Now This Is How You Cosplay....

If you are interested in getting into the cosplay game, meet Abbie Soule and take some notes. This young lady absolutely slayed a Ramona Flowers getup that had me swearing that I was looking at Mary Elizabeth Winstead in the flesh. The costume is perfect, the hair and accessories are spectacular, and the angelic face is a thing of beauty. You want more proof as to the fact that this is one of the greatest cosplay efforts ever? How about the fact that Bryan Lee O'Malley, creator of the Scott Pilgrim comic book series, reblogged her photoset!!!! Now that is the ultimate compliment. Check out her blog here and other cosplay efforts of hers here, and take a look at her Ramona Flowers get up after the jump. I would fight a League of Evil Ex's for this girl any day...

The Edgar Wright Triple Play At The Alamo Drafthouse Is Another Reason I Am Considering Moving To Texas...

God, the gang at the Alamo Drafthouse sure know how to put some interesting programming. This weekend they are hosting a triple play screening of Edgar Wright's three seminal movies: Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and Scott Pilgrim. Wow... just wow. How is there no Drafthouse here in NYC yet? what are you guys waiting on? WTF!!!! Anyway, Mondo commissioned Kevin Tong to create a triple bill poster to be sold at the event, similar to the ones created by DKNG Studios & CCD fave Alex Pardee last year for the L.A. triple bills that were shown. Pretty awesome stuff, all the way around. After the jump you can see Tong's unreal take on the three films, as well as the two older posters just cause they are fucking awesome...

Kevin Tong

DKNG Studios

Alex Pardee

Commercially Acclaimed Vol #24 - Nike Fuel Band

TV commercials are a part of our everyday lives as TV viewers. Even though Tivo and DVR have allowed us to "skip through" the commercials, the advertising companies are still trying to peak our interests by coming up with creative commercials. To me, great commercials are an art form and are under appreciated by a society that is always trying to speed through things. Think about it... how many times did you see a great commercial that made you laugh hysterically or want to go out and purchase the advertised product??? And how many times has the best part of the Super Bowl been the commercials during a blow out game???  Whether you want to admit it or not, commercials are cool as shit... and here are some of my favorites.

This weeks ad comes to us from the geniuses over at Nike. It is being used to promote the Nike Fuel Band, which is a new product that tracks our activity throughout the day. In order to illustrate which activities will generate positive energy readings on the Fuel Band, they choose to highlight multiple scenes from cinematic history & past Nike Commercials. Any commercial that can squeeze The Big Lebowski, Twin Peaks, Amadeus, The Warriors, Monty Python, Scott Pilgrim vs The World, Scooby Doo, Ghost Dog and Slap Shot clips into one commercial has got to be amazing. This one certainly is!  Enjoy the commercial after the jump...

Scott Pilgrim vs. DubStep?

Ok it's not actually Scott Pilgrim. But check out this cool video made by Corridor Digital. Kind of has that Scott Pilgrim feel to it. I'm not a fan of DubStep... but I am a fan of cool FX and Scott Pilgrim!

Gender Bending League of Evil Ex's by Piggy Nukka

Check out this cool photograph of some cosplayers flipping the script on Scott Pilgrim's arch nemesis's, The League of Evil Exes!!! They subbed in chicks for the dudes, and a dude for the chick... priceless! Piggy Nukka's phot was retweeted by Edgar Wright himself... very cool. Enjoy!

From L to R: The Katayangi Twins, Roxy Richter, Gideon Graves, Todd Ingram, Lucas Lee, and Matt Patel 

The Fights of Scott Pilgrim In 2 Minutes

Check out this awesome compilation video of the killer fight scences from Scott Pilgrim vs The World that is set to Scott's band Sex Bob-Omb's 'Launchpad McQuack'. I love this movie, and this compilation is one of the best I have seen in a while. Great job Aperfectnin .

Scott Pilgrim... What The Hell Went Wrong???

Way back in May we had 2010 Summer Movie Week here at CCD and all of the contributors gave us the top 5 movies that they were looking forward to. My top 5 was headlined by Edgar Wright's Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. I could not look at the slate of upcoming flicks without this particular entry jumping out at me, so I picked it first. It has been a pretty lackluster summer, and as the week of August 11th came closer I began to hope that Pilgrim would salvage it for me. It did. It most certainly did. Despite the fact that I felt the movie was pretty perfect, it has bee a miserable failure at the box office and has been panned by a few "traditional" movie critics. How is this possible??? It has taken me a few days, but I have some theories.

First of all, let me start with what I thought the film got right... and its just about everything. Edgar Wright was a perfect fit for this project from its inception. I am a huge fan of Hot Fuzz & Shaun of the Dead, and Pilgrim continues the tradition of instant classics that come from Wright. Next, lets talk about the cast. Have we ever seen a better cast put together to fit the look of previously imagined characters before. Take a look at this:

These are just a few of the excellent casting choices and their comic book couterparts. Chris Evans was born to play uber-douche Lucas Lee. Kieran Caulkin is a perfect Wallace Wells. Mary Elizabeth Winstead looks so natural with un-naturally colored hair as Ramona Flowers. Allison Pill is a perfect cunt as Kim Pine, and Brandon Routh is wonderful as Super-Vegan Todd Ingram. Is there anyone better to play the evil Gideon "G-Man" Graves than Jason Schwartzman??? And thats just a few of them. and the there is Michael Cera as Scott himself...

Really, this is perfect casting. Perfect. I am starting to get a bit sick of Cera's non maturing body and same-in-every-movie role as just about anybody, but the dude really LOOKS like the character. Thats the first step, cast someone who fits the part. Then you hope he kills it. And he did, boy did he ever kill it. Cera gets Scott's ideosyncracies down to a T and gives, in my opinion, his best career performance to date. I know Superbad was great, but in Pilgrim Cera shines in a part that seems to have been written just for him (it wasn't, the 1st book came out in 2004, long before Cera became a star in SuperBad).

Now, lets get to the movie. Epic is the only word that I feel does it justice. Brian Lee O'malley's comic did a great job showing a cross section of various people age 17 to 20-something and embraced the things that made them individuals. Wallace is a gay party boy who loves to gossip. Ramona is looking for normality after being a bit of a maneater in her teen years. Lucas Lee is the epitomy of a Hollywood action star who can not understand why anything in the world wouldn't be about him. Kim Pine is the typical jilted lover holding a grudge against Scott while making believe everything is just fine. Natalie "NV" Adams is the rock star who made it big but longs for approval from the people in her past. Knives Chau is 17 and in love with who she thinks is a rock star, when in reality he is just a loser in a shitty local band. We all know someone like Julie Powers, seemingly working 100 jobs and popping up everywhere. And Scott is a 22 year old that just wants to get by... you guys know people like this, you are surrounded by them everyday. Wright does a phenomenal job of making us see the inside of all these characters and loving them all in their own way. Thats the strength in this movie, and its this characteristic that I think will eventually make this movie a cult classic.

Now as far as what the characters encounter in the O'Malley/Wright version of Toronto, well that seems to have been the cause for much of the criticism from these old fogey "traditional" movie critics that I have heard so far. Currently, SP has an 81% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Out of the bad reviews, there seem to be two overwhelming themes that the critics seem to be harping on. 1) Cera is no good in the lead 2) The film is too faithful to the look of the comic and unbelievable. Now I am not saying a critic should have to read all of O'Malley's comics to accurately review the movie, but give it a quick wiki search and its pretty plain to see that Cera is a no-brainer as Pilgrim. Garry Walcott of the Tri City Tribune wrote "Cast anyone else in the lead role and it might work. I assume the Scott Pilgrim of the graphic novels is actually masculine and has all the correct and working body parts."  Yeah, do ya. How 'bout you don't assume and just look at the picture above. Does he seem to be super physically fit??? What a dickbag. Margret Pomeranz, a huge film critic in Australia, said this: " She has too many exes. They should have stopped at four, because it just means these repetitive fights that are the same and they're all unbelievable and it becomes extremely tedious." Who the fuck are you to say how many characters should be in a book or movie. Unbelievable that a 20 something year old girl has seven ex's... whats so unbelievable? Oh, and its a comic book, idiots. I don't think O'Malley or Wright really means that if you destroy someone they will turn into coins. Its not Gone With The Wind, stop being so fucking serious. Then you get Tom Horgen, who is labeled as a Top Critic, saying " What's the point of being clever if you're just going to follow it up with enough flaming-sword action and exploding bad guys to make our pupils hurt?" Here is why Tom... because its an adaption of a previous work, and in that work there are flaming swords and exploding bad guys. What would you have preferred, a Victorian era adaption with bare knuckle fisticuffs so as to appear more like real life??? Well gues what. If you get that, then YOU DO NOT HAVE AN ADAPTION OF A PREVIOUS WORK BECAUSE IT IS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THAN WHAT ITS BASED ON!!!!

Mr. Mike D Vs. Asshole Movie Critics

 I get that people don't have to like something. No one is saying that everyone should love Pilgrim. Just give some legit reasons other than the fact that you didn't read up on the source material, or video games and comic book style fighting isn't your thing. Honestly, Armond White may be a super douche sometimes who ruined Toy Story 3's perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes, but at least he gives legit reasons why he doesn't like a film. Stop being cowards and broaden your horizons a bit. I know your 70 and

The Full Length Scott Pilgrim Is Pimp...Wow!!!

Edgar Wright's upcoming indy comic book movie opus has finally gotten the full length trailer treatment. I am super excited to see this flick, as I was a huge of the comic and picked it as my #1 most anticipated summer movie when we made our picks a few weeks back. I have seen the trailer a few times, and the one thing I have to say is that Edgar Wright seems to have captured the essence of how the characters are supposed to look... the above collage of actors and actresses next to their perspective cartoon versions shows that the cast did a great job with that. I hope you enjoy the trailer. Scott Pilgrim opens on August 13th.