“Hey, I didn’t think SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD was all that terrible. Just not very good.” That’s what I told my buddies who had seen it before me. They were surprised and appalled.
The word was abysmal on George Romero’s latest, especially from the guy I saw DIARY OF THE DEAD with. He agreed with me that although that one was an embarrassing failure at least it had some good parts. He offered no such mercy for the new one. (more…)
Dear diary,
I saw George Romero’s new movie DIARY OF THE DEAD. It’s basically “NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD meets BLAIR WITCH PROJECT” or “CLOVERFIELD with zombies” or “CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST – cannibal + zombies but not ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST.” It’s not a sequel to the living dead movies but kind of a do-over with the zombie plague beginning in the present day and depicted in documentary form. Some film students are working on a crappy mummy movie (come on George, this is 2008, only Rob Cohen makes mummy movies) when they start hearing news about the dead coming back to life, and their director is compelled to keep filming. We’re told at the beginning of the movie that his footage was edited by another character along with clips they downloaded from youtube, some news and security cam footage. Also she admits that she added music. And, I’m afraid, she narrates it.
I feel bad saying this but since nobody is reading this and it’s only a diary I will come out and say it: this movie isn’t very good. I enjoyed watching it and will list many of the good things about it right here on these pages, in the interest of balance. And in case Harry reads this because he got real mad at Quint for not liking it and I pretty much agree with everything in Quint’s review. But in my deepest, most personal secret opinion this is a failed experiment for old George.
This is Romero back doing low budget independent movies, but it looks real nice. Especially in the parts that show the larger world outside of the documentary, the clips from the news and youtube where there is total chaos going on, cars crashing into each other, zombies hanging on nooses from freeway overpasses, and various madness. In NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD the characters were constantly trying to listen to news reports to get some kind of information about what’s going on. In DIARY we see news reports (sometimes edited to hide the truth), we hear talk radio, CBs, all kinds of communication. All those different fuzzy broadcasts add a realistic texture to the movie and I think Romero is right that if something like this were to happen now (God forbid, because I bet it would be a huge pain the ass) the young people would in fact be the ones spreading information about what’s going on. Because they have all their god damn cell phones and little handheld video games and all that stupid shit they always play with, and they spell worse than me because they write in some kind of moronic gibberish from writing on phones and they also wear their pants too tight now and wear those white belts and they look almost as stupid as their older brothers did wearing those giant clown pants. (more…)
Fellas -
Well the Batman fans have their good Batman movie to get excited about, the Star Wars fans have their good Star Wars movie to complain and make rape metaphors about*, and now comes the actual, genuine most anticipated movie of the summer. In my opinion.
[*and no, this is not a license to talk about Star Wars in the talkbacks. you even THINK about mentioning Hans shooting whatsisdick the hutt or what have you, even in a relevant comparison to the works of George Romero, you're fuckin fired]
There’s not much of a rumbling in the media, there doesn’t even seem to be as much excitement on the internet thing here as you’d think there’d be. But some of you out there know what I’m talking about. We’ve been waiting for this movie a long god damn time. I mean how many false alarms can you live through over the years, the guy saying he almost has the money to make another Living Dead movie? It starts to seem like a pipe dream. How many Resident Evils and 28 Days and Haunted Mansions can go by with us saying “fer chrissakes you morons, just give George Romero some money for a living dead picture and make the world a better place for all creeds, colors and stripes.”
Yes, 28 DAYS LATER was pretty good for a sloppy digital video retread of DAWN/DAY OF THE DEAD but with a virus instead of zombies so really its almost like they made up a new idea for a movie. And yes, DAWN OF THE DEAD remake was amazingly good for a remake of a perfect movie that should never be fucked with. And yes SHAUN OF THE DEAD was a funny zombie sitcom that I would’ve enjoyed even more if I hadn’t heard so much ridiculous hyperbolic bullshit about it being great. And yes, HOUSE OF THE DEAD was, well I didn’t see that one not sure about that one. But no matter how much we enjoyed any of those we always had that question in the back of our heads: what about the REAL George Romero zombie movie? The one actually directed by George Romero, in the style of George Romero, with authentic George Romero zombies and non-zombies? The one we’ve been dreaming about. Praying for. Begging for. Give it to us. It is our birthright! (more…)
Folks this week I’m gonna cut right to the chase. I have just seen a movie that is new to dvd that is VERY likely the BEST FUCKIN MOVIE EVER. This is a movie many of you have probaly never seen and hell I never even HEARD of this piece until the other day however it is, for those of you just joining us, the BEST FUCKIN MOVIE EVER.
Now I have been tallying and calculating votes for the top 100 Badass Films of All Time and this picture has not received one vote. And I’m not complainin because this is not a Badass picture per se. It is more of a drama than an action film and is more about feeling and sentiment than about attitude and breaking a motherfucker’s arms or whatever.
The name of the picture is Knightriders, a film directed by George A. Romero in 1980. It was one of those movies that did very poorly at the box office and was never heard of again…. until it came to dvd and most people discovered that it was the BEST FUCKIN MOVIE EVER.
The picture opens with a whisp of mystical medeival flute and a black raven flying through a forest. A young Ed Harris and a pretty gal wake up naked in the woods. Ed bathes in the pond, meditates on his sword. He puts on his armor, the gal puts on her crown. She stands behind him and embraces him. The music grows triumphant as he pulls down his face shield and revs up his motorcycle.
Yes, this is a picture about knights who ride motorcycles. And that is only one of the reasons why it is the BEST etc. etc.
Ed is King Billy or Sir William, the leader of a troupe of individuals who travel around the country and hold renaissance fair type deals. This is where everybody dresses up like knights and monks and shit and pretend its hundreds of years ago. They sell swords and maces and wine and all this type of garbage. It is basically the same as Star Trek conventions only without action figures or that fucking kid from Trekkies with the camper shaped like a spaceship. (more…)
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