Having directed numerous commercials in the United Kingdom, as well as music videos for artists such as Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Massive Attack, Blur, Radiohead and Jamiroquai, English filmmaker Jonathan Glazer went on to film his first feature, the critically acclaimed crime movie Sexy Beast. With a screenplay written by Louis Mellis and David Scinto, Glazer’s film debut follows Gary ‘Gal’ Dove (Ray Winstone), an ex-criminal enjoying his life post-prison in a Spanish villa, alongside his wife and their two friends. But Gal’s idyllic retirement is put on hold with the arrival of his former criminal associate Don Logan (Sir Ben Kingsley), intent on getting Gal on board for a heist in London.
Sexy Beast earned Sir Ben Kingsley an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor—and rightfully so. The thespian best known for his courageous and humane characters in Gandhi and Schindler’s List gives an electrifying performance as sociopathic antagonist Don Logan, who remains the film’s driving force even when he is absent from the screen. Sexy Beast, with its amazing dialogue and exceptional acting, not only passed censorship despite having “like 300 uses of the word ‘cunt’, and 400 ‘fucks’” according to producer Jeremy Thomas, but also inspired The Kook’s song ‘Jackie Big Tits’, as well as the name of American folk-punk band The Front Bottoms (an homage to Kingsley’s line ‘Someone's touched me, touched my front...my front bottom.’). The band’s vocalist and guitarist Brian Sella stated: “I was going to call the band, 'Ben Kingsley and The Front Bottoms', but The Front Bottoms is stupid enough.”
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