Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright of the “hugely successful romzomcom” Shaun of the Dead announce the cast and details of their next project, the buddy-cop movie Hot Fuzz. Pegg will play a London cop who gets sent out to the sticks (Somerset), where he’s teamed up with new partner Nick Frost (also of Shaun.) Around to stir up trouble for this dynamic duo are a murderer’s row of British hams, including Jim Broadbent, Steve Coogan, Martin Freeman, and Timothy Dalton.
Tag: Steve Coogan
Coogan’s Bluff.
I’ve never read Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (and was surprised to discover that this pre-mo fellow Sterne apparently beat out overhyped authors like David Foster Wallace and Dave Eggers to the sprawling po-mo novel by, oh, two hundred years.) So, to be honest, I’ve no clue as to whether Michael Winterbottom’s Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story succeeds as an adaptation (or Adaptation) of Sterne’s tome or not. I do know that this Shandy, while not as engaging as Winterbottom and Coogan’s 24 Hour Party People, is a breezy, detour-ridden romp through the life (well, birth) of Tristram Shandy, the business of filmmaking, and the public persona of the inimitable Steve Coogan.
After some discussion of the evocative shade of actor Rob Brydon (Rob Brydon)’s teeth, Tristam Shandy (Steve Coogan), a la 24HPP, emerges from his manor to introduce himself to us, the audience. He then proceeds to tell his life story — but wait, first we need to talk about his father, Walter Shandy (Steve Coogan), and the strange circumstances attending Tristram’s conception and birth. But, before we finish that digression, we meet Steve Coogan (Steve Coogan), who, while playing both Walter and Tristram Shandy in a film version of Tristram Shandy, must navigate among his visiting girlfriend Jenny (Kelly MacDonald), his possible new girlfriend Jenny (Naomie Harris), his long-suffering director (Jeremy Northam) and screenwriter (Ian Hart), and his co-star and erstwhile rival, Rob Brydon…who, as it turns out, can do a mean Steve Coogan impression.
Meta enough for ya? (If not, you can throw in Gillian Anderson, Shirley Henderson, and Stephen Fry as Gillian Anderson, Shirley Henderson, and Stephen Fry respectively. And also skulking about the set are Shaun of the Dead‘s Dylan Moran, Extras‘ Ashley Jensen, Dirty Pretty Things‘ Benedict Wong, and even Mr. Weasley (Mark Williams), as the resident historical consultant/martinet.) Well, if it all sounds like two hours of breaking-the-fourth-wall head games and inside baseball, it sorta is. Still, this cock and bull story is also consistently funny, particularly if you find Steve Coogan’s dry not-so-self-effacing wit amusing. And, when you get right down to it, there just aren’t that many eighteenth-century literary adaptations out there that offer up chance circumcisions, Al Pacino jokes, and the sight of a grown man being lowered upside-down into a styrofoam womb.
Thick & Thin.
In the trailer bin, Steve Coogan breaks the fourth wall (again) — and gets his Scully on — in the trailer for Michael Winterbottom’s Tristam Shandy: A Cock-&-Bull Story, and Christian Bale gets uber-skinny (again) with Steve Zahn for Werner Herzog’s Vietnam movie Rescue Dawn.
Power, Corruption, and Lies.
From the Age of Consent to the Age of Revolution comes this spiffy new trailer for Sofia Coppola’s biopic of that monument of ’80’s excess, Marie Antoinette, starring Kirsten Dunst, Jason Schwartzman, and Asia Argento. Somehow, I don’t think the real Marie Antoinette had much love for (the) New Order.
6×7.
The forthcoming Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy film gets its Arthur Dent, and it’s apparently this fellow: Martin Freeman, of Love Actually and The Office, neither of which I’ve seen. Well, he looks like an ordinary bloke, which is half the battle. (The other half is straight-man timing.) Apparently, Bill Nighy (also of Love Actually, but I only know him as the Big Bad in the very lame Underworld) is playing Slartibartfast, and I also think that’s pretty good casting. Now for Ford Prefect…Steve Coogan? Keira Knightley as Trillian? Andy Serkis as Zaphod Beeblebrox’s second head?
Life and How to Live It.
Since my cable connection has been spotty over the past day and a half, and as I needed a break from orals reading, I threw another catch-up movie marathon here at Casa Berkeley. Not sure what the underlying subtext of this quadruple billing is…biopics, perhaps (Schmidt, Kahlo, Crane, Wilson)? Or, rather, fanboy villains in the arthouse (Nicholson, Molina, DeFoe, Serkis)? At any rate, here’s what I thought, in the order I watched them:
About Schmidt: I dunno…I’m normally a big fan of Alexander Payne’s movies, and particularly Election, but think I saw this film on the wrong end of the hype machine. Schmidt was mildly enjoyable, but it also dragged in parts and spent too much of its time deriving humor from goofy Midwestern antics (most notably the couple in the Winnebago park and Dermot Mulroney as the son-in-law to be…pyramid schemes and Why Bad Things Happen to Good People? Come on.) While aiming to be a rumination on retirement, time wasted, and the myths surrounding a life lived well, I suppose, I thought the entire film basically revolved around stunt casting – watching Jack play the anti-Jack. Speaking of which, Nicholson was quite good as the befuddled, world-weary Schmidt, but without him playing against type, there doesn’t seem to be much here. Something of a disappointment.
Frida: Perhaps this biopic focuses too much on the Diego Rivera-Frida Kahlo romance, but I enjoyed it, and particularly the narrative lapses into Kahlo’s artistic world (for example, the Day of the Dead hospital sequence by the Brothers Quay). There’s some grotesque miscasting in here – Ashley Judd trips all over her Spanish accent, Geoffrey Rush is oddly hammy as Leon Trotsky, and Nelson Rockefeller is entirely too Nortonesque – but Salma Hayek and Alfred Molina are quite good as the emotional center of the film, and all in all this picture works. After traveling around in the winnebago with Warren Schmidt for two hours, it was nice to spend some time with people who embrace life along with their pain.
Auto Focus: Greg Kinnear is very good as Bob Crane in this Paul Schrader flick, but unfortunately Auto Focus, while very watchable, comes off as a by-the-numbers addiction movie. Between the Angelo Badalamenti score and all the retro-dressed beauties stalking Col. Hogan in various dens of iniquity, this pic seems set in Mulholland Drive Hollywood from the get-go, which ends up being one of the main problems. Other than a shrewish Rita Wilson on his back, it’s hard to understand from this picture what drives Crane into this sordid life. Perhaps it’s unfair to compare these movies to each other, but oh well – When Frida Kahlo has an affair with Josephine Baker or Diego Rivera sleeps with basically everybody in Frida, at least they look like they’re having a good time. The sex scenes in Auto Focus are all filmed like something out of a Bosch triptych – dark, muddled, and hellish. Ok, I know the film is about sex addiction, but still – better movies on addiction (such as The Basketball Diaries) at least give a sense of what the draw was in the first place. As such, Auto Focus, while easy to watch, ends up feeling cold and puritanical. Too bad, really, because the performances are all generally good.
24-Hour Party People: I get the sense this movie would be inscrutable to anyone who didn’t already know the contours of the story, and insufferable to anyone who doesn’t care about Joy Division and such, but I found 24-Hour Party People the most fun of the foursome. Shot in a cinema verite style with real concert footage thrown in [along with postmodern narrative asides by Tony Wilson (Steve Coogan)], 24HPP is an informative and irreverent trip into the history of the Manchester rave, and one that seems to capture the spirit of the post-punk era without wallowing in Studio 24-type nostalgia. If I had my druthers, I would have spent more time on the rise of New Order (or for that matter, the Smiths and Stone Roses) and much less on the Happy Mondays, but oh well. As I said, I’d think this film might be immensely confusing – or just plain boring – if you don’t already know who Ian Curtis, Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, and the Buzzcocks are, but if you do, Party People is rollicking good fun, a movie that manages to take its subject seriously by not taking it seriously, if you know what I mean.
So that’s that, then. I still have Human Nature and The Grey Zone to watch, which should make for one bizarre double feature.