Thursday 04 December

BLOGS

blogCategory
Previous
Back to blog
Next

The Best...movie mash-up

Simon Pegg and Kate Ashfield in Shaun of the Dead
  • Posted at 4:01pm
  • 13 August 2007
  • by RichardRees-RT
  • 1 comment

You more groovy RT-ers out there may be familiar with the concept of the "mash-up": some clever DJ chappie welds together two or more tracks from seemingly incompatible styles to create something that shouldn't work but does, brilliantly. Witness the splicing of rave-granny Madonna's Ray of Light with the Sex Pistols to produce the immaculately titled Ray of Gob - genius.

Simon Pegg has now introduced the idea of the movie mash-up, saying of his latest film, Hot Fuzz, that it's "as if Tony Scott was to guest-helm an episode of Heartbeat". It's not the first movie to get its genres in a twist, though, and while some of these mismatches have been "interesting", like chocolate 'n' cheese pizza, others have turned out more like molecular-chef Heston Blumenthal's bacon-and-egg ice cream - it seems so wrong, but tastes oh-so-good.

So, with that in mind, here's some unlikely cinematic marriages made in heaven...

Flesh Gordon

Sci-fi sex-comedy adventure. Which pretty much sounds like a 14-year-old's dream movie if you think about it. It's pretty tame by today's standards, but this 70s porno-parody of the old Buster Crabbe serials deserves a mention for saucing up space-operas, as Flesh saves the world from Emperor Wang the Perverted. Avoid belated sequel Flesh Gordon Meets the Cosmic Cheerleaders, mind.

The Producers

Nazi musical. OK, to be fair, a comedy about a musical about Nazis. Mel Brooks's 1968 film ridicules the absurdities of the Third Reich in the story of a song-and-dance extravaganza that's meant to flop but becomes a smash hit on Broadway. The film was later adapted for the stage, and Brooks surely appreciated the irony that it became…a smash hit on Broadway.

Romeo & Juliet

Shakespearean teen-flick. 10 Things I Hate about You borrowed the plot of The Taming of the Shrew but set the action in a present-day US high school with language updated accordingly. Like, whateva! Baz Luhrmann's take on the star-crossed lovers actually did the impossible - he stuck to the original text and still made the Bard sexy to teens across the globe (though Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes might have helped a bit there). And anything that can set Shakespeare to a Butthole Surfers' soundtrack must be applauded.

Any Bollywood movie

Romantic musical drama (Devdas). Dramatic romantic comedy-thriller (Fanaa). Historical romantic musical drama. About cricket (Lagaan: Once upon a Time in India). Esteemed movie critic Roger Ebert described Bollywood films as "the Swiss army knives of the cinema, with a tool for every job", and the imdb.com plot keywords alone for Fanaa ("...premarital sex...tour guide...terrorism...eye surgery...exploding helicopter...") make it essential viewing for the fan of multi-genre madness.

But the best mixed-up movie is...

Shaun of the Dead

Zombie rom-com. Proof that Simon Pegg and director Edgar Wright are the kings of, in Pegg's phrase, "self-indulgent intertextuality". Comedy horror had been done many times before (An American Werewolf in London, er, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein), but this added a romantic subplot and the suburban slackercom-style of Pegg's Spaced to the carnage to give it a uniquely British edge. Huge success both here and in the US is testament to how they pulled off such an absurd premise - imagine if had been the cast of Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps being ripped apart by Zombie Flesh Eaters. Actually, that doesn't sound too bad at all...

Link to this post
Post a comment | 1 comment

Comments

  • Posted on 13 August 2007
  • at 5:08pm
  • by Guest100

FROM DUSK TIL DAWN has to be a classic mash up. One minute it's a classic Tarantino style criminals-on-the-run movie, then all of a sudden it snaps to zombie horror half way through, and funnily enough it works.

Post a comment

Do you have something to say about this post? Does it ring true for you or have you got different ideas? Share your thoughts…

Post a comment

(first or nickname only)

Please do not include any personal or personally identifiable information about yourself or others (including email addresses). All information you submit about yourself or others can be viewed by others.

Thank you for your comment

Thank you for your comments. All comments will be looked at by a moderator, however, due to the numbers of comments we receive, we can't promise that all will be posted on the site.

Post another comment

More


Advertisement