly bracing about The Thick of It is the absence of an obviously sympathetic character enlarge The bad news for MPs hoping to shore up their image in the seemingly never-ending ...

Ten lucky readers of The Local can now win tickets to watch the critically acclaimed Armando Iannucci satire In the Loop.