to give her the job," Mr Goldmintz said.He also claimed Mr Rutter had failed to make allowances for Mrs Brennan during her pregnancy and had declared at a Christmas lunch that he could never work for a woman.David Scorey, speaking for Amex, told the tribunal that "there was no blind eye turned to the problem if the managers did not know about it". He asked Mr Goldmintz why he had not reported the Christmas lunch incident to senior managers The case continues.. Mention the names of certain film critics and the movie-making fraternity will spit blood. But now British victims of the critical thumbs-down are fighting back.

Mention the names of certain film critics and the movie-making fraternity will spit blood. But now British victims of the critical thumbs-down are fighting back. Stung by the hostile reception on home territory to his most recent films, Andrew Macdonald, producer of Trainspotting and Shallow Grave, has vowed to take his talents to a country where he feels they would be better appreciated.Although his early successes were given their premiÿres in British cinemas, he has declared that he intends to give audiences in the United States first sight of his future work. "It's an irony, but for small films requiring specialist handling, America is easier," Mr Macdonald said. "The British market is currently the most difficult in the world."The recent mauling given to Beautiful Creatures, the black comedy starring Rachel Weisz for which he was the executive producer, appears to have been the final straw for Mr Macdonald.

And the next few films from DNA, the company he runs with Duncan Kenworthy, producer of Notting Hill, will be seen by in the US before British cinema-goers get their turn.Strictly Sinatra, a romantic comedy with the Trainspotting star Kelly Macdonald, will be unveiled in America in July. The Final Curtain, a satire on television game shows starring Peter O'Toole, will follow in September.A Film Council insider said: "There is a very general feeling in the industry that a lot of press are hostile to British films." As evidence she cited Dancing in the Dark, a Lars von Trier film released by FilmFour, which was "murdered" and Beautiful Creatures which came under fire even before it opened.But the real issue may be a tale of two cultures. In Britain, the public listen to the critics before going to see a film; in the United States they go anyway. In Britain, national newspapers give critics a prominence which simply does not exist in the States where there is no nationwide press.In America, film companies go to excessive lengths to control coverage. Favoured journalists get interviews, those with tricky questions do not.It is not an arrangement that the British press condones. "The edge has gone out of a lot of American criticism," John Marriott, chairman of the Film Critics Circle in Britain, said. "The publicists and agents are super-heavy in America in a way they aren't here."The British were not that nasty anyway, he added.

"My own feeling is that there's an even-handed spread in this country that can be considered fair. The reason a lot of British movies get hammered is because they're not terribly good. There's not enough script-editing and enough producers who can read a script. When films get criticised, they pretty much deserve it."Paul Brett, head of film services for the British Film Institute, does not blame the British critics either, but their editors.

"The critics are lovely people, but their editors are always pressing to have Tom Hanks and it's at the expense of other coverage," he said."Andrew Macdonald is an absolute classic case. They championed the first film - everybody claimed to have discovered Trainspotting Shallow Grave proved he was a talent to watch. But with the third one - A Life Less Ordinary - everyone just went for him."Film-going is also more popular in the US than in Britain. Americans visit the cinema twice as often as the British, who attend, on average, six times a year. Promotional costs exacerbate the divide, Mr Brett said, with the high cost of advertising on television and in the press, putting Britain at further disadvantage.Recent figures in Screen International magazine showed it cost about 14 per cent more than the European average to reach television viewers in Britain - a telling consideration for promoters of all but the Hollywood blockbusters.By comparison, distributors backing the type of smaller-scale independent movies the British specialise in only have to worry about six North American cities because 80 per cent of the expected audience resides in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Chicago, New Orleans and San Francisco. Distributors can focus on those cities, making it both easier and cheaper.Cost is one factor behind the thinking which traditionally saw films released in America first, allowing the buzz to cross the Atlantic and boost interest when a film opens in the UK.The sheer size of the US media market makes a difference too.