Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
Okay... I know we’ve spent a good chunk of this year talking about this film, but once you get a peek at it, you’ll understand. This is the sort of film that you can’t fully appreciate it if you’ve only seen a downloaded DVD rip, so even if you’re one of those impatient souls who have watched it via the Internet, you need to see it in the theater. It’s shot in glorious John Carpenter-esque scope, a full 2.35:1, and like most great comedies, you need to see it with a packed house to fully appreciate just how well it works.
And now, thanks to AICN, the Arclight Cinemas in Hollywood, and the fine folks at Focus Features, you’re going to get your chance. We’re going to be screening the film, along with a few surprises, and director Edgar Wright is going to be there with Simon Pegg, star of this film as well as SPACED, the series where he and Wright perfected the droll sense of movie geek humor that makes SHAUN so much damn fun. I’m going to do some Q&A with the guys, and this’ll be a great chance for you all to meet some folks who are going to be a major part of film comedy in the years ahead.
So... wanna come? Looks like we filled it to overflowing at this point, so if you're on the RSVP list, make sure you show up early so that you can get a great seat. Just so you don't forget, here are the details:
AICN presents a special advance screening of SHAUN OF THE DEAD
Q&A with Edgar Wright (writer/director) and Simon Pegg (writer/actor) to follow the screening
Tuesday, August 10th at 7PM
ArcLight Theater
6360 West Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA
Seating is limited and you MUST ARRIVE EARLY to guarantee your seat.
We’re working on all sorts of things to make this a night to remember, and I’d love for you guys to all be a part of it. I know it’s just a week away, but whatever plans you already have that night... forget ‘em. This is going to be the most fun you can have in an LA movie theater that night. I thought I’d go ahead and reprint my review (it was part of a much longer column that you shouldn’t have to wade through) just to remind you what we’re talking about.
It’s EVIL DEAD 2 funny.
It’s AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON funny.
And I can’t wait to share it with you.
It’s a good time to be a zombie fan right now. No question about it. In fact, I can’t think of a time when the genre was getting more high-profile love at the multiplex. Last year’s 28 DAYS LATER was more of a virus movie than a full-fledged zombie movie, but there’s no denying the enormous debt Garland and Boyle owed to George Romero. This year, Zack Snyder’s DAWN OF THE DEAD remake is a surprisingly okay movie. I didn’t love it, but I thought it worked well in certain stretches. There are some great moments, and I’ll give credit to both Snyder and James Gunn for the way they’ve tried to make their own movie while staying true to the general outline of the original Romero film. It was a hell of a lot more successful than last year’s miserable TEXAS CHAINSAW remake, and I’ll bet it ends up being lots better than the cheapie DAY OF THE DEAD remake that Richard Rubenstein is rushing into production at the moment.
But if you’re a real fan of the genre, the big news of the moment is that SHAUN OF THE DEAD is coming, and it deserves all the hype it’s already gotten in the UK press and online.
I first heard about this film from Edgar Wright around the same time that he set up his deal to make it at Working Title films. He sent me a poster mock-up that his brother had done in the style of an Italian poster. My manager had gotten me hooked on SPACED about six months before that, pushing a stack of tapes on me and insisting that I watch them, and word had evidently gotten back to Edgar that I loved his show. Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson struck me as original comic voices, performers who didn’t just write material to show themselves off, but who also were smart and generous enough to write great roles for their entire supporting cast. One of the things that made SPACED such a treat was the way the show effortlessly referenced doznes of geek-favorite films and TV shows and games, both with narrative references as well as sly visual gags. Pegg’s character, Tim, was a proto-geek, vaguely employed and Playstation addicted, and it was nearly impossible not to identify with him while watching.
Thanks to BBC America and DVD, everybody’s seen THE OFFICE by now, but music clearance issues have kept SPACED out of circulation on this side of the Atlantic. That’s why Edgar went to great lengths to show AICN staffers the film two weeks ago in Austin. We’ve been looking forward to this for a while. We ran an open casting call for zombie extras for the movie that pretty much melted a mail server. We were one of the few American outlets to have actually seen SPACED, so we had some rooting interest in seeing how the film turned out.
Short answer: a classic. Go ahead and clear some shelf space for the inevitable and covet-worthy DVD release of the movie. You will love the movie. You will end up watching and rewatching the movie. And if you don’t, chances are you and I have never agreed on anything. This is one of those comedies so great and self-assured that I can’t imagine any audience dour enough to resist it. Edgar Wright is officially too cool to hang out with me. He’s got one of the most original comic voices as a director since the debut of Wes Anderson with BOTTLE ROCKET.
Right away, as soon as we meet Shaun, Pegg’s character in the film, it’s obvious that he’s not just playing Tim again. He’s not as bright. He’s not as cynical. When confronted by his girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield) and her friends David (Dylan Moran) and Dianne (Lucy Davis), there’s not much Shaun can say to defend himself or his behavior. It’s not even that Shaun’s a bad guy. He’s not. He’s just inert, stuck in a rut. And he’s insanely, incredibly loyal to his best friend, the source of all his troubles, Ed.
Oh... how do we even start to discuss Ed, played with a sort of shambling magnificence by Nick Frost? Ed is one of those characters that doesn’t just steal a movie; they provide the movie with a reason to be. Ed deserves to be embraced as a comedy icon on par with Belushi’s Bluto or Turturro’s Jesus. He’s the best friend who Shaun keep around for sheer entertainment value, and it’s Ed’s pot selling, his never paying rent, his belligerent sense of humor that keeps causing Shaun all the friction in his life. He’s Shaun’s anchor, in both good and bad ways. One the one hand, no one speaks in shorthand with Shaun the same way. They’ve got this great natural secret language that is the source of much of the film’s best humor. There’s real poignancy to the way Pegg and Frost play off each other by film’s end. Pete (Peter Serafinowicz), who shares the flat with Shaun, may be fed up with Ed, and so is Liz, but Shaun still can’t cut him loose. Pete’s at the end of his rope, tired of paying for everything, and there’s a great early showdown between Pete and Shaun that really sums Ed up.
Shaun’s so busy dealing with the whole Ed situation that he hardly has any focus left over to spend on his mum, Barbara (Penelope Wilton), much to the consternation of Shaun’s stepdad, Philip (LOVE ACTUALLY’s Bill Nighy). Is it any wonder he barely has the energy left over to do an entirely mediocre job managing an electronics store? Based on all of this, you can understand how Shaun just doesn’t notice when the world ends.
Well, let’s be fair. It is with a whimper instead of a bang, and it’s just that he doesn’t notice at first. When the living dead actually start showing up in the garden, Shaun and Ed start to get the idea that something might be wrong. And the more the world falls apart about them, the more they step up, snapping out of their lethargy. The way they rise to the occasion is the reason they are soon going to find themselves as beloved as Ash by fandom. They are remarkable reluctant comic heroes as well realized as BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA’s Jack Burton or even the various Ghostbusters. By the time Pegg’s gone full-blown DEER HUNTER late in the movie, fans will already be planning their Halloween costumes for this year.
The rest of the cast all manages to shine to varying degrees. Lucy Davis is very different here than she is as Dawn on THE OFFICE, and I must say... I’m smitten. Yes, Shaun’s in love with Liz, and Kate Ashfield (who I remember as one of the things I liked in Norrington’s THE LAST MINUTE) does a nice job here overall. She just isn’t as adorable as Davis, and there’s this great sort of just-below-the-surface something going on between her and Shaun that actually had me hoping that he was going to switch girlfriends by the end of the film, leaving Liz to the long-pining David. Penelope Wilton is very good as Shaun’s mother, and even though Bill Nighy has a small role, he makes the most of it, with a final punchline that’s even funnier in hindsight. Dylan Moran (known for his fine work in English bookstores in productions like BLACK BOOKS and NOTTING HILL) isn’t my favorite performer in the film, but his big moments really pay off, and it’s more an issue of me not liking David than it is any fault of the actor. Even if you don’t know Peter Serafinowicz by sight, close your eyes, and there’s no missing the voice of Darth Maul. This big, younger thug version of Stephen Fry makes me laugh a lot, and has some stand-out moments.
I’m not going to describe any of the rest of the film. I don’t want to give away any of the jokes. Like all of the best film comedy, that sense of discovery is part of the joy of the film. As these great scenes play out and the low-key charm of the dialogue works on the audience, there’s that great exhilarating charge that comes when a movie’s really hitting on all cylinders. You know the feeling... you start laughing as soon as the film begins, and it just keeps building and getting better and better, and by the end, you’re sorry it’s over. You want to see it again. In fact, you’re already thinking about who you want to show it to first. And it also knows the rule of great horror-comedy, which is that the horror has to actually be scary in order for the film to work. The reason AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON felt like a lightning bolt strike to the forehead when it was released was because no one had ever managed to mix the naturalistic dialogue, the dark humor, and the flat-out spattergore horror before, not like that. Films like DEAD ALIVE and EVIL DEAD 2 are undeniable classics of the genre because of how well they walk that line. Personally, I was bored silly by last year’s much-touted UNDEAD. I admire the Spierig Brothers for making something that looked so nice on such a low budget, but I flat-out hated their lead actors, and I spent most of the movie waiting for something either funny or scary to happen. Instead, it’s repetitive and flat. This is not that kind of film. There’s no comparing the two. The difference is that Wright’s made a real movie, with a pulse, and not just an intentional cult item that drowns in its own style.
There are any number of reasons why I adore this film. First, there’s just plain surprise. SPACED is, as I’ve said before, a very good show, and part of its appeal is the very cinematic style of Edgar Wright. Even so, I wasn’t expecting a film this confident from him the first time out. Pegg and Wright co-wrote this script, and they’ve done something incredibly difficult, making it look very easy in the process. Wright’s visual style has been unleashed by moving from the small to the big screen, and his use of the full 2.35:1 widescreen frame rivals John Carpenter, as high a compliment as I can pay. Credit David M. Dunlap with the film’s exceptionally slick and accomplished look. He shot a sweet little Lili Taylor film that I saw at Sundance ’01 called JULIE JOHNSON, but he’s got a long career as a second-unit D.P. and as a camera op. He’s worked on big-budget fare like this summer’s THE STEPFORD WIVES remake and CHANGING LANES, A BEAUTIFUL MIND, THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS, HANNIBAL, FORREST GUMP, MEN IN BLACK, AIR FORCE ONE, Coppola’s DRACULA, and on and on. You really look back, though, and you’ll see some cool credits that really qualify him for this job. He was a camera operator on RAISING ARIZONA, one of the most fluid and kinetic film comedies ever shot, and on AFTER HOURS, which has that same sort of sleep, propulsive feel. Even further back, you’ll see that he got his start on films like ZOMBIE ISLAND MASSACRE and CHUD, so the class and assurance of his work here brings him triumphantly full-circle. Wright is also an expert editor, and his work with Chris Dickens is surgically precise. He uses smash cuts to hilarious effect, and when he cuts to music, it’s as infectious as the best moments of John Landis or Alan Parker.
Which reminds me... the soundtrack is available now in the UK, and it’s fantastic. Still, don’t even bother to pick it up and read the track listing if you haven’t seen the film yet. You don’t want to know what songs are in the film ahead of time. There are two Queen songs that are perfectly chosen and placed, a rap classic that made me grin from ear-to-ear, a hysterically perfect Smiths tune, a perfectly eerie Specials track, and some beautifully-used catalog tracks and samples sure to make any Romero fan squeal in glee. The CD itself features tons of dialogue from the movie, so you don’t want to hear it until you’ve seen it. Once you have, I dare you to stop listening to it. It’s taken up permanent residence in my car’s CD player now, supplanting even the KILL BILL VOL. 2 soundtrack.
Focus Features has the distribution rights in the U.S., and they certainly don’t need to worry about the “Englishness” of the film. Anyone who speaks geek will fall head over heels in love with it, and I think it has a real shot at being a mainstream hit as well, thanks in large part to the films that have been laying the groundwork over the last year or so. Audiences will understand a lot of the little touches they might otherwise not get, even people who aren’t lifelong fans of Romero’s classic original trilogy. If you are a lifelong fan, then there are a million little easter egg style jokes peppered throughout the film, and I’m sure repeat viewings of the film will turn up even more of them.
This is a film that was obviously made by people who are deeply, drunkenly in love with this genre, and that affection is impossible to resist. I hoped this would be good when I flew to Austin to see it, staying less than 24 hours. I went specifically so I could meet Edgar face-to-face, eat some flesh with him at the Salt Lick Barbecue, and see the movie at midnight. I had no idea it was going to be great. Hats off to all involved.
Everyone who sees this film falls under its spell. Some of the biggest names in genre films around the world are rabid SHAUN fans now. Even George Romero adores it. Here’s your chance to see it for yourself. I hope we see you there!
"Moriarty" out.
