Taking over England’s top football club Leeds United, previously successful manager Brian Clough’s abrasive approach and his clear dislike of the players’ dirty style of play make it certain there is going to be friction. Glimpses of his earlier career help explain both his hostility to previous manager Don Revie and how much he is missing right-hand man Peter Taylor who has loyally stayed with Brighton & Hove Albion. —IMDb
Thomas George “Tom” Hooper (born 1972) is a British film and television director of English and Australian heritage. Hooper began making short films at the age of 13, and had his first professional short, Painted Faces, broadcast on Channel 4 in 1992. At Oxford University Hooper directed plays and television commercials. After graduating, he directed episodes of Quayside, Byker Grove, EastEnders and Cold Feet.
Into the 2000s, Hooper directed the major BBC costume dramas Love in a Cold Climate (2001) and Daniel Deronda (2002), and was selected to helm the 2003 revival of ITV’s Prime Suspect series, starring Helen Mirren. Hooper made his feature film debut with Red Dust (2004), a South African drama starring Hilary Swank and Chiwetel Ejiofor, before directing Helen Mirren again in the Company Pictures/HBO Films historical drama Elizabeth I (2005). This began an association between Hooper and… read more
Maybe not the best film ever made about British football, but it's definitely in the top one. :D
"[T]he film biz in post-imperial, post-Tony Blair Britain is riding a hot streak, cranking out splashy, stylish, audience-friendly flicks
Before giving us Best Picture THE KING’S SPEECH (2010), Tom Hooper made the glorious, British “football” biopic, THE DAMNED UNITED.
You needn’t know of Leeds United, 1970’s-era English football… read review
More biography than sports drama, Tom Hooper’s The Damned United becomes so much more than just a chronicle of English soccer in the 1970s. Peter Morgan has made a pretty good career of late by screenwriting… read review
