June 03, 2004

• ...And I'm the King of Marvin Gardens.
• I have so much love for Romero's films that it's borderline unhealthy. This story brought a big smile on my face. Thanks, BearGuy.
• You ain't just messing with your own life, ah, Prince! Now then, your Highness - shall I wheel you to Penney's in the wheelbarrow? apropos of nothing: haven't seen the new Dawn yet (apparently he's in that, too!). What'd you think of it, shawnj? Similary apropos of zippo: I recently saw 28 Days Later, which was purported to me to be (a) the ultimate zombie movie (I scoffed, the original Dawn of the Dead will always carry that title) and (b) scary as all get out, which it wasn't. Nary a proper flesh-eater in the mix!
• I liked it a lot, actually. It's a good thing that they relied heavily on the action, because I'm not sure how well the sarcastic commentary would have went over with audiences today. Jake Webber was great, as was the rest of the cast. What sold the remake for me, though, was the first ten minutes, and the credit sequence. It was like they shoved all the trappings of the genre into a neat bundle for all of us freaks to squeal over. I disagree with you about 28 Days Later, though. I think it's certainly one of the Top 5 Horror movies of all time. I loved every second of it, even if they weren't technically zombies.
• For reference/debate, my Top 5 Horror movies: Dawn of the Dead Suspiria The Exorcist Alien 28 Days Later Those are really the only five movies that have ever "scared" me in the way horror movies are supposed to. Well, some dramas have, but other than the metaphorical sense, I wouldn't call something like Requiem for a Dream a horror movie.
• I loved the deserted London in 28 days later. Made me want to live through the Apocalypse, almost. After that, it was just Day of The Triffids, rehashed.
• I enjoyed parts of 28 Days Later (although, yes, not true zombies that wanted to eat your braaaaains), but I hoped it would be _more_ like the BBC version of Day of the Triffids, i.e., asking questions about what kind of world you wanted in the apocalypse...and if you could even manage it.
• Except for one important fact: Day of the Triffids was mind numbingly boring and schlocky. 28 Days Later was neither.
• I was talking about the book, actually. Sorry. I can't really remember the film. Don't they defeat the triffids with sea water, or something equally stupid?
• I loved 'em both (Dawn remake and 28 Days). Yeah, Dawn was much lighter on the commentary and not exactly scary, but that zombie birth scene was one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen on film. Not a big spoiler if you haven't seen it yet -- you'll see that scene coming about a mile away.
• Nice top 5, though I'll have to add Suspiria to video list. The Ring scared me too. Anyone read the translation/seen the original?
• He's what? A Prince of Gor?
• Ah, shawnj, I'm not speaking of the awful 60s (50s?) film where yes, they defeated the things with sea water. The BBC mini-series is three 50-minute episodes and was made in '81 I think. It follows the book much more closely and deals a lot more with society after the fall, competing philosophies, etc.
• I have to disagree with the collective about 28 Days Later. While it was certainly entertaining, I was expecting some new ground to be cut (there wasn't a single scene in that movie that you couldn't have found equally in The Omega Man), the metaphor of the plaque of "rage" was overdone (this plague doesn't have a name?), you could see the scary parts coming about a mile off (power is off in London for weeks, dude gets up in middle of night, lights big-ass candle, waves it around in a windowed room... well, you don't have to be in Mensa to figure out what happens next). But I guess the biggest problem I have with it (and temper that problem part with the fact that I *did* actually enjoy the film) was that I was never really able to suspend my disbelief. The most difficult aspect of horror and science fiction is portraying fantastic concepts in a realistic way - maintaining internal reality consistency, for lack of a better term. In order to suspend disbelief effectively, the rules of the imagined world have to at least approximate the rules of the real world, and the more realistic the portrayal, the more stringent the piece must conform to real-world rules. And 28 Days Later, I felt, didn't do that very well. Why don't the murderous, rage-filled "Infected" turn on each other, rather than save their violence for uninfected? Why don't the come out during the day? Why are their reactions to loud noises, talking and yelling, uninfected wandering around, cars driving, loud daylight raids on grocery stores, etc so spotty? and yet, a single candle at night draws several? Why, on one hand, are the streets of London cluttered with papers and trash, but not the cars of those people who almost certainly would have tried to escape (and are actually referred to on several occasions in the dialogue)? How is it that the looting and social upheaval that would have inevitably taken place during the course of the plague didn't happen? How, scientiically speaking, is it possible for a virus to do to a person the sorts of things that this virus is portrayed as doing (10-20 second incubation, inciting violent attacks on uninfected but not on fellow infected, suppression of eating, reddening of the eyes, etc)? Since Infected didn't seem to see each other as targets, why were there not hundreds of Infected running around London, as well as more clusters of Uninfected? A city that size would surely have the capacity for creating one and harboring the other for a single month. I could go on; taken individually, these internal inconsistencies are small, but thrown together they create a wall of disbelief that's hard to vault over. Like I say, I enjoyed it, but I can't say that I'd put it in my top five, or even top 20.
• My top Five (sticking strictly to Horror, as shawnj did, and off the top of my head, reviewing what's in my tape cabinet and mentally tallying number of lifetime viewings): 1. Dawn of the Dead '78 2. Carrie 3. Halloween (the original) 4. Salem's Lot 5. The Thing
• Fes, You point to some of the reasons I enjoyed 28 Days Later, but left the film wanting more. I think the ad campaign in part gave me false expectations (ooh, big surprise, but let me 'splain). Some of the first trailers, teaser trailers if you will had: Day 1: Exposure Day 3: Infection Day 10: Evauation Day 11: Devastation 28 DAYS LATER That was great, and certainly we've seen fanciful, potentially distasteful (in all sorts of ways) film versions of plagues (Outbreak, anyone?). But the 20 second thing was a bit much--especially after the expectation I falsely assumed from the trailer. It would have made much more sense to me that the one member of the raiding party at the beginning gets infected and then succumbs on the third day, perhaps once the raiders have escaped to continental Europe...which leads to another thing. The speed at which the virus is transmitted means that it can burn itself out very quickly. Getting infected rageoids to Ireland alone was some severe testing of my disbelief. Ooh, and don't get me started on the ending in the mansion. Still, overall I liked it, just wished it could have been better.