A few days ago, Redditor Golden_Dalek posted on the Internet’s favorite forum that he sent a few items to Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and Star Trek star Simon Pegg three months with the hopes of having them signed. Sure enough, when he checked the mail this week, his items had returned, fresh with Pegg’s King John I on everything. And that includes a personalized letter that Pegg added to the stash.

Alex,

Congratulations on being the person who has taken the most piss in terms of amount of things to sign. If any of this turns up on eBay, I have your address and I still have the cricket bat.

Simon

Pegg added a little smiley face, too, so that we knew he was joking, but he shouldn’t have because now everyone is going to send him stuff to autograph. I just shipped a crate to Pegg, filled with expired condoms. I need to do something with those damn things, so he better have a few pens ready.

Image of the actual letter after the jump.

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Paramount released this new publicity still from Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, starring Tom Cruise, Paula Patton, Simon Pegg, and Jeremy Renner, from director Brad Bird (Ratatouille), opening December 21st. Here we see Cruise’s Ethan Hunt grilling Renner’s Brandt on whether there are indeed gays in there.

This Christmas… Justice wears white pants.

We’ve been hearing about The Adventures of TinTin: Secret of the Unicorn (directed by Steven Spielberg, produced by Peter Jackson) for what feels like decades, and finally, the first teaser is here.  Based on the beloved Belgian comic strip I’d never heard of before this, the 3D, motion-capture project “stars” Daniel Craig, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Jamie Bell, and Cary Elwes.  As far as I’m concerned, the most interesting thing about it is that Edgar Wright co-wrote the script (with Steven Moffat and Joe Cornish).  Seriously, did you guys see Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson’s last movies?  Anyway, now that the first footage is here, it sure looks… uh… motion-capturey.  Although it may have broken the record for most dramatic music ever set to footage of a guy staring at a toy boat.

[HD Available at Apple]

Here’s Jackson’s explanation for using motion-capture to Empire Magazine back in November:

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Thanks to Robopanda for sending over this clip of a 25-year-old Simon Pegg doing stand-up comedy back in 1995.  It’s obviously not a new clip, but I hadn’t seen it before, so INDULGE ME.  It’s a British audience, and pretty much every joke has to do with being British, but it still holds up fairly well (PLAID SHIRTS ARE STILL COOL!).  The most disappointing part is that the guy who introduces him says, “Our next act is 25, I’ve got suits older than that!”

It’s disappointing, because at first I thought he said “I’ve got soups older than that!” which would’ve been far more hilarious and British.

[via EpicPonyz]

Not to excuse indifference to bloggerly responsibilities on my part, but Paul is the kind of movie that isn’t a lot of fun to review.  It’s not terrible, there aren’t any glaring inconsistencies, but it just doesn’t quite work.  It’s just not that funny.  It’s usually cute, but not quite laugh-worthy, and occasionally obnoxious, but not quite grating.  The word that most comes to mind is “thin.” It’s trivial.  It’s the acquaintance you always tell yourself you should call more but don’t, and deep down you know exactly why.

It’s a bit of a blue-ball dry rub considering the people involved.  I loved director Greg Mottola’s last two movies (Superbad and Adventureland), and getting the double-team from Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (who also wrote the script) is almost always a good thing.  The plot, two nerds find a wacky alien (voiced by Seth Rogen) and have to help it escape the US government that wants to study its brain and harvest its penises for fuel or whatever, is cribbed from the standard 80s-alien-movie formula (ET, Mac & Me, etc).  But rather than the clever genre homage seen in the Pegg co-written (with Edgar Wright, whose influence might have been needed here) Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead, or the glowy, rich nostalgia of Mottola’s last two movies, what we get instead is just a series of throwaway references to every 80s alien movie, like they wrote it by going down a checklist.  Reese’s Pieces reference goes here… okay now what?  Not homage, not parody, just, as my co-viewer Brendan from the Frotcast put it, “one long wink.”

Winking at the audience can be fine, but… you should probably tell a joke first.

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