How It Should Have Ended - Godzilla

The good people at How It Should Have Ended have taken on this year's Godzilla. Pretty funny. Check it out below.

Poster Of The Day - Zombie-A-Thon Edition - Dawn Of The Dead (1978)

Dawn of the Dead is a great movie. Characters with depth, a story that mostly makes sense, pacing that builds tension, bursts of action and violence, great practical effects (although the blue face on the zombies isn't that great) and some deftly handled social commentary.

And that poster! Freaking amazing. It is visually simple; but, it's minimalism is key of its appeal. The bold title font and color let's you know this is a hard hitting film. The abstract zombie head rising from the horizon is disturbing without being graphic. You know some bad is happening - why does the head have the mottled discoloration? Why is it being equated with the sun? Does it mean the film is going to show us a world where zombies have won the day? We don't have an image of what the zombies will look like, allowing us to mentally fill in the blanks.There is no visual example of the scope of the film, just the impression that it will be big. The tag line "When there's no more room in HELL the dead will walk the EARTH" is memorable and prominently place. Your gaze goes straight from the zombie head to the tag line, enhancing the impact of both. The only thing that detracts from the poster is the side bar, mentioning >Night of the Living Dead and Romero's name. While understandable from a marketing point of view, it detracts from the vertical lines and clear focus of the poster.

The poster is a classic example of conveying feeling and meaning without using complex images or giving away anything specifically from the film. One of my favorites.

Happy Trailers - The Devil's Rain (1975)

The Seventies were the heyday of Satan movies. Films like The Exorcist, The Omen, and The Omen 2 were big budget examples of demonic cinema. There were also a lot of low-budget films in this sub-genre, some good, some bad. Race with the Devil and The Car are examples of enjoyable low-budget Satan movie. At the other end of the spectrum are the amazingly titled but otherwise boring as...well, Hell...Satan's School for Girls and the horrible Italian rip-off of The Exorcist, Beyond the Door.

Somewhere in the middle is The Devil's Rain. The film is a mess as far as the story is concerned, with numerous plot holes. However, it does make good use of its Southwestern locations, has some great, mid-tier actors (Bill Shatner, Ernest Borgnine, Tom Skerritt), decent low-budget effects and a pretty good pace. In short, it's an acceptable drive-in movie (although it needs a shower scene with hottie Joan Prather). It entertains, gives us some nice images and a few mild scares and then wraps everything up in a fairly unsettling fashion. In short, it's worth seeing.

The trailer, however, does everything a trailer shouldn't. First, it starts with some cheesy paintings. Guys, we're in a movie, not at the Met. Then, it shows all of the effects money shots. Finally, it gives away the ending! So, why watch the 90 minute long movie when I can just watch a 3 minute long trailer that makes about as much sense?

Favorite quote form the trailer: "A melting Hell on Earth!"

Don't Have An Opinion In France

Apparently, having an opinion in France and sharing it online is cause for legal damages. This from The Independent:

A French food blogger has been fined thousands of euros and ordered to change the title of a negative review after a judge ruled that the piece appeared too prominently on Google. Ads by Google Caroline Doudet wrote the post titled “The place to avoid in Cap-Ferret: Il Giardino” in August 2013, with the review appearing fourth in searches for the restaurant’s name. The restaurant’s owners sued Ms Doudet six months later, arguing that the article was hurting their business and the judge ordered Ms Doudet to change the title of the blog and pay €2,500 (£2000) in damages and costs earlier this month.

This is insane. I read the review (well, a Google translation of it) and, while definitely negative, doesn't seem to extreme. Basically, the author says the service and food are bad. Okay...how is that worthy of a fine? How is any opinion offered on a for-free blog worthy of a fine? I don't know the laws in France that pertain to this - I assume the judge was acting withing the appropriate legal framework - but any country that allows this has problems.

A free society can't function if people are afraid to offer their opinions, whether on food, art, religion, politics, whatever. Even if your opinion is "x sucks! It sucks dead donkey balls" that should be okay. As long as your not writing (or saying) "I hate this restaurant; let's firebomb it" or something along those lines, then free speech should trump every other consideration.

You can read more at Eater.com and you can access the original article here.

Zombie-A-Thon #7 - Diary Of The Dead (2007) - With Found Spoiler Footage

George Romero created the modern zombie. Of course, other people were involved with Night of the Living Dead (1968) but Romero is recognized as the father of the zombie movie in particular and modern zombie fiction in general. His is vision of zombies - slow moving, flesh munching, hard to stop unless you "shoot 'em in the head" - is the de facto depiction in pop culture. Deviation from this - the fast moving zombies of the Dawn of the Dead (2004) remake - often lead to apoplectic fans, who declare that "that's not what zombies are like."

Romero has made other, non-zombie films (including two of my favorite low-budget films from the the Seventies The Crazies and Martin) but is best known for his six films featuring the undead. Night and Dawn of the Dead (1978) are generally recognized as classics of the horror genre. Day of the Dead (1985) was initially disliked by those who were not ready for its unrelentingly grim tone and dark, claustrophobic setting; however, over the years, there has been a lot of reassessing done and it is now seen in a much more favorable light. For my part, I loved it since I first saw it at a midnight showing at the 12 Oaks Mall in Novi, Michigan.

After a break of 20 years, Romero came back with Land of the Dead (2005), which has its moments, but has serious story and character problems. It did have a more "epic" feel than his previous films with multiple locations and a more wide-open feel. This is a nice change from isolated homes, shopping malls and underground bunkers. However, for his next two zombie films, Romero has gone back to smaller, more intimate (and lower budget) films.

Which brings us to tonight's feature, Diary of the Dead.

Synopsis

A group of film students are in an isolated forest shooting a horror movie for a class as the zombie apocalypse starts. As they try to survive, the director, Jason (Joshua Close) insists of filming everything that his happening. Along the way, they encounter a zombie infested hospital, a town run by heavily armed African-Americans, a deaf-mute, dynamite wielding Amish farmer and a group of rouge National Guardsmen. They make it to voice of reason (and narrator) Debra's (Michelle Morgan) home, only to find her family zombiefied. Finally, they arrive at rich kid Ripley's (Philip Riccio) home, where everything falls apart. Debra - hiding in the mansions panic room - uses the footage to make a movie The Death of Death and release it online. The fate of the survivors is let unknown, although things don't look very good. The end.

Analysis

I'll start with the "found footage" aspect of the movie. Normally, I dislike found footage movies. The conceits of the genre are generally used to hide bad effects, terrible acting, and threadbare production values. However, by setting this film up from the onset as a documentary Romero avoids some of the problems of plot and logic that mars many films in this sub-genre. As Debra says at the onset, "The film was shot with a Panasonic HDX-900 and an HBX-200. I did the final cut on Jason's laptop. I've added music occasionally for effect, hoping to scare you." There is a minimum of shaky cam - always good - and most of the action is shown clearly. Romero makes the weaknesses work.

There are some decent gore effects. The score sounds like something that a person would piece together on Garageband from clips, which works. The plot - small group trying to survive while documenting the disaster going on around them - is fine. There are some decent scenes - the hospital sequence is well done and tense, as is the finale.

However...the story, acting and dialogue are a mess. Starting with the cast, the highlight is Amy Lalonde as Tracy, a tough little gal from Texas. She seems to be enjoying herself. No one else is very good, varying between flat and somnambulist. So, strike one. The dialogue is a collection of cliches and slogans. One or two is okay...but no one speaks the way these people do. This is not uncommon in movies; however, when the film is supposed to be a documentary and when the script is unrelenting in the use of catch-phrase dialogue, it becomes annoying. So, strike two. The story isn't horrible; however, there are some serious flaws. There are a few moments of humor that don;t work. Of course, you can use humor in a horror film; but, the jokes and sight gags better be funny. Here, they seem out-of-place, like something a writer would have in a first draft - because it sounded amusing - but one re-reads would realize just slows down the pace of the film. There are moments of supposed tension which are anything but that. In particular, there are two moments with protagonist, narrator and film maker Debra, where she is supposed to be in danger. One, is in the town with the African-Americans where she badgers the leader into giving them supplies. The setup is that she won't leave, that he'll have to kill her, if he doesn't give in. Well, he has to give in, because she is alive to make the movie. The same applies when she arrives at her home and a) tells everyone to leave her there and b) she is attacked by her zombie family.

Romero likes to use his movies to comment on social, political and cultural issue. I applaud this. Movies don't always have to be about some great issue or make some deep statement about life, the universe and everything. When they are, however, it adds another dimension to the story and makes for a more interesting (although not always better) viewing. While never the most subtle of allegorical story-tellers, Romero here is hammering the viewer over the head with his message: that the spread of info technology has made getting to the truth harder, that "those damn kids" (as one character says "blogger, hackers, kids") have taken over for the old guardians of the truth, the professional media. Because e the message is delivered in such a ham-fisted manner it doesn't have the impact that Romero obviously thinks it does. While not as bad as Land of the Dead in this regard (where the message is so dumb and presented so poorly that it detracts from the film) Diary does not work as a social commentary film, even though that is what Romero wanted from it.

Verdict

Diary is not a bad film; it's just mediocre. Romero delivers some good gore, some good jolts and some arresting images. However, he also gives us dull actors, silly dialogue and a story whose main purpose seems to be to deliver a poorly developed rant against new media. So, if you see it on Netflix (or whatever) check it out. But, don't expect another Night, Dawn or even Day.

Trailer Time!

Guardians Of The Galaxy - Villains Get Some Poster Love

Okay, these are just awesome, particularly Karen Gillan as a hot-ass blue chick...instead of the hot-ass ginger she is in real life. Click on images to make 'em big. Do it!

Ronan the Accuser, Kree bad guy with a hammer. Everybody gets a hammer these days.

Nebula, hot homicidal blue chick. She can kick my ass whenever she wants.

Some dude named Korath. Reminds me a little of Lobot (see below).

Lobot...Korath's cousin? Or just a bald guy with unfashionable brain implants? You decide.

Oh, and here's Karen Gillan looking substantially less blue. And you're welcome.

Battle Of The Five Armies...Yawn...

With Comic-Con coming starting up next week (I want to be there...sad me) everyone is dumping images, plot points, story-lines, etc for upcoming movies, TV shows, comics...if it's genre media, there's new stuff being flung at the geek masses.

The image below is from Peter Jackson's third Hobbit film, The Battle of Five Armies. But, really, who cares? The last movie was so bad, so boring, a cinematic slog, that I have zero interest in seeing the next one. Jackson has made some awesome movies; but the Hobbit films are exercises in bloated self-indulgence. What her really needs is an editor or producer or someone who can tell him "Peter, this whole sequence is dull and dumb; cut it." But, apparently this doesn't happen. Of course, Smaug made almost a billion dollars world-wide so he must being doing something that people like, right?

Anyway, image of Gandalf and some other greasy haired bearded guy below. Enjoy.

TV Daredevil Gets A Karen Page

Will she wear this in Daredevil? Please please please...

Great news on the TV front. Netflix, which is developing a number of Marvel properties including Daredevil, has announced it is casting True Blood's Deborah Ann Woll as DD's love interest Karen Page. In addition to being insanely hot, Wolf is also a good actor; she has been one of the few bright spots as True blood goes off the rails in its final seasons. I was looking forward to the Netflix Marvel series before; now, I can't wait to see them. Hurry up, Netflix! Oh, and don;t forget a shower scene or two with Deborah. You can never be too clean, right?

Happy Trailers - Zombie-A-Thon Edition - Night Of The Living Dead (1968)

I love trailers. I have entire disks I've made of film trailers. Whenever I do a movie night, I subject my guests to as many of them as I think they will stand before they start throwing beer bottles at me. So, I'm going to start a new feature on the site, Happy Trailers. Not only will I post the trailer, I'll give a little review of it. Creating a good trailer is an art form in its own right. You want to entice the audience without giving too much of the story away or showing too much of the money scenes. On the other hand, if you have a bad movie, you have 90 seconds to try to make it look good.

The trailer for Night of the Living Dead does a good job of letting you know what you're going to see. There's some violence, lot's of screaming, some gore (the head, stripped of flesh is prominent in the trailer even though it is on-screen in the film for a about two seconds) and enough voice-over exposition to let you know what the film is about. There are no character scenes, no in-film dialogue, nothing to indicate that the movie will ever slow down. And, for the most part, that's true. Romero keeps his movie moving at a nice pace, something the trailer accurately reflects. And, of course, there is no hint of the ending. Since the ending is still disturbing almost 50 years after the film was released, not hinting at it was a good call. Based on this trailer, I'd want to see the movie.

Another Neat Plot Point For Age Of Ultron

Ultron's creator will be...Tony Stark! In the comics, the creator of Ultron is Henry Pym aka Ant Man aka Giant Man aka Yellow Jacket aka...so many superhero identities. Just pick one.

Since this character has not been introduced in the Marvel Cinematic Universe yet and since movie-Stark is the tech guy, this is a good idea. Having Tony develop the AI to help the Avengers cope with threats in the post-SHIELD world makes sense. We'll have to see why Ultron goes all genocidal. Maybe he's like Bender and it's just part of his charming personality.