Blu-ray Review: The World's End (2013)

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A postmodern version of an epic Arthurian quest lays just below the surface of as you like it hilarity in The World's End, the third and final installment of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's Three Flavors Cornetto trilogy of sorts.

Wright's own junk food hangover cure he referenced along with co-writer Simon Pegg in their slacker vs. zombie cult classic Shaun of the Dead and then devoured onscreen in their Midsomer-like village set Michael Bay actioner Hot Fuzz, it's only fitting that the hangover cure come full circle for use in a film about the ultimate pub crawl.

 

Yet just like an inebriated man with beer goggles, it's safe to say that a good many will watch The World's End drunk on the overflowing humor and only begin to peel back the layers after it's finished. And not only do Wright and Pegg seem fine with that but they damn near count on it, building a vastly intoxicating behind-the-scenes Blu-ray experience that's almost as enjoyable as the film itself.

Guiding you through every aspect of the moviemaking process in more than three hours worth of footage, the two walk you through the insanely detailed, screenplay blueprint flip-chart, pointing out all of the signs and omens audibly and visually, before giving every department and/or topic its due.

With the benefit of knowledge meeting you halfway with your sense of humor already engaged -- it's safe to say that just like the film's main character, you're sure to want to go on the pub crawl a second time with fresh eyes as opposed to solely under the influence of beer (or humor) goggles.

Centering the onscreen quest on a very different King than Arthur, we're introduced to Pegg's irresponsible, overgrown adolescence in arrested development Gary King, who first brings us up to speed wearing rose colored glasses.

 

Reliving the greatest night of his life embarking on The Golden Mile pub crawl with his four best mates after graduating high school, Gary happily idealizes the past before a comment from a fellow addiction anonymous group member plants the seed of dissatisfaction in his middle-aged life.

Having failed to make it to all twelve of the pubs that make up the Mile in the past, Gary sets off -- determined to get the old band back together... well, not literally since he'd sold their instruments to buy drugs ages ago and all of the other men are in respectable careers now.

 

Manipulating each man with various tales until they bend to his will, the five knights embark not on horseback but via his vintage car nicknamed the Beast complete with a killer late '80s/early '90s mix-tape blasting away mile after mile.

While it doesn't seem to have a lot to offer in the way of plot -- at least initially -- things start going from strange to worse shortly into their Mile journey from one Tarot-card like symbolized, ominously named pub to the next all the way through to the titular World's End.

 

From the corporations that have taken over the pubs so that they've all begun to look the same to the bizarre behavior of the locals (moving in concert -- conformity and group-think gone haywire), our heroes begin to realize things aren't like they used to be.

And even though there's always the question of whether or not you can really go home again, the widening gap between us vs. them (or the heroes vs. the "blanks" as they come to be called) come to the forefront shortly after they begin slamming down pints as embodied in an apocalyptic twist midway through the movie.

 

Realizing they must come together to save the town from annihilation one pub patron at a time, Gary's pub crawl takes on a far more epic meaning as he and the others struggle to make it to the final destination of The World's End alive.

Actually, "blanks" turns out to be a great word as issues of any prejudice can be used to literally fill-in-the-blank if you want to read deeper into the movie (and indeed, are teased in a tongue-in-cheek conclusion as well). However, just like appreciating the humor first and the layers later, the apocalyptic comedic horror smackdown soon takes center stage over anything else, dominating your brain-space for the rest of the film.

 

An enjoyable romp that intriguingly pays off on the previous two films as we discover the way the blanks multiplied has zombie-ish similarities and reveling in the same type of over-the-top action we witnessed in Fuzz, The World's End marks a surprisingly soulful conclusion to the trilogy-in-jest.

 

While I still have a special place in my heart for Fuzz, in a year over-crowded with topically similar movies of every genre, comically speaking it's The World's End rather than This is the End that I think I'd sooner grab hold of a second time for a night of apocalyptical hilarity ever after.

Related Review

Hot Fuzz

     

Text ©2013, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

Blu-ray Review: Saving Santa (2013)

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Stellar CG animation and appealingly energetic original songs help elevate this otherwise generic straight-to-Christmas-disc children's feature that centers on Bernard (voiced by The Hobbit's Martin Freeman), a well-intentioned North Pole elf with an unfortunate unintentional knack for getting in trouble.

 

An aspiring inventor, as the movie opens Bernard returns to present his latest holiday related piece of gadgetry to the revered Saint Nick affiliated elf think-tank dubbed SANTECH. Shortly thereafter, he finds his day going from bad to worse when an accidental glitch in the meeting mistakenly reveals the classified location of Santa's illustrious workshop to Tim Curry's snooping billionaire baddie with a grudge, the aptly-named Neville Baddington.

 

A middle-aged Mama's Boy to the movie's gender-flipped Grinch meets Cruella deVil hybrid (voiced by Joan Collins), Baddington is eager to steal the secret technology of Santa's ultra-fast sleigh to use in the family's worldwide delivery service empire.

Hoping to make Santa obsolete due to a longstanding childhood grudge that's fairly easy to predict to any viewer that’s been around the candy cane laden block of holiday hits of days gone by, Baddington's unwelcome arrival in the North Pole inspires Bernard to go from Reindeer Pooper Scooper to Time Traveler Super Duper.

 

Impressed by Bernard's cleverness and appetite for invention, just before they're interrupted by the ruthless businessman and his un-merry band of Santa haters, the Tim Conway voiced Claus entrusts the sleigh's intel to Bernard with the hopes he can thwart the villains and save Christmas for good.

 

Drawing obvious inspiration from Back to the Future and parallels to Groundhog Day as the movie continues, Bernard realizes he's forced to go back in time repeatedly, reliving and re-experiencing earlier events from a different vantage point. As such, Saving Santa may feel a tad too familiar and start to bore those older than grade school age midway through its otherwise succinct 83 minute running time.

Fortunately what it lacks in plot, it makes up for in song as the infectious charm of Grant Olding's original musical numbers keep toes tapping along all-the-way through the predictable Grinchian ending.

 

Similarly augmented by the film's bright colored, yet soft-edged warm holiday animation completed by the same company (Prana Studios) that was tapped by Disney to work on Planes and the wildly successful (not to mention eye-poppingly gorgeous) Tinker Bell series, Saving Santa's strengths in picture and sound come through one hundred percent on a flawless Blu-ray transfer, which plays best on systems that smooth fast-motion sequences so your eyes can remain lost in the image rather than pulled into the questionable frame rate of a slightly staccato sequence.

 

Light on extras, the Blu-ray/DVD combo pack contains two mini-featurettes that offer a glimpse into the Recording Sessions with Freeman singing what he describes as one of the "Bacharach Muppet songs," and a post-production sound byte heavy featurette that seems as though it had been made as a marketing tool to negotiate foreign rights with plenty of references to the film’s "selling points."

While it probably would've been to their benefit to serve up a few more kid-friendly gems, the obvious standout for fans of the High School Musical actress who voices the elfin love-interest to Freeman's character is an Ashley Tisdale music video for the track "Some Kind of Miracle."

 

Directed by first-time feature directors including editor turned filmmaker Aaron Seelman and former Disney character animator Leon Joosen, Saving Santa is a charming, if ultimately forgettable new stocking stuffer that's at least colorful and quirky enough to hold the attention span of little ones this holiday season.

 

Though the convoluted plot that borrows a bit too heavily from preexisting entertainment threatens to bog down the second half of Santa and weigh heavily on the goodwill served up by animation and sound, ultimately its sweetness in message and affably earnest elf hero (with a standout bit of voice-work by Freeman) manages to save it from obscurity after all.

Referenced & Related Reviews

101 & 102 Dalmatians

High School Musical Trilogy

Tinker Bell

Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue

Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure

     

Text ©2013, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

TV on DVD: The Helen West Casebook (2001)

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The cliché of “writing what you know” has become not only a truism but the most frequently dispensed advice to would be scribes attempting to pen the next blockbuster. And sure enough by doing just that, literary success has been achieved by authors including Jeffrey Archer, Joseph Finder and John Grisham who have utilized their professional backgrounds in politics, espionage, and the law (respectively) and transformed it into page-turning bestsellers that have been adapted for screens both big and small.

Yet by purely dismissing the achievements of these individuals and countless others as simply writing what they know, we're overlooking the far more important truism that needs to go right along with said advice. In the simplest terms it's paramount that before you write anything, it definitely helps if you have a knack for the written word and know how to craft a compelling plot.

Sadly this vital fact was often ignored via the '80s and '90s greatest trend of lawyers turned novelists who made readers suffer wooden dialogue and endless legalese to the point that “writing what you know” has become the type of creative writing advice that makes me shudder along with trendy phrases like “my bad,” “staycation,” and “chillax.”

Yet before I get to the Casebook in point, I must admit that I've never read the novels of two-time Dagger crime award winning and UK crown prosecutor turned scribe Frances Fyfield. Unfortunately these three weak roughly 90-100 minute long A&E televised versions of Deep Sleep, Shadow Play, and A Clear Conscience are so lifeless, predictable, and unappealing that it's fairly easy to guess why the cable channel put a stop to The Helen West Casebook just three episodes during its 2001 run.

Optioned for TV by John Davies and produced by Arrowhead Productions/UK Film and TV Production, East Wind Films Ltd and Fremantle International Distribution, The Helen West Casebook features the acclaimed and three-time recipient of the National Television Award for Most Popular Actress, Ms. Amanda Burton.

And although the series tried to build up momentum and augment the disastrous opener Deep Sleep by bringing other writers and directors on board, it's nonetheless forgettable from the start. This is especially a problem since, despite being classified as a "British Mystery" we're never in any doubt regarding the identity of the villain nor are we tossed even the slightest curve-ball in terms of plot set-up.

Still, the sole exception to the rule is in the much more successful middle episode Shadow Play which tried to make Burton's eponymous prosecutor heroine a bit more sympathetic while additionally adding in a few unexpected yet illogical twists. It nearly worked too until it soon succumbed to the same problems of the other works as everything played out according to predictable plan.

Likewise Shadow continued the creepy “ick” factor of recurring fetishes and assaults on women being the main driving plot-lines utilized throughout every single episode. Obviously as a prosecutor, Fyfield certainly dealt with crimes against women on a regular basis. Yet as a writer (or at least in these examples) she goes to this well so much that the TV series borders on bizarre exploitation and unintentional titillation for the twisted. This is most unnervingly put on display in the skin-crawling first episode which derived suspense just based on how much bad taste would be used in showing the perpetrator molest an unconscious female victim. Luckily as it featured a poor audio and video transfer, the graphic nature of this scene in particular was diminished slightly by the presentation.

Still you know it's a bad sign when as a viewer and a woman, I began feeling sympathetic to the heroine's kind police chief boyfriend when he begins a flirtation with a shy stranger while out of town with his colleague played by The Office UK's Martin Freeman. Thus, overall this slim-packaged set from Acorn Media won't convert many of us to become interested in picking up the novels of Fyfield.

With works that aren't quite mysteries and definitely aren't suspenseful (at least not in an equal opportunity cat-and-mouse way), these by-the-numbers time-wasters are televised proof that sometimes the last thing you should do is write what you know... or adapt it like it's a straightforward Casebook.

Text ©2009, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com
Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited.

The Good Night

Director:
Jake Paltrow

We all flirt but there are often lines that seem to change with each relationship as to what constitutes cheating. Is going out for coffee with an opposite gender friend cheating? How about dinner with an ex? What about those e-mail correspondences that are getting more flirtatious? Do you find it’s easier to chat with an attractive coworker than your mate in the morning? While these questions can lead to more revelations about yourself and your relationship since they all include boundaries that may be easily crossed, how does it fit into the mix if you dream cheat? That is, if in your dreams you have an affair with a perfect stranger that actually feels more like love while embarking on a fantasy relationship you look more forward to than the perfunctory “good night” and “I love you” said to your partner.

For Gary (Martin Freeman), this is the situation he finds himself in fairly quickly into writer/director Jake Paltrow’s feature film debut. In a beginning that feels ike a British version of VH1 Behind the Music, we learn a bit of the background of former Britpop musician Gary who, now in his thirties, resides in New York with his nagging, frumpy, dark-haired girlfriend of seven years Dora (played by Jake’s sister Gwyenth Paltrow). When we first meet him, Gary is busily eking out an unsatisfying career scoring commercial jingles for an advertising agency with his former band-mate turned boss Paul (Simon Pegg). Although he’s approaching an early midlife crisis, unlike his womanizing, lecherous married friend Paul who is currently having an affair with a woman he describes (as only Pegg can) as “sort of tall and hot, in a kind of short, ugly way,” Gary saves his fantasies for himself and finds them indulged in a bizarre way one evening when he dreams of a gorgeous, beguiling stranger (Penelope Cruz) who, speaking to him only in subtitles, tells him that if he pays close attention and shuts his eyes he “can feel a heartbeat” in her lips.

Intoxicated by this imagined encounter, Gary’s ego is given a boost as he decides to explore the field of dream interpretation and lucid dreaming, visiting a new age bookstore before he meets up with a dream coach in the form of a group run by Mel (Danny DeVito). Gary, who decides to avoid the small clique of fellow dreamers all hoping to control their dreams as if they were listening to their favorite song without an ending before the Kendo practice interrupts them, hires Mel for private consultation. Soon their sessions enable him to continue his affair with Cruz that soon takes over his own waking life as he begins darkening and soundproofing his bedroom for better dreaming conditions before Dora is only too happy to have an excuse to leave for an Italian two week business trip. Quickly startled into thinking that fate is the reason for his dreams when he sees Cruz’s likeness adorning fashion ads on city buses, Paul takes it upon himself to arrange an introduction but will the reality be as good as his dream or was Gary just trying to find a way to avoid his own relationship that may be way past the expiration date?

A fascinating premise that would have done better to be played more for laughs than the downbeat drama as penned by Paltrow that concludes into a dark cheat of an ending that feels a bit rushed and disappointing, the film also suffers from as Hollywood Reporter writer Kirk Honeycut noted, Paltrow’s decision to make “ever character thoroughly unlikable” or as he corrects, “actually pathetic would be a better adjective.” With such a brooding tone to the film with self-involved and cringe-worthy characters that may have been more successful on the page, there is little to recommend the work despite the originality of Paltrow’s idea and his unquestionable gift for direction as the film offers plenty of gorgeous scenes that, on their own, show his promise but compounded with the rest result in an uneven mess. This being said, it's nonetheless suitable for the same audiences who found themselves entranced by the similarly themed fellow Penelope Cruz vehicle, Cameron Crowe’s Vanilla Sky (based on the superior Abre los Ojos also starring Cruz).

Hot Fuzz

Related Review:
The World's End

Director: Edgar Wright

Bad Brits, Bad Brits, Whatcha Gonna Do?

In this inventive spoof of American buddy cop films, the Shaun of the Dead duo (Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright) reunite for Hot Fuzz bringing their distinctive blend of hyper cuts, ironic dialogue matched with contradictory images and witty banter to a film that I liked even more than their previous one.

Pegg stars as Nicholas Angell, the literal "Goody Two Shoes" London police officer (the song even plays during his introduction) whose arrest record is 400% higher than any other officer in the entire department. In the simplest terms, the prodigy with the badge is not only a criminal’s worst nightmare but that of his coworkers as well and, tired of looking like slackers, they give him a promotion and send him off to a country department in Sanford, a town with low crime but increasingly deadly accidents that Nicholas quickly believes to be foul play, making him unpopular in his new community.

Of course, this isn’t helped by the fact that on his first night there, he arrests what seems to be half the town for various offenses, only to realize that one of the men he apprehended is to be his new partner, the eager and hilarious Danny Butterman (Nick Frost), son of the Inspector who plies his partner with questions about carnage and danger.

In a humorous play on the homoerotic subtext of cop films made in the states, Butterman invites Angell in for a night of drinking together on the sofa during a cozy double feature of Point Break and Bad Boys II that seems all the more entertaining after discovering on IMDb that early drafts of Hot Fuzz had given Angell a love interest who was cut from the shooting script but lots of her original dialogue was given instead to Butterman “often without any changes.”

Featuring great bits by Martin Freeman, Bill Nighy, Steve Coogan and two nearly unrecognizable cameos by Cate Blanchett and Peter Jackson, the film also offers up two juicy roles for Timothy Dalton as a sadistic grocery store owner and Jim Broadbent as the Inspector unsure of how to deal with his new employee, other than making sure he enforces the swear box policy. A movie that, like Mike Judge’s Office Space, is sure to draw an even bigger following on DVD, Hot Fuzz is best shared with friends, especially those up on their 80’s and 90’s American cop movies.