This blog has been talking a lot recently about Simon Pegg-Nick Frost films. Reader kyoseki sent me a link to this clip to the skills of Edgar Wright, the director of many of the performances of the duo.. The person who put this clip together says that Wright is a master of using visual effects for comedic purposes and not depending simply on verbal gags, and shows how he does it.
Edgar Wright – How to Do Visual Comedy from Tony Zhou on Vimeo.
He makes a good point that a lot of cinematographers have gotten lazy and focused far to much on talking improve, what I suspect they think of as more intellectual comedy, while ignoring visual comedy.
Hot Fuzz is still, as far as I’m concerned, one of the best movies ever made, it might not be as funny as Shaun of the Dead or The World’s End (OK, it’s probably funnier than The World’s End), but in terms of film making, it easily eclipses both of them.
If you’re really familiar with it (ie. you’ve watched it at least a dozen times) watch the alternate edits on the DVD/Blu Ray, it’s fascinating to see how they recut scenes to both trim out unnecessary fluff but also in some cases change how the scene works.
I was very disappointed to learn that Edgar Wright left the Marvel movie Ant Man over creative differences with Marvel, thus removing pretty much any interest I had in seeing it. Instead I’m sure we’ll get some generic piece of crap about a character nobody really gives a shit about anyway.
… that said, there are a number of Star Wars spin off movies coming up and I’d LOVE to see him involved with one of those.
Side note: “This is the End’ which appears in the above clip was originally going to be called “The End of the World”, but Edgar Wright called Rogen & Goldberg and asked them if they wouldn’t mind changing the title since his movie “The World’s End” kind of depended on the name as a plot point and they dutifully obliged.