Hot Fuzz: Addressing A Travesty, And Recommending It As A Spring Movie

To begin, this is the synopsis for 'Hot Fuzz' an action comedy. (It is R-rated for violence and language. From a completely biased standpoint it's what I would call zombie violence, if that's helpful at all. The violence is obviously there, but it has a certain cheese factor. But it depends on the person. Side-note, I forgot everyone's character names so I'm using their real names.)

Hotshot police officer Nicholas Angel smells foul play when the residents of a sleepy Somerset village start to die in terrible `accidents'. Something's afoot, but can he and daft local plod Danny Butterman find out what?

With the synopsis out of the way, I will say that this movie is very British, particularly with it's humour, and if you like Shaun of the Dead you'll most likely like this movie. Honestly going into the movie, the only thing I knew was that I'd seen a cover photo of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost dressed as cops while chasing a swan. I have watched things for less. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost's bromance is iconic and one for the ages. If they're in a movie together, most likely it's going to be hilarious. Also there's a big shoot-out scene and there's a lot of flower pots, hanging baskets, and just flowers in general so that's why I'm classifying it as a Spring movie.

That's the end of my spoil-free recommendation section. 

Onto my very well-informed, well-written, critical essay addressing the travesty that occurred because it didn't actually happen. There will be spoilers. 

In the movie, we get to to the point where Simon Pegg has found out who all the killers in this town are and he decides to tell the city police what's going on and get them to come help him. He leaves Nick Frost behind because Nick found out one of the killers is his dad so he's conflicted and decides to stay behind. Anyways, Simon Pegg ends up coming back to the town police station's evidence room, which was full of guns after he'd seized a heck ton of guns (and a sea-mine for some reason?) from a secret room somewhere. He grabs a bunch of guns, sticks a toothpick in his mouth, puts on sunglasses and rides a white horse into town on the main road. 

It's hard to tell with this GIF but there are flowers everywhere

Nick Frost is sitting in the cop car along the main road and sees Simon Pegg and expresses the appropriate amount of stunned awe. Simon Pegg is then spotted by the murderers who all want him dead which causes the first big shoot-out. Now we're getting to the travesty. Simon Pegg gets off the horse and it runs away. We had ample opportunity for Nick Frost to sit with Simon Pegg on the horse and either shoot at the killers, or even run away from them. Had it only been for a second. But it never happened. Simon Pegg won Nick Frost a stuffed monkey at the fair, he bought him a Japanese Peace Lilly which immediately had to be put into evidence after one of the murders happened, they had the grown man equalivent of this

The context of this is, Simon Pegg is talking about not knowing how 
to shut off his 'detective' brain and then Nick Frost tells him the he can show him 
how and proceeds to get two cop movies for them to watch. But the phrasing of everything 
was very intentional and hilarious.

They gave us all that, and yet, they couldn't give me, I mean us, Nick Frost sitting with Simon Pegg on a white horse while strapped with guns. Where is the outcry, the fanart? I need the fanart. If I could draw fanart I would, but currently I lack the skill. A travesty occurred and other people must know about it. 

If you're like me and can barely read this it says,
'It was the single most painful experience of my life'

Soon after Simon Pegg shows up on the horse, one of the killers rides her bike towards Simon Pegg as she holds her weapon of choice ready to kill him. Nick Frost opens his door on her and she flips over his door and lands on the ground. Nick ends up helping Simon and eventually there's a shoot-out with the help of some of the not-psycho-killer-cops in the grocery store. Then after that happens they have a car chase and they run into the door of the car that was left open. That's funny because it's a call-back that shows attention to detail. Where was that after the horse ran away? If a car door can get call-back, a horse deserves it even more. 

If the problem was time constraints, they could have taken out one of the times that a drunk guy pees on something. Why the British seem to think drunk guys peeing on things 5 times in a row is funny really doesn't make sense. Particularly when it uses up the time of a moment of comedic, and iconic, gold.

Let Nick Frost and Simon Pegg ride off on a white horse together.

The is the closest I get

That being said, I enjoyed the movie. 

It's the first movie I've found that I consider to be a Spring movie in a long time.

There's no reason for this to be here except that it made me laugh

I hope this made sense for the most part. Sometimes it's hard to tell.

For The First Day Of Spring

 

It's the first day of Spring and I've been really excited for it. Combine that with the fact that I've missed doing posts like this lately, you end up here. None of this particularly makes sense together, but I had fun finding quotes, listening to music, and that's all that matters. On that note, if my blog does weird things at any point I'm probably playing with the settings. Just fyi.

'Pete Wyatt woke as a stranger in the world of miracles. He was neither a saint nor a pilgrim. He was just a kid waking too late in the morning in the back of a stranger's egg-yellow Mercury.' -Maggie Stiefvater (All the Crooked Saints)

'You can hear a miracle a long way after dark...' -Maggie Stiefvater (All The Crooked Saints)

'It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot 

and the wind blows cold: 

when it is summer in the light and

 winter in the shade.'

-Charles Dickens (Great Expectations)

'Is the Spring coming? He said. "What is it like?"

...It is the rain falling on the sunlight and the 

rain falling on the sunshine.'

-Frances Hodgson Burnett (The Secret Garden)

'I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it, 

the rest of me is on the draining board.'

-Dodie Smith (I Capture the Castle)

'I've been keeping up appearances all my life. Now I'm going in for realities.

Appearances can go hang!' -L.M. Montgomery (The Blue Castle) 

'In the Spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.' -Margaret Atwood 

'It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folks

that keep darkness at bay.

Small acts of kindness and love.'

-J.R.R. Tolkien (Lord of the Rings)

'There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.' -C.S Lewis

'Based on the way I react when toast pops out of the toaster, I will never look cool walking away from an explosion.' -Pinterest somewhere

Happy first day of Spring!

The Fandom Tag

Skye tagged me for this and I've been excited to do it. Although trying to narrow down answers for some of these was ridiculously hard. I either blanked on everything ever made, or thought of way too many answers. If this had a Howl's Moving Castle title, it would probably be 'In Which I Say Too Much About Myself'. Apparently I struggle with short and snappy.

The Questions

What’s the first fandom you remember becoming a part of?

Aside from pretty much everything I liked from my childhood. There's a lot...

Sherlock Holmes, Edward Scissorhands, and Lilo and Stitch (the first and second movie) 

I was an obsessive (and basic) child. It's weird rewatching some things that I haven't seen since I was little and realizing just how much I hyper-focused on details that are still so distinct in my head. But like weirdly specific details like the leaves on Lilo's dance costume. There was a specific version of Winnie the Pooh that I watched when I was little and I was really obsessed with the tomatoes in it. Don't ask me why, they just looked really good to kid me. 

I don't remember which version this is but this was the one I saw

Sherlock Holmes was the first book character I remember crying over and Stitch was the first movie character I remember crying over. Hence why I chose them for this question. 

Phantom of the Opera (25th Anniversary Royal Albert Hall 2011) was the thing that made me realize fandoms existed though.

What’s the newest fandom you’ve come to enjoy?

I'm not really involved in any fandoms exactly. I consider myself part of the fandom for things that I like but it's more that I just like a thing rather than actually being a contributing member of something. I'm very grateful to all the people that do make GIFs and general things because I don't know how to do it.

Currently (as far as T.V. shows go. And this is narrowed down) 

I've been watching Daredevil when I get the opportunity 

&

I Love Lucy 

It's quite the combo I know. 

I finished the O.C. recently.

I've watched I Love Lucy/The Lucy Show before, but I re-got some of the seasons from the library recently. The first time my mom got it from the library we were only allowed to watch the episodes while mom was making the quilt she'd been working on at the time and I swear that every time we get it from somewhere it coincides with somebody starting a sewing project. It's never intentional, it just sort of happens. Although I think I'm the only one in my family that seems to have noticed this pattern; everyone always seems surprised when I mention it.

What’s a fandom guaranteed to give you feels?

Doctor Who 

It's funny because it's not.

What’s a guilty pleasure fandom of yours?

I'm blanking on anything that really counts as a guilty pleasure. I like the City of Bones movie with Lilly Collins but it's not really a guilty pleasure.

Vampire Diaries maybe? the show is trash but I am a goblin troll and I pick out the parts that I like from it. Which might be saying too much considering I stopped somewhere in season 4 and then had forgotten it for awhile.

What’s the weirdest fandom you’ve heard of/are a part of?

I don't think this is the kind of answer that I'm supposed to give, but it is the answer I want to give.

Lorde's (formerly-deleted) secret onion ring Instagram account where she kept track of what her favourite onion rings were. I've never actually seen her account and I don't think there is a fandom for this but I don't care. I will be the fandom. 

Lorde had made a secret Instagram account dedicated to onion rings (purely for herself) but then people found out about it and she deleted it. Apparently it's coming back, is back, or I just heard a rumour. Either way, the fact that it existed at all is beautiful.

As far as weird fandoms go, possibly Merlin. You'll think the fandom is dead and then it will rise up like Mushu at the oddest times.

Top 2 photos say
'Everyone escapes from our dungeons,
have you ever noticed how everyone-?'

Favorite popular/widely-known fandom?

There's a lot. Pirates of the Caribbean.

 Stranger Things is pretty popular/widely-known. 

Favorite bookish fandom?

As far as actual fandom I've seen for books I've read, possibly The Raven Cycle, Howl's Moving Castle, and Lockwood and Co.

What do you consider your ‘homebase’, a fandom you can always come back to?

Sherlock Holmes again honestly. 

There's so many versions you can never really be bored. Be that books, movies, or t.v. shows

What’s a fandom you know all about…but aren’t actually into it?

I don't know if all the weird info I know is accurate, but I know a lot of random information about Twilight for someone that's never seen/read it (with the exception of the first 30 minutes of the first movie). Granted it's mostly the basic information. Honestly Twilight is hilarious if you don't take it seriously from the little I've seen.

Which fandom has the best characters?

Now there's a loaded question designed to start fandom wars. 

I feel disinclined to acquiesce this request and so I've elected to ignore it.

Do not read into that response, it's not my answer. 

Name your all-time favorite ship.

Just one??? With all due respect to the person that asked the question originally, what the heck kind of questions is that? How do I narrow that down? I'll just mention some of the ones I've been watching edit videos of lately

Grace and Daniel (Ready or Not)

Reylo  (Star Wars)

Ten and Rose (Doctor Who)

Kevin and Casey (Split/Glass)

What’s a fandom you’re curious about joining?

One I've been curious about is Teen Wolf. 

There's some K-dramas, Alice in Borderland...there's quite a few things actually.

5 Ravenclaw Characters I admire/Like To Think I Have Similarities To

 Disclaimer: Please do not take any of this too seriously. It's all in dumb, spur-of-the-moment fun. This is an incredible display of (probably, I hold out a small hope for myself) wishful thinking and I had a blast. 

This whole idea was inspired by a Nancy Wheeler edit video I watched and then I remembered that she is commonly sorted into the Ravenclaw Hogwarts House. There are so many characters I love/ relate to, but to try narrow it down, I thought it could be fun to use characters that are usually sorted into Ravenclaw. However, I will use the term 'usually sorted into' very loosely as I pretty much did whatever I want. If I saw a character get sorted into Ravenclaw just once, I considered it fair game. Although, I did try to make sure that Ravenclaw was a common house for them to be sorted into.

Nancy Wheeler

While I didn't like all of Nancy's decisions, I really like her as a character. 

Some things I admire about her/Hope that I have similarities to is her tenacity, self-respect, and just how much of a fighter she is.

Beth Harmon 

From the few things I could find, Beth seems to be interchangeably sorted into Ravenclaw and Slytherin. I thought my personal opinion was that she was in Slytherin, but the argument could be made for both sides.

Some things I admire about her/hope that I have similarities to is her complexity, (is it too obvious to say I really do admire her intelligence), and the way she notices everything around her. There are so many other things though and that goes for all the characters on this list.

Seth Cohen

I saw him sorted into Ravenclaw once which was all I needed to add him to this list.

Some things I admire about him/hope that I have similarities to is his humour/self-awareness, loyalty, and his intelligence combined with his stupidity.

Rapunzel 

She seems to be sorted into Ravenclaw most often. The thing I love about the internet is that no one can agree with each other which gives me full liberty to make up my own rules while following the rules I already set for myself. 

Some things I admire about her/hope I have similarities to is her drive to follow her dream, appreciation for the small things, and the slight duality of her personality. 

Veronica Mars

I got excited when I saw her sorted into Ravenclaw. As with pretty much anyone on this list, whether they are actually Ravenclaw or not really depends on the whim of the person sorting them.

Some things I admire about her/hope that I have similarities to is her spunk/scrappiness, humour/sarcasm, and that she's a marshmallow.

There were so many options it was hard to narrow everything down. I hope this was fun, I enjoyed doing it. From personal curiosity, I'm curious if anyone has thoughts on what my secondary Hogwarts house might be. And on the flip side of that, what do you think your secondary Hogwarts house is?

Random Classic Hollywood Actor/Actress Trivia

I've been watching a lot of random Youtube videos about different actors/actresses and I thought it would be fun to share a few of the random bits of trivia I found. There's so much information out there, it's both fun and a little daunting. Anyways, without further ado.

Sorry, I couldn't not finish the exchange

Ray Milland (top GIF)

Ray Milland, like any actor or actress, had to work hard to get good roles, but eventually after he started getting them he began to suspect that he was getting roles just because of his looks. He decided to go take lessons and get better at it. 

He had some sort of woodworking saw in his backyard. One time his hand slipped and he got his left hand/thumb pretty bad I guess. (Later on the set of another film he would injure his left hand again. He just didn't have much luck with his hand.) Because WW1 or WW2 was going on he tried enlisting but because of his hand they wouldn't let him. Despite that though he found other ways to help. 

At a different point, he was touring at these different theatres and a soldier there was heckling him asking why he wasn't in the army and his response was 'With a war on? Are you crazy?' 

He ended up (I think) helping with the audition reading for a movie called 'The Jungle Princess' and the lady that they ended up casting as the leading lady requested that be her co-star instead of the guy that was supposed to do it. The studio was hesitant but they ended up going along with her request which surprised me. The movie ended up doing really well apparently so the studio really couldn't complain.

He was asked to do the movie 'The Lost Weekend' but he was really hesitant because he wasn't sure he could portray alcoholism properly and he knew that his acting had to be good. He really wanted to fully understand what he was doing and I guess he decided to spend the night in a psychiatric ward but he only made it a few hours. The effort he put into the role paid off though, the director/cast thought that the movie wasn't going to do very well (based on the reaction they had been receiving) but Ray Milland ended up getting an Oscar for the role. It was also one of the first Hollywood movies to portray alcoholism as a serious thing and not just played for laughs. Although some temperance groups misunderstood the movie and thought that they were glorifying it. I've seen the movie and I'm not sure how they could have got that part so wrong, but misunderstandings like that happen all the time so I guess it makes sense. 

Ingrid Bergman

Ingrid Bergman was a famous actress particularly in the 40s. Eventually, after about 10 years of working in the American Film Industry bubble she became bored with it and worked with an Italian director in neo-realistic films. She ended up having an affair with her co-star (they were both married to different people and had their own children). She had a very 'perfect' persona that had been carefully crafted by different people, which is sort of how show business works I guess, but when she had the affair (which resulted with a baby) it made a lot of people mad. Suddenly she wasn't this perfect person and a lot of people turned on her. Someone actually wrote (and I'm completely paraphrasing, this isn't the exact quote) that she had done more harm for the concept of the family unit than Stalin or Lenin could have done preaching for 10 years. Her movies were banned at different times and it was all very over-blown. Can you imagine people thinking you are worse than Stalin?

She, eventually, after working on different projects that interested her came back for a few American movies years later for roles she wanted to do. She thought the whole thing was kind of ridiculous and stated very clearly that she didn't regret any of it. She was 'forgiven' over time as the press started to back-peddle on some of the things they had said saying that 'people shouldn't judge other people' which sounds disingenuous considering everything but whatever.  

Cary Grant

His mother was put into a mental institution when he was 10 (9? possibly 11? different sources say different things) and she remained there for 21 years. Apparently he didn't know that and had been told that she'd just left. He didn't find out she was still alive and in the institution until he was 30 years old. She'd been suffering 'mania'. 

I was watching a documentary and there was this lady that was saying she had written something and she needed a very, very handsome man to carry the plot. The people that told her about him said that he wouldn't work because he had a cockney accent, had a weird walk, etc and she said that didn't make a difference to her. She said that he was the only good-looking man who'd come in the last week and she says that she just fell madly in love with him. Honestly writing goals.

He was rejected his first Paramount screen test because he 'had bow-legs and a thick neck'.

Thelma Todd

Getting good jobs as an actor/actress is really hard but women especially seemed to have a dangerous time of it. Not always, but the things that happened behind closed doors sometimes is horrifying. There were (and sadly still are) a lot of monsters and sickos in Hollywood. Anyways Thelma Todd refused to go to a 'party' where there was going to be a lot of drunk guys (and there were other actresses that would be told to go as well) and they told her that if she didn't they would fire her. Despite having a mother that was reliant on support from her daughter and trying to survive through life in general, Thelma Todd walked out on them and made a name for herself despite them. And good for her.

Hope this was interesting!