Brits Go Home! The End of the Invasion

AMID ALL the self-congratulatory hubbub over the British successes at the Oscars, few people stopped to reflect that luvvie wonderboy Sam Mendes hadn't actually made a film called British Beauty – that his stellar debut was a study of dysfunctional American suburbia set thousands of miles from the director's beloved Donmar Warehouse. More recently, the celluloid version of Nick Hornby's Britbloke novel High Fidelity was relocated from London to Chicago without a murmur of complaint – not even from Hornby himself.