Tuesday, August 27, 2013

THE WORLD'S END: The Golden Mile

[ 130911. See the UPDATED version of this post HERE—thanks! ]

Check out Edgar Wright's post of the signs from the twelve pubs of the Golden Mile. Currently he's asking for fans to comment on the post and leave theories of the significance of each of the pubs' names/signs. And thusly…

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Only seen the film twice (so far!), so my memory of what goes down at which pub is not 100 percent. Also, I've got more than one idea regarding the significance of several of the pubs' names and signs so please excuse the (usual) blogorrhea. Also also, be warned, they are *spoiler*-ful…

All pub signs with blue paint spattered on them mark pubs where the gang dukes it out w bluebloods and get ink on their hands. So, that's THE CROSS HANDS, THE TWO HEADED DOG, THE BEEHIVE, and THE HOLE IN THE WALL.  =)

1. THE FIRST POST (click the pub name to see the sign in a new window).

An appropriate name for the first stop (an anagram of "post") on the Golden Mile.

A pun on "First!" comments/posts online.

An example of what the Network does to people: If they're not cooperative and useful, they're replaced by soulless Blanks and mulched as Empties. The post office was declared obsolete and ultimately turned into a Barbucks clone.

2. THE OLD FAMILIAR.

The old familiar… feeling? Meaning the effect that Sam has on Stephen when she appears.

"Familiar" as in inspiring deja vu, as it looks just like THE FIRST POST inside (Barbucks syndrome).

Would Basil be considered a familiar to the boys, as a cat to a witch? Or maybe just to Steven, as Gary maintains that he was closest to him. Also, later that night it's to Steven that Basil drops his shooting star and spacebook truth.

3. THE FAMOUS COCK.

This is the only pub (and publican) that remembers Gary without any Blanking help—because he's been barred for life, the (in)famous cock.

(Can't remember if we saw what he did in 1990 that won him this (dis)honor.)

It's here that Gary downs the remains of three pints sitting on table outside the pub.

4. THE CROSS HANDS.

"Cross" as in "angry." This is where Gary punched the wall tile in the gents 23 years earlier and almost does so again.

This is where the gang first fights (and takes apart) the young Blanks, so there are "cross hands" on both sides. The opening grab-salvos between Gary and the young Blank leader are all about grabbing and blocking wrists and hands, like in the sign's visual.

A stretch—Peter encounters his childhood bully, who does not recognize him. The bully's hands might be considered cross hands as well.

Another stretch?—It's here that Andy, Stephen, Peter, and Oliver discover that Gary lied about his mother passing away, making them a crew of cross "hands" to Gary's obsessed captain Ahab.

The sign's image shows five clasped hands, reflecting the solidarity of the band (in spite of the King's lie) in the face of the cyberpunks attack in the gents. Can't be sure, but the checkerboard pattern background might reflect bathroom floor tiles.

5. THE GOOD COMPANIONS.

Where they meet the Reverend Green and the two Newton Haven Blankolytes, humans who have gone along to get along w the Network (aka good companions).

The one comedie and four tragedie masks of the sign reflect the state of Gary and the Enablers—the unreasonably chipper King (and Jester) and his unhappy knights.

The masks could also reflect Gary's plan (the only one they've got) to act like they don't know what they know about Newton Haven and continue with the Golden Mile.

I'm not familiar with the English novel or the adapted play and films, but the internet tells me it's the title of those, which tells the story of three travelers who apparently save/join a band called The Dinky Doos.

6. THE TRUSTY SERVANT.

This is where they lose Oliver/O-Man *Chamberlain* (aka the trusty servant) to the Network. (Funny how the first thing I thought when I saw grown-up O-Man w the earpiece was "Cyberman." =)

(This is the pub where they "lost" O-Man back in 1990.)

7. THE TWO HEADED DOG.

This is where they run into Sam again and she, Gary, and Stephen fight the twins, aka "the two headed dog." While both the twins' heads do get popped, the canine resemblance to the pub name (and image) is more about having four legs than two heads. Also makes for a wonderful line—"Get your feet off of her!"—and a crazy fun bit of foot-and-fisticuffs.

Question: can a two-headed dog look up? =)

8. THE MERMAID.

The band encounters the youthanized Marmalade Sandwich at the Mermaid. They are the story's sirens of School Disco who attempt to lure our sailors to their Blanking doom.

The pub's name is kind of a contraction of "marmalade" (to "mermaid"), and the sign's image shows the Marmalade Sandwich in mermaid form.

This is also where Basil reappears to educate Steven on the truth behind Newton Haven since the June 22, 1990 shooting star. Basil, the conspiracy nut and truth-is-out-there believer who is steeped in cryptozoology.

Does that golden pearl in the Strawberry mermaid's hand look just a bit like golden ring? One that might have been plucked from the mermaid's belly button…?

9. THE BEEHIVE.

Cool teacher Guy Shepherd has a sit-down w the gang to explain the "merger" offered by the Network, basically a worry-free hive mind existence for replaced Blanks and sympathizers. During this discussion, Andy smashingly reveals Oliver to be a Blank, which leads to the full-on brawl with the Newton Haven drones en masse, when Knightley goes all "Andy smash puny robots!"

(This is the pub where Andy Hulked out in 1990.)

Funny, a hive must have its queen (hrm… didn't spot anyone in drag), but there's no place for a King! =)

The gang escapes the Network's drones by going to the Smokehouse. Smoke is used by beekeepers to keep bees docile while they go for the honey (ale =).

Could the inclusion of this pub be an environmentally conscious callout/connection between the mysterious plight of honey bees and the end of the world?

10. THE KING'S HEAD.

This is where Gary recovers consciousness and decides to keep on with the Golden Mile, demonstrating how far gone he is, where his/the King's head is at.

The King of the sign bears an uncanny resemblance to Gary. =)

Another interpretation: this is where Gary's head (or perhaps "playhead"?) has been for the last 20-some years, paused just before this pub, as Gary and his court quit the crawl before making it to this pub in 1990.

11. THE HOLE IN THE WALL.

Stephen smashes the Beast thru the wall of this pub in an attempt to save Andy and Gary.

Also, Gary and Andy manage to evade the town's Blanked forces (not without some blueblooded violence of course, but still, relatively unscathed). They take advantage of the hole in the Network's defense, but one that leads/herds them directly to…

12. THE WORLD'S END.

The name and the sign say it all. It's here, or rather beneath here, that Gary, Andy, and Steven's drunken case for humanity's freedom-loving incorrigibility sends the Network packing back to Legoland, catastrophically returning the world to the dark ages.

There are two cathartic revelations of a more personal scale as well. Before the end of everyone's world, at the climax of their fight on the ground floor of the pub, Andy discovers that Gary has attempted to end his world by suicide. And below ground, when the Network offers Gary a youthful Blank existence, he rejects it by destroying his younger eggheaded self.

The image of the burning world is a pretty close match for what happens when the Network pulls up its technological stakes (including Ampera?) and unfriends the Earth.

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Not everything these guys do is a reference, but my brain is wired for cinema and story pattern recognition/connection. Faultily, perhaps, but wired nevertheless…

The Andy v. Gary fight at the World's End totally gave me deja movie for the Dante v. Randal fight in Kevin Smith's CLERKS. The energy more than the choreography, I should think. =)

And below the World's End, the underground complex and confrontation, along with both Guy Sheperd's and the Network's pitch to Gary and the boys had me thinking of THEY LIVE, with a spacebook twist. And the case made by Gary King of the humans and his Prince and Knight, along with the verdict and sentence took me back to the end of ESCAPE FROM L.A. =)

Love that this brand of alien invasion is described as a merger, an old school body snatchers-type execution on the ground with a new school social network framework/philosophy. An alien species or culture doesn't physically arrive to impose itself on us, but instead lures us into joining them from afar with the promise of new apps and upgrades.

Love that once the Blanks are unplugged from the Network they reboot as individuals. I imagine that's what it's like to quit the facebooks, eh?

I feel like there should be more to The Hole In The Wall. The hole in the Network's defense is pretty frickin thin, and the literal hole in the wall made by the Beast seems, well, literal. Maybe I've forgotten something else that happens there.

O well! Guess I'll just have to see it again! Drat! =)

Keep on keepin on~

Friday, August 23, 2013

It's THE WORLD'S END!

Hey, blankin' blankety blanks!

Funny, "blankety" is, like, "blanket-y." I suppose spelling it "blankitty" might clear that up a bit, but then you get the "kitty" thing in there and…

Never mind.

THE WORLD'S END is here! It's the latest film from Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost—the creative team that brought you SPACED, SHAUN OF THE DEAD, and HOT FUZZ—and the third film in their "Cornetto Trilogy."
My Cornetto Wars Trilogy trading cards! =)

While the "Three Flavours" Cornetto bit *is* something of a gimmick, the films together do form a pretty wonderful body of work, deftly and brilliantly bending, crossing, honoring, and inhabiting multiple film genres and creating some wonderful characters and relationships along the way. I think they work best as a progression in time-of-life, roughly corresponding to 20s, 30s, and 40s, which I think springs from the creators' own POVs. Pay attention to the music/soundtracks and I think you'll agree.

And how better to title the 40s chapter than THE WORLD'S END, right? Straight from a coffee mug or Hallmark card! =)

In this film, we're introduced to a group of five teenage friends who decide to celebrate the end of their high school careers by walking (well, okay, staggering) the Golden Mile, a dozen-pub crawl through their home town of Newton Haven. Alas, this is a challenge that through no fault of their own, they must leave unfinished. Flash forward twenty-some years to present day and the leader of this band, Gary King (Simon Pegg) tracks down his friends, now grown rather distant from him, and gets them to return to Newton Haven with him to complete their quest! And it all goes down smoothly, like a pint of honey lager.

Not. =)

Enough rambling. For a decent taste of this somber and melancholy reunion of childhood friends as they enter mid-life—what the filmmakers described as (paraphrasing) "THE BIG CHILL if the corpse came to the reunion as well"—well, just watch the trailer…

=)

TRAILER.

And if you're Boston local, it's playing at Regal and AMC, but also in the main room at the Somerville in Davis. I highly recommend supporting the Somerville whenever you can, and while I'm not much of a drinker myself, it's the venue where you *can* partake of a pint while watching Gary King (Simon Pegg) and his rag tag court pub crawl on the big screen! I'll definitely be there. =)

Somerville listings.

Keep on keepin on~

P.S. Also, there's this thoughtful testimonial to consider (along w a link to the "5 DAYS" trailer).

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Cornetto licks!

Quick-ish post to mark the occasion—the Cornetto Trilogy tumblr just posted my "Three Flavours" goofs from flickr side-by-side! =)


Links to the flickrs…

Three Flavours of Doom!

Three Flavours of Hero!

I found the DOOM one at the Cornetto Trilogy tumblr on its own last week (submitted from my freshly-minted tumblr). Yeah, I'm tumbling now. Well, at least for a little while. I've been preoccupied obsessed with getting some bit of Cornetto fan goofing up there, and when submitted uploaded images or links to flickr didn't seem to work, I thought that the Trilogy tumblr might take kindly to another of its kind, so, Edgar, Simon, Nick, I tumble 4 U.

What was I gonna do? *Not* force the Culture Club reference?

=)

If there's any chance you've come across this post and have no idea what any of the images or titles are about… The (Three Flavours of) Cornetto Trilogy refers to the three brilliant and remarkable films by Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg and their talented menagerie:

SHAUN OF THE DEAD

HOT FUZZ

THE WORLD'S END

All of these films are incredibly entertaining, thoughtful, clever, and have at their centers some great relationships and relating. I don't have the time to describe the awesome properly, but with these films, I believe you can watch and trust the trailers. In fact, they are UNDERselling their films.

And—Oh!—the music! Frack. Can't wait for the soundtrack to THE WORLD'S END to be available here in the colonies!

END opens in the U.S. on August 23 and select theatres are offering the triple feature of all three films in order on Thursday, August 22. I *highly* recommend this option. DO IT =)

Keep on keepin on~

Monday, August 05, 2013

Not-so-crazy talk? The Next Doctor

Wow. I really like this


But "realistically," I'd roll back the romantic notion of just *seeing* Donna again. I'd failed to consider Donna herself to be a reason to visit that point in time, but now that I've been smacked in the face with it, I see a lot of potential… The biggest being to somehow immunize her against the side effects of the metacrisis (and its memory-stealing "cure" as we've seen already seen it).

So, Twelve would zip back to 79 A.D. take the place of Caecillius, for a few days, or maybe just moments, while the real one is engaged in the vomitorium or something, and zap her w a time-release packet of dormant Timelord energy, as well as a Jedi mind trick suggestion that she persuade Ten to save his family.

Perhaps there cannot be two of the same TARDIS sharing the same time? So, Twelve arrives in 79 before Ten, Vulcan nerve pinches Caecillius, stows him in his TARDIS—which he sends a couple of days into the future and to a location safely outside of the destruction of Pompeii—and takes his place until after Vesuvius erupts and Ten and Donna leave.

The mind trick suggestion kind of cheapens the Donna Nobility of her desire to save everyone, tho. So, scrap that.

Or… How about having Twelve *ready* to make the suggestion, but on somehow "reading" Donna, he realizes that he doesn't have to. She's got it in her head all on her own that—fixed points be damned!—we have to save everyone! She's just that plucky and ginormous-heartedly human.

And Ten and Donna's adventures continue and conclude as we've seen them. At the end, they go their separate ways and worlds sing of Donna's exploits while, sadly, Donna can no longer remember them. She can't recall, or to some degree, even be exposed to Doctor and Doctor-adjacent adventures and weirdness without going mad. And Ten becomes Eleven. And Eleven becomes Twelve. But, Twelve isn't obviously Ten, right? So he can show his face to Donna without her head blowing up, and one day Professor MacLeish does just that, asks her for directions to the pub or something, and while Donna launches into a story that barely has anything to do with going to the pub, he zaps her with the Timelord energy activator, which Timelord-sciencingly ejects the memory block / returns her memory / whatever they'll want to call it safely, allowing her to regain her memories and experiences, without her Timelordliness.

The Doctor does save everyone!

Well, not really, but it sounds good, right?

Keep on keepin on~

Thursday, August 01, 2013

Crazy Talk: The Next Doctor…

Just wanted to get some of my crazy talk Out There before the rumored/reported announcement of Twelve this weekend…

I would like to see next Doctor be a character we've already seen in the series. Not an ACTOR, mind you, but a CHARACTER. I think it would be best and most practical if it's someone from the timelines of the most recent three Doctors. So, let's say it's Ten…
In one of Ten's stories, he encounters someone identified as a local, native to the planet and timeline, with whom he helps save civilization, time, space, Christmas, and reality in general. The usual Doctor fare.

But when Eleven regenerates into Twelve, we see that he looks exactly like that native, which could be a coincidence, a casting decision, a familiar Whovian shark jump. But this time, the Doctor remembers/recognizes that he looks like someone a previous Doctor has met before. Could still be coincidence, tho.

But as Twelve goes on about his wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey business, he finds himself in a situation that requires crossing Ten's timeline, perhaps to consult with or save someone, or grab/save an artifact or vital piece of information. I forget what sort of spacetime gymnastics were required and described to make it happen, but other Doctors have crossed timelines and worked together in the older series.

This time, tho, Twelve must go about his mission without alerting Ten, so, he goes undercover as the native who helped Ten do what he did back in his episode that protected the universe. We will be treated to a NEW episode (or two) covering the same events from Ten's story, but now from the native's/Twelve's point of view, which of course would include an arc or three of its own, beyond helping Ten out.

The first character that jumps to *my* mind for a Twelve of this kind is Alonso Frame…
I mean, how perfect would it be that Twelve would show up to grant Ten his "Allons-y Alonso" wish, right? But, I'm not sure how down I am with Ten setting Twelve up on a date with Captain Jack. Then again, we only see Boe Face starting to flirt w Alonso, which Twelve would expect (remembering/flashing back to what Ten told Jack), and we could pick up where the Ten episode cuts away, to a conversation in which Alonso maybe has a little fun w Jack before revealing that he's the Doctor! =)

Yeah, I like it.

Okay, it's crazy talk, but I like it. I like it a lot. Nyeah.

My other bit of hopeful crazy talk regarding the next Doc makes use of a device that in my personal pop culture absorption timeline belongs to STAR TREK, and was tweaked for use in/by BUFFY and FARSCAPE.

During the next regeneration, while the Doctor appears to be more glowing stardust than two-hearted humanoid, he gets intercepted by a transmat. It can't lock on him while regenerating, so he doesn't get whisked away, but it *does* mess w his proper regeneration, leaving his friends/allies/companion-types/hobos to protect him while he's vulnerable and OdinSleeping. Eventually, a spot of tea brings him around and he's ready to rock and roll!

How about, "Monocles are cool…" ? =)

And just as we see the new Doctor getting comfortable in his new skin and duds, we cut to… A darkened lab space with a transmat pad, pod, or ring. The glowing, regenerating Doctor materializes, staggering, perhaps ALTERED STATES-edly thrashing, and nozzles surrounding the pad hit him with some sparkly energetic compound that stabilizes him, allowing him to complete his regeneration without the coma/vulnerable period that his other half/self experienced. Lights come up in flashes, as if having trouble powering up, and in sequence reveal the a twin of the new Doctor standing in the interior of a somewhat blasted and very jerry-rigged and duct-taped together TARDIS! And who is there to greet him from the shadows?

"Hi, Dad."
You remember Ten's daughter, right? I *so* want the show to revisit that planted seed.

Or, I suppose, as much as I really don't love her, a lot of fans would probably love to hear…

"Hello, sweetie."

River. Blerg. I prefer Jenny. Regardless of who/how the new Doc is, I do want a Bring Your Daughter To Work Day episode soon! =)

Keep on keepin on~