Let’s talk about what I’ve seen recently. (I’ll write more carefully about the tv-shows later. Wonderfalls #13 proved my theory that all good season finales needs a song by Sarah McLachlan.)

Shaun of the Dead. First of all, I must state that I’m a Spaced fan. This might tint the ramblings a bit. (If you haven’t seen the show, I feel for you. If you have but don’t like it, you’re probably a pro-censorship kind of fellow and I think you’re silly.) Shaun is pretty much Spaced-Tim but with a girlfriend and a job. Both like beer and playing videogames until dawn. Ed however, is not Spaced-Mike. Ed is a sociopath and Nick Frost is really impressive in the part. At heart it is a romantic comedy, albeit with lots of zombies that pester our heroes. But it’s the small things that makes me smile the most. Not the dialogue, even though that’s funny as well. No, it’s when Shaun glides a bit on the blood in the shop without bothering to look down, or when Ed advances the film in the camera. Lot of things like that. Wonderful and the best British film since… a long way back. (The movie also made me want to hunt down a copy of 2000AD issue boobliboo, just so that I can read Pegg and Wright’s little story about the girl in the garden.)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Like a lot of Charlie Kaufman-based movies, much of it has been seen before but as usual a lot of it is in the presentation. Jim Carrey plays a boring and shy character who falls in love with a impulsive and extroverted Kate Winslet. They break up and to make a long story short, most of the movie takes place in a room by the sleeping Jim Carrey and in his head. There’s a twist of course and the whole thing is about that you’ll only miss certain memories when they’re gone. Not even the crying hobbit spoiled the movie and his memory-erasing friend looks way too much like Danny Strong in those glasses. In whole, the movie feels a bit like a Philip K Dick story—to no real surprise.

Hellboy. Comicbooks adaptation jadda-jadda, only done right. Mike Mignola let the director Del Toro change whatever he wanted and the movie works much better because of that. He even managed to get some distinct comic book feeling in a lot of the scenes, amongs others the Kirby-banter-in-air-as-we-fight-scene. (Something they wanted to do but failed to accomplish in the smelly Daredevil) It’s funny and not too serious as well as it manages to avoid the claptrap about the-weight-of-the-world-on my-shoulders a lot of superheor comics to film suffers from. Destiny is only a choice and pam-cakes, rotten eggs and the girl matters more.

Comments

1. Hellboy was a fun movie. They did everything right (so very HP Lovecraft!).
   
   I recently saw Daredevil. Now I wish I could get that hour and a half of my life back.
   — Natalie    (@ 29. July 2004, 16:59)
2. I just came for the fish.
   — Boo    (@ 29. July 2004, 17:38)
3. Natalie: Daredevil was so… frustrating. I saw what they were trying to do in every frame but failed. Stupid script, and that they used names of comic book writers on all the non-comic book characters was annoying after the first namedropping. And the acting. When Ben Affleck isn’t the problem, then you know it’s shit.
   — Nicklas    (@ 29. July 2004, 18:23)
4. Didn’t he look more like Adam Busch than Danny Strong? Whichever the case; great movie. Great, and wonderful.
   — Boo    (@ 29. July 2004, 23:12)
5. I would rather watch Buffy than Daredevil. God, I hope Boo is reading this.
   — Ola    (@ 30. July 2004, 13:44)
6. Adam Busch is bigger. Look at Danny Strong at the end of “Superstar” and draw glasses on the tv-screen—almost a perfect lookalike.
   — Nicklas    (@ 30. July 2004, 14:23)

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