Because of the Winston Churchill documentary playing at the Film Forum—which I saw this weekend and kinda-sorta recommend—I know that the Spitfire was the British fighter plane that beat back the Nazi bombers during the Battle of Britain.

Pumpclip Parade, a British blog that chronicles the worst of ale pumpclips (bad puns, xenophobia, goblins and wizards), has the full advertising campaign for Spitfire ale. Some of the doozies:

How to make sauerkraut.

Mention the war.

Not for Mssrs Schmidt.

And

You started it.

See the whole series—some mildly humorous, some dumb, some just cruel—here.

As for Winston Churchill: Walking with Destiny, its pompous, humorless title says a lot about the film.

It’s decent Netflix material for people who already have some interest in Churchill, and its telling of the Dunkirk evacuation—when the navy joined with civilian boaters (fishermen, yachters), to sail across the English channel and rescue the British army from the German onslaught—is beautiful and chilling.

The movie, unfortunately, is a hagiography which totally ignores Churchill’s uglier side: Dresden and the terror-bombing of German cities, his loathing of taxes and social welfare, his own racism, his handling of the Indian independence movement, the Bengal Famine, and other major events that came before and after his Big Moment on the world-historical stage. But it’s a detailed account of how Churchill stepped up when the British army was small and bruised, and everybody else—the battered French, the standoffish Americans, members of his own government—wanted to cut a deal with Hitler.

It also passes over Churchill’s legendary wit, just barely mentions his legendary drinking, and takes awkward pains to shoehorn in bits about Churchill’s Zionism, his opposition to a Palestinian state, and what David Ben-Gurion thought about old Winnie. Churchill was made by Moriah Films, the film division of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which may explain those odd detours away from the blow-by-blow of Churchill’s statesmanship in 1940 and 1941.

Anyway: The film’s okay. Not great. But okay.

Brend an Kiley has worked as a child actor in New Orleans, as a member of the junior press corps at the 1988 Republican National Convention, and, for one happy April, as a bootlegger’s assistant in Nicaragua....

11 replies on “The Bottle of Britain”

  1. Timmy’s grandpa was invited to class for history lesson.
    – So just as my ammunition starts running low, I’m surrounded by these fockers, says granpa. I got fockers on my 6, fockers on my 3, fockers on my 9…
    – Children, interrupts the teacher, you should know that the Focker Wulf was the name of the fighter plane flown by the Germans.
    – Hell no! These fockers were flying messerschmidts!

  2. I love real ale, but that really is a cavalcade of the worst graphic design in the universe. Funny how the old classic brands got it so right with their limited tools, while today’s InDesigners and Photoshoppers are so spectacularly terrible.

  3. The Hawker Hurricane actually carried the heavier load (flew more sorties, shot down more Germans) than the more glamorous Spitfire.

    But the Spitfire was faster and prettier and looked better on posters.

  4. That “Bandits at 6 O’Clock” one! Antigay and anti-German both, but if you’re like me you just can’t help giggling at least the once.

  7. Perhaps you’d be interested to know that Fnarf once swallowed a British shilling coin, causing him to cough repeatedly until it was ejected.

  11. @1 Bad mash-up. The joke involves Fokker, an aircraft manufacturer probably best known for a series of fighter models Germany used in WW I. Not to be confused with Focke Wulf, which made a pretty WW II fighter, but doesn’t fit in the joke as well. The way I heard it, the punch-line was “the fockers were flying Pfalzes!” to keep it set in WW I.

    I can’t believe this thread survived all day yesterday without rebuttal. And you people call yourself nerds!

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