Sgt. Angle Reporting for Duty!

At ease, fresh fish!

First, let me say that I was appalled by last weekend’s weak show of solidarity and support for Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World! You’re spending  your time and money on what, Vampire’s Suck ?! Really??! You’ve made some bad decisions, maggot…real bad. Get with the program, mount up, and sit your butts down in the theater!

Now, onto business. This past weekend, we were given a hearty dose of blood, gore, and frightful waters in Alexandre Aja’s Piranha 3D, a semi-reboot, semi-sequel to the popular Joe Dante Cult film Piranha, from 1978. The original story (scripted by indie-darling John Sayles) told of a school of piranha’s let loose on a small town lake, and was meant as a B-style parody of JAWS. Roger Corman produced it — as only Corman would — and that film involved dozens of practical effects, from rubber fish tied to fishing lines to a simple hotel waitress standing in as a “boob double” for actress Heather Menzies.

Aja’s remake is brutal in many ways — overuse of CGI, terrible 3D conversion, gratuitous and plentiful nudity, hundreds of gallons of fake blood. And it’s also glorious — Christopher Lloyd doing a moderately watered down Doc Brown reincarnation, Richard Dreyfus in a classic and referential cameo, and Ving Rhames going medieval on killer fish. But even the water ballet by two naked women is hilarious only for a few seconds, then it just becomes a tedious distraction from, you know, the gore.

At the end of the day, after seeing Piranha 3D, I still could’ve walked right along the shores of the ocean and taken a dip, had I been off duty. The problem with this Piranha is that not enough is done to scare me. The script doesn’t have an underlying agenda, nor are any of the deaths filled with spine-tingling suspense. They’re all gruesome, the sort of way that the bloody kills of a Friday the 13th movie are gruesome — that is, without tension. With no tension comes no fear the minute you walk out of the theater.

There are a few “make-you-jump” moments — a bloody hand darting out of the water, a penis-less dude spurting his last bloody breath — but director Aja really needs to work out the meaning of “suspense” — odd, considering his breakout film was titled High Tension. Piranhas dash through dark waters and towards kicking feet at casual speeds. Most of the chomping that occurs in the first half of the film is of one person at a time. When the body count truly starts to climb, we’re left with mangled gore — body parts that become Spaghetti-o’s rather than recognizeable as humans. This effect was put to much better use in Peter Jackson’s early film Dead Alive. But Jackson had the foresight to frontload his movie’s setting in a bizarro-small town setting, and new how to play to the comedy. The actors in Piranha try to under or oversell their parts, and it’s sad that they weren’t given specific quirks that could’ve helped set the tone (something done to better effect in a movie like Scream).

Granted, we’re not talking high art here. We’re talking B-Movie schlock — get to the scares, character be damned! Then show me the schlock! Guts and gore and chomping CG fish will only take us to the edge of what your movie “wants to be”. You have to hand me the cheese on a silver platter. I don’t care about the teen kid’s high school crush, and I’m kind of sick of the whole sheriff’s department being full of tough folks who never made it out of the small town. Overkill is too narrow a concept to describe the level of gratuitous breasts in Piranha 3D — and this is coming from a man with more guts than Gianna Michaels’ breasts have surface area.

There’s been a lot of chatter that Piranha 3D is a movie that “knows what it is”, but it doesn’t. This isn’t a grindhouse flick, nor is it even an exploitation film, in the truest sense of the word. It’s a cheap imitation of B-grade horror, that fails to scare. However, I will admit that the amount of creative kills is quite remarkable in the scheme of things. As is the underwater lesbian ballet provided by Kelly Brooke and Riley Steele.

Perhaps the one missing element from JAWS…

The unbalanced ratio of scares to gratuitousness displayed in Piranha got me thinking of another great scare picture, told with incredible skill and depth, yet still able to scare the bejeezus out of the audience — JAWS (The original mama piranha, if you will).

Now, before you sound off about the differences in these two movies’ intentions, and the (attempted) exploitation aspect of Piranha vs. the serious artistic merits of Jaws, let me remind you that I’m not saying one film is better than the other. Piranha 3D obviously offers up a large dose of gore and blood, along with sex and c-grade jokes — all aspects of a movie to enjoy with a dozen loaded partygoers on a Friday night.

JAWS, on the other hand, will make you think twice about going in the water, and yet also tosses us a bone — literally — or two in the gore department.

My main point here is that you cannot compare apples to kumquats without at least acknowledging the context of where you pick the fruit. I’ve seen people get angry — angryyyyy — when talking about which Dawn of the Dead is better, Romero’s brilliant original or Zach Snyder’s career-making remake five years ago. One was labored and offered up strong social commentary as well as gruesome scares, while the other was fast-paced, unrelenting in jump-scares, and just as disgusting — but also included inside jokes and throwbacks to the original. Piranha 3D does the same, in its’ cameo offerings and the mocking of Girls Gone Wild’s Joe Francis via Jerry O’Connell.

I guess what it comes down to is that, however you play within the genre, know your part and play it to the fullest extreme. Piranha 3D is fun and brutally gruesome, but you’ve got to at least try the practical effects and utilize suspense. How hard is it to create suspense — real tension, I’m talking — when thousands of deadly piranha are swimming towards a whole lake full of drunk Spring Breakers?

Now get your asses back in the field and go see SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD!!!

You are dismissed!

Sgt. Angle

Sgt. Angle Reporting for Duty!

Ladies and gentlemen, the other night we were graced with the glorious presence of the prestigious Movie Awards. Along with the usual candy-cane hubbub that comes with MTV, we were also graced with some exclusive clips of upcoming movies. Because your sergeant is especially tired this morning, you’re going to have to bear with an exceptionally short session.

1. Twilight whatever: Never gonna watch it. And you can’t make me. And Kristen Stewart is beyond awkward. Reading the series must be worse, according to this site. In fact, this story drives me so nuts, I’m not even going to post the trailer that debuted on the Movie Awards.

2. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Aside from Lord of the Rings, this is the only true film series that might beat the test of time — and don’t bother trying with the Star Wars argument, Lucas already destroyed our patience with his effing prequel scenarios…Lookit HP in all of its’ wonderful gloriousnes, and if you still don’t want to see it, tell me what’s wrong with you, soldier.

3. Next up from the MA 2010 pre-sow broadcast is a new clip from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Michael Cera, Anna Kendrick…gimme more!

4. We were also given a taste of Shyamalan sauce tossed around with hot air in The Last Airbender. This is one I’m still on the fence about. Either I’ll be wishy washy and not see it, or I’ll see it and look for everything wrong with it. I wish there was another option.

Finally, you should really download to your internal hard drive everything Tom Cruise can do, from Risky Business pants-less dancing to male dominance motivation to fat-suit grooving. Les grossman, we salute you.

Until next week…you are dismissed!

Sgt. Angle

Sgt. Angle Reporting for Duty!

Before today’s briefing, be sure you check out Semantink’s countdown to Wondercon here. This information is by no means top secret, so be sure to recruit some new readers on the double.

And now this:

Last week, the cinematic world was stricken with laughter by screenwriter J.D. Shapiro’s apology for the worst movie of the decade (Battlefield Earth). Is this the first time a writer/creator has apologized for putting pen to paper? Probably not, but I digress.

Also this past week, the trailer for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World premiered, and it’s quite a doozy. Such a doozy, in fact, that it fits right in time with today’s Film Creator Spotlight on the co-writer and director of the comic adaptation, EDGAR WRIGHT.

How must one begin? To start with, you can get your own brief summary here, suffice it to say that Wright has been making home movies since he was a child in Somerset and/or Dorset, England (isn’t that how it always starts?). Just before he met his collaborators for most of the next decade, Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes nee Stevenson, Wright directed an indie feature spoofing Spaghetti Westerns called A Fistful of Fingers.

Wright then went on to direct a couple of British TV series, including “Asylum” which co-starred and was co-written by Jessica Hynes nee Stevenson and Simon Pegg. Pegg and Hynes would then become the creative force behind “Spaced,” the television series which launched Edgar onto the international stage, and solidified his style as well as his contribution to the genre. Wright uses quick cuts, wiping edits, and cinematic techniques that are still fresh to television comedies. His shows and films contain multiple homages to movies past and present, so much so that he often includes an “homage-o-meter” track to his DVD releases.

“Spaced” revolved around two twentysomethings in England struggling to pay rent, find work and love, and resist growing out of their childish ways. Pegg plays an artist just dumped by his girlfriend, works in a comic-book store and who has an extensive love of obscure films, paintball, and nights out drinking. Hynes plays a freelance writer moving out of a squatters’ flat. They find each other and move in together, in a building with a drunk landlady and an eccentric artist. And here’s where Nick Frost enters, playing Pegg’s best friend Mike who was kicked out of the territorial army and is essentially a cuddly die-hard soldier.

The series often involves slick references to pop culture and overly profound discussions of events (Star Wars plays a rather large role in many an episode) that usually stemmed from, or led to, drug or drink induced sleep or laughter. The show also references, either in words or style, everything from Robocop to Pulp Fiction, Dawn of the Dead to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. (*if you get the chance and money to purchase the entire series on DVD, there are two commentary tracks, one from years ago with Wright, Pegg, Hynes and Frost, and a new track with contributions from Kevin Smith, Quentin Tarantino, Patton Oswalt and Diablo Cody).

After the success of “Spaced,” Wright and Pegg co-wrote Shaun of the Dead, their rom-com meets zombies film, paying homage to Romero and Raimi while capturing that sense of loss in twentysomethings that the team has become known for. Dead reached $30 million worldwide, and did fairly well on DVD. It furthered Wright’s reliance on editing to induce laughs as well as scares, and catapulted him into the friend circle of Tarantino, Kevin Smith, and Eli Roth, thus allowing Wright to contribute to Grindhouse with the faux trailer to Don’t.

Next came Hot Fuzz (a personal favorite of mine) wherein, once again, Pegg and Wright wrote the script, and Nick Frost played the reliable best friend to real life best friend Simon Pegg. This time around, Wright tackled the buddy cop and action movie genre, referencing over 120 films, and reading Roger Ebert’s book of Hollywood cliches, to be sure to hit all the familiar cliches.

Wright’s love of all genres of music and his respect for the history of filmmaking bring a lively, personal touch to his films’ music and scene structure. His website features, among the obligatory self and movie news, a daily photo update from the set of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, introducing cast and crew members and revealing a little at a time of the set and the world of the story.

SPVTW trailer (linked at the top) debuted to a fury of love last week, and is now something more to look forward to this year after April’s release of Kick-Ass. Michael Cera plays Scott Pilgrim, a young guy who falls for the girl of his dreams, and must fight her seven evil ex-boyfriends in order to be able to date her. (For more on the Scott Pilgrim adaptation, read this article at Chud.) This movie also indicates Wright’s shift away from constant collaboration with Simon Pegg after a decade, so it’ll be interesting to see if the style remains strictly in the footage, or if Wright’s scripting abilities are the constant more than anything else.

Following that, Wright has been rumored to be covering the Ant-Man adaptation, as well as The World’s End, the final film in the ‘Blood and Ice Cream trilogy’ started with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. This time around, the team will cover disaster movies.

Edgar Wright has been the director to watch over the last decade, and one can only assume a positive direction for his career after Scott Pilgrim, arguably his highest-profile project yet. By the end of the year, he should become more than a niche attraction at the movies, much the same way Tarantino exploded after Pulp Fiction.

I had the pleasure of attending two “Edgar Wright related events” in Los Angeles, one was a fun Q & A for the Hot Fuzz sneak peak, and the other was a double-feature at the New Beverly Cinema during his “The Wright Stuff” festival (occasionally, the New Beverly will allow guest filmmakers to curate two weeks of films, hopefully bringing in special guests). The night I attended, he screened An American Werewolf in London. John Landis was there for a Q & A, and in the audience were Eli Roth and Quentin Tarantino, who at one point stopped in the middle of the aisle after grabbing some popcorn to watch a particularly fun scene in the film.

Edgar Wright certainly knows the right movies and scenes that trigger a moviegoers sense of enjoyment. As a director, he certainly does have the Wright Stuff (awkward pun hit!).

If you enjoy comedy, watch an Edgar Wright movie. If you enjoy feel good film and/or television, watch an Edgar Wright production.

Oh, and here’s a Pizza Hut commercial he directed during a brief brush with commercialism.

You are now dismissed!

Sgt. Angle