Diary of an up and coming sociopath

Yesterday we went to see Hot Fuzz at the cinema. It’s a harmless enough assumption when one heads to the cinema, that the transaction you engage in will be upheld at both ends. That is, I’ll watch the film, and they’ll show it.

My assessment of Hot Fuzz is thus: It starts off alright, it’s quite funny, if not Shaun-funny, then just as it’s about to get good it ends. It’s perhaps about 25 minutes too short.

At least, it’s 25 minutes too short if you’re foolish enough to go and see it at the Ealing Empire, who managed in 100% of cases (that were tested first-hand) to destroy their projection equipment, rendering it mute just as the final act begins. First there was a pop. Then it went silent. Then we kind of looked around confused as if to see if anything was going to be done about this. People started walking out. Employees started running in. After about 10 minutes of chaos, during which we saw the film run backwards and eventually replaced by adverts, it became clear things were buggered.

We were ushered into the ticket hall by an, er, usher, who was as astonished as us. “I wouldn’t,” she remarked, “have expected this to happen.” Downstairs the manager urged a man who wasn’t shouting at her to calm down. We were compensated with vouchers for free viewings, or told we could return for another showing this weekend. We stood on the pavement in the cold unsure what the protocol should be. These things happen, but we were quickly and fairly compensated. Should we be angry? Upset? Disappointed? I think bemusement prevailed in me, as it so often does. Ian got the bus home and Nikki and I walked back over the park.

This has been as especially long-winded way of saying “we went to the cinema and the projector broke.” To be honest I find it more interesting than it is because our expectations were completely upset. I’ll never take the cinema for granted again. At the start of a film there’s an Anti-Piracy Advert that shows you what watching a pirated film is like. Low quality picture, bad sound, that sort of thing. It encourages you to get the full cinema experience. A certain poetic irony, then, than in order to watch the last 25 minutes of this film, I downloaded us a camsync, the first time I’ve willingly watched one since I couldn’t fine anyone who’d go and see Attack of the Clones with me. Say what you want about piracy, it undeniably gets results.

Still, now I’ve seen the film, it’s fair to say that it’s the worst of the three Pegg/Wright collaborations. Not by much, but it’s not as funny as Spaced nor as well-written as Shaun. It’s definitely a 4 out of 5 film (assuming, like me, that you put Shaun as 5/5) and although I’ll be buying the DVD first chance I get, it’s hard to be overly enthusiastic when you’ve seen better from the same team. Still, the difference between Shaun and Hot Fuzz is the difference between my mansion having a red door or a blue door, where Ghost Rider would be settling for a normal sized house and The Simpsons or Transformers movie will be choosing which of two slums I’d prefer to be raped and murdered in. I’d gladly go and see Hot Fuzz again, if only those faulty cinemas would let me, or indeed, hadn’t driven me to download it, because now I can rewatch it when I like, for free.

Rush Hour is a new BBC3 comedy which we were, er, fortunate enough to get free tickets for a showing of, where they played 3 episodes to record a laugh track. Since I already typed all this nonsense up in an e-mail to a select few, I decided to post it, but don’t worry, I’ve still got stuff about the Arcade Fire and Tedstock to get to. Before and after the BBC provided us with free drinks, so I came away two bottles of coke up on when I started, and I had a muffin from the cafe which was adequate. This has not influenced my opinion of the program.

The Adam Buxton stuff was the best, presumably because he is himself, but there was plenty that was actually funny. It’s not another Man Stroke Woman “Nick Frost’s stuff is OK but the rest is shite” situation. The camerawork was pretty frantic, but that’s just because people still think it’s TRENDY to be all SHAKYCAM when it is, in fact, often very annoying. Maybe it’s just cheaper. There are quite a lot of children in it, but they’re mostly pretty funny because they’re either mistreated or have very little dialogue.

The best sketch was Adam Buxton’s “Rock Father” (a middle-aged guy teaching his primary-school-aged kid about rock history, getting upset when he can’t remember who produced “Transformer” when prompted) doing a “clean” version of Fuck tha Police because his son was in the car. He sang the whole song, turning down the volume and inserting clean/safe lyrics into it whenever it swore or referenced sex or violence. It was total genius. The other funny ones were about a child who appears to be some kind of antichrist reading her mother’s mind, and another where a kid was telling his mother about the teacher at school he likes who says some sensible things about the world, which included my current favourite joke, holocaust denial.

There was some funny stuff with some polish nannies, and some unfunny stuff with some businessmen complimenting each other ending in the same punchline each time and going on way too long. It’s no Mitchell and Webb, but it’s not as bad as most. I think giving it a theme improves it somewhat. I think the fact it’s got a laugh track will go a long way to making it decent, though, because it’s got a similarly awkward/naturalistic tone to most modern sketch comedy which would usually make it feel too voyeuristic to be jokes. I think having a laugh track will soften that significantly. That horrible Green Wing/Hyperdrive woman even turns up as one character, and manages to not suck, though her role largely involves standing still and not moving.

The warm-up guy was quite funny. He was ripping off Bill Bailey/Ross Noble a bit, but there are worse people to rip off. Also, in the interest of demystifying television, they made us record three “clean” laughs without dialogue or prompting - one small, one big, and one that turns into applause. It’ll be interesting to see how much they feel they need to use those in the show, though to their credit, at least they’re not just canning it, I suppose.

Edited to add: Oh yeah, all the external stuff was filmed around Ealing (Broadway, Northfield Avenue, Uxbridge Road) with additional aerial shots of West London/the M4. Which was cool because THAT’S WHERE I LIVE! I WALKED ON THAT PAVEMENT! ME! I AM BY EXTENSION ON TELEVISION!