Thursday, August 02, 2007 Rant Archive
Oh Tommy, don’t do it.
As we fade to black in the latest episode of RESCUE ME, Tommy Gavin is leaning on a guard rail over the river, contemplating dropping his newborn son over the edge to his imminent death.
The reasons for taking the kid’s life are plenty. First of all, it isn’t even his son. It’s his dead brother’s, who conceived it while having an affair with his ex-wife. And now she’s in a rampant state of depression, ex-fling -- and crazy psycho -- Sheila wants to take custody of it (yeah, that’s what the kid needs) and money’s scarce, what with Tommy’s other two kids in need.
There has to be a better way. But not according to the ghost of Connor, who is thinly veiled in Tommy’s phsyche as his desire for a drink (at least, in this guy’s esteemed medical opinion) and urges Tommy to off the kid.
But you can’t blame Tommy – or anyone else in the house – for being pretty stressed out. The episode starts out with a whammy of a house fire, and the damage done – seven babies and a mother die – is pretty traumatic. I’ll be honest, I’ve never dragged a baby out of a burning building, only to see them die on the sidewalk outside. But I’ll just go on out on a limb and say it has to mess a guy up.
Graduating from college, New Year’s Eve, the season finale of FOOTBALLERS WIVES; there are some things that are never going to live up to your high expectations.
FOOTBALLERS WIVES set the bar of what was possible on a trashy soap opera so high at the beginning of the season, that in order to out do itself, it had no choice but to under whelm. Tonight’s finale was more sordid then campy, more trash then fun.
The closest the episode got to being fun was Liberty’s ridiculous racist cannibal ad. It was a bad version of the whiskey ad in LOST IN TRANSLATION, complete with a bad Japanese translator. Otherwise, I just felt bad for everyone. And pity is not fun at all.
Firstly, did I miss Lucy and Tre sleeping together? When the hell did that happen? I am sure I saw every episode this season. And I am also sure I would remember those two getting it on. But Tre has spent the past eight weeks tripping in Liberty’s wake, trying to keep hold of his woman. The only scene I remember of Tre and Lucy alone together in, was when she fit him for those wedding trousers. Can a girl get preggers by touching a guy’s thigh, through the pants he is going to wear at his own wedding (to another girl?) Sounds plausible, I guess.
The next bone I have to pick is with stupid nineteen-year-old Callum. Listen here, boy. You are never going to have a girl as good and sweet, and as curvaceous, as Shannon ever again. And no one will dress as wonderfully for you. Shannon’s outfit was by far the best of the lot tonight. The thigh-high latex Dior boots, paired with the booty cut sequin shorts were the kicker. Well done. I think I saw the same look in Vogue, recently.
As the gents of AC/DC say, “It’s a long way to the top,” and nobody knows that better than PC Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) of London’s Metropolitan Police Service. He’s worked hard all his life to uphold the law and bust the bad guys, and as a result, his stats are way the hell out in front of everybody else on the force.
As his “reward,” Angel gets a promotion to sergeant, which comes with a surprise: relocation to Sandford, a picturesque, aka deadly dull, village in the middle of nowhere. When Angel arrives, however, he finds that while the crime rate is low, the accident and disappearance rates are astronomically high. With his new partner in crime prevention, PC Danny Butterman (Nick Frost), Angel decides it’s time to dig a little, despite the gentle warnings of his boss (Jim Broadbent) and the derision of everybody else in the department.
That is the plot of HOT FUZZ, now out on DVD for fans of English comedy and American action to enjoy. While the plot is invaluable to a review, it doesn’t get across what a hoot this movie is, because it’s damn funny. Even a casual movie watcher can recognize the love and enjoyment of big, loud action flicks writers Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg squeeze into every frame of this film, especially those of the master, Michael Bay.
What’s better, everything is filtered through the warped, peculiarly English sensibilities of the same nutjobs who unleashed SHAUN OF THE DEAD on the world a few years ago, which makes them the creators of the best romantic comedy with flesh-eating corpses ever made. HOT FUZZ is part spoof and part homage to the blow-‘em-up-good genre of action film, and manages to give us a fair dose of gunfire and mayhem in the process.