the world's end

Started by jenkins, May 08, 2013, 01:05:13 AM

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jenkins

i searched for but could not find a thread on this movie, the new movie by edgar wright. i'm excited. wilderesque is probably excited too. what a potential chat!

i think wright is my fav of those directors who attracts a nerd culture based on this and that. i like that he likes movies so much, and i like that his movies reference movies, and are movies. he's the james joyce of a culture that's like an h.p. lovecraft fanfare. lovecraft was chill. i'm confused about wtf i'm talking about. this isn't even a thread about the maker

here's the movie's trailer, not just a list of production methods and casting

http://video.uk.msn.com/watch/video/exclusive-the-world-s-end-trailer/2t5faj5e

(right now says "Watch our exclusive trailer" but will probably be on youtube soon)

k

MacGuffin

"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

03

this actually looks really good. hot fuzz didnt grow on me at all, but rewatching spaced has given me faith.
nice use of tnghts new song 'acrylics' too.

jenkins

mmk. been waiting and waiting for this. posted about it and then thought i'd just wait

in los angeles, edgar wright has three-times programmed for the new beverly cinema (media famous for qt owning the building, he's their landlord, and qt brought django unchained into this theater for a first release -- the big news was the addition of credit cards!)

and because we like him and he likes us, here it comes for the world's end, a set of movies that inspired him for his movie
http://www.edgarwrighthere.com/2013/08/05/the-new-beverly-cinema-presents-the-worlds-end-is-nigh-season-curated-by-edgar-wright/

after hours -- to die for!
into the hours -- what is that??

american graffiti -- in a theater
dazed and confused -- lol, of course i cherish this movie

westworld -- you gotta throw down when you throw down. i like that
the terminator -- tech noir! the bar is called tech noir. "it's fucking tech noir, you guysss"

invasion of the body snatchers -- did you instantly wonder? philip kaufman's. what's it double with
dead & buried -- oh. these nights will sell out, and this won't be my first grab. but it's his fucking party

it's always fair weather -- what is this?!? into this
the big chill -- there you go, a chill night. good plan
^^("These two films are the only features we watched prior to writing the first draft of 'The World's End'.")

last night -- all you gotta do is have david cronenberg act in your movie. that's all you gotta do
the road warrior -- !!!! i'm as excited as you'd guess

withnail & i -- what a way to finish, with
24 hour party people -- allout great ending
(^"The former influenced our film in it's whirlwind of a lead, so much so that some have called our new movie 'Withnail And I-Robot'.")

for me,
#1, first night and last night
#2, chill night
#3, all others

he knows what he's doing. good programming

jenkins

my story about Devin Faraci is a friend introduced him to me, around the chinese theaters on hollywood blvd, and there was a short conversation between us three about vinterberg's the hunt. in faraci's opinion it was bad, like an 80s tv thriller. i hadn't seen the movie and the conversation was short. this short. he seems to have done well for himself at the badass digest. i always remember swanberg beating him up -- swanberg beat him up, not the other way around -- and that's a kinda terrible memory of a person

into the movie (my bolds, my []s)
http://badassdigest.com/2013/08/06/the-badass-interview-edgar-wright-is-up-all-night-with-the-worlds-end/

Q: In a lot of ways The World's End brings you full circle back to Shaun of the Dead, not just with pubs but with the idea of both films being about guys who need to grow up.

A: With Shaun of the Dead, with Shaun's character, most people feel like that in their 20s -- 'Man, I have to be an adult! I have to buck up!'  In this movie you've got five guys, four of whom are perfectly functioning adults who have grown up and have responsibilities and moved on with their lives, and one guy who not only hasn't grown up, he wants to go backwards. He's so unhappy with his current lot that he wants to go back in time. I've done pretty well in my life so far, but I still have time travel fantasies, I still have fantasies about going back to rectify things. I thought, 'Why would I want to go back to being a teenager?' Even though Gary is not really based on me, I do recognize that feeling. And there are people who want to keep that buzz of that one night going forever.

Q: That's the thing, it's the idea that you've peaked and you can't deal with the idea of peaking. In other movies it's usually the jock character who has that, the guy who is still reliving the big game. This is coming from a very different perspective.

A: What we tried to do with all of the films is take characters who might in other films be the sidekick or even a truly negative character and try to find them some kind of redemption. Simon's character, compared to Shaun and Nicholas Angel, is charmingly unlikable. We push it as far as we can go, which I think is really fun for Simon. After two films playing the straight man he wanted to be the wild man. It's nice to flip it all around and Nick is straighter, initially.

But I really think people who watch this film are going to say, 'Man, I know that guy.' And sometimes it'll really freak them out, they'll say, 'Oh man, that's my brother.' Or 'That's me!' It's fun to give that character some redemption. Someone asked me what I want people to take away from the movie, and I said, 'I want them to call that guy in their life just to see if he's okay!'

Q: One of the things I love is how Nick and Simon are flipped. It reminds me of Belushi and Aykroyd switching spots in Neighbors. It's fun to see that dynamic changed.

A: In the years between Spaced and The World's End, I've seen Nick go from being Simon's roommate to a real actor and now a father. In that space of time, which is only like 12 years, I've seen that man -- he's still great and fun as ever -- he's become a dad. With some comedies it's responsible, even if we as filmmakers have become successful, to play your own age. To not play 20something forever. And I think there's more comic mileage to get out of that. The six years between this and Hot Fuzz... we couldn't have written this specific screenplay six years ago.

Q: Pubs play central roles in all your British films. If you were making these movies in America it wouldn't be quite the same -- bars don't hold the same central spot in the common culture here. What is it about pubs that makes them so important to British life?

A: I think you have neighborhood bars in the US, and the smaller your town the more central your neighborhood bar is. It's similar here in a way; being in London as a big city offers you a lot more to do. But when I was living in a country town, like Newton Haven, that was your one source of entertainment. There was one cinema, one nightclub and a whole ton of pubs. You're going to end up going to them whether you like it or not. [end of the world material]

Me and Simon, we have a love/hate relationship with them. When I was shooting Hot Fuzz there's a pub scene where the cops meet and where the shootout happens in the end. We were shooting in this real pub and it was tiny. I said to [producer] Nira Park, out loud, 'I never want to shoot in a fucking British pub ever again. I've had it.' But that was before I came up with the idea for this one! The idea of doing an Arthurian quest movie about pubs was so vivid for me. [he might not guess he's making me think about john steinbeck's tortilla flat] We did one movie where one character wants to get to the pub, now we have to do a movie where the character wants to get to ALL of the pubs!

I had done exactly this when I was a 19 year old. I was living in Wells, Somerset -- which is where Hot Fuzz is set -- and there were 12 or 13 pubs and me and my friends were going to go to the outskirts of town, to the farthest one out, and do all 13. That plan went as far as 6 pubs. By the sixth pub, because I am quite a lightweight, I was almost blackout drunk and causing mischief. [lol] I had a weird, wild night and went off on my own for a bit looking for this girl I was kind of seeing, but I forgot she wasn't home and I ended up waking her mother and she threatened to call the police because who is this drunk, idiot 19 year old on her doorstep? And when I realized I was being irritating I tried to run away and I turned around and ran right into a clothesline and almost knocked myself out. I found my friends at 2 in the morning and I had a big purple bruise on my neck where I had run into a clothesline -- I had literally clotheslined myself! I had got through less than half of the pubs in my town, but it always stuck with me.

When I was 21, after I did Fistful of Fingers, I wrote a script called Crawl, about teenagers on a pub crawl. I intended to make it but never did, and then years later we were doing the Hot Fuzz press tour and weirdly started thinking of that script again and then Superbad came out and I thought I couldn't do anything with the script anymore. Then I was on a plane with Simon and thought maybe that's just the start of it -- maybe that's the first five minutes. The first three minutes of The World's End comprises what I might have made when I was 21. It's a mini-movie, a mini-American Graffiti and I realized the story of them reuniting to do it again is going to be great.

Once you bring the otherworldly stuff into it, it comes together. It was an epiphany where I realized you could make a movie about alienation in your hometown, that you can return to your home town and feel alienated, the lack of connection with childhood friends, the pub has changed, your favorite coffee shop is missing, your favorite bar has been refurbished. People you went to school with don't recognize you anymore. There's something poignant and alarming about that, and it struck me as being like a quiet invasion movie -- the kind of thing that was a staple of British scifi in the '60s.

Q: You and I are the same age, and the early '90s are the heyday of our youth. This movie revisits that so well -- the soundtrack, the fashion, the fact that Simon is wearing that Egyptian eye necklace is so 1990. Can you talk about the idea of nostalgia that comes when you get close to 40, the feeling that you aren't that old, but you aren't that young anymore.

A: I think it's a very odd feeling, especially when some of those bands are still around. You think, 'Oh great, Primal Scream has a new album out!' and then you realize Primal Scream started in 1985. It's that feeling you're not thinking in decades anymore, that some of the culture you were around is twenty years old or twenty-five years old. It was crucial to us to make everybody in the audience feel old. One of the first lines of the film is Simon saying, 'It was NINETEEN NINETY,' saying it like it was 1890. You've had plenty of '80s retro comedies, but to switch it to 1990 and make it sound like it was a thousand years ago is designed to make everybody in the audience feel ancient.

Q: We are farther from 1990 than American Graffiti was from 1963.

A: It seems ridiculous!

Q: Speaking of American Graffiti, The World's End is pretty much an all-in-one-night movie, like American Graffiti.

A: It is, absolutely. It has a prologue and an epilogue, but the rest of it is in that span.

Q: Is it harder to do a movie that's set all in one night, or does the propulsive nature of the timeline make it easier?

A: I think it makes it easier, in a way. It's got a very different feeling in that respect than Shaun or Hot Fuzz. The time is truncated. Most of Shaun of the Dead is one day, but this is all one night, and it has an effect on the shoot. We shoot some daytime and then the sun going down and then the rest of the shoot is at night. We shot for 12 weeks on this, and the last month was all nights, which creates a weird feeling on set. You start to feel like the characters, like you're trapped in this hell night. A lot of it is on location -- nine of the twelve pubs are on location - and there was a lot of nights there.

I hope that, even more than Shaun and Hot Fuzz people feel those locations, the geography. It's that oppressive sense of a night in a small town where you can't escape. We were pretty much in the same two towns, so there are chase scenes where you're really going from A to B, so people from those towns will be able to trace the steps of the action scenes.

It creates its own internal tension, making an all-in-one-night movie, and it was fun. One of the early ideas was can we make this almost existential farce? I don't think you'll see anything of Louis Bunuel in here, but I always liked The Exterminating Angel and the idea of the dinner party you cannot live. In this pub crawl one character has said 'We need to get to number 12 if it kills us,' and he does everything he can to keep the pub crawl on track. This is the movie where one of our heroes is going to have a great night... whatever the cost.

Q: Can you talk about some of the touchstone movies that informed the scifi decisions you made in The World's End?

A: There's something strong about showing something bigger happening through a keyhole focus. That was present in a lot of '50s, '60s and '70s scifi films, British and American. While writing we didn't rewatch any of those movies, but when we were prepping the movie I went back to a couple of them just for fun and it was interesting to see how we had captured them without watching them at all.

There were things from Body Snatchers to Quatermass, the Hammer ones from the '50s and '60s. They were influential themselves, in that they influenced films of the '70s. There were films like Village of the Damned and Stepford Wives. I like those small-town paranoia films, and growing up in a small town they always resonated with me. The idea of what happens in a small town may have larger consequences. And we did something in The World's End that we never did in the other movies, which is that it may all be our main character's fault! In Shaun of the Dead it's not Shaun's fault there's a zombie apocalypse; he has nothing to do with the outbreak of the virus. But in this one we have a central character who may be a galactic nuisance.

Q: How is the small town paranoia in The World's End different from Hot Fuzz?

A: Nicholas Angel is a stranger in Sanford, and in this film they're going back to their home town. It's one of those ideas that became very vivid to me way before I even thought of the movie. When I first went to college, I would come back home every holiday -- Easter, summer, Halloween, Christmas. Then the following year I just came back twice, summer and Christmas. Then the following year just Christmas. The next two years I didn't go back at all. Then I went back for Christmas again.

Every time you go back there's a change in personnel. The bars are different but the people stay the same... but the further you get away from them the less they recognize you. Something that's in the film happened to me, where there was a bully from school who was a really tough character growing up, and one night I came home and he blanked me in a pub. I was really upset because I wanted him to remember me. It's like he moved on in his life, like it meant nothing to him at all. It wasn't that he was nasty to me, it was that he didn't recognize me somehow really disturbed me.

I was thinking 'This is like Body Snatchers, all the people I knew have been replaced by replicants.' It was a metaphor for coming home but having the feeling you can never go back.

Q: This magazine is really aimed at a cinephile audience. What obscure pub or bar movies should they check out?

A: There aren't that many movies set just in pubs. We may have thrown down the gauntlet for being the most pub-centric film of all time. I defy you to beat us!

Most pub films tend to be downers, tough stuff like Nil By Mouth or Tyrannosaur. But some films with good pub scenes in them include An American Werewolf In London, perhaps one of the most famous British pub scenes put to film. Withnail & I has an amazing pub scene, and the pub is central to the small village there. I always liked the pub scene in Get Carter, when Michael Caine goes in and says, 'I'd like a lager in a straight glass, please.' It says a lot about the north/south divide, it's a real class film, southern Londoners versus tough northerners. Brannigan, the John Wayne film, has a great brawl in a pub, very silly.

John Wayne throws this guy into a jukebox. Unbeknownst to me -- I didn't find this out until later -- the stunt man playing the publican we throw into the jukebox is the same guy. I found that out later and I couldn't believe we did the whole scene and he never said, 'Hey, did you see the John Wayne film Brannigan? Because I do the same stunt in that.' Why didn't he tell me he went into the jukebox in Brannigan, and he was thrown by the Duke!

There's a whole wave of B-movies based on the works of John Wyndham that are pub-centric. I didn't watch it when we were writing, but seemed to me the perfect low budget British scifi movie, called The Earth Dies Screaming. It has that great title and yet it pretty much takes place in one small village -- not even a village, a hamlet! Most of the action revolves around the pub, and there are robots in that making people into zombies. It's amazing to have a movie called The Earth Dies Screaming that has a cast about eight strong.

Q: I'm going to name three all-in-one-night movies, you have to tell me which is best. You can only have one of these: American Graffiti, After Hours, Dazed and Confused.

A: I really love After Hours, but I'm going to go for American Graffiti. It's a perfect movie, and watching it recently it hit me just as hard as it did when I was a teenager. The ending is perfect, you get the ups and downs of the night that goes from joyful teenage abandon to being dark and enigmatic to brutal in terms of its final epilogue. That film is a real masterpiece, and it goes from light and frothy to hard-hitting with real grace. [interesting that dazed and confused was not a contender. coulda been somebody, imo]

Q: Is it too controversial to say American Graffiti is George Lucas' best movie?

A: No, he never made anything like it again. You can say that. I like Star Wars IV and V, but American Graffiti, in his career, is a one off. It feels like that kind of movie you can only make once. It's an amazing moment of lightning striking for him and his technical team and editor and the cast. There is some real filmmaking skill in that movie, and some happy accidents as well and they gel.

Q: Was it during one of your programming stints at the New Beverly where you had American Graffiti on a double bill with Animal House and John Landis watched American Graffiti for the first time in decades?

A: Yeah! John Landis apologized for making fun of American Graffiti. He hadn't seen it since the '70s, and it really knocked him back in his seat. He said, 'I forgot how powerful that ending is, and it makes me feel bad we made fun of it in Animal House.' He said the writers and producers of Animal House had kept knocking American Graffiti, saying 'This isn't the '60s, Animal House is the '60s!' and calling it the anti-American Graffiti. After watching it he said he wanted to apologize for ever getting involved in that because American Graffiti is a great movie. He was taken aback.

My theory was the films make a perfect double bill because Richard Dreyfuss in American Graffiti turned into Tom Hulce in Animal House. Even the year works well! One ends the summer of '62, the other is the start of the college year '62. Dreyfuss is a writer, Tom Hulce is a writer. They could be cut together!

polkablues

Good interview.

I haven't followed Faraci much since he left CHUD, but I will always respect him for the time he referred to Crash as a "greasy prostate massage of utter falsity."
My house, my rules, my coffee

picolas

saw a super advance screening of this last night

this movie is saddled with a few major problems. the narrative logic is really really flimsy. it bends and weaves to accommodate funny scenarios, undermining any real dramatic integrity the story might have. it would totally work on the internet in 3-minute segments, but as a feature length narrative it's impossibly contrived. it's hard to understand every character's motivation at any given time, and they often contradict their own logic depending on the situation. the characters are poorly defined. maybe there are too many, although hot fuzz and shaun still had a lot and i understood who they were much more clearly. the relationship between pegg and frost is soooo shifty depending on what the story 'needs' at any particular moment. the romance is totally tacked-on. the script feels like an early draft with a crapload of ideas that needed some organization and focus. not just sci-fi ideas, but character relationship ideas and arcs as well.

i'm curious how the movie would have worked without all the robots. i was quite enjoying it as a straight comedy prior to all that business.

in spite of all these issues, it IS very funny and i laughed a lot and will probably watch it again. i just expect so much more from wright. i think he got bogged down in sci-fi concepts this time.

oh and that guy who planned the red wedding totally redeemed himself in my books. laugh-a-minute!

jenkins


jenkins

many praises are coming its way. not many nonpraises so far, but like you'd expect it's the fans who've seen it first

at new bev he's been chill, yeah. always is. brings guests

he has some art show coming soon. i don't know if he made the art or if it's about him. recommended research for people who buy posters and frame them and things like that
http://nineteeneightyeight.com/

modage

I saw this over the weekend as part of the trilogy screening. I hate to admit it because I love those guys but it's watching diminishing returns in action seeing them back-to-back-to-back like that. "Shaun of the Dead" is still pretty much a perfect movie. "Hot Fuzz" has some great bits but feels strained and just isn't as funny. (I also still, cannot really get over mixing cult horror stuff with cop movie tropes.) The new one starts promisingly but when the genre stuff comes in, it comes in out of nowhere, feels incredibly forced and they never explore the themes they're trying to bring out. It's the same layered humor as the others but feels tired now. I'm not sure I would ever watch it again. 

As someone who was a huge obsessive SOTD fan 9 years ago and couldn't fucking wait to see what they did next, it's pretty disappointing to see the slide.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

pete

it's also a bit unfortunate that this film came out the same summer as This is the End, which has an entirely different premise, but riffs on some of the same jokes, and is probably the only good studio film released this summer. the cast is great but the movie is so greedy for those precious Moments that it forgets to surprise or delight. it seems to think all you need to please the audience is to have regular guys in a genre scenario plus a tidy little three act structure. nothing felt too sincere but everything felt too eager.

also, just on an action movie level - this fell in the same trap as the first Hellboy and Attack the Block - the first confrontation with the Monsters essentially played everything out, then the movie just repeats itself by fighting the same monsters using the same gags over and over and over again.
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

Tictacbk

Is it sloppy at times? Yes.
Is it convoluted at times? Yes.
Is it highly entertaining? Yes.


Had I seen Shaun of the Dead recently I probably wouldn't have been as entertained, but its been a while, so I had fun.

jenkins

hatched a plan because there's a music festival that multiple friends (~12) are attending. i'm going to movietrick my potentially-lonely day with an easy triple of dude pictures

the world's end i've been curious about and i'll miss bryan o'malley until there's no problem
2 guns you maybe have to google, do you have to google that, it stars hollywood and genre and iceland makes it
elysium because i want to see a bunch of really serious faces, which is what i expect, star trek and after earth and pacific rim and oblivion and serious faces

Ghostboy

I loved this!

The last 20 minutes turn into three different movies but two of them are great.

The action is whatever. The threat exists only on a metaphoric level. But it somehow still works, and for me worked beautifully.

RegularKarate

I loved it.
It's pretty unfair to just compare it to Shaun of the Dead. How about instead you compare it to most of the shit comedies that have come out in the past few years.

Funny that people keep bringing up "This is the End" because while I like that movie, in a couple years, people will still remember "The World's End" and will have completely forgotten why people liked "This is the End" (oh yeah, pop culture references and cameos).

This movie was completely enjoyable and I suspect I'll like it even more after seeing it a few more times. They put thought into it... it's a real movie.