• Home
  • popular
  • EVENTS
  • submit-new-event
  • CHARITY GUIDE
  • Children
  • Education
  • Health
  • Veterans
  • Social Services
  • Arts + Culture
  • Animals
  • LGBTQ
  • New Charity
  • TRENDING NEWS
  • News
  • City Life
  • Entertainment
  • Sports
  • Home + Design
  • Travel
  • Real Estate
  • Restaurants + Bars
  • Arts
  • Society
  • Innovation
  • Fashion + Beauty
  • subscribe
  • about
  • series
  • Embracing Your Inner Cowboy
  • Green Living
  • Summer Fun
  • Real Estate Confidential
  • RX In the City
  • State of the Arts
  • Fall For Fashion
  • Cai's Odyssey
  • Comforts of Home
  • Good Eats
  • Holiday Gift Guide 2010
  • Holiday Gift Guide 2
  • Good Eats 2
  • HMNS Pirates
  • The Future of Houston
  • We Heart Hou 2
  • Music Inspires
  • True Grit
  • Hoops City
  • Green Living 2011
  • Cruizin for a Cure
  • Summer Fun 2011
  • Just Beat It
  • Real Estate 2011
  • Shelby on the Seine
  • Rx in the City 2011
  • Entrepreneur Video Series
  • Going Wild Zoo
  • State of the Arts 2011
  • Fall for Fashion 2011
  • Elaine Turner 2011
  • Comforts of Home 2011
  • King Tut
  • Chevy Girls
  • Good Eats 2011
  • Ready to Jingle
  • Houston at 175
  • The Love Month
  • Clifford on The Catwalk Htx
  • Let's Go Rodeo 2012
  • King's Harbor
  • FotoFest 2012
  • City Centre
  • Hidden Houston
  • Green Living 2012
  • Summer Fun 2012
  • Bookmark
  • 1987: The year that changed Houston
  • Best of Everything 2012
  • Real Estate 2012
  • Rx in the City 2012
  • Lost Pines Road Trip Houston
  • London Dreams
  • State of the Arts 2012
  • HTX Fall For Fashion 2012
  • HTX Good Eats 2012
  • HTX Contemporary Arts 2012
  • HCC 2012
  • Dine to Donate
  • Tasting Room
  • HTX Comforts of Home 2012
  • Charming Charlie
  • Asia Society
  • HTX Ready to Jingle 2012
  • HTX Mistletoe on the go
  • HTX Sun and Ski
  • HTX Cars in Lifestyle
  • HTX New Beginnings
  • HTX Wonderful Weddings
  • HTX Clifford on the Catwalk 2013
  • Zadok Sparkle into Spring
  • HTX Let's Go Rodeo 2013
  • HCC Passion for Fashion
  • BCAF 2013
  • HTX Best of 2013
  • HTX City Centre 2013
  • HTX Real Estate 2013
  • HTX France 2013
  • Driving in Style
  • HTX Island Time
  • HTX Super Season 2013
  • HTX Music Scene 2013
  • HTX Clifford on the Catwalk 2013 2
  • HTX Baker Institute
  • HTX Comforts of Home 2013
  • Mothers Day Gift Guide 2021 Houston
  • Staying Ahead of the Game
  • Wrangler Houston
  • First-time Homebuyers Guide Houston 2021
  • Visit Frisco Houston
  • promoted
  • eventdetail
  • Greystar Novel River Oaks
  • Thirdhome Go Houston
  • Dogfish Head Houston
  • LovBe Houston
  • Claire St Amant podcast Houston
  • The Listing Firm Houston
  • South Padre Houston
  • NextGen Real Estate Houston
  • Pioneer Houston
  • Collaborative for Children
  • Decorum
  • Bold Rock Cider
  • Nasher Houston
  • Houston Tastemaker Awards 2021
  • CityNorth
  • Urban Office
  • Villa Cotton
  • Luck Springs Houston
  • EightyTwo
  • Rectanglo.com
  • Silver Eagle Karbach
  • Mirador Group
  • Nirmanz
  • Bandera Houston
  • Milan Laser
  • Lafayette Travel
  • Highland Park Village Houston
  • Proximo Spirits
  • Douglas Elliman Harris Benson
  • Original ChopShop
  • Bordeaux Houston
  • Strike Marketing
  • Rice Village Gift Guide 2021
  • Downtown District
  • Broadstone Memorial Park
  • Gift Guide
  • Music Lane
  • Blue Circle Foods
  • Houston Tastemaker Awards 2022
  • True Rest
  • Lone Star Sports
  • Silver Eagle Hard Soda
  • Modelo recipes
  • Modelo Fighting Spirit
  • Athletic Brewing
  • Rodeo Houston
  • Silver Eagle Bud Light Next
  • Waco CVB
  • EnerGenie
  • HLSR Wine Committee
  • All Hands
  • El Paso
  • Avenida Houston
  • Visit Lubbock Houston
  • JW Marriott San Antonio
  • Silver Eagle Tupps
  • Space Center Houston
  • Central Market Houston
  • Boulevard Realty
  • Travel Texas Houston
  • Alliantgroup
  • Golf Live
  • DC Partners
  • Under the Influencer
  • Blossom Hotel
  • San Marcos Houston
  • Photo Essay: Holiday Gift Guide 2009
  • We Heart Hou
  • Walker House
  • HTX Good Eats 2013
  • HTX Ready to Jingle 2013
  • HTX Culture Motive
  • HTX Auto Awards
  • HTX Ski Magic
  • HTX Wonderful Weddings 2014
  • HTX Texas Traveler
  • HTX Cifford on the Catwalk 2014
  • HTX United Way 2014
  • HTX Up to Speed
  • HTX Rodeo 2014
  • HTX City Centre 2014
  • HTX Dos Equis
  • HTX Tastemakers 2014
  • HTX Reliant
  • HTX Houston Symphony
  • HTX Trailblazers
  • HTX_RealEstateConfidential_2014
  • HTX_IW_Marks_FashionSeries
  • HTX_Green_Street
  • Dating 101
  • HTX_Clifford_on_the_Catwalk_2014
  • FIVE CultureMap 5th Birthday Bash
  • HTX Clifford on the Catwalk 2014 TEST
  • HTX Texans
  • Bergner and Johnson
  • HTX Good Eats 2014
  • United Way 2014-15_Single Promoted Articles
  • Holiday Pop Up Shop Houston
  • Where to Eat Houston
  • Copious Row Single Promoted Articles
  • HTX Ready to Jingle 2014
  • htx woodford reserve manhattans
  • Zadok Swiss Watches
  • HTX Wonderful Weddings 2015
  • HTX Charity Challenge 2015
  • United Way Helpline Promoted Article
  • Boulevard Realty
  • Fusion Academy Promoted Article
  • Clifford on the Catwalk Fall 2015
  • United Way Book Power Promoted Article
  • Jameson HTX
  • Primavera 2015
  • Promenade Place
  • Hotel Galvez
  • Tremont House
  • HTX Tastemakers 2015
  • HTX Digital Graffiti/Alys Beach
  • MD Anderson Breast Cancer Promoted Article
  • HTX RealEstateConfidential 2015
  • HTX Vargos on the Lake
  • Omni Hotel HTX
  • Undies for Everyone
  • Reliant Bright Ideas Houston
  • 2015 Houston Stylemaker
  • HTX Renewable You
  • Urban Flats Builder
  • Urban Flats Builder
  • HTX New York Fashion Week spring 2016
  • Kyrie Massage
  • Red Bull Flying Bach
  • Hotze Health and Wellness
  • ReadFest 2015
  • Alzheimer's Promoted Article
  • Formula 1 Giveaway
  • Professional Skin Treatments by NuMe Express

    The CultureMap Interview

    Scott Pilgrim's Edgar Wright isn't one of those directors just looking to "bang" extras: He triple swears

    Joe Leydon
    Aug 16, 2010 | 2:53 pm
    One of the keys was making sure that Michael Cera looked completely overmatched physically.

    Scott Pilgrim vs. The World wasn’t exactly a world-beater at the box office this weekend — though, gee whiz, remember when a $10.5 million opening was, like, phenomenal? — but never mind: Director Edgar Wright’s flashy, funny, phantasmagorical graphic novel adaptation has more than enough built-in-geek appeal, genre-twisting spectacle and pop-culture-pollination to ensure its long life as a cult-fave destined for midnight screenings and home-video viewings.

    Based on the comic book series by Bryan Lee O’Malley, it’s the story of a basically lovable but immaturely selfish Toronto slacker (played by the perpetually puppy-doggish Michael Cera) who’s recovering from a breakup with a beautiful rocker (Brie Larson) who “kicked his heart in the ass” — and casually hanging with a high school senior (Ellen Wong) who takes their budding relationship way too seriously — when he encounters Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a mysterious lovely from the United States whom he suspects has quite literally stepped out his dreams.

    Unfortunately, in order to hook up with Ramona, Scott will have to fight and defeat each of her Seven Evil Exes, former flames who range in ferocity from a vainglorious pro skateboarder (Chris Evans) to a super-powerful vegan telekinetic (Brandon Routh). And he must do so in one-on-one (or, in one case, one-on-two) slugfests that resemble the ever-escalating grudge matches in a ‘80s video game.

    Wright, the cheeky Brit filmmaker justly famed for the straight-faced, seriocomic genre tweaking of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, visited Houston (along with Scott Pilgrim co-star Brandon Routh) to promote his hard-to-categorize, harder-to-resist live-action comic-book action-adventure kung-fu fantasy. Here’s some of what he had to say.

    CultureMap: It’s funny to see — in a movie so heavily influenced by comic books — that two of the Evil Exes are played by Brandon Routh, the star of Superman Returns, and Chris Evans, who was The Human Torch in the Fantastic Four movies, and will star in Captain America: The First Avenger.

    Edgar Wright: Well, Brandon and Chris are great comic actors. But there’s definitely an element where you had to have people who would be a physical threat to Michael. I think if I would have cast more established comedy actors, or people whom you primarily know for their roles in comedies, it wouldn’t have been as interesting — or threatening.

    You see a scene where Michael Cera and Chris Evans are about to fight — you sort of assume that Michael Cera is going to die after the first punch. You need to have that sense of threat.

    CM:. Is it true you actually had to do a three-day test shoot, simply to illustrate your plan to mix up indie rock, romantic comedy, martial arts action, magna-style visuals, and video game iconography?

    EW: That’s right. I’ve been working on this on and off for about five years, and solidly for two years. And we had the script and all of the books and some of the casting in place — but there was always the question of what the movie was going to look like. People reading the script — even after they saw the storyboards — they just couldn’t see it. So we suggested to Universal that they let us shoot a test shoot.

    And we shot part of the first fight — the Matthew Patel versus Scott Pilgrim fight — with two stunt men. We’ll probably put that on the DVD, because it’s funny to watch. Because the stunt man who plays Scott Pilgrim looks a lot more like Brandon Routh than Michael Cera. But it’s very similar to the finished scene. And it really helped, because we worked on the special effects for, like, three months just for that test scene, to be able to present it to Universal.

    CM. How much pressure did you feel while stepping up from small-budget features like Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead to the big-budget extravaganza of Scott Pilgrim?

    EW: This is, yeah, the biggest budget I’ve ever worked with. But I always feel like I have to take full responsibility for getting the max out of the budget, and making sure all of the money is on screen. Or try to make sure it looks like it cost twice as much as it did. In a case like this, with the amount of talent on both sides of the camera, when you come to work for a 12-hour shooting day, you’ve got to come to work prepped, and know exactly what you’re doing.

    And you’d be amazed by how many directors don’t know what they’re doing, and try to wing it. Or spend much of their time in their trailer, trying to bang extras. Not mentioning any names, of course.

    I have to say, Universal was very supportive. They looked at the dailies all during the filming, and I think they were kind of thrilled by what they were getting. But, like I say, I did feel a sense of responsibility. You always do. Like, Shaun of the Dead cost six million dollars — which is kind of like nothing in Hollywood terms. But you feel exactly the same pressure doing something like that. It’s no different, because it’s still a lot of money.

    Basically, this cost the equivalent of four Hot Fuzzes. And I’d love to think it looks like it cost the equivalent of eight Hot Fuzzes.

    CM: Were you the one who decided to impose on the storyline the structure of a progression up different levels of a video game?

    EW: That’s true. In the books — because there’s one fight per book, they’re kind of structured in a different way. And the books are great, because they have a lot of that Japanese manga feel. But they’re also sort of like sprawling teen soap operas. They’re as much about the relationships as they are about the action. We wanted to get that balance right in the movie, too.

    But I think the movie took on more of the structure of those ‘70s martial arts films where you have a tournament, or a certain number of foes you have to defeat. Sort of like seven levels of ascension toward becoming a man.

    And like in the book, Scott has this sort of extended family of friends and mentors and family members. I think they all work as kind of a Greek chorus. It’s like they try to guide him through life. For the first two-thirds, people are trying to advise him — and he winds up ignoring them. And then toward the end, he has to sort of make up his own mind about what he needs to do.

    CM: It seems to me that, at some point during the writing and pre-production, you had to decide: You’d either stop the movie every few minutes to provide exposition or explain the pop-culture references and video game allusions, or just move forward and trust the audience to understand. You chose the latter. Wasn’t that a bit risky?

    EW: I think it’s a case where you simply have to submit to the film, and let it kind of cast its spell. One of the problems with most genre films is having to explain how everybody got their super powers, or why they’re where they are, or whatever. And it really becomes highly tedious cinema. I can think of films this summer — I can think of one film in particular — which spend so much time explaining the rules of their world that you wind up thinking, “Oh, for fuck’s sake – just end!”

    You don’t even care anymore after a while.

    With this, basically, you’re watching Scott Pilgrim’s daydream. And the film is all about taking you on a ride in his imagination. In terms of references and stuff, I think those things are kind of like just dressing on top. A thing should never have to stop dead for a reference to be explained. Because it really shouldn’t and doesn’t matter if there’s a little sound that you hear that you either recognize or not. It’s not really important. They’re like little Easter eggs for you to find.

    And if out of 300 people in the cinema, only one spots it as a sound effect from Flash Gordon — that’s absolutely fine. That’s kind of what it’s designed for — to make that one person laugh. But at the same time, it hasn’t stopped the scene dead, because most people haven’t even noticed it.

    CM: This is one of the first major U.S. films in recent memory to be shot in Toronto because the story actually takes place in Toronto.

    EW: Well, the original books are set in Toronto. So we do have to make reference to it. I mean, actually, on one side, we don’t make a big deal that it’s in Canada. But there are a few specific cultural jokes — usually at the expense of Scott Pilgrim. The characters from the United States are usually seen as more exotic and cooler and stuff, and make the Canadians feel insecure. But, yeah, this is Toronto. So it may be one of the first American films shot there where you didn’t have to digitally erase the CN Tower from every exterior shot.

    CM: True enough. It’s funny to see so many films that are supposed to be set in New York or Chicago or Unnamed American City, but have scenes that feature distinctive Toronto landmarks like the CN Tower — or the spectacularly gaudy Honest Ed’s store on Bloor Street, which has been in everything from The Long Kiss Goodnight to TV commercials for Cadillac.

    EW: It’s funny you mention that. Because, yeah, Honest Ed’s is this block-long discount store with, like, a million light bulbs on the sign in front. So it’s very, very recognizable. But then you see these American films shot where Toronto is doubling for the United States — and someone drives past Honest Ed’s. It’s like when I saw The Long Kiss Goodnight on cable again recently.

    It was a scene where they were walking past Honest Ed’s, and I thought: “Aha! I know where this is!”

    The fight scenes in Scott Pilgrim involved painstaking planning.

      
    unspecified
    news/entertainment

    Movie Review

    Tom Cruise goes all out in Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning

    Alex Bentley
    May 22, 2025 | 3:30 pm
    Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, and Hayley Atwell in Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning
    Photo courtesy of
    Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, and Hayley Atwell in Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning.

    Over the course of 30 years and eight films, the Mission: Impossible series has proven to be the most reliable of any action movie franchise. Not all of them are equally good, but with Tom Cruise in the lead as Ethan Hunt, they can be counted on for at least a couple of mind-blowing stunt sequences per film, enough to keep fans clamoring for more.

    Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning has the feel of being the last film in the series, and not just because the 62-year-old Cruise is getting up there in age. Following up closely on the events of 2023’s Dead Reckoning Part One (Part Two changed to The Final Reckoning for unknown reasons), the film has Hunt trying to stop an A.I. villain known as The Entity from taking over the world’s collective stash of nuclear weapons.

    To do so, Hunt and his cobbled-together team — Luther (Ving Rhames), Benji (Simon Pegg), Grace (Hayley Atwell), and Paris (Pom Klementieff) — must hopscotch around the world, tracking villain Gabriel (Esai Morales) and trying to figure out a way to get The Entity’s source code, which is located on a sunken Russian submarine. Oh, and they also have to evade capture by a disgruntled U.S. government, led by now-President Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett).

    Written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie and co-written by Erik Jendresen, the film might just be the most convoluted one in the series so far. The filmmakers layer on tons of exposition, with lots of flashbacks to previous events in the series to explicate the events of the present, as well as providing unexpected connections to previous films. The plan for stopping The Entity and the references to the past are so dense that the first half of the film is relatively boring.

    Things pick up in the final 90 minutes of the three-hour film, mostly because that’s when the majority of the action takes place. More than other entries in the series, the film considers the geopolitical implications of Hunt’s actions, and he has to negotiate with a variety of high-powered people to do what he deems best. While his efforts are somewhat preposterous, even by the standards of the series, they lead to a bunch of fun sequences that provide levity among the world-changing drama.

    Ultimately, what makes the film succeed are its action scenes. Cruise has done stunts on planes/helicopters before in the series, but what he does during a biplane sequence toward the end of the film is almost beyond belief. Yes, he’s attached to the plane with harnesses that are digitally erased, but he’s still doing it hundreds of feet in the air at great bodily risk considering. While the series has always featured spectacular stunt sequences, this one deserves to be near the top of the list.

    The flashbacks to scenes from throughout the series underscore just how much Cruise has changed in the past 30 years, but also emphasize how amazing it is that he’s still willing to sacrifice his body as much as does to make these films. No other actor goes as far as he does to entertain the masses, and the events of the story even give him opportunities to show off his dramatic acting skills.

    The supporting cast is more packed than usual, and all of them enhance the film. In addition to Hunt’s team, the President has a group of advisers that includes actors like Henry Czerny, Holt McCallany, Nick Offerman, and Janet McTeer. Other recognizable faces like Hannah Waddingham (Ted Lasso), Trammell Tillman (Severance), and Katy O’Brian (Love Lies Bleeding) show up for impactful roles.

    Whether or not this is the last film in the current incarnation of the series, The Final Reckoning has a lot to offer longtime fans, with action set pieces that remains some of the best Hollywood has to offer. The story may be completely baffling, but with Cruise and other appealing actors leading the way, there’s more than enough great entertainment to go around.

    ---

    Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning opens in theaters on May 23.

    moviesfilm
    news/entertainment
    Loading...