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Me and my partner, we work on the run
My computer is still dead. I am still on borrowed internet. Most of the files I care about have been salvaged and transferred. This could have been a lot worse.
Change of subject. On the strength of Shaun of the Dead, my father and I went to see Hot Fuzz tonight. It was incredibly charming, in a sort of explosive, bullet-riddled, swan-festooned way. The film starts out with the same low-key, deadpan plausibility as Shaun, introducing our protagonist as a London sergeant so dedicated and efficient he's embarrassing the rest of the service—and so precise and humorless in the performance of his duty that, reassigned to the sleepily eccentric village of Sandford, where he all but closes down the pub on his first night in town and the worst crime he can find to crack down on the next day is a spot of unauthorized hedge-clipping, he looks like the second coming of Neil Howie. His avuncular new superior advises him to loosen up, he's not in the big city anymore, is he? His new partner has learned everything he wants to know about police work from American buddy-cop flicks, the kind whose heroes regularly fire two guns while flying sideways through the air. The rest of the local constabulary isn't worth describing as such. And everyone smiles and knows everyone, the new arrival included, by name. The frustated fish out of water, the cheerily impenetrable villagers, the dark secrets underneath the pastoral trimmings—this is familiar territory, the land of the quirky country mystery. Which presently morphs, through a series of plot swings that make more or less sense at the time, into the mad love child of The Prisoner and High Plains Drifter. No, really. As the allusions and homages pile up, the weirdness escalates. And perhaps because I am unfamiliar with the genre, I did find that they piled up; I didn't feel the need to watch quite as many shootouts as the finale seemed to think I did. (And my God, has Edward Woodward ever made a movie where his character survives to the credits? Because I haven't seen it yet . . .) But even when the film loses all grip on reality, it somehow doesn't become the kind of silliness that bores. And its soundtrack contains the Kinks' "The Village Green Preservation Society," which I have to applaud. In short, never mind the hedgehogs or the floating mines, I will happily watch whatever Simon Pegg and Nick Frost do next, and I hope that will be soon. It's nice to have a new addiction.
Change of subject. On the strength of Shaun of the Dead, my father and I went to see Hot Fuzz tonight. It was incredibly charming, in a sort of explosive, bullet-riddled, swan-festooned way. The film starts out with the same low-key, deadpan plausibility as Shaun, introducing our protagonist as a London sergeant so dedicated and efficient he's embarrassing the rest of the service—and so precise and humorless in the performance of his duty that, reassigned to the sleepily eccentric village of Sandford, where he all but closes down the pub on his first night in town and the worst crime he can find to crack down on the next day is a spot of unauthorized hedge-clipping, he looks like the second coming of Neil Howie. His avuncular new superior advises him to loosen up, he's not in the big city anymore, is he? His new partner has learned everything he wants to know about police work from American buddy-cop flicks, the kind whose heroes regularly fire two guns while flying sideways through the air. The rest of the local constabulary isn't worth describing as such. And everyone smiles and knows everyone, the new arrival included, by name. The frustated fish out of water, the cheerily impenetrable villagers, the dark secrets underneath the pastoral trimmings—this is familiar territory, the land of the quirky country mystery. Which presently morphs, through a series of plot swings that make more or less sense at the time, into the mad love child of The Prisoner and High Plains Drifter. No, really. As the allusions and homages pile up, the weirdness escalates. And perhaps because I am unfamiliar with the genre, I did find that they piled up; I didn't feel the need to watch quite as many shootouts as the finale seemed to think I did. (And my God, has Edward Woodward ever made a movie where his character survives to the credits? Because I haven't seen it yet . . .) But even when the film loses all grip on reality, it somehow doesn't become the kind of silliness that bores. And its soundtrack contains the Kinks' "The Village Green Preservation Society," which I have to applaud. In short, never mind the hedgehogs or the floating mines, I will happily watch whatever Simon Pegg and Nick Frost do next, and I hope that will be soon. It's nice to have a new addiction.
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Hey, can you think of any other British film whose hero is a cop?
(You will now name a dozen and I with my insufficient knowledge of film will just shut up over here . . .)
I also caught some Prisoner vibes, but I wasn't sure.
I am almost positive that one character gives another the Village farewell—the eye-salute usually accompanied by the phrase "Be seeing you!"—at one point fairly early on. I might have to see the movie a second time to make sure.
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