26. Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)

{in this exact clip, he actually says the film's title!}

Code-name: Whackbat



Director: Wes Anderson
Writer: (book) Roald Dahl, (screenplay) Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach
Type: book-to-movie adaptation, animated, dramedy

Cast:
Mr. Fox- George Clooney
Felicity Fox- Meryl Streep
Ash- Jason Schwartzman
Kristofferson- Eric Anderson (Wes's brother)
Badger- Bill Murray
Kylie the Possum- Wally Wolodarksy
Coach Skip- Owen Wilson
Agnes- Juman Malouf
Rabbit- Mario Batali
Boggis- Robin Hurlstone
Bunce- Hugo Guinness
Bean- Michael Gambon
Rat- Williem Dafoe
Petey- Jarvis Cocker

Notable Nominations:
OSCAR- Best Animated Film
OSCAR- Best Original Score- Alexandre Desplat (another frequent collaborator of Wes Anderson's)
Golden Globe- Best Animated Film

Write-up:

INTRODUCTION

According to my other blog, I first saw this movie on Cinemax in October of 2010 and these were my first "in-a-nutshell" thoughts.

As for “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” George Clooney does not disappoint. The movie was not necessarily my cup of tea, but the edginess of it, including the animation won me over. It fascinates and captivates at the same time. The humor derives from some new jokes that haven’t been overclichéd and there are some old jokes in there that have been heard in other movies. In a word, I say its charming.

Charming and incredibly quirky.

I've come into other Wes Anderson movies expecting the same thing. So far, only "The Grand Budapest Hotel" delivered on that. As I might have stated previously, if there was any humor in "The Royal Tenenbaums," it was lost on me... and "Moonrise Kingdom" could have been better if it wasn't taken so seriously with the "Romeo & Juliet"-esque storyline.

Is it silly to expect the same thing in every movie an actor or director does?
Yes, but that's just how I roll.

When I first became aware of this movie, I didn't know what to think. It seemed so different on the animation alone, but since it got good reviews, I had to check it out.

Anyone who read my reviews for "She's out of my league" and "Easy A" knows how I saw lots of movies in 2010 and my favorites were the ones with the most unique writing.
It might have gotten to a point with me where I'd seen so many movies that I was getting sick of their predictability. Luckily, I came across gems like this one that kept me engaged in this medium.

PLOT

Back in the day, Mr. Fox was all about the danger of being a wild animal, stealing various fowl from farmers. But when he and his wife find themselves in a fox trap, he obeys her wish to give up this life for a less hazardous one.

Fast-forward 2 years (12 fox years) later:
He writes a newspaper column, she paints thunderstorm-laden landscapes for a hobby and their son Ash aspires to be an athlete.

Mr. Fox moves his family to a large oak tree at, in his view, an ideal location. It happens to have easy access to three notorious farmers, Boggis, Bunce and Bean.
Just for the heck of it, he and his new partner-in-crime Kylie break into the farms night after night to steal chickens, ducks, geese and squab ("whatever they are"). Ultimately, this gives way to some pretty dramatic consequences for the Foxes and the other animals.

The animals struggle to survive. Mr. Fox's marriage gets rocky. Ash deals with some growing pains including dealing with the arrival of his "perfect" yet humble cousin Kristofferson. And the animals give the farmers their comeuppance.

All the while, despite all the drama, hilarity ensues whenever the cracks allow. Which is pretty often ;)

CHARACTERS and ACTORS

We're talking an all-star cast here. Not surprisingly, Wes Anderson has his favorites. Bill Murray obviously. At least one Wilson brother (Owen Wilson is practically a cameo but it's a great one). Jason Schwartzman, who first worked with Wes Anderson in "Rushmore" (another film I gotta see for him and the writer/director).

Willem Dafoe played the psychotic rat that guards Mr. Bean's alcoholic "tastes like melted gold" cider, making a pretty good secondary villain. But I'm not sure anyone caught onto the fact it was him doing the voice. I certainly didn't and I was thinking during "The Grand Budapest Hotel" that it was his first time working with Wes Anderson. Plays a really good villain in that too ;)

Then there're the big guns of Clooney and Streep and Gambon.

In the right context, I love Meryl Streep. But I'm not the biggest fan when it comes to awards season and when she's cast because moviemakers believe they need a name as big as hers to give their project credibility. (Trust me, when "The Giver" comes out, I will be vocal about casting her... among several other things because it's my favorite book).

Michael Gambon plays "possibly the scariest man currently living" Mr. Bean, which is an interesting contrast to the role I will forever associate him with... Professor Dumbledore.
Sure, on looks alone, Richard Harris will always be the Dumbledore I picture when I re-read the books, but you see one actor play the same role over a decade... that stuff sticks with you :-P

Of course, last but not least is George Clooney.
I could care less that he plays the same character in every movie (particularly ones like this, "Ocean's 11" and "The Monuments Men" where he leads heist operations), he's always so pleasant to watch. He's the only actor I can confidently consider a "movie star" because he's a class act and a really nice guy.

Nobody else could play the incorrigible Mr. Fox as good as him. Not in a million years :-P

THE ATHLETE

All of these characters have their faults. Second only to the Fantastic Mr. Fox himself is his son, Ash.

My memory has faded over the years that've passed, but I'm convinced that I stuck through this movie because I'm very partial to that name. My first love, who first inspired me to write, had that name.

I don't know why I find Ash such a compelling character. Maybe it's all about Jason Schwartzman's voice, how he was so perfect as this character. This was my first encounter with him. I've been known to follow actors around like a lost puppy when I fall in love with their voices (Haley Joel Osment is the biggest example of that for me). Oddly enough, so far the movies I've found him in (Scott Pilgrim, The Grand Budapest Hotel) were purely coincidental 8-)

Either way, yeah, he's rude, but I loved his insistence of his athletic status when all but one final scene showed otherwise. (The final scene was the best pay-off this movie has, at least in my book).

Also love this set of dialogue and how he ends it.

Felicity: we all know what it's like to be... different
Ash: but I'm not different. Am I?
Felicity: we all are. Him especially (points to Mr. Fox) but there's something fantastic about that, isn't there? (leaves)
Ash: hmm, not to me, I prefer to be an athlete

(when the situation calls for it, I always love quoting that final line... yeah, I am a total nerd)

On the other hand, we have Kristofferson. He's staying with the Foxes because his father (Felicity's brother) is suffering from double pneumonia. In a short time, Ash takes a strong disliking to him. Particularly when he unassumingly captures the affections of Agnes, another fox at their school, but most notably when he shows him up in gym class;

WHACK-BAT

This is my favorite scene in this movie.
1) because it stars Owen Wilson as the school coach
2) it has great dialogue ("that's the first time that kid has ever swung a whack bat?")
3) the sport itself

Throughout our trip to Sydney, Australia, which was a couple months after I saw this movie, I couldn't help but think of "whack bat" whenever we were trying to discern the mystery of cricket. One dude we met at a pub tried to explain it to us, but his speech was unintelligible after all the drinks he had.

I still don't get whack-bat, but I find it so intriguing. This is the only dialogue we have to go on:
"Basically, there's three grabbers, three taggers, five twig runners, and a player at Whackbat. Center tagger lights a pine cone and chucks it over the basket and the whack-batter tries to hit the cedar stick off the cross rock. Then the twig runners dash back and forth until the pine cone burns out and the umpire calls hotbox. Finally, you count up however many score-downs it adds up to and divide that by nine."

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS

If it's not random quotes, its entire scenes that make me geek-out when I watch this movie because I find them oddly compelling.
The greatest example is when Mr. Fox is delegating tasks to the other animals, calling them by their Latin names. So many random answers. Like Badger says he's a demolitions' expert. And how he enthusiastically shakes weasel, rattles off his Latin name while he responds "Stop yelling!"

There are a dozen great scenes that are just full of laughs, varying from ha-ha funny to slow-burn laughs you have to think about.

Or just running gags.

Like every now and then, Kylie gets the "psycho" look in his eyes where his pupils are the shape of spirals :-P it's even funnier when Mr. Fox gets it after running away from a beagle suffering from Rabies in one of the latter scenes.
Or the ransom notes (where the letters are cut out from magazines to "hide" identities of the letter writers) where the characters break the fourth wall just to get us to laugh.
Or when Mr. Fox has his trademark click and whistle and Kylie asks about it during the final mission to rescue Kristofferson and get back at the farmers. Then later on tries to establish his own trademark and kinda fails at it, lol
Or how they use the word "cuss" whenever they're spewing profanities because it keeps the movie PG. Every now and then, I will use the word "cuss" in my writing for that reason alone. My favorite "cuss" scene is where Mr. Fox and the Badger go at it after Badger says "the cuss you are" and Mr. Fox responds "The cuss am I?"

One oddly cool moment is where Mr. Fox confronts his phobia of wolves (which he brings up a couple times before hand) when he comes across one. There's no dialogue exchanged (at least not by the wolf), but both of them raise their hands in the air out of respect for one another.

It's all about the quirky details and subtle moments with this movie. The way I see it, you either go crazy for it or you just don't get it. But if you're open to something different, this is definitely a good movie to get into.

COMING SOON

Don't know how many people read my previous entry, but forgetting my place in my countdown, I gave away I had another Downey film coming up.

Not just because this particular movie is great in its own right and not just because he actually won something for it (yep, I just gave it away right there, lol), but because the impact it had on me was pretty substantial.

All the more reason to one day aspire to do a "6 degrees of Downey" entry (take that, Kevin Bacon!) where I go into the amazing people and things that might not have been on my radar had it not been for his involvement.

Theatrical Review: The Grand Budapest Hotel

Date: May 4, 2014
Location: Pocono Community Theater
Time: 1pm
Party: 3 (my mom, sister & I)

Writer/Director: Wes Anderson

Duration: 100 minutes (+3 trailers)

Cast:
M. Gustave- Ralph Fiennes
Mr. [Zero] Moustafa- F. Murray Abraham
Zero- Tony Revolori
Madame D- Tilda Swinton
Heckels- Edward Norton
Dmitri- Adrien Brody
Jopling- Willem Dafoe
Agatha- Saoirse Ronan
Deputy Kovacs- Jeff Goldblum
M. Ivan- Billy Murray
M. Jean- Jason Schwartzman
M. Chuck- Owen Wilson
Young Writer- Jude Law

Theater & Previews:

We arrived a few minutes before the movie started. There was maybe a dozen other people in theater, most of them looked older than 50.

The first preview was for a Richard Linklater called "Boyhood," which I'd seen posters for on IMDB but don't know much about it. It sounds like it's a labor of love he spent 12 years slaving over and is unlike any movie you'd seen before. Something about following around a family for a dozen years and filming them, although I'm not sure if it's an actual family or they're all actors.

The second looked interesting. It was called "Words and Pictures," starring a very handsome Clive Owen and Juliette Binoche (who I know from "Chocolat") and they're teachers that develop an unusual relationship. He's a writer who's an English professor in danger of losing his job because he has a drinking problem. She's a newly arrived art teacher that's a little rough around the edges and fresh from an injury we'll likely hear about later in the film.

Then the third was "Dom Hemingway," which is said to be a Jude Law performance unlike any other... might be interesting to see down the road. He certainly can't do any worse than "The Talented Mr. Ripley" or "Closer".

Write-up:

Every now and then, we will take the trip downtown to see a movie not available locally. We'd been here maybe a handful of times, including the two Oscar winners I picked correctly (The King's Speech and The Artist), "Water for Elephants" and maybe one other that I'm forgetting.

I kinda expected this movie would be another one of those. For whatever reason, Wes Anderson movies are still deemed to be on the independent circuit so they don't come to all theaters.
Since its release date, I've said how much I want to see it, but it's not playing locally. Luckily, it finally did make it and my patience was well awarded.

When it comes to this particular writer/director, a few things are inevitable.

• Bill Murray will be in it somewhere
• We'll get at least one Wilson brother
• The sets will be incredibly detailed, all the way down to the shelf knick-knacks
• I'm going to compare it to "The Fantastic Mr. Fox" because it was my first Wes Anderson film.

I was attracted to "The Grand Budapest Hotel" because it looked like another quirky, fun Wes Anderson movie. A few months ago when it was just coming out, I watched the Behind the Scenes special about it on HBO and all of the reviews were positive. People were saying it was the best movie of the year so far.

I'm happy to say that all of the Wes Anderson movies I'd seen so far, this one has been my favorite... second only to "The Fantastic Mr. Fox".

Other than that, I'd seen "Moonrise Kingdom" which I thought was more serious than it had to be and "The Royal Tennebaums" which was so serious it bordered on depressing.

It's kinda hard to explain what "The Royal Budapest Hotel" is about. It starts out with a girl leaving a key at a statue dedicated to a man and she's reading a book named for the movie. We hear the narrative in voiceover and that leads us to the writer talking to a camera. We go back a couple decades and see the writer much younger (played by Jude Law) talking to the man who owned the hotel.

This man (played by F. Murray Abraham) tells us the story the majority of the movie goes into, following the concierge M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes) and his loyal lobby boy Zero (newcomer Tony Revolori).

M. Gustave teaches Zero the ropes, telling him how a lobby boy treats the guests so well that he anticipates their needs before they do.
The hotel is located in a very exclusive, but beautiful location. The inside runs like a well-oiled machine, like something we'd only read about or see on film. Just wondrous to behold.
It's also suggested that M. Gustave takes such care of his guests that he meets their every need, some of which are sexual.

This movie is R-rated, but it goes as far as partial or brief nudity (some of this is in paintings and drawings on the walls) and the amount of cussing.
With the former, I was wary because I didn't want to expose my sister to too much. She was a little more concerned with the amount of cussing (she counted 13-14 f-bombs).

The plot takes off when one of the regular hotel guests passes away. He and Zero goes to her estate to pay respects and to see if she left anything in her will to him. Her will bequeathed to him a portrait known as "Boy with Apple."
Her family is all looking for their cut and is taken aback by the concierge's inclusion in the will. Her son Dmitri is the most vocal, very opposed to him getting the painting... for whatever reason :shrug: seems silly to me, but there's gotta be conflict somewhere.

When they arrive back at the hotel, the police are there looking from him... for some reason believing he killed her.
I saw this scene in the Behind the Scenes where he says "I knew something was suspicious, we never got the cause of death" and he proceeds to run from the authorities.

The movie progresses as he's put in jail, he and some inmates plan a break-out and another member of the Madame's family, Jopling, goes after the executor of her will.
Willem Dafoe plays this role almost like it was written for Christopher Walken. He's pretty hardcore about it, although I'm having trouble recalling if he has much dialogue.

The humor varies from being incredibly obvious to an actor randomly cussing up a storm when something doesn't go their way to something that takes a while for the laugh to hit. The pacing is slow at times. There was a period after the prison break scene where I found myself getting bored because not much was going on and there weren't many laughs to be had.

Another thing that can be expected in a Wes Anderson film is pacing. Often times, you'll have a scene where things race by you, both with the scenery and with the dialogue that it's hard to keep up. Then in the scene immediately afterwards, everything stops and it's almost so quiet you can hear a pin drop.

Probably my favorite part was the chase scene (and its hilarious resolution) where M. Gustave and Zero on a toboggan are chasing after Jopling on skis. You get all kinds of twists and turns. You see a sign that welcomes us to the sight of the local winter games (how timely of them :-P), which includes slaloms, ski jumps and sledding tracks. I won't give away the resolution, but it's unexpected and one of the best laughs of the entire movie.

Pretty much all of the actors are great in this. It's certainly interesting to see Ralph Fiennes do a comedic role after only knowing him as Voldemort for the past several years :-P
Most of the cast members, Wes Anderson has worked with before, including Jason Schwartzman (who I will give his due in my "Fantastic Mr. Fox" review), Edward Norton and Jude Law.

Overall, I found it very enjoyable. The details and quirks were as I expected them to be but there were plenty of surprises in between. The scenery was often vast and the fact it takes place in wintertime with plenty of snowflakes... I just love that, it makes it all look so beautiful.
Yeah, winter does suck and the fact we've had so much snow this year sucks, but I'm a sucker for great winter scenery. My "Frozen" review went into it quite a bit ;)

In its constructs, it's probably the best realized movie I'd seen so far this year. I didn't fully enjoy it as much as some of the other ones I'd seen so far, but it was very satisfying.
I guess you could say it's a sleeper hit in that the enjoyment comes in small subtle doses and doesn't hit as many highs as it could have.

Grade: B+

63. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)

Code-name: Graphic Novel Triumph
Director: Edgar Wright (yeah, the same dude who did all those Simon Pegg movies, totally fooled me)
Type: Nerdgasmic Fantasy, Romance, Comedy
Cast:

[Sex Bob-omb]
Scot Pilgrim- Michael Cera
Kim- Alison Pill
Stephen- Mark Webber
Young Neil- Johnny Simmons

[Scott's girlfriends]
Ramona Flowers- Mary Elizabeth Winstead
Knives Chau-Ellen Wong
Envy Adams- Brie Larson

[The League of Evil Exes]
Matthew Patel (the "pirate")- Satya  Bhabha
Lucas Lee (the movie star) Chris Evans
Roxy Richter (bi-curious lover)- Mae Whitman
Todd Ingram (the vegan)- Brandon Routh
Ken Katayanagi- Shota  Saito
Kyle Katayanagi- Keita Saitou
Gideon- Jason Schwartzman

[Others]
Scott's Roommate, Wallace- Kieran Culkin
Scott's sister, Stacey Pilgrim- Anna Kendrick
Julie Powers- Aubrey Plaza
Comeau [knows everybody]- Nelson Franklin

Write-up/Play-by-play:

...is it a little too late to give warning for my NERD ALERT cuz, based on how I over organized the cast list, I've already crossed that threshold :-P
And I practically give the whole movie away, so be warned if you haven't seen it yet.
ample SPOILERS

Something as nerdtastic as this movie, you kinda have to go all out. Or as "out" as you can get even though you hadn't seen the movie in ages.

I remember seeing the trailers and just not getting it. I thought it was going to be so stupid, etc, etc.
I remember the exact night I gave it a chance and changed my mind completely within seconds...

Lady Gaga's Monster Ball was premiering on HBO and I had to kill the 2 hour period beforehand.
Both were clear triumphs in my mind, but there are few things I love more in movies that unexpected pleasures like this. Going into a movie and experiencing it not only made me like it, but I LOVED it.

Apparently it IS based on a series of 6 graphic novels written by Bryan Lee O'Malley. IMDB says he came up with the idea between two notions coming together.
a) if you found yourself having to fight for your life like the "Street Fighter" games you frequently play, and;
b) while dating his future wife, he found out she dated three guys named Matthew... the League of Matthews eventually evolved into the League of Evil Exes

Personally, my gaming style is more on the side of RPG and platform gaming... Spyro the Dragon, Jak & Daxter, and the Pokémon series... as well as some of the old school arcade games like Galaga and Pac-Man
But I can still appreciate the gaming references in this game for the sheer fact I am a bit of a geek :-P

As if some of my recent movie choices haven't given that away entirely :-P

This movie checks into my countdown just ahead of "Zombieland" because it is purely fun geek-dom that I wouldn't mind experiencing 100's of times... opposed to maybe half that with "Zombieland."

It's also a cut above "Zombieland" because the post-production touches go beyond the rules.
Every little second of this movie has some sort of add-in that makes you feel like you're inside a graphic novel. To me, that's just mind-blowingly awesome. There's no way to describe it other than it being a "full-blown nerdgasm"... opposed to the occasional nerdgasm "Zombieland" provides.

The video game references involved range from Street Fighter to Dance Dance Revolution to Zelda to, again, Pac-Man.
Only a dude as nerdy as Michael Cera could think of using the origin of "Pac-Man" as his pick-up line.

And for the record, I did know about that story... how Pac-Man was originally Puck-Man and they changed the name because people could tamper with it to make it obscene :-P
Although I didn't know "Puck" derived to the Japanese word for "to flap one's mouth".

Before going any father, I have to give credit to Nigel Godrich who put together the music in this movie. I'm not a heavy metal or punk type of music junkie, but it works so well in this capacity.
I mean, what's geekier than underground punk music? It's just as much an exclusive club of fans as I understand it.

Sex Bob-omb is such a kick-ass name too. That's a reference to a Mario villain that looks like a bomb with legs and eyeballs.... which reminds me, I forgot that Paper Mario was among the video games I play.
What supposedly sets them apart from the other bands in the underground scene is the fact they have a female drummer... until they go to one of the battle of the bands and finds out one of the other bands has a female drummer.

The previous time I saw Alison Pill in a movie was "Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen" and her character Kim couldn't be anymore different from Ella Fitzgerald. Kim is a bundle of joy, and I mean that in the most sarcastic way ;) as sarcastic as she speaks her lines, which is VERY.

I didn't think too much of Michael Cera before this movie. To be honest, I still don't. I saw him in "Juno" and thought he was a good guy. He played up the nerdy guy archetype to the max. And afterwards, I took the time to see "Superbad" (which I hated because Jonah Hill played such a jerk) and "Youth in Revolt," which wasn't meant to be a good movie in the first place.
Word is, though, he is great in that 2013  film "This is the End"... until he was a casualty of the impeding apocalypse.
Between him and Jesse Eisenberg, I take Jesse a little more seriously and he's the better looking of the two.

Scott Pilgrim is meant to be the quintessential nerdy guy who is likely to die a virgin because no respecting girl would be with him.
At least that's the way I interpret it... not that I believe all nerdy guys are doomed to die virgins. That's just the wildly accepted stereotype.

However, he begins this movie in a relationship...  with a 17-girl Chinese school girl named Knives Chau.
As a sucker for Japanese animation, I responded to that almost immediately and couldn't wait to see what was next.
Obviously, Ramona Flowers is what happens.

Funny enough, Scott sees Ramona in a dream... so she IS his "dream girl," but it turns out that she's real. Right now, he's into her and more or less forgets he's together with Knives.
He breaks this off sooooo awkwardly, but it certainly isn't the first time we see Knives in the movie. Which is awesome because she's one of my favorite characters. You will never find a more enthaustic fangirl for an underground band nobody's heard of ;)
I also thought her to be the girl in the latest Peppermint Patty ads, but that's another actress entirely :-P my bad... goes to show how much I loved the character and this movie.

Scott meets Ramona, who has pink hair.
That resonated with me because of the sheer fact another movie on my list features a girl who wears a pink wig to hid her identity when she's not posing as someone else.

They don't exactly hit it off right away, but once they do, she tells him that he may have to defeat her 7 evil exes if they're going to be together.

And so it begins....

In the oddest of times, most of which happen the same night Sex Bob-omb has a gig... the evil exes arrive to fight Scott to the death.

Matthew Patel is more of a Street Fight, ending with a direct hit and him bursting into a pile of coins.

Lucas Lee is on the set of his latest movie. Scott happens to be there because she's hanging out with his roommate Wallace (who is gay-stalking him)..
Wallace steals the show more than once, probably one of the most hilarious characters in the movie. He also happens to be at the center of several running jokes in the movie. The one that had my jaw dropping in hilarity was where Scott shoots out of bed, followed by Wallace and his boyfriend(s). What's really insane is when Wallace makes eyes at Scott's sister's boyfriend and within 10 minutes, they're making out. Almost as if Wallace's presence frees closeted gays from the closet.

Scott manages to beat Lucas in a skateboard challenge and wins when Lucas overshoots his bounds and gets himself "killed".
...with the exception of the final ex, there is no blood in any of these altercations.

Another "gag" throughout the movie is Ramona's changing hair color.
After defeating Matthew Patel, her hair is blue the next time Scott sees her. He gets so bent out of shape about it (perhaps more that she's nonchalant about the change and didn't tell him).



Once Knives finds out about her, she dyes her hair half blue in an attempt to win Scott back. Unfortunately, in the one of the "evil ex" confrontations, she gets the dye punched out of her hair. She looked good with the blue, but it is my favorite color.



A few victories later, her hair changes to green, which doesn't look nearly as good as pink and blue.

On multiple occasions, Ramona corrects Scott, emphasizing that she has 7 "exes," opposed to ex-boyfriends... this distinction helps include Roxy in the movie... Ramona helps Scott with that fight because, evil ex or not, he doesn't want to hit a girl.
The "bi-furious" line was the only one I remembered from the trailers and I say, ain't nothin' wrong with that 8-)

Another villain featured in the movie was Scott's ex-girlfriend Envy Adams, who left Sex Bob-omb for another band. For a short time, she holds power over Scott, but after defeating her vegan boyfriend (another evil ex) Todd Ingram, that gets taken care of.
Supposedly being vegan gives you superpowers, but because Scott slips him coffee with half and half, his powers get revoked by the vegan police.
I know, totally weird, but who really cares at this point?

Envy also incurred one of my favorite running gags. She would make a comment about Scott's hair getting shaggy and a split second later, you'd see him hiding it under a knit hat :-P


Not did they have all these cool post-production touches with various words and video-game widgets on the screen throughout the movie, but the editing was so sharp from scene to scene... giving it a pace so fast you can't help but pay attention to everything going on.
Another great moment, which a few people loaded to YouTube, is where Scott jumps out the window to escape facing Knives... a moment later, Wallace says Scott isn't around.

The Katayanagi twins show up at another battle of the bands and take on Sex Bob-omb. It's a battle of guitars vs. keyboards, monsters vs. dragons. Ultimately, Scott comes out on top again, only to lose Ramona to Gideon... who happens to be Gman, the person Sex Bob-omb was hoping would sign them to his record label if he liked them.

Gideon would prove to be the toughest ex to defeat (also one of the coolest characters, even with how annoyingly arrogant he can be) and it would take EVERYONE to defeat him... including Knives, who fights alongside Scott in the style of their favorite arcade game, which combines ninja skills and dance dance revolution.

Once it's all finished, it felt like a very open-ended deal. Would Scott choose Knives because their final battle showed them to be the better team? Or would he choose Ramona, who he fought this entire movie to be with?
Knives makes the final choice and pushes Scott to Ramona... and there you have it.