Miraclo Miles

Life In the Country I was up fairly early for a Saturday -- a sunny, pleasant Saturday -- but hours slow in getting moving on more than some email and laundry. Still, Nick and I finally did get out to catch the first showing of the day of Hot Fuzz at a local Regal. Being a Yank I know Simon Pegg and Nick Frost almost entirely from one of my favorite movies of the past several years, Shaun of the Dead . Oh, I've seen them pop up individually in various tv shows and movies, but when I think of them together it's in Shaun ... and now that's expanded to Hot Fuzz . Unlike Shaun , where they play friends since childhood, in Fuzz - as one would expect of what is in part a British parody of U.S. cop/buddy films - they start out as strangers. Now, I don't want to emphasize the parody angle, because Hot Fuzz is too smart for that, telling its own story in its own way and avoiding most of the clichéd abrasiveness and conflict that would be so predictably inevitable in a Hollyw...

A bite of fun I should be asleep now, or at least reading myself in that direction, but I wanted to make some quick comments about one of this weekend's new releases, Shaun of the Dead . One of my sons and I caught Shaun late this afternoon, and it was a good time. The filmmakers have a fun sense of humor, but it's also very much a zombie movie. Or, one could see it simply as a romantic comedy with zombies as a critical plot element to effect change. Either way, a real affection for Romero's films is in evidence, at least the first two, as elements of both - especially 1978's Dawn of the Dead - are echoed in this film. It flirts with elements of a British Dumb & Dumber , too, but only just so; the two, central buddy characters are often goofy, but it's much more in the vein of lifelong friends who are keeping each other in perpetual childhood than their simply being over the top and under the bar morons. The laughs are genuine, the pacing's good, and the c...