Yarp. Narp?

Last night we saw Hot Fuzz.

I actually wasn’t massively keen on Shaun of the Dead – it was funny, but just a little bit too weird, and I’ve never been a big horror fan so I probably didn’t get all of the movie references sprinkled through the film.

Hot Fuzz was different – I completely “got” the genre and the things they were sending up. Very British, very funny. The whole premise of a hot-shot urban cop being relegated to some sleepy backwater village was a nice set-up for some great observations on both the police service (not force, that implies aggression) and local village life in England. It was obviously well-researched – we loved the parts where the official police vocabulary was invoked, and the regional dialect was brilliantly done too. One or two gory bits, done in an amusing way. The last part of the film was just superb – without giving too much away, the shootouts were hilarious.

Trailers for Magicians and the next Simon Pegg film, Run, Fat Boy, Run. Looks like the next few months should be good for British comedies at the cinema.

And I just have to add – By the Power of Grayskull! (a cultural reference that was lost on my wife and sister-in-law, who laughed their heads off through much of the film, but must have missed so many of the cool bits)

Technorati Tags: Hot Fuzz, Magicians, movies, Nick Frost, comedy, Simon Pegg, Run, Fat Boy, Run, Shaun of the Dead

This Life + 10 = Outstanding

Last night saw a slice of nostalgia, when This Life returned for a one-off special, ten years on.

Ten years ago I was a few months away from leaving university (stop rolling your eyes, at the back!) and I fondly remember cramming into my neighbour’s room to watch each episode. We were all just about to graduate, and seeing these five people sharing a house in London at the start of their careers somehow felt like it might be a view into our own lives in a few years’ time. This series, and Friends, were big at the time… and somehow Friends was never real enough for us to think that way about it.

This Life was groundbreaking stuff – the handheld camera work, the sex and drugs pushing new boundaries (although whether or not that has been a good thing in the long term is another matter), the gritty realism, the rapid editing, the well-observed mundane details (not only who was sleeping with whom, but whether or not the washing up had been done)… a really great series.

From the moment the theme tune came on last night, the memories all flooded back. The characters had grown slightly older, but not very much wiser. The characterisations were still excellent. The setting had changed, of course – no more lawyers sharing a grotty house in London, this time the careers had all changed, and it was scaled up to a weekend at a country house instead. The thing that impressed me the most about the special was that there was real emotional depth and tension that had an impact even after the 10 year gap.

The music was great too – although this time it was all played out of an iPod. A chance to relive some of my favourite indie moments of the 1990s.

I’ll be getting the original 2 series on DVD to remind myself of what it was all about…

Good stuff to watch most nights this week – final two episodes of Torchwood tonight, and the final episode of Green Wing tomorrow. Don’t expect to hear much from me…

Technorati tags: TV, BBC, This Life, drama, television

Shiny!

I’m probably the last Joss Whedon fan in the world to see it, but on Saturday I picked up the series box set of Firefly from HMV for less than half price, and last night I watched the opening double header, “Serenity”.

Errr – wow!

I’m a long-term Whedon addict (Buffy/Angel/any film he’s been involved with), so I expected good writing, but some of the interplay between characters was just superb. The effects were brilliantly done, and the music was just right. It’s clear that JW has a backstory in mind for all of the characters, and I just wonder how much of it I’ll get from the small number of episodes that were made.

I haven’t got the movie yet, although it has been on my wishlist for ages and Amazon are offering it at a reasonable price… more than can be said for HMV, otherwise I’d have picked it up at the time.

Technorati tags: Firefly, Joss Whedon, TV, DVD, Serenity

Torchwood initial review

I was going to write up my thoughts on last night’s first two episodes of Torchwood, but bsag has done a good job already. If you are interested, go have a read. I added a comment on the post with my own opinions.

(I thought it was very good, by the way)

Technorati tags: Torchwood, TV, BBC, review, bsag

Torchwood

The BBC’s new spin-off from Doctor Who, Torchwood (spot the anagram), starts on Sunday. The trailers look flash.

Bad: I’m away this weekend; plus, we don’t get digital, and this is on BBC3. Any news on whether it will hit traditional BBC channels any time soon?

Technorati tags: BBC, Torchwood, Doctor Who

Things to see and do

Watch The History Boys.

See Spamalot.

Go to the exhibitions on my Upcoming.org list.

SOA, the Movie… (trailer)

This looks quite funky…

(good excuse for me to try out the YouTube embedding functionality in WordPress.com, too, since I hadn’t had the chance to do so yet… like so many other features on WP.com, it “just works”)

TV viewers, get a clue

The BBC News website reports reports that there have been 500 complaints about “provocative” comments made in Top Gear over the last series. Quite rightly, many of them have been rejected as being part of the programme’s humour and style – Jeremy Clarkson has made a career out of hyperbole.

Those people who don’t get it… well, it was spelled out in a recent Sunday Times article where the journalist spent the day with the Top Gear team and Clarkson remarked that he was determined to “beat Ross” after the comments about Thatcher… and even the Poles get it – a recent Guardian supplement on Poles in Britain noted that Clarkson is currently Warsaw’s favourite author, and that Polish women don’t consider him offensive, since the jokes are jokes, made in good humour.

Round of applause for the BBC on this one!

GW / DW

I’m really looking forward to the new series of Green Wing on Channel 4 tonight – the first series was hilarious. Very strange at first, and it took until at least the second episode before I “got it”, but it was easily the funniest comedy on TV last year (my DVD set should arrive early next week).

The other thing I’m looking forward to is the second series of new Doctor Who – which, it was announced, will start on Saturday 15th April. Splendid.

Movie time

We had a small and belated family celebration of my advanced age on Sunday. Among the gifts was the DVD of Sin City.

It's a stunningly shot film. Time and time again I found myself wondering just how they'd managed to get the different effects to work. I know a little of Frank Miller's work, and this seemed very true to the style.

Very, very grim to watch, and horribly violent. At first I found that OK, because it was done in a comic book style… but it did become a bit much. I'm not a huge fan of violent imagery, and although the visual style and music were both compelling, I'm not sure how often I could rewatch this.

I also thought the story and format of the film was a bit reminiscent of one of my all-time least favourite films (now there's a controversial statement), Pulp Fiction. Surprise surprise, Tarantino was a "guest director" on Sin City. The way the story split, parts ran out of chronological order, and came back together, reminded me of Tarantino. Or maybe it was the other way around.

Apparently there's an extended version available on DVD, that splits the stories out separately rather than having them intertwined.

Sounds like Sin City 2 and Sin City 3 (and probably more) are on the way. I know one person in our family won't be watching it, as she positively hated this first installment. I'm going to have to think about whether I can cope with the next one…