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In the wall of good fortune and the windows to another world
Last night, on the insistence of my brother, I saw Shaun of the Dead (2004)—and was pleasantly surprised. I'm not much for gore, so I'd avoided the film initially, but here the splatter was almost always secondary to the humor: which was generally deadpan and absurd, as in a scene where our hero and his slacker flatmate pitch LPs at an oncoming zombie, but take time out to sort the genuine classics (Purple Rain) from the ammunition (the soundtrack to Batman), or when our plucky band of survivors take a crash course in zombie impersonation ("Look at the face. Vacant, with a hint of sadness . . . Like a drunk who's lost a bet"). Perhaps the best sequence is the initial introduction of the zombies, as our hungover hero staggers to the corner store for a soda, barely conscious himself and decidedly unaware of the certain amount of shambling going on all around him.
It helps that the character work is realistic and matter-of-fact. The protagonists of Shaun of the Dead are the kind of people who would watch zombie movies, but haven't quite wrapped their minds around the idea that they're in one: so that we may be screaming at them to move, but twenty-odd years of dedicated slacking are still telling them that there are far more important things than the carnivorous dead to worry about. I thought the tone stumbled near the finale, which ratchets up the gore along with the emotional stake and suddenly plays both straight, but fortunately the film recovers in the epilogue. And I'd never have expected to recommend a zombie movie to anyone, but this may be one I'd like to own.
I've also picked up Patricia McKillip's Harrowing the Dragon and Solstice Wood, the first of which I read later last night. (I figured it was as good an antidote to zombies as any.) I'm not sorry that I don't own the book, because I have almost all of its contents in various anthologies, but I liked it nonetheless. Of the stories I hadn't previously read, my favorite might have been "Star-Crossed." The treatment of the deaths of Romeo and Juliet as a crime to be solved only goes so far as a narrative trick, but the viewpoint adds another layer: one of the men charged to investigate what looks like a nasty murder-suicide, a no longer young watchman of Verona who shares a lover with one of his co-workers and has learned not to ask which one of them she loves best. There are no supernatural occurrences, but the love and deaths of Romeo and Juliet are made into myth as they pass through the narrator's life; and the inevitable comparison follows. He left me with that thought, as if the lovers had been more than human, nothing like us, who, older and growing tawdry with life, could no more have loved again than we could have cut new teeth. Live fast, die young, leave a good-looking legend . . .
And on that note, Hesiod is about to eat my life.
χρύσεον μὲν πρώτιστα γένος μερόπων ἀνθρώπων
ἀθάνατοι ποίησαν Ὀλύμπια δώματ' ἔχοντες . . .
It helps that the character work is realistic and matter-of-fact. The protagonists of Shaun of the Dead are the kind of people who would watch zombie movies, but haven't quite wrapped their minds around the idea that they're in one: so that we may be screaming at them to move, but twenty-odd years of dedicated slacking are still telling them that there are far more important things than the carnivorous dead to worry about. I thought the tone stumbled near the finale, which ratchets up the gore along with the emotional stake and suddenly plays both straight, but fortunately the film recovers in the epilogue. And I'd never have expected to recommend a zombie movie to anyone, but this may be one I'd like to own.
I've also picked up Patricia McKillip's Harrowing the Dragon and Solstice Wood, the first of which I read later last night. (I figured it was as good an antidote to zombies as any.) I'm not sorry that I don't own the book, because I have almost all of its contents in various anthologies, but I liked it nonetheless. Of the stories I hadn't previously read, my favorite might have been "Star-Crossed." The treatment of the deaths of Romeo and Juliet as a crime to be solved only goes so far as a narrative trick, but the viewpoint adds another layer: one of the men charged to investigate what looks like a nasty murder-suicide, a no longer young watchman of Verona who shares a lover with one of his co-workers and has learned not to ask which one of them she loves best. There are no supernatural occurrences, but the love and deaths of Romeo and Juliet are made into myth as they pass through the narrator's life; and the inevitable comparison follows. He left me with that thought, as if the lovers had been more than human, nothing like us, who, older and growing tawdry with life, could no more have loved again than we could have cut new teeth. Live fast, die young, leave a good-looking legend . . .
And on that note, Hesiod is about to eat my life.
χρύσεον μὲν πρώτιστα γένος μερόπων ἀνθρώπων
ἀθάνατοι ποίησαν Ὀλύμπια δώματ' ἔχοντες . . .
no subject
Army of Darkness basically jettisons the horror/gore (well, most of it) and lurches straight for a sort of smug Plan 9-level awfulness, which, frankly, it brilliantly achieves. (Hey, another great sentence. ;-p)
no subject
no subject
. . . I may have to see this and judge for myself. Plan 9 from Outer Space is a transcendent film. I'd be impressed if anyone who wasn't Ed Wood could even come close.
no subject
This is one case, though, where if you can, you should avoid the director's cut, because the ending that was actually released in theaters is a hell of a lot funnier.
Here's a sample, clipped from IMDB:
Ash: Lady, I'm afraid I'm gonna have to ask you to leave the store.
Possessed woman: Who the hell are you?
Ash: Name's Ash. [cocks rifle] Housewares.