Dear Santa, I've Been A Bad Boy......

I love toys, (no, not that kind you cheeky monkey! Ok, but only if there's a safety word.) and I have dozens packed away at home since I have no more shelf space. What can I say, some people like little ceramic figurines, or balls of colored glass (ouch) but I'm all about poseable plastic in the shapes of superheroes, and the military and monsters....oh how I love the monsters. While I often get melancholy over the toys I've lost moving or through other means, I had a "life size" Spike from Gremlins, and an original Alien with the pop out mouth and many many more, I still do get excited over some really cool item. (Note to self: dig out your Sin City Marv in the electric chair that laughs when you fry him.)
So I got really pumped when Hasbro posted pictures of their upcoming Cloverfield Monster. Here are the bullet points from the Hasbro site:

• 70 points of articulation and incredible life-like detail
• Authentic sound
• 14" tall
• 10 parasites
• Two interchangeable heads
• Statue of Liberty head accessory
• Special collector’s edition packaging

The only negative for me is the $99. projected price tag, but hey, I could get caught up in the moment of wanting to see Cloverfield raze Lego town to the ground. Hmmmm, maybe I'll reshoot Cloverfield in "Startling Legovision." While there's no official release date, there is a projected shipping date of 9/30 and Hasbro is taking pre-orders through their website here.

Now before I leave you with images of Cloverfield dancing in your heads, I have something else to show you. (no, not that you cheeky monkey)
These items are definite pre-orders for me. I'm sorry to say I missed the first three in The Dead series from Sideshow Collectibles, and may need to hunt them down on Ebay. I absolutely will not let these escape my greedy little clutches. They may actually push my decision to get a custom head sculpt done by Andgor Toy Company over the edge so I could lead my own army of zombie hunters across my shelves.
I think these would compliment any childs toy box as well as keep Buzz LightYear and those noisy Pokemon critters in check.

Shooting The Dead

I promise this is the last zombie related post till the next zombie related post.

(I dig zombies, what can I say)
This is, in a sense the second part of my day with Diary of the Dead review, so if you have not read the previous post, please go back and do so. Think of it as a “choose your own adventure” story for the really really lame.

Done? Good.
I’m going to try to avoid spoilers, but let’s be realistic; it’s a Romero Dead film. It’s not if zombies get the main characters, it’s when.

Here’s a shocker, I thoroughly enjoyed George A Romero’s Diary of the Dead. Romero has returned to his roots of guerrilla film making bypassing Hollywood and making the picture he wanted to make, and it shows.
The films tone more closely resembled the original Dead films Night and Dawn in the sense that Romero has hit the reset button on the genre he’s created and brought us back to the first days of the zombie epidemic.
Diary of the Dead takes place in a world without Resident Evil or Evil Dead, if there’s a George Romero counterpart in this world he’s still working for PBS. There are no known zombie rules in Diary of the Dead. No one automatically goes for the head shot, or get’s the now clichéd idea to head to the nearest mall, a bite is just a bite and certainly not deadly. As our heroes learn, Romero’s rules of the dead are in place and it’s only through trial, since there’s no room for error, do they discover what those are. One thing that bugged me in the Dawn remake was only a bite would turn you, but as the one legged priest in the original Dawn said “When the dead walk the earth señors, we must stop the killing, or lose the war” Any dead body will rise in Diary, which ups the ante considerably for our survivors.

Just who are our survivors?
A group of film students and their teacher are out in the woods of Pittsburgh filming a mummy picture when the first news reports start coming in. Finding the dorms deserted and not knowing what to do, they load up in an RV and try to get to their respective homes.
Jason who wants to be a documentary filmmaker controls the camera through most of the film. I say most because one of the themes of this film is the camera as a safety net and at times as an addiction. Where Hud in Cloverfield seemed to keep the camera going out of shock, Jason operates obsessively, needing to create his movie The Death of Death which is the true film we are watching. While he may hide behind the tenet of needing to get the truth out, it’s really about how many hits his MySpace page gets. Don’t get me wrong, Jason isn’t a bad guy, he’s doing what he believes is right, and that belief includes a strict non interference policy. At one point he’s charging the camera battery when he hears shots coming from the direction his girlfriend Debra had gone. Unable to leave the camera you can feel his relief when Debra appears at the doorway. What happened? He asks. If it didn’t happen on camera, it didn’t happen she replies.

Like all of Romero’s Dead films, Diary has a somewhat heavy handed social commentary to make. Unable to trust traditional news media, information publication falls into the hands of the bloggers and the YouTubers, but it’s only a matter of time that all this information and all this news spinning becomes noise and you can no longer tell what truth is. Where does our responsibility lie? Is it our role to prevent atrocities or document them?

I wish I could tell you who played who, but with a cast of newcomers and my lousy memory for names I can’t. What I can tell you is each character was fleshed out just enough to let you know them. One thing I love about Romero films is his short story approach to characterization. Unlike another writer/director named George who creates great characters but can’t get them to live on screen, Romero’s written characterization is basic, and it’s in front of the camera that they become real people. Our group meets up with a mute Amish man in one of the movies funnier and terrifying moments. Romero captures everything you need to know about him within a few minutes of screen time and I find myself caring about what happens to him. The same goes for another band of survivors we meet who have organized with military precision under the leadership of an ex national guardsman. The lead guardsman was great and I’d love to see Romero tackle another film just about these guys. You can see how a society like the one in Land of the Dead could form from survival groups like this trying to rebuild.

Romero also dips into his own bag of tricks to give us little nods to previous Dead films. From soldiers cleaning out an apartment building, complete with a resident shouting “don’t go in there” (a direct nod to Dawn) to a home being overrun as in Night and a zombies guts spilling out as it attempts to rise (dream sequence from Day). Romero reminds us that somewhere a woman named Barbara just lost her brother, and a guy named Steven is still flying his helicopter for a local news channel and everything is going to hell.

My nits to pick are small. With Romero returning to his roots I would have liked to see more “live” gore effects. The whole film was shot in 23 days and many of the effects were added digitally. Since the film was financed without a studio backing it this saved Romero a ton of money, but I found myself missing latex chunks torn from necks and torsos being ripped into as condoms filled with stage blood erupt and paint the actors. One effect involving hydrochloric acid really took me out of the moment as it was clearly digital.
I also found it difficult to tell how much time had passed and how much distance has been traveled. Unlike Cloverfield, The Death of Death is an edited film, and while that eliminates complaints over how long it takes to get from downtown to 59^th street on foot, it also eliminates our timeline. I’m assuming that our group is on the road for several days, but I could be wrong.

The makeup however, by Greg Nicotero was top notch and the first zombie in particular reminded me of why I love these films.

So to wrap up, George A Romero’s Diary of the Dead is a must see for fans, and I’m hoping it gets a bigger distribution. If you’re a casual fan or new to the zombie genre, this reboot will show you what makes Romero the king, and why nothing is scarier than a slow zombie.

George A Romero’s Diary of the Dead is in limited release.
For a list of theaters click here.

Field Of Screams

Well, this past weekend I finally went to see Cloverfield. I was reluctant at first. After all, reviews were all over the place, and history has shown us that anything with this much of an internet buzz usually fails to live up to the hype. Remember Snakes on a Plane? Exactly, no one does. Then there were all the gripes about the shaky cam, really? If you are bothered by the shaky cam, then you do not spend enough time on the internet. We are exposed to far grainier poorly shot video than this on a daily basis, and we love it so much, we send it to everyone we know. If anything I was amazed at how well thought out each shot had to be. The shakiness of the camera was a character in itself. In a movie lacking a soundtrack it was the camera work that told us when we should be tense and when to take a breather. I’ve seen a lot of comparisons to Blair Witch, but I think Cloverfield is a more intimate claustrophobic film. No easy feat in the middle of a normally bustling city like New York. Where Blair Witch relied on perception to deliver scares, Cloverfield shows you everything.

Being a New York native, I’m glad I didn’t see this movie back home. I’ve read about some angry New Yorkers walking out of the theater and I can see why.
See, New Yorkers have always felt a degree of invulnerability. Back home nothing can hurt me. I can fall asleep on the subway, yell at a random stranger for bumping me in the street, run across midtown traffic without fear, because in some way New York protects its own. That was until 9/11.
9/11 affected the sense of security of every New Yorker who was in the city at the time. It left a lot of us bruised and reeling. Cloverfield brought me back to that time. At one point the main characters are separated, just across the street from each other by a wave of soldiers and vehicles rushing by firing guns and missiles. The noise is frightening, the bursts of light from the guns is frightening. Our heroes are separated by less than 20” and it may as well have been a mile.
My wife and I both thought of the armed National Guard that stood along 14^th Street and in the subways during the days following 9/11.
Films that have tried to deliver the emotional impact of that horrible time in New York have not even come close to the desperation and helplessness as Cloverfield has.
I’ve read a bunch of reviews of Cloverfield that have blasted the film for the same reasons I liked it. I wonder where those reviewers were during 9/11? Did they walk home across the Williamsburg Bridge among people covered in ash unable to take their eyes off the column of smoke a couple of miles away feeling very small?

Another gripe I’ve read is that the characters are not entirely likable. It’s true, they were average 20 somethings. There wasn’t anything to really like or dislike about them. That was the frikkin’ point. They weren’t heroes, they weren’t special they were just..themselves. If anything the actors deserve credit for being so believable in their normality. When was the last time you watched a war documentary and thought hey, there’s a soldier I want to hang out with? The film lets you know right at the beginning. This is found footage – no spoilers there. At that point you know enough to not to get too emotionally vested in these people. The real star in the film is the camera. The people are just a support system.

Cloverfield was one of the scarier movies I’ve seen in a long time. The film is fairly light on gore but heavy on special effects that pay off. I’m not saying it’s for everyone, but neither was The Exorcist when it came out. I think time will prove Cloverfield a true classic and it will be hailed alongside films like The Exorcist, Jaws and The Shining as a true innovation in horror. Cloverfield may be the definitive horror of this decade. Tailor made for a culture reliant on YouTube, 24 hour news channels, and reality programming.

I only wish this movie had not hit before George Romeros Diary of the Dead coming on Feb 15^th as Romero is using a similar camera technique, and there is no doubt that unfair comparisons will be made. I’m a huge Romero fan and it would be a shame if his film suffered from negative reactions to Cloverfield.

If you’re a geek and haven’t seen Cloverfield, chances are you’re going to wish you had, and if you’re like me and prefer walking through the subway tunnels at night rather than wait for that local that runs every half hour to go 2 lousy stops,…..you will...never…do…that…again.

Cloverfield was directed by Matt Reeves and written by Drew Goddard.
It was produced by J.J. Abrams.
It stars Lizzy Caplan, Jessica Lucas, T.J. Miller, Michael Stahl-David, Mike Vogal, Odette Yustman and New York City.

Plus one big ass monster……..