Hot Fuzz

Forget it, Nicholas. It's Sandford.

That's the kind of subterranean movie reference that puts writer/director Edgar Wright in the same league as Quentin Tarantino. The in-jokes and homages don't just drop one by one into the plot as with most pop culture obsessed writing (e.g. Kevin Smith). Instead the movie lore forms the very matrix out of which the plot grows...You stop counting the notes and listen to the music: An old fella from the village claims to have been an extra in Straw Dogs and before long somebody gets a bear trap to the head.

The Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy written by Wright and Simon Pegg consists of three genre-roasting Brit comedies — Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and the forthcoming The World's End — strung together by Cornetto ice cream cones and ropes of red corn syrup. The television series Spaced appears to be the predecessor to this trilogy...it just got bumped up the queue. Wright would have to be included on an international version of the list below, and in fact he has already joined forces with Tarantino: Wright directed DON'T, the best of the Grindhouse fake trailers.

I'm still laughing about the fact that the senior citizens call their neighborhood watch N.W.A.