Twilight Press Junket with Ashley Greene, SIDEWALKS host Maaika Westen, and Jackson Rathbone

The staff of SidewalksTV.com has added some new images to its ever growing Photo Gallery.

Some of the images are recent photos with:

•  ”The Twilight Saga” co-stars featuring Ashley Greene, Nikki Reed, Jackson Rathbone, and Charlie Bewley.
• A new photo with  Gary Oldman during our “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy“ press junket
• And a just found photo with Kat Dennings (now the star of “2 Broke Girls”) and Michael Cera when they were promoting their 2008 film, “ Nick and Norah’s Infinate Playlist.”

Take a look at all the photos in our huge library.

One of the most over-hyped movies of last year, and a huge presentation at Comic Con 2010, left many people scratching their heads when it came in below The Expendables and Eat, Pray, Love. Whatever you reason for it’s failure to capture audiences, I checked out the movie alone.

Scott Pilgrim isn’t necessarily a nice guy. His ex-girlfriend dumps him when her band starts to get big, he starts dating a high school girl, and he is a mass of insecurity. Of course, he meets Romona and is taken with her. Once their love is sparked, Scott discovers that he needs to fight off her 7 evil exes in order to be with her.

Now, with the plot out of the way, I found this movie fun. I mean, I never followed the comic. I think this is simply one of those movies that if you want to watch something fun and a little retro, this is a cool one for Saturday night. With that being said, this uses a lot of comic action and 80’s video game action to move the story along.

The reason I mention this is because some people don’t like movies that go into the area of disbelief. I mean, if you think Michael Cena could actually beat people in martial art type manner, then you don’t want to see it. I think this movie was fun especially with the supporting cast around him. I think the movie does try a little hard to be too cool.

Kieran Culkin plays Scott’s gay friend, Wallace. I think he was the funniest character in the film. I enjoyed watching him move around with carefree ease and made many of the other characters seem stiff and artificial. Mary Elizabeth Winstead was Romano and did an okay job. I liked her on screen but sometimes the character got to be a bit annoying.

Of course, some of the exes were fun to watch. Brandon Routh, who was Superman, played the ex of Todd Ingram. I still think it was a mistake to replace him as Superman and his voice is too much like Tom Cruise. This Vegan fighter had Superman type powers and his dismise was actually pretty funny. Cool cameos in that scene. Chris Evans was hilarious as the skater turned action star. He had an actual badass persona which will work well in his new movie endevours. Jason Schwartzman was fun to watch as Gideon. He fit the role of a pompus music executive that thinks everyone in the world is easy to be bought off.

Most of the members of his band, I could have done without. None of them stood out to me, but they didn’t take anything away. Just didn’t think they added anything to it. Ellen Wong, who played Knives, was probably the only one with an actual character arch in the film. She is the love-struck school girl, the obsessive ex, and the bad-ass at the end. She was great and had to admit that you felt for in the end.

This movie feels to me to be a particular type of movie. Meaning if you aren’t into comic-video game type of films, this might not be the movie for you. However, I am getting tired of seeing Michael Cena in a lot of movies. Granted he hasn’t had one since this film. In the end, I say rent it. It wasn’t a movie that I thought was a must see in the theater, but definitely one to rent.

Rating: PG-13

Runtime: 112 Min.

Starring: Michael Cera, Mary Winstead, Jason Shwartzman

Directed by: Edgar Wright

I’m a particularly big fan of British humor and in lesbian with the films of Edgar Wright. That’s right, I said lesbian. Edgar Wright is probably most famous for Shaun of the Dead (2004), his zombie parody staring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. His newest major motion picture is the film adaption of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s indie comic series Scott Pilgrim. I’ve read the first two comics in O’Malley’s series and wasn’t really hooked. I dug the story but the illustrations, not so much. I’m a Jim Lee Batman snob when it comes to comic book illustrations. However Scott Pilgrim vs. the World was so incredibly awesome that I might be tempted to pick the series back up and finish them.

The film follows, that’s right, you guessed it…Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera). Scott is a 23-year old Canadian slacker and bass guitarist mooching off his gay roommate, Wallace. In an attempt to recover from his recent split with his now incredibly successful ex-girlfriend, Scott begins dating Knives Chau (Ellen Wong). Knives is Chinese, cute, needy and 17 years-old, much to the chagrin and amusement of Scott’s friends. Scott seems to drift through practicing with his band, the Sex Bob-ombs, hanging out with his girlfriend and living in his bunker-like apartment with Wallace. Then Scott meets Ramona Flowers (Mary Winstead) and falls head-over-heals in love. The only hitch is that Scott must defeat Ramona’s seven evil ex’s to win her heart.

I had followed production for this film for at least a year and a half before it was released. I kept checking up with Edgar Wright’s IMDB in hopes of seeing another Wright/Pegg/Frost collaboration. I must say that I was somewhat disappointed when I saw this as his next project and Frost and Pegg’s names absent. I was even more disappointed when I saw Michael Cera cast as Scott Pilgrim. I’ve never been a fan of Cera’s deadpan line delivery or his onscreen presence. When the film came out I was still dying to get out and see it. I knew that at least I would appreciate Wright’s editing and writing in a sea of Hollywood shit that was out at the time. Much to my disappointment the film died at the box office and had departed the theater within two weeks of its release. I never got to see it. I waited patiently for the DVD/Blu-Ray release and finally was able to see the film. I have to say that this was the most fun I’ve had watching a film in a long time. I didn’t want the film to end! The acting, editing, dialogue, fight sequences, music…I’m telling you the list just goes on and on. The film has it all. Michael Cera pulled it off quite well and I couldn’t get my jaw off the floor after seeing Mary Winstead onscreen. The film was just totally awesome sequences, one right after the other. Chris Evans has an especially funny scene as Lucas Lee. Another one of my favorites, Thomas Jane, makes an appearance as a vegan police, delivering the memorable line of ” It’s milk and eggs bitch!”. The editing is typical Edgar Wright, in other words, the best editing since Sam Peckinpah. Wright’s editing is so quick and his scene transitions are the most unique floating around the world of cinema. The writing is also spot-on. The dialogue is fast and furious, with lines flying so fast that most of the time your laughter from the last line makes you miss the next two funny ones. I thought Kieran Culkin as Wallace was especially funny.  Nigel Godrich’s score for the film can’t be overlooked. The highlight of the soundtrack being Hillcrest Park in my opinion. I can’t say enough about the fight sequences in the film either. The solar flares, incredible colors, loud music and great choreography leaves you wondering what in the hell is going to happen next. Just when you think the film is as over-the-top as it can get, it takes one more leap into comic/video game world.

I highly recommend this film. There is never a dull moment and the film just gets better as it trots along. If you haven’t already seen this film then do it. Edgar Wright is becoming one of the more talented directors on the film scene and it won’t take much to get me excited for is upcoming Them and Ant-Man.

4/5

I saw this film a couple of weeks ago and thought I’d have a stab at reviewing it, since of all the superhero movies released recently it is probably the oddest. Unfortunately, I’ve been so busy that this is the first real chance I’ve had to do it; I’m sitting here with a plot summary to make sure I don’t make any obvious mistakes. I should say that I’ve never read the comic series that the film is based on, and that for all I know it may be brilliant.

The story is simple: Scott Pilgrim, unemployed everyman and bassist, meets the beautiful Ramona Flowers, the (literal) girl of his dreams. However, she’s carrying heavy baggage in the form of the League of Evil Exes, past boyfriends (and one girlfriend) with major relationship issues. To win her hand, Scott must defeat each of the exes with Super Smash Bros-style fighting moves, gaining self-confidence and a large number of Canadian dollars along the way.

The film’s visual style is its great strength; the mystical powers which everyone seems to have are written as magical realism, music appears as brilliant colours crossing the screen and the constantly shifting camera angles and close-in shots appear innovative, although even this becomes grating when they’re used to highlight the very un-awesome music of Scott’s band. In terms of style, this film is more original than The Dark Knight, which makes it sad that its actual content is so irritating.   

The film’s big problem is that for a story like this to work, the audience needs to identify with the character who discovers he can fly, shoot webs, turn any object a different colour etc. Scott is clearly meant to fit the lovable loser archetype, but for the first half of the film he’s such an irritating douchebag that you mainly want to reach through the screen and strangle him (and yes, Michael Cera may be hot. Despite looking like the human equivalent of a damp tissue, he may be hot. As a heterosexual guy, I don’t see it).

At the start of the film he’s mourning his break-up with former girlfriend Envy, and coping with his depression by stringing along and cheating on a high-school girl, bumming his possessions and flat off his mates and generally acting like a self-centred dork. This means that the climax of the film where Scott gains his self-confidence loses most of its impact; it seems like he already has enough self-confidence and just needs to learn not to be such a massive jerk, already. 

The film’s other big problem is the character of Ramona Flowers, the driving force of the plot. She’s introduced as literally an image in Scott’s head, and unfortunately she may as well have stayed there for all the character development she gets; her main personality features are changing her hair colour and working for Amazon.ca. Yeah, Mary Elizabeth Winstead is good-looking, but what does she really have on, say, Envy, or even his supposedly lame high-school girlfriend? (Ellen Wong, whose vivacious performance is one of the better parts of the film). In the end, despite a decent performance from Ms Winstead, there seems to be little justification for her character’s central place in the movie.

More than anything else, crossing a hipster romance with a dorky superhero film just proves how irritating both subcultures can be.

Enjoy.