» Dear Diary… OF THE DEAD!!!

Dear Diary… OF THE DEAD!!! - March 25th, 2008 [ « ] [ » ]

I think Diary of the Dead was better than Romero’s previous return to the shambling genre Land Of The Dead. There was a more natural tone and the drama focused around human relationships as in the original trilogy (Night Of The Living …, Dawn Of The … and Day Of The …) unfortunately those relationships were conducted pretty much exclusively between those scourges of the modern horror film, bland US college kids. The only interesting characters were a hammy alcoholic Brit thesp who hangs around on the sidelines proclaiming stuff, and a deaf and dumb Amish guy called Samuel who introduces himself and excuses himself from the action in two of the films most memorable moments. The political stuff which is par for the course with Romero’s zombie flicks isn’t left as subtext as in the brilliant Dawn… and underrated Day… but instead repeatedly hammered at the audience via an annoying narration, part of the films frankly unnecessary “it’s a documentary” framing device. 6/10 probably.

In other film news in spite of what some people think ‘No Country For Old Men’ isn’t the Coen brothers’ best film, it’s good but it’s no Millers Crossing, it’s not even Fargo. Having said that, the suspense is awesome and Bardem’s Oscar winning haircut is funny. The executive summary is 1. No free will and 2. Things ain’t what they used to be.

There Will Be Blood, is I think, as great as people say it is.

Also, we saw the trailer for a film called Doomsday in the cinema on Thursday. It was a bit confusing, a cheesy 28 Days later knockoff (i.e. crazy virus sweeps the UK) that midway through morphed into a kind of Escape From NY/ Mad Max 2 feast of leather costumes and chainsaws. Also it’s directed by the guy who did Dog Soldiers and The Descent, both of which I loved.

Yeah, I expect I’ll be going to see that.

And then Charlie said:

I disagree with your executive summary, I think No Country was more about differing concepts of honour, and doing the right thing. Personally, I thought No Country was at least as good as Blood Simple, probably better, which makes it the best of the Coen’s darker fare. It’s certainly the best thing they’ve done since O Brother. Surely you can agree on that?

And then tom said:

Yes, the summary was a bit flippant. I think any attempt to sum up the film in ten words is doomed to miss out on quite a bit, i was kind of reading through the lense of Cormac McCarthy stuff I’ve read recently (particularly Blood Meridian re. determinism) which probably puts a different slant on things. The film is definitely a real return to form after some decidedly middle of the road stuff. In my rush not to be late for work I made it sound like I didn’t think the film was really excellent, I was actually thinking of editing it as I cycled in but then got overtaken by events when I got in to the office. To be clear: I think it’s a really excellent film easily up there with their best stuff putting it squarely amongst some of my all time favourite films. I do prefer Fargo though. Blood Simple is certainly the film of theirs that it’s closest to but again I’m not as crazy about that film as a lot of people are.

I think that No Country’s main problem for me was that I saw There Will Be Blood a couple of days later and it blew me away. When I first saw the posters for that film I thought “Wow that’s a bold typeface, quite a boast, can it really live up to that?” Gnarled, complex, gothic, slightly difficult to read and loaded with meaning? But yes it lived up to the typeface!

And then KateG said:

That looks ACE!!!

And then kate b said:

I still don’t think there will be blood is that good. sorry, don’t know why I need to note down my negativity…

That’s fine, no need to apologise. I expect you wouldn’t have much enjoy Diary Of The Dead either.

And then Neil said:

Still thinking about TWBB. In some ways it’s amazing (the score, Day Lewis, creepy preacher guy, cinematography), in others (plot, lack of character development)… meh.

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