The World's End, the Final Flavor in Edgar Wright's Cornetto Trilogy. Flavor, Beer.

But that particular flavor can be tasted in all three films in the Three Flavors trilogy, with other spirits spritzed throughout.  Each of them, from Shaun of the Dead forward, lays out the spread.  The details differ greatly, both in the genre mixed as well as the personal hangups laid out.  Edgar Wright's films are genre romps, there is no doubt.  But those are just the stages set.  When it comes down to it, he's a keen observer of the human condition and uses the magical stages of the fantastical genres to look into the human soul as only they can.

Our current subject, The World's End, sets this particular stage, with a man  reminiscing about what he sees as good times past, his youth when he was the cock of the walk, if he does say so himself.  Gary King (Simon Pegg) is sitting in an encounter group sharing with an audience is regret upon recounting a night where he and his crew attempted the Golden Mile, a pub crawl that saw them visiting twelve pubs, having a pint at each.  Things went south.  So, Gary wants to get the band back together twenty years later and have another go at it.  From the glimpses we see in Gary's life, he's manipulative, inconsiderate and not very nice.  He has temper issues, substance abuse issues, some darker events are alluded to and he is stuck in the past.  His friends have moved on and they aren't either glad to see him when he comes waltzing back into their lives to manipulate/guilt them into returning to their small British town.  They've gotten on with their lives and have left him behind.  Especially his former best friend, Andy Knightly (Nick Frost) who, at first glance, wants to send him right back out he door he came through.  But Gary is persistent and the five are back together to try to recapture lost youth.

But they discover something else entirely.  This is not the town they left.

Some have said this may be the closet we see to Mr. Wright directing an episode of Doctor Who.

They may be right.  But the spooky stuff going on in small town England are the secondary show to the inner journey of our heroes.  As they quaff spirits and their psyches loosen up and all the debris starts shaking loose, they begin to confront each other and their issues more openly.  When the alienesque shenanigans start up, that just gets them back to the essentials when the beer and issues take a back seat to survival.

Funny how imminent death can sometimes clarify and simplify things.

This is, in many ways a darker, sadder, more layered film, compared to the previous editions in the trilogy.  The visual action joke hooks are there, but they are almost sad nods.  Lightening the mood briefly for those who can recognize what they are, before we get back to the shadows in which we now trod.

The World's End, not always a "good time".  But a great film that is ultimately about growing up and facing life squarely.  And being better for it.

An Evening With Kevin Smith 2: Evening Harder, Or This Talky Thing is Pretty Cool

Kevin Smith is a wordsmith.  The language is the tool through which he transcribes his creative expressions upon the world.  Since he made Clerks, his journey has been to perfect his medium of expression.  It is interesting that he began his journey in film.  Film is primarily a visual medium, yet he is not primarily a visual guy.  He admits his particular weaknesses, too, though I don't see that they have to be looked at as weaknesses.  He has a keen eye for life and the inner journey of people, emotionally, spiritually, and can wed the language into a spiraling dance of the sacred touching the profane in all those places where the human animal ooohs and aaahs in ways that we all recognize.  Coupled with lots of geeky references, of course.

This is just more of Smith in front of audiences and tracking his journey as a public speaker.  Rather than being seen at a series of college auditoriums, he is seen at two city amphitheaters, the first being in Toronto where he admits to his love for all things Canadian and talks more and more about usually Smithy type things.  The key one is where he goes on about being associated with comic book properties and you hear his rationale as to why he never will do one.  He regards himself as too impatient to be a good action director, where you have to be supremely visually detailed with an eye to repetition and perfection.

But...he still thinks of Ranger Danger, his own space opera creation, so never say never.

Just a quicky...

It has been a very long time since I posted here.  In fact, before my Gettysburg review, my last entry had taken place before I deployed to Afghanistan.  But I am back.  I see I have even been getting visits in my absence, and that is after neglecting this blog for years.  If I get that attention after letting lie dormant, here's to a wrapping up of 2013 and bring in 2014 with a plethora of blogging goodness.

This is the Voice of Stone.  Can you hear me now?

TNT's Gettysburg and It's Relevance to Today

It is almost like something is conspiring to prevent me from writing this review, an overview of TNT's Gettysburg, a four hour plus epic, with an epic cast (Martin Sheen, Jeff Daniels, Tom Berenger, etc) about an epic event, the battle that pretty much decided the conclusion of the American Civil War.  The war would drag on for two more years after this, but the conclusion was all but foregone.  As is mine, that even though I have lost two previous versions of this blog, I will see it to it's conclusion, because I simply must.

I don't know if it was Ted Turner, who is an avowed American Civil War buff and does have a cameo role in this film, or the material they were adapting, author Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels, but the battle itself seems to be faithfully depicted.  Not the usual Hollywood amalgamization of characters and events in a historical adaption, nor the jamming in of elements that weren't a part of recorded history, like a love story or what not.  The closest they came to this is conversations between characters that seemed less for the characters at the time and more about summing up and sending messages to modern viewers.  One example of that would C. Thomas Howell's Thomas Chamberlain conversing with a captured Confederate soldier about the war and why they are fighting it.

The American Civil War is an event that hangs with us to this day.  And though many of us don't really give it much thought from day to day, all you have to do is look at the headlines of the day and see issues and events that still echo to those times, from race, to the culture of the states, to the size and purpose of government, the shots fired on American soil are still heard to this day.  The blood shed may have paid the price for continued national unity, but the conversation from that day still goes on.

And as long as we are talking and seeking solutions, this is not a bad thing.