(warning: here be spoilers!)
Ok, I finally had a chance to see Hot Fuzz, and in addition to its heavy use of The Fratellis—never a bad thing—here's a short list of its cleverest music moments as devised by director Edgar Wright and music supervisor Nick Angel:
1. When the young sergeant (played by Simon Pegg) walks into the Hotel Swan, there is some background music of the elegant lobby variety playing, but it sounds vaguely buckled, as if the hotel has been spinning the same warped vinyl record over the loudspeakers for the last 40 years. The music perfectly establishes Sandford as a place that is both out-of-touch and ineffably creepy.
2. For their curtain call to a truly awful stage performance of Romeo & Juliet, the local theater troupe breaks out into a rousing chorus of The Cardigans' "Lovefool," presumably to put a happier ending on things. This is one in a series of provincialisms meant to hammer home just how not-in-London anymore the protagonist is, and it gets my vote for the smartest, most original music moment in the film.
3. While driving past the scene of a grisly car wreck where the beheaded bodies of the Shakespearean theater troupe's two lead actors have been covered with a tarp, Simon Skinner (played by Timothy Dalton) stops to chat with the cops. He is grinning widely and playing Dire Straits' "Romeo and Juliet" on his Jaguar XK convertible's car stereo. Later after an equally fatal explosion takes place, he drives by playing Arthur Brown's "Fire."
By the way, Hot Fuzz's lead character "Nicholas Angel" was named after this film's music supervisor, Nick Angel, who also worked with Wright to create the many brilliant film-music moments in Shaun of the Dead, such as the pub shootout scene that takes place to "Don't Stop Me Now" by Queen. Angel's many other music supervisor credits include About a Boy, Love Actually, Bridget Jones's Diary, Pride & Prejudice, United 93, and Smokin' Aces.
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