Redbrick catch up with Edgar Wright, Ellen Wong and Mary Winstead

Edgar, you have moved out of your comfort zone by working with an entirely new cast and a much bigger canvas. How was that?

Edgar: It was fun! I had about half of my usual crew so it wasn’t a completely different gang and my brother was out there. Working with the cast was a dream because I think they’re such a good ensemble of actors.

Were you tempted to pull in a cameo for the fans?

Edgar: I didn’t want to demean anyone by giving a token cameo.

Ellen and Mary, you get very exciting parts to play. How much of the story did you know before you started and were you pleased with your individual roles?

Ellen: I think my favorite element of the movie was that every role was so funny, especially the female roles. It was exciting to play a role for a female character with that specific ethnicity. I was very impressed. I was thrilled to be in that ensemble, but I didn’t know anything about Knives before I went into the audition. It wasn’t until after the audition that I collected all the books and found out that she was this secret ninja as well. I got really excited and was thinking if I don’t get a chance to do this part, I would just die! Edgar saved my life!

Mary: I agree with that. I wasn’t familiar with the books before Edgar had talked to me about them. The books were so great and the character Ramona was really interesting, unlike any movie dream girl that I had read in a script before. And I was excited to tackle that kind of part, even though it was challenging and daunting.

Ellen, in the film your character makes a transition from this naïve, childish girl into powerful young woman. I was wondering in reality, as this is your first big film, did you develop an emotional attachment to your character Knives?

Ellen: Definitely, going into it with Knives I was really nervous. I didn’t know what to expect, I was going onto a journey with her and my life of filming was paralleling hers. It was cool because I felt like I got to grow up with her. It worked out in a way that the film was shot so the last scenes were the ones where Knives grows, matures and gets to kick but! And by then I had developed a thespian confidence and was comfortable working in that environment.

Edgar, your films aren’t like anything I have seen before, do you think you have created a genre?

Edgar: No. When people ask about that, I think it comes back down to the film being a comedy. When it is eventually in the stores it will be in the comedy section, so I guess it’s a comedy with elements of other genres. It’s the particular mix that’s different really.

Edgar, A main feature of Scot Pilgrim was that of video games, will this style be seen again in your later films?

Edgar: It was specific to this film because the character was governed by this medium. I’m not going to do a period-drama, though that would be kind of cool!

Redbrick speak to Jason Schwartzman, Michael Cera, Matthew Patel and Brandon Routh about their new film Scott Pilgrim

Jason, you watch ¾ of the film without your character appearing.

Jason: For about an hour and five minutes it’s an incredibly enjoyable experience. Then it becomes much more slutty. My first reaction was how happy I was for Michael and Edgar. For Edgar the process took about 7 years, and Michael worked almost double your average big movie shoot. He worked every day, just the amount of energy and focus Michael had was amazing. It was great seeing how all the effects went. It wasn’t like we were shooting a lot of this in front of the green screen. Seeing the wires airbrushed out so it looked like they were really flying was mind-blowing.

When you saw the finished production did it actually stun you?

Matthew: It’s in the details of the movie, I noticed tiny little things that I didn’t even capture in the first viewing. It’s those were wondrous for me. I noticed stars in Knives Chau’s eyes on my second viewing!

Brandon: The film is very layered and at any one moment there are two things happening at once. You read that in the script but you cant imagine how it comes together. It still amazes me how visually stunning it is.

Michael: That jumped out for me when watching the movie, the love story and coming of age part of it. By reading the story you kind of get distracted by all the effects and action, but it still makes a great story. The lines just come out with an amazing rhythm. A lot of the gags in the movie are very visual and Edgar pieces it together very meticulously. This movie stood out for me process-wise, it was completely unique.

Jason, what’s on your cheek? (Jason has lipstick on his face)

Jason: Michael Cera’s kiss.

Matthew: He was wearing lipstick last night if that explains.

Michael: I woke up with lipstick on, please don’t ask too many questions

Jason: What’s on my cheek is a symbol of the Scot Pilgrim experience and it’s a symbol of the times we have had. This is like the smoke from the birthday candle that got blown out.

Jason, the movie comes from comic-book material. Was there an opportunity to bring anything of your own to the story?

Jason: Edgar had been writing it for so long you can easily imagine a scenario where he was tied to one thing and not willing to bend. But in rehearsals if a moment occurred by accident and it looked like it would work, he would laugh and write it down. I have never worked on a movie to this scale, and what was amazing to me was how Edgar kept it feeling intimate. That’s one thing great about the movie, although it is bigger, it’s still crafted by hand.

Was there anything daunting about having to fight a man who played Superman?

Michael: Were you superman? Was it daunting? Kind of…No. It was work. Actually Brandon had some very nice advice when I was in the harness.

Brandon: Just relax baby, just relax baby.

Michael: You gave me directions to the adoption agency.

If you did read the comics beforehand, did that make you protective of the original characters?

Matthew Patel: I didn’t think I had to worry as an actor about being slavish to the comics. I feel with acting once you have the part you can relax, they wouldn’t have cast you if they didn’t feel you were right for it.

Michael Cera: I felt totally confident in Edgar, he knew this movie so well. When you have a director like that you can let go of your fears, follow that confidence and believe in the movie.

Jason: That way if people don’t like it critically, it’s not your fault!

Which audience is this movie for?

Matthew: I feel a lot of people assume that this film is particularly geared towards the video-game viewer. But I actually think there are many access points for a really wide audience. I think people will be surprised at the connections they make with the material, even if they don’t think they are the target audience.

Brandon: It’s a unique cinematic experience, you go the theatre and genuinely laugh out loud at something you didn’t see coming. So many jokes come out of the blue and there are many visual effects you have never seen.

Michael: If you hate movies, stay at home.

Following kick-ass performances in Mr and Mrs Smith and Wanted, the actress has secured her status as a new breed of action star in Salt: the story of an enigmatic CIA agent accused of being a Russian spy. Directed by Phillip Noyce (Rabbit-Proof Fence), the film is both an exhilarating and intriguing action piece, and Jolie slides effortlessly from one mind-bending stunt to another. In fact, the film seems at times to be an intricate showcase for the star’s talents (it’s hard to imagine the film was first intended as a Tom Cruise vehicle, and frankly, thank goodness he declined).

This is without a doubt Jolie’s film, and while her supporting actors are near-eclipsed, the ever-reliable Liev Schreiber still shines through as growly CIA agent Ted Winter. Brit actor Chiwetel Ejiofor excels, though somewhat underused, he plays the uptight Agent Peabody with panache. One of the few missed notes of this film however is in the relationship between Evelyn and her husband, whilst believable, it could have benefited from further development.

Also, as with many actioners, the film does sport its fair share of plot holes. However, what it does provide is something that is sadly rare in modern Hollywood: surprise. More often than not in this genre the audience has guessed every supposed ‘twist’ in fifteen minutes, but Salt manages to keep you thinking from start to finish, a brilliant accomplishment.

Both entertaining and interesting, Salt achieves what few action films outside Bourne have: an intelligent spectacle. Angelina Jolie is truly the coolest woman in Hollywood.

Typically, these were low on plot, high on explosions and populated by steroid-popping, cigar-chewing grunts with big guns and bigger guns. Some of them were even quite good. Many a film fan around the world has a soft spot for Die Hard, Predator or The Running Man.

The Expendables, however, is unlikely to achieve such status.  Following The Losers and The A-Team, two colourful and exciting summer movies, Stallone’s flick fails to compete. The story is uninspiring: a bunch of mercenaries are paid to overthrow a foreign dictatorship.  The direction is lazy. The script is empty and even the action looks dated. There’is no humour, no originality — arguably the point, but still not good enough — and no colour. It is grey, grey and grey.

The heroes do nothing but flex and fire. Posters go on and on about the big names that have been assembled, but they are criminally underused.  And without Mickey Rourke, there wouldn’t be a single piece of acting in the entire film.

The villains present even bigger problems. The Losers showed that an action film can have an enigmatic, scene-stealing baddie. However, The Expendables marks a return to the cardboard cut-out villain: a rogue CIA agent, scowling goons and the obligatory abusive boyfriend. It even has the stereotypical ending: a villain flees with a hostage and a gun, desperately searching for a helicopter.

All of this would have been fine if Stallone was offering us a parody or a spoof or even a box-ticking homage. Unfortunately, the impression is given that he’s actually taking himself seriously.  What results is a film that would have been forgettable and run-of-the-mill even if it had appeared in the eighties themselves.

The Expendables also disappoints in its whole promise of a full-scale reunion of eighties action heroes. Big dogs Schwarzenegger and Willis appear for two minutes only, and those that do make the reunion have bafflingly little to do with it. We have wrestlers and American football players, kick-boxers and ultimate fighting champions: none of which starred in eighties action films.

What The Expendables demonstrates is that the world of action movies has moved on. We now have the CGI-assisted action flicks of Messrs Cameron, Bay and Snyder. We have smart action such as the Wachowski’s bullet-time and the wirework of Inception. And the Bourne films have shown that action can be achieved on a budget.

There are ways this could have worked, but instead, The Expendables is a two-star disappointment and the biggest anti-climax of 2010. Evidently, some things are best left in the eighties.

Macmillan Cancer Support’s Birmingham and Black Country team are excited to announce the launch of the World’s Biggest Coffee Morning today, which aims to raise huge amounts of money to provide the vital services and support to people living with cancer.

This is a special year for the annual event, with it being in its 20^th year and predicted to bring in over £8m nationally, helping change the lives of people affected by cancer.

The World’s Biggest Coffee Morning is a really fun event that gets the whole nation slurping and socialising and there’s no right or wrong way to go about it. You can tailor it to suit yourself, whether you hold a traditional coffee morning at home or work, organise a glamorous coffee– themed evening, or serve smoothies and herbal teas instead of coffee. It doesn’t matter how much you raise, every penny will make a difference to people living with cancer.

World’s Biggest Coffee Morning intern for Birmingham and Black Country, Emma Bates, explains: ‘The help we provide people with cancer is absolutely essential and the money raised from this event will help us to give support to everyone who needs it. We encourage everyone to take part, its great fun and it really makes a difference’

Last year World’s Biggest Coffee Morning raised over £280,000 for people affected by cancer in Birmingham and Black Country and this year we want to raise even more!

For people living with cancer, the difference between a good day and a bad day can often come down to really small things. That could be getting answers on something they’re worrying about, finding out they are entitled to financial help, or just having a chat with someone who understands. As an example, £130 is needed to fund a Macmillan cancer support officer for one working day and raising just £24 will pay for a Macmillan nurse for an hour.

So why not put a smile on your mug and join in the World’s Biggest Coffee Morning on Friday 24^th September and feel good about raising money for a worthwhile cause.

If you’re interested in hosting a coffee morning, the fundraising team would love to here from you.

Register now at macmillan.org.uk/coffee or call 0845 602 1246

For local information on WBCM, please call Macmillan’s Birmingham and Black Country office on 0121 742 6393.

The idea behind the title, inspired by Liverpool’s success in 2008 as the European City of Culture, is to host a number of annual national cultural events such as the Brit Awards and the Turner Prize, as well as become a centre for culture during that year.

Birmingham had also campaigned to be named European City of Culture over Liverpool, but the campaign was criticised for a lack of public support. As a result, organisers were keen to get the Birmingham public involved as much as possible, especially with a promise to organise a ‘people’s festival’ if they won.

As well as extensive advertising in the city and outside, a 24-hour online blog was created to track the daily life of an ordinary person from Birmingham which attracted over 7500 people and over 1000 messages of support.

Finally, the organisers of the campaign went to pitch Birmingham as the city of culture to a panel of judges, led by television producer Phil Redmond, last month.

Speaking to the Birmingham Mail, Stuart Griffiths, chief executive and delegation member of the Birmingham Hippodrome said: ‘As much as this represents a big disappointment for the many people across the city that supported the bid, we should take heart from the fact that so many thousands of exciting contributions were made to the bid itself.’

The honour is not tied to any direct government funding, but the organisers in each city were hoping that it would bring investors and patrons to the city to focus on fundraising and regeneration.

The title is expected to bring jobs and investment to the winning city, creating a new pool of wealth for the more depraved and rundown areas particularly.

Chairman of the Birmingham Cultural Partnership Martin Mullaney, who was a member of the Birmingham City of Culture 2013 team, congratulated Derry on their win and said regardless of defeat, Birmingham will continue to be a ‘city of culture’.

Organisers went onto say that several of the events and proposals put forward as part of the bid will still go ahead such as the re-opening of the Birmingham REP and the permanent display of the Staffordshire Hoard at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.

The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Andris Nelsons, will be performing at the BBC PROMS on Thursday 29 July, and will be live on BBC FOUR and BBC Radio 3. Ticketing information can be found at www.bbc.co.uk/proms

The Big Bang take two – an utterly brilliant episode bringing together fairytale, myth and mystery on an epic scale, whereas the previous episode, in all its Indiana-Jones-esque galloping-on-white-horses grandeur, paled in comparison. Even the whole plethora of the Doctor’s enemies locking him up forever in the Pandorica didn’t really hold any consequence to the finale.
 
Gone are the days of the ‘touchy-feely’ Doctor of Tennant, and there’s no clichéd good versus evil battle somewhere over the skies of London; no besotted companion; definitely no more strapping Captain Jack, who has been replaced  by theequally lovable, if less camp, Rory. So there wasn’t a battle of Daleks and Cybermen over Canary Wharf or stolen planets, but the character-driven series did roll out the mother of all apocalyptic finales – I mean, the end of the Universe and all reality? Beat that Tennant.
 
So Matt Smith had a shaky start: criticised initially for being an imitation of Tennant, too fidgety, dressed like a hipster granddad, and behaving like the neighbourhood Etonion (we all know one of those), but he’s pretty much single-handedly responsible for the rocketing of sales of bowties and an emerging gaggle of 8 year-old Tommy Coopers.  And, as a friend commented, he’s not bad looking either – funny how playing the Doctor makes one seem attractive.
 
Stephen Moffat really is king of story-telling. Amy’s not dead and with no stars in the sky, the companion, Doctor and Rory the Auton, all make it to the present/future/would-be-future: there’s a whole lot of time paradox time travel back and forth, complete with fez and mop. The trio run around, get chased by a Dalek, rescue River .…and the end of history itself takes a full 1,894 years and 45 minutes to happen.
 
With the Doctor’s ultimate sacrifice to give the Pandorica’s restoration field a moment of infinite power via the exploding Tardis reeking of poetic pseudoscience, any claims of Moffat’s series being emotionally lack-lustre go out the window as the Doctor painfully bids goodbye to Amy.
 
The unravelling of his own time stream sees Matt Smith emphatically claim he could buy another fez, as he sighs ‘Hello, Universe. Goodbye, Doctor’ and sad triumph as he watches the cracks in time and space close.  Glimpses of the young actor’s genius came through as he sits and talks to the sleeping Amelia — emotions dancing across his face, with passing shadows of doubt, regret and sadness.
 
And the beauty of this series is that the Doctor loses some of that infallibility as the other characters really mark their places in Who-dom legend. Rory waits for Amy for 2000 years, River makes a Dalek beg for mercy, and Amy the anomaly brings back not only Rory, albeit plastic at first, but also her delightful family, as she runs to embrace her ‘little father’ aptly named Augustus. But, she also brings back the Doctor. And that was the essence of the episode – that friendship and love save the day.
 
From aliens hidden in OAPs, a pregnant Amy bringing out a Doctor reminiscent of Trek’s Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy with exclaims of: I’m a Doctor, not a …oh wait, and to the revival of classic Who villains, have really placed this series up there amongst the greats. And we still don’t know what made the TARDIS explode in the first place. Now, if that’s not the definition of epic, I don’t know what is.

He addressed these statements to a packed Lecture Theatre at the University of Exeter, with a majority Labour audience. However, there were numerous opponents to Mr. Miliband specifically, and to the Labour Party in general.

Earlier that day, it came to my attention through Ben Bradshaw MP’s Twitter feed that Mr. Miliband was to visit my hometown, and his advisers kindly permitted an interview with Redbrick.

Bradshaw opened the evening by explaining his reasons for backing Miliband, citing his leadership credentials and his ability to win elections as key factors.

Fashionably late, he arrived ten minutes behind schedule, jogging down the stairs as earnestly as a substitute struts onto the football field. In a typically Obama-esque move, he carefully removed his jacket and courteously apologised. Considering his two previous appointments, and the atrocious weather, I think he regained any votes lost.

He opened up by expressing the need for the Labour Party to learn the lessons of what went right as well as what went wrong, although there was less of the latter as he then went on to describe how people were ‘scared’ of the austerity measures of the Coalition Government – but failed to take the blame for the part Labour played in the economic downturn.

With a couple of anecdotes about his upbringing, he explained his ‘vision’ for the Party. He highlighted the need for Labour to ‘build as a movement, and not as a machine.’ Vive la revolution!

Perhaps Miliband was learning these lessons, as in a direct fashion typical of Cameron he engaged the audience almost immediately, and approached the speaker in a similarly motherly pose as Bill Clinton did in his debate against Al Gore in 1999.
He was questioned on an array of issues — from the privatisation of the railways, to Afghanistan. His answers were reasonable and well considered, and he refused to make promises he couldn’t keep.

One member, a former HMRC worker, highlighted the need for a clampdown on tax evasion as being a key way of improving the deficit, and Miliband appeared to have had no idea that the reduction in the number of HMRC workers had such an impact on tax collection. He showed genuine humility; another sign of his intent to learn the lessons of the past.

However, the story that grabbed the day’s headlines was undoubtedly Vince Cable’s proposal of a Graduate Tax as an alternative to the current financial system within the Higher Education system.

It was a topic that was brought up by a healthy number of students in the room, but his answers were half-supportive of the suggestion. He talked of the need to be ‘very careful of the system we have’, and in my interview, I sought a more definite answer as to how he would like to see university funding being reformed.

‘I think we have got to make sure that the system is fair, for example between part time and full time students’, he said.

‘It’s got to promote access, and it’s got to be related to ability to pay, as we cannot have a system where people are put off from applying to university because of financial consideration. ‘

Miliband can never be accused of shying away from sound-bite, and none made such an impact (or arguably was so cringe-worthy) as his attitude towards climate change, ‘although we are red, we must be green as well.’ Pre-prepared most certainly, in a moment of forgetfulness of who he was addressing — an audience who were not all ‘red’.

It is indeed the sound-bite that has seen the left-leaning New Statesman criticise  the elder Miliband. I used my final opportunity to press him over an article published by the publication, which criticised his lack of originality, and asked to him clarify more explicitly what he really stands for. Any hope of a revelation was not forthcoming.

‘We stand for a Labour Party which is able to address the problems from around the world’, he stated.

‘We need to apply the values which above all is commitment to equal worth of every person, to the bigger challenges which Britain faces, on jobs, on housing, on political reform – those are the things the modern Labour Party needs to do, and I think we have got a lot of work in order to do it, but I think we can.’

At the conclusion of the interview, it was now approaching 10pm, and he was led away for his evening meal with Bradshaw.  It was dark; the weather was atrocious, and had three of these Q&As that day. Luckily for him, there are only forty-odd hustings remaining. Happy Birthday David!

To be frank, you’re not a ‘proper’ student unless your summer calendar has at least one festival scrawled across it. Sure, the most coveted ones have either come and gone or already sold out, but this doesn’t mean you can go see your favourite bands elsewhere. Not only are there a plethora of smaller events in the UK, but there are many attractive options to party with our European neighbours. Unexpectedly, going abroad is often the cleverest decision music and money-wise.

The Wickerman Festival from £58
22–24 July
South West Scotland
www.thewickermanfestival.co.uk

Lineup includes: The Futureheads, The Charlatans, Sons & Daughters.

Off Festival from £25
05–08 August
Katowice, Poland
www.2010.off-festival.pl

Lineup includes: The Flaming Lips, Dinosaur Jr., The Fall, Art Brut, The Horrors, The Raveonettes.

Truck Festival from £44
23–25 July
Steventon, Oxfordshire
www.thisistruck.com

Lineup includes: Los Campesinos, Teenage Fanclub, 65Daysofstatic, Blood Red Shoes.

Frequency Festival from £100
19–21 August
St. Polten, Austria
www.frequency.at

Lineup includes: Muse, Gogol Bordello, Klaxons, LCD Soundsystem, Massive Attack, Hot Chip.

Sziget Festival from £38
11–16 August
Budapest, Hungary
www.sziget.hu

Lineup includes: Faithless, Madness, Mika, Kasabian, Muse, Iron Maiden, Yeasayer.