Romero's Diary of the Dead good?

From AICN, "I managed to get my hands on the "Dairy of the Dead" script and my inner geek was doing back-flips, my outer geek tried to remain calm but screw him. Anyway, to be clear, I'm a big Romero fan but my faith had been shaken by Land Of The Dead. Then, after reading your and Harry's IM chat, my heart sank. It seemed a weak idea, cheap and beneath George. A.

So is it that bad? No it is not, in fact, half way through reading the script I started wishing that this had been the film he'd made instead of LOTD. To clear a few things up, The film takes place outside of the Night, Dawn, Day and Land chronology. We see the dead start to rise much like the Dawn remake. It's present day and there's no explanation. The students are shooting a Mummy film in the woods and it takes up about 3 scenes. When they pick up news reports on the radio they abandon the film and head home or back to their dorms. There's some nice jokes about slow or fast moving Mummy's during the filming scenes. One student, ambitious film-maker Jason Creed, keeps filming as a documentary much to the others disgust. The film then becomes a standard Zombie apocalypse story as the group, split and one faction make their way back to Jason's girlfriend's house.

The handheld camera style is really a stylistic device so it doesn't come over as cheap as it sounds. The action takes place on the road and in many locations and for some of the shocks, think of the night-vision first look at the troglodyte in "The Descent" i.e disorienting and unexpected, it adds to their effectiveness. All the traditional ways for a filmmaker to technically build suspense aren't available with this style so the zombies appear almost out of nowhere. With the glut of Zombie films we're faced with, this approach seems fresh and not as dated as I first feared.

There are parts of the story that seem odd, an, African, American, guerilla army pop up in the middle section and when Jason posts the footage onto his My Space page he gets a million hits in an hour. The Dead Walk and everyone turns to My Space for answers? There's also an alcoholic, English character that rivals Day of the Dead's drunken Irish man for cringe inducing dialogue but it's basically a Zombie road movie with the sort of imagery Land was missing. We get to see Amish zombies, golfer zombies, burnt zombie cops and a character keeping the rest of his undead family, in the deep end of the swimming pool, underwater, because he doesn't know what to do with them.

So, I'm a convert, in fact while were at it George why not get Savini out of retirement too?"

KILLSHOT!

Killshot Trailer

From Iwatchstuff, 'Director John Madden, who continues to insist he's not the football guy, has successfully fused two semi-related words into one mediocre-looking movie: Killshot. The first thing you're going to think when watching this is "Why is the bad guy from Kindergarten Cop in this?" That's actually Mickey Rourke. Your next thought will be "When did Mickey Rourke become a Native American?" I don't know, try to move past that. Then you'll think, "When did Third Rock kid become a child molestor?" I can only assume he always has been but went unnoticed because he looked pre-pubescent until a few months ago. Your final thought will be, "Can I have back the time I spent watching this?" I'm sorry.'

Oooh, scary

From X-entertainment, "We went to Target tonight, because this is what twenty-somethings with lives and worlds that are their oysters do on Friday nights: They go to Target. Along with a few other things that I must force myself to hold off on writing about, I found the four awesome monster finger puppets seen above in their party supplies aisle. It was like, Dora hats, Disney-Pixar Cars blowhorns, Shrek paper plates and then BAM, rubber monster finger puppets from Hell.

I'm not one to bust a nut over thirty cents, but it bugged me that the things were priced at $1.29 each. I would've felt so much more triumphant about my purchase if they were a buck, because that's what things like this are supposed to be: A buck. You're supposed to look at these, know you don't need 'em and buy them anyway because they're "just a buck." At $1.29 a pop for the four puppets, I paid over a dollar more than I was comfortable with. I could've used that dollar. In a perfect world, I could've used that dollar for a fifth rubber monster finger puppet.

But, as the kids like to say these days whenever they're feelin' sassy, "whatev." They're great little toys, full of pleasant plasticky scents, colorful paint jobs and horrendous faces. Scoring the four, I can't tell if they guy on the upper left is the most normal of the bunch, or if I'm just assuming he is because he's the only one with two eyes that are the same size. I probably like the black skull on the lower left best, if not for the painstakingly detailed pink stitches under his mouth, then for the fact that I keep thinking he's a gorilla even though he hasn't a single gorilla-like feature.

Most points for creativity goes to the ghoul on the upper right, appearing to be some sort of ugly albino who messily eats blue magic markers. He looks indignant, and he should, because there's a fucking earthworm crawling out of his eye socket.

Thank you, Target. If my fingers could actually fit into the baby hand-sized holes on the back of the puppets, I'd manipulate one of them to compliment you on your parfum."

Slow news day

From Thesuperficial, "Harry Morton and Lindsay Lohan just got back from their vacation in Hawaii and here's some shots from their trip, including the one above of Harry giving Lindsay a good ass grabbing as they make out. Does it matter that there's a mother reading a book to her baby behind them? Of course not. Real men don't let little things like babies get in the way of a good time. Besides, it takes that kind of ballsy attitude to be the succesful CEO of the Pink Taco restaurants. That and a billionaire father. Who may or may not be senile, because you can't be completely there if you're investing in something called the Pink Taco."

Fantastic Four 2 starts shooting, moviegoers already want their money back

From superherohype, "Fantastic Four: Rise of The Silver Surfer director Tim Story has updated his official Blog and says that filming has started on the sequel:

So it has begun! The Fantastic Four have been photographed for Rise of The Silver Surfer. Felt like old times. Everyone's back in the mix and really picking their characters up where we last left off.

We also shot Andre Braugher for the first time. He plays General Hager, an old acquaintance of Reed Richards and one of the major additions to the movie. Jessicas is looking amazing. Chris has his energetic performance firing on all cylinders. Ioan looks great and Chiklis is funny as ever as the blue-eyed Thing.

One of the days was pretty long. Just happened to be one of those locations that we can't come back to and we had a lot of effects shots. Those things always take forever. The background plates, then the actor buy himself, then the crowd. Blah blah blah. Wish we could shoot everything practically, but then again, I guess stretching Ioan may not go over too well.

More to come guys. Fairly straightforward start. 3 days off then we're back to it.

20th Century Fox will release Fantastic Four: Rise of The Silver Surfer on June 15, 2007."

Pan's LABYRINTH Trailer is baffling

Pan's LABYRINTH Trailer (9/1/06)

From Iwatchstuff, "The crack team down at CHUD got a hold of the new teaser for Guillermo Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth. What do you call it when you orgasm in glee and shit yourself in fear at the same time? Or better yet, how do you clean it? Because that's what this made me do."

Much to the chagrin of nerds everywhere, a football movie remains number 1 at the box office

By Patty Rhule, USA TODAY
Invincible proved to be just that as the football film claimed the top spot of the box office for a second straight weekend. The Mark Wahlberg drama about a walk-on who got to play for the Philadelphia Eagles took in $15.2 million, according to studio estimates. It fell just 11% from its opening weekend.
BY THE NUMBERS: See the weekend's top 10 films

Crank, the action thriller starring Jason Statham, was No. 2 with $13 million, followed by the Nicolas Cage thriller The Wicker Man, which did $11.7 million. Small films surged over the holiday.

Little Miss Sunshine, now in 1,602 theaters, was fourth with $9.7 million. The R-rated movie stars Steve Carell, Toni Collette and Greg Kinnear as members of a dysfunctional family en route to a child beauty pagent.

The Illusionist, starring Edward Norton as a magician in a love triangle with a prince in turn of the century Vienna, was No. 5 with $8.0 million.

The Wicker Man

(2006) **

Well as expected, the Wicker Man remake did not measure up. Though their heart may have been in the right place (this is debatable), they completely missed the mark in capturing what exactly made the original so special. And what might that be? The feeling of being lost in a faraway (in both distance and time) land where things are just not quite right. The incredible imagination and painstaking lengths they took to make the island of Summerisle convincing. The strange pagan costumes and unique music. Christopher Fucking Lee. The original Wicker Man was clearly a labor of love and pure vision.

The remake did not comprehend this so it was forced to imitate. Changing the location to Washington state was a foolish choice but I can let that one go. It was a bold move to turn the island folk into a feminist colony but they never explored the implications of this. In fact, they kind of avoided making any kind of statement. Most irritating was Willow, mother of the missing girl as well as love interest to Nick Cage. We were never given a chance to know her or understand what Cage sees in her. Her only expression was a look of bewilderment and worry. This gets old very fast and by the end, you'll grow weary of her big stupid eyes.

I'm not going to dignify this movie by picking it apart further. I was afraid that this would be so bad that it would ruin the original but that was a pointless concern. The original is incapable of being ruined. Lindsey Lohan couldn't ruin it. So I was able to enjoy this one for what it was. I've sat through Halloween Resurrection, Curse of the Werewolf and a slew of piss-poor Vincent Price offerings. The Wicker Man '06 is much more enjoyable than those. But not enjoyable enough to ever be mentioned by me again.

A Lois Lane Movie? Sure, Why Not

From iwatchstuff, "For me, the draw to superhero movies has never been the cool, superpowered costumed hero. I'm seeing it for the one-dimensional love interest every time. It appears someone else feels the same way, as Sky News reports that Lois Lane will not only have a larger part in the next Superman film, but is in the works for her own spinoff as well. Now the only question is if the movie can stand up to the sky high standards of the Lois Lane comic. I'm hoping it will be based on the one where she falls under a spell that turns her into a centaur."

The Invisible Poster Appears, Defying Name

From Iwatchstuff, "David Goyer's supernatural thriller, The Invisible, tells the story of a young man left for dead who finds himself invisible to the living, separated from his body. It sounds pretty neat, unfortunately I can't get behind a poster for invisibility that isn't centered around a girl's locker room. Any other use for invisibility I consider too far fetched."

Shatner and Nimoy come to their senses

From darkhorizons, 'In news of another franchise, Leonard Nimoy has mentioned to Jam Movies that he and William Shatner might get to be involved with J.J. Abrams' "Star Trek XI" at Paramount.

He says "The head of production at Paramount called my agency to tell them about this project and they are aware of Bill's and my contribution to the franchise, and they'd like us to know they might want some involvement. It was all very, very general. They might possibly want Bill and I to set up the story as a flashback. But that's just conjecture on my part".'