| about
trismugistus.com
and digital-bondage.net
are my web sites.
trismugistus.com
is where I upload my anime, manga and tv&film reviews,
and also where I occasionally post short stories and longer
works I've written.
digital-bondage.net
is my wallpaper site and provides anime, manga and other
desktop wallpapers in a variety of resolutions. I also
have a few tutorials and some resources, such as psds
for you to download.
I also run a site called scan-city.org,
which provides scans from the latest japanese anime magazines
for you to download and use in your wallpapers.
You can also read my blog here
or check out my anime list here. |
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| details |
| The Genre: Action/Comedy |
| The Format: DVD (2 disk special edition) |
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| The plot: Nicholas Angel is the finest cop London
has to offer, with an arrest record 400% higher
than any other officer on the force. He's so good;
he makes everyone else look bad. As a result, Angel's
superiors send him to a place where his talents
won't be quite so embarrassing - the sleepy and
seemingly crime-free village of Sandford.
Once there, he is partnered with the well-meaning
but overeager police officer Danny Butterman. The
son of amiable Police Chief Frank Butterman, Danny
is a huge action movie fan and believes his new
big-city partner might just be a real-life "bad
boy," and his chance to experience the life
of gunfights and car chases he so longs for. Angel
is quick to dismiss this as childish fantasy and
Danny's puppy-like enthusiasm only adds to Angel's
growing frustration
However, as a series of grisly accidents rocks
the village, Angel is convinced that Sandford is
not what it seems and as the intrigue deepens, Danny's
dreams of explosive, high-octane, car-chasing, gun
fighting and all-out action seem more and more like
a reality. It's time for these small-town cops to
break out some big-city justice. |
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| opinion |
| I wasn't really looking forward to watching
Hot Fuzz.
Which, considering how much of a fan of both Spaced
and Shaun of the Dead I am, is perhaps an unusual
opening gambit for this review. However, there were
two basic issues I had.
The first is one I've mentioned before in some
of my reviews--hype. I have an odd reaction to hype.
If I'm exposed to too much hype, I generally end
up feeling let down by whatever it is that's been
hyped. I don't know why this is, it just is.
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There are two solutions to this. First,
I can try to 'get in early', before the hype
can have any real affect on me, which, to
be honest, kinda chafes with my whole 'lazier
than a lounge chair on dope' personality.
Or second, I can wait for it all to die down,
give it a couple of months and then take a
look, which is way easier, so I normally do
that. And hence the tardiness of this review.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, the second
reason for not looking forward to Hot Fuzz...
How can I explain this?
Basically, it was a bit like desperately
not wanting to watch it, so that I could avoid
it being a disappointment.
Yeah, I know, that doesn't really make any
sense does it? So I'll try to explain a bit
better. As I mentioned, I'm an enormous fan
of Spaced. Spaced was a TV series that was
on channel 4 in around 1999-2000. And it was
about my life.
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I mean, it wasn't about my life; it was sort
of a proxy-life sort of thing. Spaced was about
being a nerdy, not-quite-grown-up-but-not-quite-a-kid
twenty-something, and that was me. It was crammed
full of pop culture references and was as funny
as hell. It was also filmed in an innovative way,
had a great cast of characters... I could gush for
hours, but you get the jyst.
Then came Shaun of the Dead (oddly, I have memories
of writing a review of Shaun, but I can't see it
on the site, so I guess I didn't) and this too was
awesome. It was like Spaced (almost literally--one
of the best Spaced episodes is zombie-tastic too),
but longer and with a bigger budget. And it was
awesome.
This, finally, brings me on to Hot Fuzz. With all
that expectation I had built up, if Hot Fuzz had
been a stinker I'd probably have cried.
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But, thankfully, it isn't. I mean, if I'm honest,
it's not quite as good as Shaun, but it is still
pretty damn good.
One of the hallmarks of Spaced and Shaun was that
of treading a fine line between parody and homage.
The intent, generally, seems to be to both point
out how silly something is, but also acknowledge
how cool it is too. So, for example, in Shaun we
had the cool blending of a zombie apocalypse movie
and a romantic comedy.
Both of these film genres were parodied and homaged
in equal measure at the same time--they run someone
over whilst driving to the pub, but it turns out
to be a zombie so that's okay then; they pretend
to be zombies to get to the pub; the whole notion
of going to the pub as a safe haven when the zombie
apocalypse comes... etc.
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For Hot Fuzz, the target is action films,
especially the buddy-buddy type of action
film, and it's all done very well. Just about
every clichéd action moment is covered,
and very humorously too.
Part of what makes Hot Fuzz work (and what
made Shaun and Spaced work too) is the transposing
of the big Hollywood film into a more prosaic,
small British setting. The central conceit
is "well it doesn't happen in real life,
but if it did, then let's do it like that."
It's not an original idea, obviously, but
it's done so well and so cleverly that it
makes the whole movie work.
The only real problem with Hot Fuzz is that
it's a little bit too long. However, the strange
thing is that this length is also sort of
what makes it work. You see, there's a flip
point in Hot Fuzz--the first section of the
movie is all about setting up this notion
that Nick Angel is the big-city cop stranded
in an uneventful little English village and
playing this for laughs.
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The flip comes when we see that really the big
action movie that our big-city cop should be in
is actually going on too, it was just hidden beneath
the surface. The reason this flip works so well
is because we spend so much time not knowing this
before we get there.
In other words, although it makes it too long,
if we'd gotten too quickly to the second section
of the film, this flip would have lost its impact.
In terms of the package itself, there are quite
literally more extras than you could sensibly shake
a large stick at. Continuing the trend from Shaun,
we have a plethora of commentaries, as well as the
blogs that were on the website, storyboards, making-ofs,
the return of the humorous plot-holes bit last seen
on the Shaun disk, and, well, tonnes of other stuff
too. It literally took me days to get through it
all, and if that doesn't make the package great
value for money, I don't know what does. |
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| summary |
| The Summary: Just a bit too long maybe, but
thankfully very funny. |
| The Score: 4/5 |
| The Pictures:
(click for larger versions) |
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