Peggapalooza!: Let’s Celebrate Simon Pegg!

Simon Pegg is all flavors of awesome. He’s known for smart, layered stories that reward multiple viewings and, from all available evidence, a hell of good guy.

Both me and Edgar [Wright] are firm believers in never underestimating or talking down to an audience, and giving an audience something to do, to give them something which is entirely up to them to enter into the film and find these hidden things and whatever.

Just because, “why not?” (and because I noticed that I had several of his films queued), I’m going to celebrate his work with a series of reviews. Being a fan, I’ve already reviewed a few of his movies:

• Paul: An underrated, often forgotten ode to fandom, conspiracy and doing the right thing. Starring and written by Pegg and his hetero life partner, Nick Frost.
• Star Trek: Into Darkness: I loathed this, but I don’t blame Pegg in the least. I blame Damon Lindelof for… everything.
• The World’s End: The third of Pegg’s, Edgar Wright’s and Nick Frost’s Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy. It may be the worst of the three, but in a “third best Beatle” way.
• The Box Trolls: LAIKA’s sublime stop-motion wizardry made ever so slightly better for including Pegg’s voice.

We also end our annual Easter zombie festival, Boiled Eggs and Brain Eaters, with the utter perfection that is Shaun of the Dead. This may be the film that immortalized him, but an impressive collection of cameos and voice work along with performances in venerable properties like Doctor Who, Star Wars and, of course, Star Trek cemented him firmly as geek royalty.

Being a geek is all about being honest about what you enjoy and not being afraid to demonstrate that affection. It means never having to play it cool about how much you like something. It’s basically a license to proudly emote on a somewhat childish level rather than behave like a supposed adult. Being a geek is extremely liberating.

I hope you’ll join me here over the next week or so for this impromptu Peggapalooza! (I was going to call it “Pegging Movies”, but Google convinced me not to do that.)