Survival of the Dead

I believe zombie flicks were never out to scare us. To me they are more similar to sci-fi films. Zombie flicks undertake what in literary theory is known as defamiliarization in their quest to put the human spirit to test under extreme or strange circumstances. Creating a universe that serves as a crooked mirror to our own, thus isolating the bare essentials of the human condition
The George A.Romero zombie films, all six of them, are allegories of human nature and its ability to subsist in the face of terror. The one thing we’ve learned from Romero’s films is that true horror emanates from men, not from flesh eating undead. When Romero puts the word “dead” in the title, who does he refer to? The zombies or us?

After 40 years of waking the dead, Romero remains loyal to himself. In his universe zombies are merely an excuse to tell us something about ourselves. These are tales of people who were corrupted by the event around them, and a small group of people represent the good, opposing the easily corruptible. His films are never reflexive or self aware. They’re humorous but never cynical. They deal with the interaction between people. Not monsters.

Survival of the Dead ends Romero’s second “dead trilogy” following Land of the Dead and Diary of the Dead. This time around Romero tries to deal with religion and family but unfortunately this film is much inferior to his earlier works.
Don’t get me wrong, it is all there: the heartbreaking Please-Kill-Me scene, the Tearing-Apart-Alive gruesome moment and the All-Hell-Breaks-Loose finale. But what’s incredibly disappointing in Survival is the visual aspect. The great Romero films has always had distinct looks and cinematic momentum: The Night of the Living Dead‘s black & white, Land‘s Metropolin set design and Diary‘s documentary concept. Survival has nothing of the sort. The cinematography, editing, make-up, sets: nothing fits with the prior masterworks. It looks and feels like a lazy rip-off.

This begs the question: is there any room left for old-fashioned zombie flicks? Is the genre still relevant – by way of storytelling or by way of cinematic expression – or does it need be injected with comedy or self-awareness? As a zombie fan I certainly hope it’s still alive. Survival of the Dead, though, suggests otherwise.

The Coppola Situation

It’s almost unbelievable when you think about it. One guy has managed to make 4 masterpieces in 6 years. 4 films that considered an essential part of American cinema as we know it.
In 1972 came The Godfather. Two years later The Godfather II and the paranoia thriller The Conversation. Later that decade, after four years in production, we got one of the best war movies ever (and my all-time favorite) Apocalypse Now. All have the same name in the title: Francis Ford Coppola.

Last year Coppola released his latest – Tetro, his 25th full length film. Don’t feel bad if you haven’t heard about it. Few did. Can it be that one of cinema’s most acclaimed directors can no longer find an audience?
The answer is Yes. A hundred times yes. It won’t be for the first time, either.

Coppola turned the film world upside down for a whole decade in the 70’s but could never replicate that feat. I doubt if anyone ever could. The decade that follows showed the descent of Coppola with repeated swifts between entertainment (Cotton Club) and small scale tales (Rumble Fish). Even though all of his films enjoy high production value and memorable moments (some courtesy of the groundbreaking work of his long term editor Walter Murch), Coppola never gave his audience what they expected. He kept changing, seeking, experimenting. He can go from the romance of One from the Heart to the eccentric horrors of Bram Stoker’s Dracula to feel-good-movie like Jack and then toy with a John Grisham thriller. Not all of them were good. It’s even safe to say that most of the time Coppola failed to make his films intriguing and consistent. And yes, some of them were plain bad.

Over the years critics and audience moved farther from his work. Coppola’s two installments in the new millennium, Youth without Youth and Tetro, are both gorgeous but ultimately flawed. They demand a lot from the viewers but don’t necessarily give back.
Even so, I believe that is exactly what makes a  true artist. The courage to never give in and to find your own way however cold the shoulder you encounter. The art of cinema depends on movie-makers such as Coppola to keep on explore deeper, to hit and miss, to show us the true beauty of the seventh art. And it is our duty, as movie goers, to listen. To watch.

Here’s the master introduce his latest:

Guillermo Del Toro Departs The Hobbit

Guillermo Del Toro departs The Hobbit.

“In light of ongoing delays in the setting of a start date for filming The Hobbit, I am faced with the hardest decision of my life”, says Guillermo. “After nearly two years of living, breathing and designing a world as rich as Tolkien’s Middle Earth, I must, with great regret, take leave from helming these wonderful pictures. I remain grateful to Peter, Fran and Philippa Boyens, New Line and Warner Brothers and to all my crew in New Zealand. I’ve been privileged to work in one of the greatest countries on earth with some of the best people ever in our craft and my life will be forever changed. The blessings have been plenty, but the mounting pressures of conflicting schedules have overwhelmed the time slot originally allocated for the project. Both as a co-writer and as a director, I wish the production nothing but the very best of luck and I will be first in line to see the finished product. I remain an ally to it and its makers, present and future, and fully support a smooth transition to a new director”.

via Guillermo Del Toro departs “The Hobbit” | Hobbit Movie News and Rumors | TheOneRing.net™.

You gotta hand it to him, Del Toro has a pair of (bull-sized) brass balls. Leaving one of the most successful and talked-about franchises ever, practically quitting a definite blockbuster, takes courage and integrity. If it is a different project he is moving on to – I’m definitely interested!

Question is who is going to replace him. If it is anyone other than Peter Jackson he’s gonna have a very hard time: if  the movie is critically successful – Jackson and Del Toro will get the credit and he (or she) will be regarded as a hired hand only. If the movie fails – the hired hand will get the blame, whether or not he brought his own vision to the project.

Ebert on the Reviewer as an Old Man

Roger Ebert is addressing the question whether he is too old to review movies like Sex and the City 2:

Now about my age. I was the youngest daily newspaper film critic in America, and now I may be the oldest. Live with it. Years of reviewing movies may possibly have been useful to me. There are countless movie critics your age, which I am guessing is between eight and 18. They will see things as people of your age do. You already know those things. Consider me a change of pace. And don’t despair: As you grow older, you learn stuff. You really do.

via rogerebert.com :: Answer Man.

Great answer, Mr. Ebert.

More Ebert answers regarding Sex and the City 2 here, and his review here.

The Hobbit to join Bond in Development Hell

What’s up with MGM?

Turns out that due to the fragile state of MGM, they have now stalled the production of The Hobbit. While never setting a definite date of release, the movie had been considered for Dec 2011, LOTR‘s 10th anniversary and then Dec 2012, but now talk is that it hadn’t even been greenlit:

Speaking moments ago at a press conference for his latest production, Splice, Guillermo del Toro responded to questions about the state of The Hobbit, saying that the film does not have a start date, nor will it until MGM sorts out its financial troubles.

“It’s not greenlit,” said del Toro, “That’s categorical… We’ve been caught in a very tangled negotiation… There cannot be any start dates until the MGM situation gets resolved. They do hold a considerable portion of the rights.”

via Guillermo del Toro Confirms Hobbit Delay – ComingSoon.net.

Come on, MGM. First Bond, now Bilbo? Can’t you see where the money is coming from? Isn’t it clear that 007 is your most valuable and cashable asset? Don’t you know that the LOTR trilogy had grossed just under $3 billion? You’ve got the talent signed up for both, you’ve got fans all around, what is there to debate and stall? Get your head out of leo’s ass and get yourself over to the shire!

Dennis Hopper RIP

Dennis Hopper passed away last night in Venice, California, at the age of 74. The cause of his death was prostate cancer.

Hopper was the director of the generation-defining Easy Rider, which earned him Best First Work award at Cannes Film Festival and is considered the first indie film. To the general public he is best known as the villain in films like Blue Velvet, Speed, Land of the Dead and Waterwold, in which he stole the show.

Here he is in an interview for CNN, talking about playing the bad guy:

During his career, Hopper appeared in over 100 films, most notably in Rebel without a Cause, Apocalypse Now, The American Friend, True Romance and Elegy. He was nominated for the Academy Award in 1969 for writing Easy Rider and in 1986 for his role in Hoosiers.

Here is one of his best moments, across Christopher Walken, from True Romance.

On the 26th of March 2010 he was honored with a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.

The Princess and the Frog

I’ve recently come out of a protracted anti-Disney state of mind. The catalyst was the most recent Disney animated feature, The Princess and the Frog, now available on blu-ray disc.

Don’t get me wrong; I’d previously loved Disney. Lady and the Tramp was, unequivocally, the best movie of my childhood. I even had a cocker spaniel named Lady, though I’m not sure if my parents bought her because of the movie or vice versa.

But things seemed to go downhill at the Mouse House as I got older: the beauty and depth of their animation suffered as digital tools overtook traditional methods of animation. And the import of some films seemed diminished as they transitioned into vulgar franchises with direct-to-video sequels.

The last straw for me was, naturally, Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp’s Adventure, a D2V bastardization of that treasured icon of my childhood. Here was a once great organization of artists and storytellers who had simply sold out. So it was with great reluctance that I consented to a screening of a Disney movie in my very own living room this past week.

Princess takes its inspiration from the fairy tale classic The Frog Prince, but little else. There’s a prince and he gets turned into a frog (and back again, duh) but that’s where the similarities to anything you’ve heard from the Brothers Grimm end. This is, after all, The PRINCESS and the Frog.

Immediately I knew something had changed at Disney. The animation of Princess is so vivid, so organic and so fluid that the wan, jittery cartoons I had grown accustomed to faded from memory. This was no mere animated movie. This was an animated FILM on par with the likes of Aladdin, The Little Mermaid and, yes, even Lady and the Tramp. This was also the first time I’d seen 2D animation on a high definition television that didn’t have that fuzzy upconverted feel to it.

I’ve since learned Princess is actually the first hand drawn Disney feature since The Lion King. It shows. Pixar guru John Lasseter (the guy who basically invented 3D feature animation), was ironically the biggest proponent of doing Princess the old fashioned way. “I’m trying to show the world why hand drawn animation should come back,” he says in the blu-ray’s Making Of featurette. Directors Ron Clements and John Musker previously worked together directing Alladin and The Little Mermaid.

Our protagonist is Tiana (Anika Noni Rose. who succeeds as both Tiana’s speaking and singing voice), an African American waitress in New Orleans during the roaring 20s.  I only make mention of her race because everyone else does. I don’t understand why anyone finds this remarkable. Yes, Tiana is the first black Disney princess. But considering how removed she is from the realities of the Deep South of 90 years ago, her racial identity surpasses meaningless into irrelevance.

There are black people in this New Orleans. And they are poor. And they love jazz and gumbo and Jambalaya. But why they are poor (Jim Crow), why Tiana must work triple shifts to afford her dream (wage discrimination), or why the richest girl  in town is white (because her grandfather probably owned Tiana’s grandfather), are questions left unanswered.  The script was subject to extensive review by a panel of blackness experts (including Oprah, who also voices Tiana’s mother)  and the title was even changed from “The Frog Princess” so as not to offend French people (seriously).  But in this humble critic’s opinion,  all that PC-ification produced more of an insult to African American history than appreciation for it. It’s as if they told the story of Anne Frank, a little girl who just loved playing in the attic.

Now you’re saying, “But it’s for kids!” And yes, you’re right. Children’s animation isn’t necessarily suited to an honest exploration of the horrors of racism in the aftermath of slavery. But there’s nothing in Princess that grounds it in the past such that a contemporary refashioning would detract from the story. Such a refashioning would have actually allowed the writers to appropriately side step the racism issue and present some equal opportunity hardship: Katrina and/or its aftermath.

But that’s neither here nor there. What Princess accomplishes in spite of its whitewashing of history (pun intended) is truly Disney magic. Ray, the Cajun firefly, shines (literally) as equal parts Jiminy Cricket, Tinkerbell, and zydeco fanboy with “Gonna Take You There.” And Mama Odie’s inspirational “Dig a Little Deeper” is right up there with “The Bare Necessities” in terms of real meaning mixed with plain fun.

There’s also some really dark and scary shit. Facilier, the evil voodoo witch doctor (Keith David), will stop at nothing to take over New Orleans and is willing to sell his soul “to the other side” to make it happen. There’s potential here for the under 10 crowd to go bed afraid of the dark.

But don’t let that stop you. Everyone lives happily ever (except Facilier). Now all I can do is hope Disney doesn’t ruin it with The Frog Princess II: Tiana’s Twin Trouble, in which Tiana and Prince Naveen have twins who turn into tadpoles or something.

The Good Side of Awe

I was sitting in a very popular burger joint when in came a guy with his girlfriend. I recognized him to be a celeb of some kind, but couldn’t place him. Looking around I saw that the staff at the counter couldn’t really place him as well. Only the grill-man had a big smile full of teeth. “Recognize him?” asked the hostess. “Sure, that’s the runner-up of (reality show name will not be disclosed.)”, replied the grill-man. And so the celeb came in, ordered his portion of cow and sat down to wait for it. For the next several minutes he was stared at by all the patrons and staff, all smiling and pointing as discreetly as possible. All were affected one way or another – the busboy started to clean a little more vigorously, the hostess was all smiles (towards everyone), and the grill-man started humming.

Wondering what it is that makes us common people act differently when someone who is a ‘somebody’ is around I realized that it is definitely not connected to our previous perception of that somebody. Is it the fact that we want to be acknowledged, especially after acknowledging ‘them’ by recognizing their face? Is it because we feel awe and respect towards the feat they’ve accomplished – getting up there on the screen? What the heck is it?

No definite answer came to mind.

Until the guy was missing his Mayo.

The biggest thing Quentin Tarantino ever did was teach us that the Europeans were different. How are they different? Well, you know the answer to that – they eat their fries with mayonnaise, instead of ketchup.

Turns out the guy from that show saw Pulp Fiction and adopted some European habits. Seeing that he didn’t have mayo for his fries he got up and started toward the counter. The grill-man, apparently never losing sight of his idol, understood what the guy wanted even before he got there, and pulled out a mayonnaise jar. And then, just as the mayo was changing hands, I got a glimpse of the grill-man’s face and an answer popped up. Not the only possible answer, mind you, but an answer I KNEW to be right.

It was a thank-you-for-entertaining-me look. Just that. Not a ‘You are awesome!’ look, or a ‘I am not worthy’ look, or even a ‘Wait until I tell my friends’ look. It was a pure and simple ‘thank you for entertaining me’ look, gratitude for enjoyment received over several evenings a month.

You know what? I think this is the right attitude. I think this is exactly right.

What do you think?

The Messenger

We all know now that last year wasn’t a great one for Hollywood in terms of artistic repetition, but even outside the mainstream nothing really shook the barley. To this point I have seen 103 films from the crop of 2009. Sixty of those were American, and as they say, there was nothing to write home about.

One of the surprises of last year was The Messenger. This small indie won Best Screenplay award at the Berlin Film Festival and received great buzz in Sundance. Later it got two Oscar nominations for Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (Woody Harrelson). Beside all that, The Messenger is, without a doubt, my favorite English spoken film of 2009.

Director Oren Moverman first came into spotlight after writing the screenplay for Bob Dylan’s odd biopic I’m Not There. He then got a chance to direct his first feature, co-written with Alessandro Camon, centered on a young soldier back from Iraq and stationed in a Casualty Notification Team. The film follows his struggle to retain sanity in a world of war and death.
I bet if I ask how many of you will now rent this film on DVD, I’ll be greeted with silence. I would had probably reacted in the same way. But what is so astonishing about this film is that it’s somehow manages to avoid turning into a piece of grief and misery pornography. It remains a quiet – and a lot of the time humorous – tale of loss and resurrection.

The two points that make this film so memorable are the delicately balanced screenplay, and the actors: the movie is carried by three of the most talented performers of this generation. As the lead, Ben Foster (3:10 to Yuma) proves himself the worthy successor to Sean Penn. The fact that the latest award season failed to notice him is, in the least, shameful. Woody Harrelson delivers his best performance to date, while the feminine touch is provided by Samantha Morton (Minority Report), who I think can probably take any role there is and do it pitch perfect. Steven Buscemi also appears in a small role as a father who lost his son in battle.

The Messenger taps into a legacy of films dedicated to homecoming from war (which proves almost as difficult as the battlefield itself) with impressive confidence. Famous examples include The Best Years of Our Lives, Coming Home and Born on the 4th of July (this year’s Brothers was another addition to the cannon). Seems that following certain recent Iraq-themed failures, cinema is finally to beginning find the tone appropriate for this war. And while The Hurt Locker became the little war movie that could, this one unfortunately was left behind.

The Messenger still remains the best film you never saw last year. Take it from me – if I had to show you only one American film from 2009, I wouldn’t hesitate.

Still Dead After All These Years

However you choose to look at it, George A. Romero changed cinema. I don’t think it possible to talk about the horror genre, especially in recent years, without referring to one of its most crucial subcategories – the zombie flick.
True, zombies were always around. The first time moviegoers ever encountered a monster who’s neither alive nor dead and guided by homicidal instincts alone was in Robert Wiene’s groundbreaking Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari. And that was in 1920! Since then the zombies appeared in many American, Italian and British B Movies such as White Zombie and I Walked with a Zombie. But it wasn’t untill one midnight screening in 1968 that zombies became part of our culture.

American director Romero, then 28 years old, made a small low-budget black & white film about a group of strangers trapped in a country house while an army of flesh eating undead is lurking around them (which feature one of the best opening sequence in cinema). The film was beautifully crafted and Romero cleverly didn’t shy away from political and social references, as the ironic  final scene clearly demonstrates. Ever since 1968, zombies were here to stay.

Although Romeo went on to direct horror flicks of other varieties, he returned to what he does best in 1978 with Dawn of the Dead which was, among others, a cruel satire of America’s shopping habits. The film has received one of best horror remakes courtesy of Zack Snyder in 2004. The third installment of that trilogy was Day of the Dead, released in 1985.

The new millennium saw the zombies return to the limelight, big time. Britain’s 28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead along American’s Planet Terror and Fido gave us different takes on the zombies and pushed forward the boundaries of the sub-genre.
A year after the Dawn of the Dead remake and Shaun of the Dead, Romero made his 4th zombie flick. This time with higher budget, elaborate sets and special effects. Alas, Land of the Dead, starring Dennis Hopper and Simon Baker, wasn’t a big hit. Two years later came Diary of the Dead – a semi-doc made in the spirit of Cloverfield – and this week, Survival of the Dead, the third part of the second trilogy, is released.

Zombie flicks are a huge favorite with me. I can’t seem to get enough of them flesh-eaters, probably because it’s always been served with something extra in form of social satire or political criticism. Or maybe it’s because it can merge with almost any other genre: comedy, family drama or sci-fi. In the right hands, those of Robert Rodriguez for example, these creepy creatures can be the best thing around. All credit is due to Mr. Romero and his friends.

Here’s the trailer to Romero’s latest: