So, just got home from an advance screening of Shaun of the Dead – with director and stars in attendance – and here’s what I thought:
First, great film. It looks fantastic on the big screen, balances the laughs with the horror elements perfectly and drew big laughs and huge applause from an overwhelmingly appreciative audience. This buzz on Shaun just keeps growing and for good reason – this is a film that truly deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Army of Darkness and Brain Dead aka Dead Alive. This will absolutely stand as a classic of the genre.
Second, see this with an audience. Yeah, it’ll still be fun on video but this is the sort of thing where the audience feeds off of each other. It’s important to be in a room jammed full of people to really appreciate the full effect of those jump moments.
As promised I also went on a bit of a fact finding mission and here’s what I learned. Their next film will indeed be an action / crime film. The script is underway and Edgar has been jamming as many classic action film viewings into his travel itinerary as he possibly can to feed the fire. They’re also already starting to work up some ideas around a third feature that’ll apparently have some sort of tie in to DJ culture. The reports of the Little Britain guys being involved are greatly exagerated. The British mag that reported that they would appear – along with Alfred Molina and others – had asked Simon who he would hypothetically like to work with in the future and took his list of friends and people he admired as being somehow written in stone for this next film. That’s not to say that they won’t be there, just that nobody knows much of anything specific yet what with the script not actually being written yet. Nick’s new tv show is in the works but is still in the writing phase, so don’t expect to be seeing it any time soon. And for you Spaced junkies, or people who really should be, there’s a new Spaced box set due to release in late September. Season two will be largely unchanged from the old edition, but season one will include a greatly expanded set of special features – including a homage-o-meter and another ten minutes of cut scenes – and the set will include a third disc of special features, built largely around a feature length documentary. You can find that spiffy new set available for pre-order on Amazon UK here.
Finally, I’ve got to say that these are some quality people … the risk of going out and meeting people that you know and admire through their art is that when you actually meet them in person they turn out to be assholes. It sucks when that happens. Edgar, Simon and Nick: definitely not assholes.
