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May 04, 2007 - 5:49 PM

Medium Hot Fuzz

Hot Fuzz. Not as good as I was hoping it would be, but I still think you should go see it. I was expecting something a little different, more blatant in its parodying of cop/action movies, perhaps a successor to the Naked Gun films. Instead, what I got was more of a nudge-nudge, wink-wink homage to the action genre, where the film-makers weren't poking fun of cops-and-robbers films, but showing their appreciation of them and all their silly glories. It's strange how expectations, wrong expectations, can color your viewing experience. If I'd gone in with a clean-slated mind, I think I would right now be hooting and hollering about how great this movie was.

And really, as a follow-up to Shaun of the Dead, I should have had my mind in the right frame...of...um...mind. Both films work hard to emulate the look and feel of the genres that they are putting a spotlight on. They accomplish this perfectly, leaving the viewer comfortably in the proper setting which allows the creators to play their jokes off the cliches. Shaun of the Dead was a bit different in that it didn't go full-bore into the Zombie-horror territory until midway through; the early part of the movie was actually playing like a romantic comedy that just happened to find itself in a horror film.

Fuzz fully commits to being a cop film first and foremost before going haywire. The comedy comes from mis-placing the hard-boiled cop in a quiet town in the countryside instead of the tough city. There are plenty of scenes where I laughed out loud when the fish-out-of-water juxtapositions really worked. But the movie did seem to drag on a bit (it's over 2 hours long) and the climactic reveal and battle scenes, while hilarious, were not entirely fulfilling. There sure was a lot of shooting, and not a lot of hitting of targets, which goes against the established fact that the main character is supposed to be an expert marksman.

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Are you going to see any of the big films this summer? Spider Man 3, Shrek 3, Pirates 3, Die Hard 3...er...4, Bourne 3, Fantastic Four 2 (Galactus, baby!), Transformers, Ocean's 13, Evan Almighty, Rush Hour 3, Ratatouille, Harry Potter and the something something something?

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See that shiny new box over to the right? It's a playlist I created through finetune.com of 45 songs that you should listen to if you have the time. Stuff like Anything Box, Neil Diamond, Imogen Heap, MC Snow, Bobby McFerrin, and Cake all mixed together. Just leave it up and open as background music while you surf the web. You can create your own playlists for free as well at finetune, and put links to them in your diary or blog or myspace page or whatever. In fact, I have another playlist at MY myspace page that you can listen to.

Next week might be busy for me, outside of work for a change. There's the Simpsons 400th episode party on Tuesday or Vienna Teng and Jenny Owen Youngs at the Hotel Cafe; Adrianne and Kyler at the Hotel on Thursday; LDBL's birthday on Saturday at Dodger Stadium; and Priscilla Ahn and my friend Wendy's band the Sweet Hurt at the Hotel on Sunday. We'll see how much we can make it to.

Now Listening To : Holly Palmer- Tender Hooks
Random Thought : 1st, 5th, and 10th places, a month into the season. For those who care.

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Here's a hand-picked playlist of 40-plus songs for you to listen to: