Sunday, March 21, 2004
A cold front came through about midnight. Lightning and thunder, wind, hail and rain. This morning is bright and sunny, but cooler. It's only 56F out there, and the high will only be 62F. I do wish this little cool snap would have waited until Monday. Yesterday was perfect, and I'd planned to spend today in the park. We probably will anyway. There's been talk of a kite, and it's nice and windy.
I am often at odds with people who do not expect me to be at odds with them. Or something like that. The point is, I saw the remake of Dawn of the Dead yesterday and I think its superior in every way to Romero's original. Spooky and I were absolutely stunned. The film comes out swinging and never lets up. Even the opening credits, which put Johnny Cash's "When the Man Comes Around," to astoundingly effective use, are a study in the art of tension. There's nothing about this film I didn't love, and only on a few occassions have I been so unnerved in a theatre. Sarah Polley and Ving Rhames are perfect. The zombies are even more disturbing than those in 28 Days Later. At the core of this film's genius is one of the most brutally artful uses of sound I've ever encountered in a horror film. Part of understanding the force of the film is realizing that it relies more on violence than gore to keep you on edge. I've never been particularly impressed with gore. Remember what Stephen King said about terror, horror, and the gross-out? The gross-out is easy, and if you can't achieve the first two, that's what you go for. And I'm not saying that the remake of Dawn of the Dead isn't gory. It's certainly one of the bloodiest films I've ever seen. But it wisely keeps just enough of a leash on the grue that it never becomes unintentionally funny (there is a humor in this film, and some of it involves gore, but it's kept to a minimum, which is a good thing). And by now, I'm sure a lot of you are shaking your heads (which gets back to the first sentence in this long paragraph). Oh, Caitlín, some will lament. How can you possibly prefer this slick knock-off to Romero's original vision? Or something like that. Truth is, while I very much liked George Romero's Night of the Living Dead, I never cared for either of the sequels. I've just never found slow and shuffling zombies that scary, and I didn't think the original film's commentary on consumerism was especially biting (no pun intented). One thing that wowed me about Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later was that it took the zombie and finally made something terrifying of it. Anyway, in short, this is an amazing vision of apocalypse, one of the scariest films I've ever seen, and I'm very glad that I ignored my instincts and saw it in the theatre. If you're a Romero purist, you'll probably be disappointed and I won't tell you to ignore me, because you're already putting a black mark by my name. If you think you'll hate it, wait for the DVD. But I think the film would lose a lot of its claustrophoc punch on a small screen.
And speaking of the Dresden Dolls, check out the new video for "Girl Anachronism."
Tomorrow, it's back to the words...
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