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In Las Vegas, this chick was lucky enough to see Edgar Wright's SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD before all of us!
Hey folks, Harry here furious at not being in Las Vegas, on what is obviously the greatest night that Vegas has ever seen. Sure they've had many of the greatest boxing bouts and mixed martial arts bouts - but man... to see SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD? That's a whole new level of LET'S GET READY TO RUUUUUUUUUUMBLLLLLLEEEEEE!!!! Now - here's Maria Von Crapp with the nitty gritty details about this extremely rough incomplete work of genius...
Hey I am Maria Von Crapp. A report from the Rave theater/Las Vegas test screening of Scott Pilgrim. I think the biggest takeaway for me from seeing Scott Pilgrim tonight is how much comedy comes from the visuals in it. Every scene is packed with on-screen graphics that add comic-book flourishes or explain what's going on, cutaways that are for the most part really inventive and funny, or just over the top or out of the blue things that cause you to experience the film in a different way than you're used to. While it's not really like anything I've seen before, it's like some mash-up of elements from Fight Club, Kill Bill, Speed Racer, Natural Born Killers and a Michael Cera movie (take your pick). As schizophrenic as that sounds, Edgar Wright found a way to shake all that up and come out with something original and fun and fundamental. I'm not sure how closely the film follows the comic book source, but the plot is pretty simple until it goes totally crazy: Scott Pilgrim, played by Michael Cera doing Michael Cera, is a jobless kind of loser who's in a garage band with his friends in Toronto. He's just started dating an Asian high schooler named Knives who's nuts for him but he then falls for this alternative punk girl who he sees at a party named Ramona Flowers. That's when things start to get kind of bananas. To win Ramona, Scott has to defeat her "seven evil exes" in these insane video-game/anime style fights that basically follow the same kind of Looney Tunes physics as most wire-fu. But there's just something ridiculous about having guys someone like Michael Cera in those situations fighting these angry ex-boyfriends (and girlfriends) of Ramona. It's kind of like a John Hughes movie smashed into The Matrix. Ramona's exes include Chris Evans as a douchey action movie star and Brandon Routh as a douchey bass player in the band of Scott's ex-girlfriend. Routh's character gets his superpowers from being a vegan until he's stripped of them by the Vegan Police who show up because he's duped into drinking some half and half by Scott. Yeah, it's that kind of movie. You're either in for the absurdity or you're not. I thought that was pretty hilarious. One thing made me smile even before the movie began: they redid the Universal logo and theme song as an 8 bit video game version. Anyone who grew up playing those first generation Nintendo games will so get this. The video game references continue throughout the movie, with Scott getting on-screen ratings and earning bonus points in his fights and the villains turning into coins after they're defeated. They throw those visuals in at even the most random of times like when Scott goes to the bathroom to take a leak and a "pee bar" appears that goes from full to empty. The fights with the exes start from crazy and go from there. The first one to show up is an asian guy, and that fight turns into a full-on floating musical number with vampire/zombie back-up singers. There are the fights with Chris Evans and all of his stunt doubles shooting a stupid action movie in toronto, plus Brandon Routh's psychic vegan, a girl from Ramona's experimental phase who calls herself "bi-furious" (actually, that fight turns into one between the ex and Ramona wielding a giant sledgehammer and is one of the more awesome ones) and then two asian twins who fight Scott and his band as a double-headed Forbidden Planet/id-type-dragon. Like I said, you either go with it or you don't. Ultimately it all leads to the ultimate bad guy, Gideon, played with Jason Schwartzman and his usual smarminess, who's basically got his bad-guy lair that Scott has to infiltrate. Like he did in his other movies, Edgar Wright really pushes the genre into whole new areas. This has to be the world's first coming of age/romance/superhero/comic book adaptation/musical/comedy/whatever movie. It has some traces of things you've seen before but not blended together in this way. The cast is all pretty great. Michael Cera's definitely a love him or hate him kind of guy and he pretty much stays in his usual zone here. I didn't recognize everyone in it, and there are a ton of them, but did know Anna Kendrick as Scott's sister, Aubrey Plaza who is hilarious and angry all the time, and Kieran Culkin as Scott's gay roommate. The girl who plays Ramona is particularly great. There's a long way to go to finish it. Nearly everything looked pretty rough down to comp/green screen/wires still being visible. But there was enough going on that you could get a sense of where they're headed with it. I thought it was pretty awesome, all and all, and I really appreciated that it was completely unique. On originality alone it wins. But it also kept me laughing along with it, too, sometimes just at the plain audacity of what's going on the screen.
Readers Talkback
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Now more than ever.
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weird is good. even if it fails, it's good support weird.
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I'm definitely in, the "pee bar" sold me.
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But might give it a go on a cheap Tuesday special at my local Vue (£2 a film instead of £6)
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The more I think about it, the more it sounds like girls will love it and so will the EMO guys trying to get laid.
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Jan. 20, 2010, 12:06 a.m. CST
all going fine, minus the michael cera doing michael cera part..
by spitflames
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I love the comic and I'm going to love the movie.
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...or are they ripping off Animal Logic? Wait and see I guess!
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Until the reviewer got to the part where Cera was acting like Cera. Maybe I'm just getting old, but I don't recall Scott Pilgrim acting awkwardly shy and uncomfortable. Scott Pilgrim always came off as being primarily a geek, but filled with all the bluster of an endearing, yet arrogant idiot. Kind of like Fry from Futurama, actually.
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Isn't that what his resume says?
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in my dojo. I'd rather see a TinTin movie, or an Asterix movie, or Michael Cera hung by the neck, in a public execution
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Michael Cera if you're reading this, you need to get some range man. And get some better posture, you're gonna be a hunchback before you're 40.
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More n more just no no no. Just waiting for the little children to start with the copy cat hair and SP t's
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not first. Either really young, or faking geek cred.
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nor have I read the books, but Flowers is probably fighting with a mallet instead of a sledgehammer, the mallet being a ubiquitous weapon pulled from the ether in manga/anime (which I assume is commonly inspired by the mallet-wielding "giant" from Kurosawa's Yojimbo).
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first generation NINTENDO games. The NES was the first generation of Nintendo consoles -- he wasn't referring to the larger gaming world -- only to Nintendo.
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Oh, and Nintendo had a few consoles in the late 70's.
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This could be a fatal blow to the film. Wright should have known better.
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Jan. 20, 2010, 2:39 a.m. CST
'It's like some mash-up of elements from Fight Club, Kill Bill,
by necros
Never heard of the movie or books till read about it on this site. Looks like the usual tween, emo pretending to be teens in theyre late 20s bullshit. Never liked a Cera movie, but i'm sure if i was 10 years younger i'd be stoked.
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It would be rated R if it were a mashup of those violent movies?
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Actually more like...a big ass boulder on a stick. It's pretty cool. Was funny that Anne from Arrested Development is using this razor rope thing, but in half the shots it was just green ribbon. Looked like she was dancing with Napoleon Dynamite.
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Look, I want this movie to be great. OH CEILING CAT DO I WANT THIS TO BE SOO FUCKING GREAT!!! I FUCKING LOVE SPACED (the first series) WITH ALL MY MOTHERFUCKING HEART!!! But the fact is that this is still, technically, only an adaptation of the first three books with, maybe, a little bit of part 4 and some input from O’Malley. Then there is the fact that Edgar Wright worked with some nobody on the script and it’s his first movie without Simon Pegg. Soo I am quite a bit apprehensive.<br> <br>Also, Wright is a hard core fucking geek, in the best way, like the rest of us and he knows how to play the publicity game by leaking early reviews on AICN. What we really need is a sneak preview at the Bloor Cinema right in Toronto, not from some expo in Las Vegas, which, in itself, is a place that sells false hope. Wright knows the Bloor well as he sponsored screenings of various double bills during the shooting of Scott Pilgrim.<br> <br>I truly hope that this will be a great movie and it has the potential as the SP comic series is that fucking good and, at it best, comes off as a cross between Kevin Smith and Stephen Chow while my dream is that the adaptation would come off as a mix of, and I’ve said this before, Kung Fu Hustle and Clerks 2.<br> <br>On a side note, Wright hired Bill Pope as his DP for this movie. Pope, in case you didn’t know, has been Sam Raimi’s DP of choice since Army of Darkness and also did the Matrix Trilogy. I, personally, am not a fan of his work as I find his style of cinematography a bit bland but the fact that he DID work on the first Matrix and Spider-man 2 is encouraging although he wasn’t able to save The Spirit.<br> <br>That’s all I’ve got now except that Wright would gain 5000+ bonus points if he used two songs in the movie; Southern Cross by 403 Forbiddena and Decepticon by LeTigre.
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Jan. 20, 2010, 3:58 a.m. CST
NO, Eastern, FUCK YOU WITH THE BURNING HATRED OF A BILLION SUNS!
by TehCreepyThinMan
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Jan. 20, 2010, 4:06 a.m. CST
maelstrom_ZERO, FRY FROM FUTURAMA, RIGHT ON FUCKING POINT!!!
by TehCreepyThinMan
That's EXACTLY what the character needed to be, not some stuttering gimp who looks like he weighs 95 pounds. A young Devon Sawa (Idle Hands, Final Destination) would have been ideal, especially given that he's Canadian. So is Cera but that's like bragging that Ellen Page is too and we don't want that getting out. I can't believe I'm the same age as Sawa AND he got to suck face with a 17 year old Jessica Alba. Lucky motherfucker >:(
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Except on The Quick and the Dead (Dante Spinotti), A Simple Plan (Alar Kivilo), For the Love of the Game (John Bailey), The Gift (Jamie Anderson), Spider-man (Don Burgess) and Drag Me To Hell which reunited Raimi with his Evil Dead 2 DP Peter Deming.<br> <br>Christ, now that I’ve actually went through Pope’s credits, he hasn’t actually worked with Raimi all that much except for a handful of flicks. It seems, to me, that Raimi was only able to get Pope on Spider-man 2 as a result of his work on the Matrix Trilogy which was the project that actually made Pope this coveted DP. Looking at it a bit more, it seems that Pope hasn’t had all that much to do with the quality of the moves he worked on. The Wachowski’s did perfectly fine with David Tattersall on Speed Racer while Drag Me To Hell didn’t suffer from Pope’s lack of participation.<br> <br>I now think Pope is highly overrated. Fuck him.
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can't.take.any.more.need.air.
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the actors arent playing teenagers-all the characters are 23-24, the actual age of the people playing them. They arent in school, or college, theyre young adults bumming around the world (theres a major point of Scott dating a high schooler who is a bit too young for him). Plus, its not emo at all-in the books Sex Bo-omb are an indie band. the fact that there are characters called Stephen Stills and Young Neil should indicate what the musical influences are really.So for anyone complaining, its not high school emo shit, its aimed at the mid 20s slacker market...so much so, Im surprised Kevin Smith isnt attached to it
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You know they're selling it but there no way in hell you're going to eat it.
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When did Hollywood get so fucking BLAND that people just started turning up and getting paid for essentially playing THEMSELVES?? Matt Dillon can play a cheesy PI with seriously weird teeth in SOMETHING ABOUT MARY, and a druggie in DRUGSTOR COWBOY. Robert Downey Jr can play Charlie Chapling, Dweeb #2 in WEIRD SCIENCE, and Tony Stark in IRON MAN. Charlize Theron can play Eileen Wuornos in MONSTER, Mia Farrow's clone in THE ASTRONAUT'S WIFE (role is twinned with her role in DEVIL'S ADVOCATE) or an insanely hot cartoon character in AEON FLUX. All requiring these people to ACT, goddamn it!<P> Michael fucking Cera. Lemme guess... He mumbles a lot, looks at the ground, looks down but side to side, mumbles a lot, eventually gets one fucking line that makes the hot chick like him again, and smiles ONCE at the end of the movie. And mumbles.<P> I'm sick of Seth Rogen being a fucking stoned Fozzie Bear twat, Michael Cera being his usual boring incompetent loser self, Jonah Hill the fat ugly unfunny guy you want to fucking punch at a bar, Bill Hader and his Comedy fucking Hairstyle yet again playing the uncool loser adult figure in the massive range he has from ADVENTURELAND to FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL, Jon Heder playing fucking Napoleon Dynamite IN EVERYTHING HE FUCKING DOES - FUCK!!<P> LEARN TO FUCKING ACT, you fucking dipshit overpaid over-cossetted blow-smoke-up-your-ass sycophant-surrounded coccooned in a world of your own self important nancy fucking TWATS! YOU'RE PAID FUCKING MILLIONS, SO FUCKING LEARN TO ACT, AND THEN FUCKING ACT!!<p> Jesus, this fucking generation. John Hughes woldn't have had a hope in Hell of getting a decent performance out of these somnambulistic fucks these days. These fuckers should be forced to watch (500) DAYS OF SUMMER to first understand how the perfect rom-com should be made, then watch everything Joseph Gordon Levitt and Heath Ledger have done, from 10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU to IMAGNIARIUM OF DR PARNASSUS and GI JOE, to see how two top-of-their-game great young actors create great fucking PERFORMANCES, NOT these fucking cloned bored phoned-in tired performances with less passion in them than my last fucking SHIT!!<P> I'll watch SCOTT PILGRIM for all the pizzazz you know Edgar Wright will bring to the table, but Cera... LEARN TO FUCKING ACT!!
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Because IDLE HANDS is one of the best kept secrets out there - I fucking LOVE that movie - and Alba has never been as hot since then as she was in that movie.<P> And he did one of the best Eminiem videos EVER. Props to Sawa for doing what he does and still retaining his geek credentials.
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Watched it last night for the first time. Franco is the only person who gets away from this with any credit, though Gary Cole and Rosie Perez are good value, but for fuck's sake - Seth Rogen! LEARN TO ACT, YOU USELESS FAT FUCK!! Oh, and Bill Hader there, using his Shit Comedy Hairstyle as a fucking character trait - LEARN TO FUCKING ACT! And Danny McBride - the bastard offspring of a fat Michael Keaton and Darht Lucas' fat gizzard - LEARN TO FUCKING ACT!!<P> What a crock of SHIT. Even HAROLD & KUMAR was better than that fucking waste of time movie.
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otherwise general audiences will pass this up. Then again, Edgar Wright knows his audience, and he's already showing he knows how to market this thing.
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Those people on the other post are making me want to listen to what the voices are telling me and go on a spree.
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Seriously, she's not worth it.
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Jan. 20, 2010, 10:11 a.m. CST
Dammit. The one thing that put me off about Scott Pilgrim...
by Chewtoy
...Was not when things went crazy in the first book with bizarre stuff, but rather the version of "normal" before that... the painfully hip geek life living with the gay roommate while in a band. I'm honestly tired of the indie-artist idea of what being 18 is like... I'm sure there are people that can relate to it, but I can't say I'm one of them.
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But then, I think I've only seen him in Arrested Development (which was awesome), Superbad, and that movie he did with Kat Dennings (with the kinda long name I forget). Not a huge follower of these books, but it looks interesting. Least he's not Shia LeBoeff (or however you spell it, I'm not looking it up). Oh, and Juno. Almost forgot about him in that. Damn, he is pretty forgettable, ain't he.
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At least not in the USA. Atari started in the 70's and I had that and a Colecovision before the first generation Nintendo and Sega devices came out and then I stopped playing video games. <p><p>I could be wrong, but I would have guessed sometime in the last 30 years I would have heard of that.
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makes me fear or this movie. I love the books but Cera fucking sucks and is totally, totally wrong for the character. PS StarWars6Life I'm 35 and would rather see this than another live-action Asterix movie. Leave him & Obelix in the books, they rule there but pretty much suck in any other medium. Tintin might be good though...
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damn sticky 'f' key...and lack of edit function.
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Heh, shows what I know. Didnt even bother to read about it, just assumed with the way hollywood is. Still wont see it. Never seen an Edgar Wright movie, but sure he'll do fine. Never a fan of these teen movies. Could be that I grew up on action movies, and still am an 80s, 90s action junkie. Watched Raw Deal last night, "Arnold is in a convertible Cadillac with a bigger arsenal than he had in Commando, blasting “Satisfaction” by the Stones, speeding around a heavily guarded inner-city stone quarry (???) and killing bad dudes by the metric ton" after reading that wanted to watch it again, havent seen it in like 10 years. Pretty bad. Betcha this movie will bomb at box office, not sure of what fan base the books have.
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MOTHER FUCKER
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Everything that exists in pop culture didn't have it's start with fuckin' Manga, you know. Classic Warner Bros. animated characters were pulling mallets out of nowhere to bash things/other characters with way back when the Japanese were still flying planes into battleships.
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I love in Vegas and had no idea this was taking place and even signed up for sneak previews with the local film club. Motherfuck
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Im more of a Commando man myself-if ever Im in the situation where I have a gun on someone Ill be fighting not to scream "Im not going to shoot you between the eyes-Im going to shoot you in the balls!"The world got brighter the day that was filmed. The Scott Pilgrim books are pretty enjoyable-silly and quite frivilous, but fun to read (even though you can tear through them in about 15 minutes and the art work is nothing to look at). The film should be just as fun and silly but better to look at, although I concur its a difficult one to market-I know people who will lap it up, but it might just be too "all over the place" for most people. Im not fussed as long as I get to see it myself, even if it bombs in america and goes straight to dvd here (which seems unlikely for a Wright film). If nothing else, it has Mary Elizabeth Winstead to look at. I'd watch that girl watch paint dry. Particulalrly in that blue wig she has in it
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Ya Commando rules. Its one of those movies anytime its on TV I watch it even though ive seen it a thousand times. They sure dont make bad guys like they used too. Bennett spends nearly the entire movie wearing the following outfit: * Leather pants * A black, sleeveless T-shirt * A chain mail vest * Fingerless leather gloves * A dog chain choker * A flat top * A push broom moustache * A leather belt that he wore around the chain mail vest, making it seem as if he were wearing a skirt. After coming to this and other movie sites almost everyday, I've been turned off on most of the movie fun. I'm very critical of movies now, but thats probably because hollywood are a bunch of suit fucks, who are all bout the $crilla couldnt give a damn about what most of us like. Im still waiting for my M.A.S.K. live action movie! Theyve made about everything else.
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You obviously didn't read my reference to Yojimbo. Also, sorry to say, but Bryan Lee O'Malley is most definitely referencing their appearance in manga, regardless of the appearance of mallets elswhere.
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Google Nintendo + "Color TV Game," "Color TV 15," or "Color TV Game Block Breaker" for those late 70's consoles.
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a Japanese/manga thing. It doesn't necessarily have to be pulled out of the blue. A character, particularly a massive, dumb male wielding a wooden mallet who is reminiscent of that character in Yojimbo is iconic in manga, anime, and Japanese video games. Golden age Hollywood cartoon shorts characters whack each other with any manner of implements and weapons.
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Cera as Cera<p> **** <p><p> Winstead as Ramona<p> ********** <p><p> The perfect casting of everyone else ********** <p><p> Edgar ALWAYS Wright ******************* <p><p> Me peeing in geek excitement ******************************** <p><p> Heh.<p><p> Cheers!
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I am not watching this crap.
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Why the fucking infatuation with manga and all things Japanese? Go there and live or fucking get over it. I was buying a coke at a big box store on my lunch break today at watched two twenty something year old guys dressed like members of Death Cab for Cutie,step in line behind me to buy several packs of what looked like Pokemon cards. Fucking seriously? Pokemon cards? The play offs are this weekend, there are good movies in the theaters, porn is an iphone touch away...... why would you be playing pokemon or watching pink haired girls in sailor outfits hitting people with mallets? Jesus, get a grip people.
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get back to me.
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