By the Powers of Greyskull!

Hot Fuzz: A hilarious action comedy with heart…and a funny swan

I felt like I should do a follow up post on “Hot Fuzz,” so here goes. Don’t worry, there won’t be any spoilers, but if you haven’t seen the film, you won't get all the painstakingly incorporated references (ok, references thrown in with moderate effort) I wrote in this post. So run and see the movie and then come back to reread my post!

Starting with the negative, the only critique I have is that “Hot Fuzz” was not quite as good as I had anticipated - “Shaun of the Dead” had a tighter script that never lost its momentum, but “Hot Fuzz” starts to lag through the second act. However, it packs quite a punch in the last half hour for a satisfying finish.

“Hot Fuzz” was a much more ambitious film than “Shaun of the Dead,” and it more than makes up for its slight imperfections with the brilliant comedy and action. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s chemistry is a delight to watch. Their rapport is engaging, funny, and most of all really sweet. Their comic timing is flawless, and they are so damn interesting to watch that you can’t take your eyes off of them. The supporting cast is excellent, notably Jim Broadbent, Timothy Dalton, Bill Nighy and Paddy Considine. Watch out for uncredited roles by Cate Blanchett and Peter Jackson, too.

This quotable movie undoubtedly already has and will continue to provide tens of minutes of quoting glee (with I'd imagine bad English accents if you’re American). One of my favorite jokes was:

Nicholas Angel [Pegg]: We have to do something, Frank's appointed himself as Judge, Jury and Executioner.
Danny Butterman [Frost]: (agitated and defensive) He is not Judge Judy and Executioner!

Read more memorable quotes >>

The action scenes were a blast, and the movie is chock full of winks to film geeks. (I loved the sly reference to "The Shining" in “Hot Fuzz” – I'll give you a hint: The "hag" said it…watch it again if you missed it. What is it exactly about "The Shining" that compels all of us film nerds to sneak in a reference to it? There was even one that tried to make it into McG's "Charlie's Angels" - a completely recreated red bathroom - talk about random and a wise outtake. But I digress.)

This is definitely a guy movie, but I loved it, being a girl that loves “Bad Boys” almost as much as "Hot Fuzz" helmer Edgar Wright does - it’s the second DVD I ever bought! Note the obvious similarity of the "Hot Fuzz" onesheet to the "Bad Boys 2" poster. This film has been described as a Hollywood action parody by some, but I saw it not as a spoof but as a heartfelt hats off to the good cop/ buddy action flicks of the Donner (Lethal Weapon)/ McTiernan (Die Hard) / Bruckheimer mold. The great references to “Point Break” (directed by Kathryn Bigelow) and the impeccable match shots from “Bad Boys” were just….off the f*$#ing chain! It’s refreshing to see such a talented and fresh director be unashamed to admit that he genuinely liked Bad Boys 2, but then go and make a movie that is infinitely superior. While I myself didn’t like “Bad Boys 2”, I did LOVE “Armageddon” and was ridiculed in a film class for admitting to listening to Michael Bay’s DVD commentary (stupid pretentious film students!). "Hot Fuzz" is definitely very unpretentious, good fun. But even if you don't know the referenced action movies by heart, I have no doubt that you’ll still love “Hot Fuzz” for its characters, jokes, and action.

If you haven’t watched it yet, what are you waiting for? This trailer (not shown in the U.S.) will make you want to SPEED (preferably in a car chase), not walk, to the theater! I guarantee that “Hot Fuzz” will make you want to shoot two guns whilst jumping through the air and utter, “Shit just got real!”

If you can't view the video, click here.

YARB.

A Solar Rhapsody?

Extending above the photosphere or visible surface of the Sun, the faint, tenuous solar corona can't be easily seen from Earth, but it is measured to be hundreds of times hotter than the photosphere itself. The clusters of the majestic, hot coronal loops span 30 or more times the diameter of planet Earth.

Music produced by the Sun’s Atmosphere? A picture forms in my mind of a future in which the privileged few dress to the nines and hop on privately chartered space shuttles for a night at the Solar Opera. The guests would be seated in a hovering amphitheatre specially designed to withstand the sun’s heat and filter its rays, optimized for a spectacular, literally out-of-this-world light & sound show... The reality is a bit less romantic, but still pretty amazing.

Astronomers recorded sound waves emitted by the looping magnetic fields along the Sun’s outer regions, or the corona, which carries magnetic sound waves. Unfortunately, we humans can't hear these sounds since our hearing range is between 20 to 20,000 hertz, while the solar sound waves are more along the lines of milli-hertz-a-thousandth of a hertz.

I don’t quite understand all of this, as to my chagrin, I’m not smart enough to grasp astrophysics, but I’m going to try my best to break down what I do understand in layman’s terms:

One of the astronomers likens this phenomenon to the solar energy plucking a guitar string. Explosive events at the sun’s surface produce acoustic waves that bounce back and forth between the ends of the loops, setting up “standing waves.” So imagine a guitar string being plucked by microflares (tiny, frequently occurring solar flares) which produce sound waves that reach tens of miles, traveling at speeds of 45,000 – 90,000 miles per hour, releasing the energy equivalent to millions of hydrogen bombs. (Considering that the speed of sound on Earth at sea level in static conditions is about 761 miles per hour, it boggles the mind!)

Forget the opera, this sounds like one hell of a badass rock concert. Too bad we can’t hear it.

This study will be presented at this week's Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting in Lancashire, England. Read more about this on Yahoo News >>

Can't wait for this movie

For those that loved the best romantic comedy with zombies ever made (not to mention one of the most clever, funniest movies ever), Shaun of the Dead, writer/director Edgar Wright and writer/actor Simon Pegg are back with Hot Fuzz! Pegg plays a London supercop, and reteams with the deliciously hilarious Nick Frost, portraying an overeager policeman in the sleepy town of Sandford. Bill Nighy (love him!), Jim Broadbent, and Timothy Dalton round out the cast. Here's a teaser trailer:


Hot Fuzz opens this Friday, April 20, 2007 in select theaters in the U.S.

Kurt Vonnegut Dies At 84

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. 1922-2007

Time said, "Vonnegut is George Orwell, Dr. Caligari and Flash Gordon compounded into one writer…a zany but moral mad scientist."

We've lost one of our literary geniuses. Kurt Vonnegut passed away last night after being hospitalized from irreversible brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote 14 novels, his first being "Player Piano." His moral vision in novels such as "Slaughterhouse-Five," "Cat's Cradle," and "Breakfast of Champions" made him a cult hero. His body of work made his countless readers think, ponder our existence and laugh, and usually at the same time. Mr. Vonnegut may be gone, but his alter ego Kilgore Trout will live on forever.

Vonnegut often wrote about god, religion, and the nature of humans. Here are two passages I had flagged in his last novel "Timequake" that always made me laugh:

"Satan," he said, "couldn't undo anything God had done. She could at least try to make existence for His little toys less painful. She could see what He couldn't: To be alive was to be either bored or scared stiff. So she filled an apple with all sorts of ideas that might at least relieve the boredom, such as rules for games with cards and dice, and how to fuck, and recipes for beer and wine and whiskey, and pictures of different plants that were smokeable, and so on. And instructions on how to make music and sing and dance real crazy, real sexy. And how to spout blasphemy when they stubbed their toes.

– Timequake, p. 30, Berkley trade paperback edition, August 1998

I will say, too, that lovemaking, if sincere, is one of the best ideas Satan put in the apple she gave to the serpent to give to Eve. The best idea in that apple, though, is making jazz

– Timequake, p. 96, Berkley trade paperback edition, August 1998

Kurt Vonnegut was a master of contemporary American Literature and a brilliant satirist with incomparable talent, humor, and imagination. He died last night. So it goes.
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Read the New York Times article for a full biography of his life and career, plus a photo gallery, and links about his work.

To Return: Twenty Years Is Nothing

I finally went to see Pedro Almodóvar's Volver a few weeks ago which I thought was incredibly powerful, gorgeous to look at (those colors!) and beautifully acted.

Since I saw the film and discovered that the passionate voice singing "Volver" that Penelope Cruz lip syncs to belonged to Estrella Morente, I've become a big fan. I just got her debut album My Songs and a Poem, and plan on getting her second and newest album, Mujeres very soon.

Here's a clip from Volver:


If you can't view the video, click here.

The classic tango song "Volver" was written by "the King of Tango" Carlos Gardel, who was born in the late 1800's and became immensely popular. He tragically died in a plane crash at the peak of his career. The phrase "Veinte años no es nada (Twenty years is nothing)" from "Volver" became a famous saying throughout Latin America.

Perdu! Great survival stories

(To avoid confusion, by perdu, I'm referring to the French word for "lost", not the brand for factory farmed chicken, hehe).

I've always been drawn to survivor stories. Real ones...I'm not talking about the reality series "Survivor," (which I am proud to admit I've never ever seen a single episode of). Survival stories are inspiring. They put things into perspective. They're entertaining stories of real people with sometimes superhuman strength, or at least strength of mind. They display the power of mind over body. Do you fight or flee when disaster strikes? Those who decide to fight can find they are capable of extraordinary things when looking death in the face. We can do things unfathomable in our day-to-day lives to keep from perishing and beat the odds. Take a page from Hannibal Lector's book? Pass the fava beans, please! Eat bugs? Lay off me, I'm starving! Saw off a limb? No problemo.

I've also never seen ABC's series "Lost", but I'd imagine that the following true story could be the basis of a French spin-off of "Lost" called "Perdu!"
A recent news story reported that two French men, Guilhem Nayral and Loic Pillois, were found after they had been reported missing in late February 2007 after a hiking trip in French Guiana. They survived by trapping insects and beetles and eating frogs and tarantulas. Insects and spiders and frogs, oh my! Read the full article here. If you read French (which I barely can), check out the family blog set up for their rescue efforts with a happy final post announcing their safe return.

Here are a few of my favorite survival stories:

He's No Ordinary Joe
Mountain climbers Joe Simpson and Simon Yaters were the first people to ever reach the summit of Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes. On their descent, Simpson fell into a crevice and broke his leg. With no food, water, or shelter, he crawled and hopped for 5 miles, subsisting on eating snow, finally collapsing near the base camp in a delirious state where he started to yell. Yates, still at the base camp, heard his cries. Simpson wrote a book entitled Touching the Void on his experience and an acclaimed documentary of the same name was made in 2003.

Teenage Girl sole survivor of a plane crash in depths of the Peruvian Jungle
I first heard this formidable story from my brother. Seventeen-year old Juliane Koepcke was flying in a Lockheed Electra on Christmas Eve, 1971, when lightning struck and she fell out of the airplane into the Peruvian Jungle. She experienced an acute heightening of senses which has been known to occur in extreme survival situations, recalling that the jungle trees looked like cauliflowers as she was falling. She awoke in the jungle, still strapped in her airplane seat. Deciding that if she stayed put, she would surely die, she set off into the jungle. She headed downhill,remembering something her father (both her parents were researchers that worked in the jungle) said about going downhill to find a river to follow, as rivers sometimes lead to civilization. Resting during the hot hours of the day and traveling at night, she survived for 11 days in a nightmare-ish state, without any shoes or survival gear, eaten alive by leeches and various tropical insects that bore into her, laying eyes, and producing worms that hatched out of her skin. She found an empty hut, and collapsed. The next day, three hunters found her and took her to a doctor. (Source: Gonzales, Laurence. Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, And Why. W.W. Norton & Company, 2003)

Man amputates his own arm
There have been several accounts of people who have severed their own limbs for the sake of survival. Here's a relatively recent, widely publicized account. Mountaineer Aron Ralston was hiking and rock climbing in Utah's Canyonlands National Park, when a boulder large enough to fill the back of a pickup truck crashed down on his right arm, pinning him in a 3-foot wide space. After 5 days, he was seriously dehydrated and had two options: free himself or die a slow death. He took out his pocket knife and cut his arm off, just under his elbow. Fashioning a tourniquette, he rappeled down to the canyon floor and hiked seven miles, all the while bleeding profusely, until he found help. He was still coherent when he was rescued. Read more in Time Magazine's May 2003 article Survival of the Fittest >>

Suggested Reading:

Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies and Why by Laurence Gonzales

The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook

I Hated "The Host!"

By putting this out there, I feel like I might be forever deemed uncool by cinephiles in the way Elaine Benes in Seinfeld was ostracized from the community when she admitted to hating The English Patient in Episode 151 (and I hated The English Patient too!).

Critics have embraced The Host, the biggest Korean box office hit ever that opened in the U.S. on March 9, 2007. It's advertised as "One of the best reviewed films of 2007" so far. Ain't It Cool News compared it to Jaws. That's going overboard...pun intended.

Here's a brief synopsis:
An American military officer orders a reluctant Korean subordinate to pour gallons of toxic chemicals down the sink, leading into the Han River, which results in a horrible mutated monster years later. The monster kidnaps a little girl, the daughter of a lazy snack kiosk worker, and the girl's family spends the rest of the film trying to find her after getting a garbled cell phone call from her. Meanwhile, there is a conspiracy that the monster is actually a host of a deadly virus, and everyone that was in contact with it are quarantined and tested on by the government.

I really did not enjoy it, and here's why in a nutshell:

I found the characters to be pathetic, unlikeable, and frustrating (I just wanted to shake the hell out of the main character, Gang-Du, convincingly played by Kang-ho Song, and scream at him to get his act together and stop bawling like a little girl every five minutes). The only character I liked was the actual little girl, the strong and heroic Hyun-Seo, impressively portrayed by Ah-sung Ko. The scenes where she is trying to escape from the monster as she is trapped in the sewers were truly thrilling.

The special effects were uneven, the monster scenes too sparse, the slapstick comedy a bit awkward despite delivering a few genuine laughs, and the long and boring scenes about the virus conspiracy and conversations between the family members added to my frustration. I won't put in any spoilers here, but the film left me feeling depressed and totally unsatisfied.

I will admit it was an interesting exercise in filmmaking. So even though I appreciated the genre-mixing, the social commentary, and how it expressed that there are many kinds of monsters we must fight, I still hated The Host.

Read the reelviews.net review by James Berardinelli; it's the only review I agree with. But check it out for yourself, maybe you'll love it and we can have a heated debate. Visit the Host's Official Site or go to Movietickets.com for local showtimes & tickets.

For a fun list of overrated films that filmgoers and that bald gold man Oscar generally liked, go to Premiere Magazine's 20 Most Overrated Movies of All Time >>