Well, I guess I’m glad that I didn’t decide to stop watching movies altogether after thinking I’d seen the greatest movie ever on Monday.

How have you been? It’s been a while, huh? I’ve been thinking of us lately. Well, no, that’s not entirely true, I’ve just been thinking of me, really. I imagine you’re not particularly surprised. But seeing Hot Fuzz yesterday made me think more about the last year or so, and who I’ve become, which has been different from who I was and, more distressingly, much different from who I’d like to be. But like Grindhouse the night before, I was reminded of some unflappable aspects of my own personality, which was initially pleasant considering all the wild and uncontrollable flapping that’s been going on lately. I like it when shit explodes. I like when old people get hurt. I like graphic violence. I like human suffering. So, yeah, imagine my dismay to realize that, despite all my recent attempts to open my open my mind and broaden my understanding of perspectives and cultures, it turns out that the person at my core is still just kind of a jerk. Well, dismay might be a strong word, what with my being insensitive and callous, so we’ll go with irritated. Yeah. I was irritated. Try to imagine it.

I’m paraphrasing here, but the creators of the movie specified that they wanted to create something that was accessible to anyone, but also rewarded fanboys and geeks with reference after reference, mentioning The Simpsons as inspiration, which I’ve always regarded as the perfect example of layering content without ever condescending or patronizing the audience. By way of providing a contrast, I usually attempt this with results confined to reactions of alienation and confusion, but I admit that I consciously sabotage such efforts in an attempt to make references too specific and isolated in the pursuit of keeping things “special” and warding off potential interlopers. Like Dennis Miller, except not funny. Anyway, I guess I feel about Hot Fuzz the way I’ve always felt about Scream. I probably don’t have to remind you that’s a compliment, huh? Yeah, I know, you’re just emotionally far away, not lobotomized. Anyway, Craven‘s movie seems the most inline with the creative philosophy of Wright, Pegg, et al. in which a work is produced that knowingly and lovingly toys with the conventions of the genre in which it exists, but also manages to surpass most of its peers as a defining and exemplary representative of that genre and its evolution. If you’ll allow me a moment of geek-speak, when watching such a film, there’s a moment where you realize that the genre has leveled up.

Despite my attempts to pretend otherwise here at MediaSlave and more generally in my daily interactions as of late, I’m a simple and stubborn person. I take childish and unabashed pleasure in displays of excess and gratuitous destruction. It makes me giddy. So there I was with Maggie, one of my new pals, laughing my ass off and clapping throughout the screening of this instantaneous classic like some kind of crazy person, and I realized that she and I haven’t yet reached that all-too-important “force-feeding of action movies” phase in our friendship. Luckily, the aforementioned prowess of the filmmakers ensured that she had a good time nevertheless, but the fact that I hadn’t asserted viewings of Point Break and Bad Boys II as requirements of our continued interaction was strikingly evident by my self-consciousness during my repeated and frequent displays of enthusiasm. I longed for that familiar hostage situation of pushing my questionable taste on friends, reminiscent of The Island (displayed both within that movie itself and the birthday viewing which it inspired). Indeed, it made me miss our more established and hard-won simpatico of days gone by.

Maybe someday, we’ll be in a place where we have time and energy to give each other and move beyond reminiscing towards something different. Maybe these things that are happening in our lives won’t feel quite so pressing and important and they’ll give way to both of us being able to be happy with what we’re asking from each other, and what we’re able to give. Then again, maybe that time is over, and we’ll just drift until we have nothing to offer one another but memories. Either way, while we wait, I hope you don’t wander off the path that has shown us so many good times. Sure, it’s a path of ridiculous and excessive violence, but we had so much fun. Don’t let this difficult time keep you from remembering that. Don’t tell yourself that you’re glad you don’t have me to drag you to all those retarded, mind-numbing movies anymore. If you can do me the favor of a small gesture in memory of our past, go see a movie that you probably wouldn’t have seen unless I dragged you, and wait for the camera to circle around and around our protagonists, slowly rising to reveal their sweaty and furrowed brows to tell us that, truly and more than ever before, this shit just got real. When that happens, pretend that person I used to be is sitting next to you smiling knowingly, stuck between awe and uncontrollable laughter, trying to figure out whether the movie is the best movie ever or the worst. Smile back.

Transformers opens July fourth.

This entry was posted by eugene on Thursday, April 12th, 2007 at 5:55 am and is filed under british, movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.