The Screengrab : diary of the dead

Thursday Morning Poll for October 23, 2008

Paul Clark — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Reader Steve C. accused me of being a sadist due to last week’s poll, in which I asked readers which of George A. Romero’s Dead movies was their favorite. But (somewhat spurious) charges of sadism notwithstanding, the Romero poll saw perhaps the most decisive win of any Thursday Morning Poll to date. A full two-thirds of Screengrab readers selected 1978’s gorefest/consumerism satire Dawn of the Dead as their favorite of the franchise, followed by Night and Day. The more recent entries in the series, Land and Diary, received no love whatsoever, but while neither of them is up to the high standard set by the original trilogy, I have a soft spot for Land, which almost feels like the best John Carpenter movie that Carpenter never made. If nothing else, it’s the best Carpenter movie in the last two decades (since They Live, of course).

In conjunction with both the upcoming Presidential election and the recent release of Oliver Stone’s W., I thought a Presidential quiz was in order for this week. But while I struggled to come up with a suitable topic, it dawned on me that Josh Brolin wasn’t the first member of his family to portray an actual President. A few years ago Josh’s dear old dad, James “Paging Mr. Herman” Brolin, essayed the role of Ronald Reagan in a much-ballyhooed and controversial miniseries, The Reagans. In light of this realization, I decided this was the only logical question for this week’s quiz. So, I ask you- which Brolin do you think was more Presidential?

Which Brolin was more Presidential? | BuzzDash polls

As always, the comments section is open. So exercise your right to vote, and we’ll see you next week!

DVD Digest for October 21, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 14:00:00 GMT

This week, a Japanese master gets the Eclipse treatment, and the first wave of 007 Blu-Rays hits the shelves.

DVD of the Week: To those who are getting acquainted with Japanese cinema, the three biggest names to know have long been Kurosawa, Ozu, and Mizoguchi. But while the first two directors have been getting the DVD treatment for years, only a handful of Mizoguchi’s best-known films (Ugetsu, Sansho the Bailiff) have been released on DVD. This week, Eclipse is taking steps to rectify this, by gathering four of the master’s greatest achievements in a lovely box set. Entitled Eclipse Series 13: Kenji Mizoguchi’s Fallen Women, the box set includes four of Mizoguchi’s finest and most poetic films about the plight of Japanese courtesans and geishas, a subject to which he’d return numerous times throughout his career. Two of the inclusions are pre-war titles- Osaka Elegy and Sisters of the Gion- while the others came after World War II, those being 1948’s Women of the Night and his final feature, Street of Shame. One of the most interesting aspects of the box set is seeing the differences between how he observes his subjects pre-WWII and post-WWII. As for the films’ other (considerable) pleasures, I’ll leave those for you to discover.

This week’s recent releases coming to DVD are headed up by two Universal releases which costar Liv Tyler, The Incredible Hulk (Universal, also Blu-Ray) and The Strangers (Universal, also Blu-Ray). But those more adventurous viewers out there shouldn’t require much persuading to watch Hou Hsiao-hsien’s first feature made outside of Asia, Flight of the Red Ballooni (Genius), starring the ever-enchanting Juliette Binoche. Also of note: Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (Universal), and Anaconda 3: Offspring (Sony).

On the classics front, Warner will be releasing two new DVD sets of Looney Tunes favorites: Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 6 and Looney Tunes Spotlight Collection Volume 6. And Criterion will be represented this week with their new DVD pressing of Missing. Finally, James Bond is back with new “Collector’s Editions” of both versions of Casino Royale- both the late-sixties lark (MGM) and the lean, mean 2006 take on the story (Sony, also Blu-Ray).

In TV on DVD news, this week brings the latest box set for the seemingly deathless animated phenomenon, Family Guy Volume 6 (Fox). Or if you’re looking for something less oppressively “hip”, today also brings a handful of old-school series: The Incredible Hulk: The Complete Series (Universal), The Man From U.N.C.L.E.: The Complete Series (Warner), and The Outer Limits: The Complete Series (Fox).

Finally, the big Blu-Ray only news this week is the release of the first six MGM-made James Bond titles in the format. James Bond Blu-Ray Box Set Volume 1 (Fox/MGM) includes Dr. No, Live and Let Die, and Die Another Day, while Volume 2 (Fox/MGM) contains From Russia With Love, Thunderball, and For Your Eyes Only. I suppose we’ll have to wait for volume 3 to get more of Connery’s classics, but it should prove worth the wait. Also this week, the bloody trio of Diary of the Dead (Weinstein), Halloween (2007) (Weinstein), and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Paramount).

George Romero Runs the Voodoo Down

Phil Nugent — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 15:15:00 GMT

Every kid with a taste for horror movies knows that vampires hate garlic, sleep in, and can be dispatched with a wooden stake through the heart. Also that werewolves are allergic to full moons and silver bullets. But these basic ground rules were cobbled together from a mix of fictional sources and ancient folklore, whereas George Romero, starting with Night of the Living Dead and then with its sequel Dawn of the Dead, actually created a new, long-lasting set of basics for a breed of movie monster. There had been zombies in movies before, but they tended to be dullish, pop-eyed stranglers whose strings were being manipulated by the local voodoo master. Now, thanks to Romero, everybody knows that zombies are carniverous and can only be taken out with a brain-pulverizing blow to the head. Now Romero is getting proprietorial about it. In his new Diary of the Dead, a student crew filming a mummy movie argues over whether a mummy could run; the director is clearly on the side of the guy who says that "dead things" can't move fast because "their ankles would snap." Speaking to the BBC as his movie arrives in Britian, Romero acknowledges that there is a trend build to update his concept by flooding theaters with fast zombies, and he ain't having it.

The "fast zombie" prototype can be found in 28 Days Later, even though the frothing speed freaks in that movie are not, strictly speaking, "zombies." They're living people suffering from a kind of hyper-rabies, and in the end of the movie they basically starve to death, but there's enough of a family resemblance to Romero's creatures that it's easy to understand why so many have, adopting a kind of genre shorthand, referred to it as "a zombie movie." What really hurt was when Zach Snyder's 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead came out and betrayed a clear 28 Days Later influence. Romero, who didn't have a hand in that movie, was horrified to see zombies sprinting around in a movie nominally connected to his own body of work. "Zombies don't run. They can't! Their ankles would snap. What did they do — wake from the dead and immediately join a health club?" Perhaps to avoid asking Romero just how much actual research he had done in this area, the BBC also asked him the seeming prevalence of the "found-footage" gag that his new movie, like Cloverfield and Redacted, is built around. "We thought we were going to be the first ones out there," says Romero. "But now we have to settle for being part of a trend. I guess there must be some sort of a collective subconscious."

Indie Box-Office Roundup: Weekend of February 22-24, 2008

Paul Clark — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 15:00:00 GMT

One of the pleasures of doing the weekly Indie Box-Office Roundup is that there are more surprises to be had with this top ten than with the top-grossing films overall. For example, I never thought I'd live to type the following six words: "Jacques Rivette, domestic box-office champ." Naturally, we're talking per-screen average rather than overall gross, but still — wow. Rivette's latest film, The Duchess of Langeais (IFC Films), took in a per-screen average of $11,126 on two screens over the past weekend. What makes this weekend's haul even more of a surprise is that Rivette's last film, L'Histoire de Marie et Julien was snubbed altogether by American distributors as being "too uncommercial." As a long-standing Rivette fan, I'm happy to see that others are responding as positively to his new work as I did. I don't expect it to stay on top, but I'll enjoy its reign while it lasts.

Coming in a strong second was Sunday night's Best Foreign-Language Film winner, Stefan Ruzowitzky's The Counterfeiters (Sony Pictures Classics). In its first weekend in American theatres, the film brought in an average of $10,939 per screen on eight screens. Expect the film's totals to soar next weekend, as Oscar-watchers turn out to see what all the fuss is about.

Sitting at #3 and #4 were last week's top two, The Band's Visit (Sony Pictures Classics) and In Bruges (Focus Features), followed by the weekend's top documentary, A Man Named Pearl (Shadow Distribution). Also worth mentioning is 9th-place film La Traviata (Emerging Pictures), a limited-engagement performance of Verdi's opera. It's hard to gauge how the opera's attendance compares to the other titles in this week's top ten, since although many cities are showing the movie fewer times than their other titles, tickets generally sell for upwards of $20.

Next weekend should see a bump for the Oscar-winners still in release, not just The Counterfeiters but also Best Documentary Feature winner Taxi to the Dark Side, and to a certain extent No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood.

Top 10, Weekend of February 22-24:
1. The Duchess Of Langeais [IFC Films] ($11,126 per screen)
2. The Counterfeiters [Sony Pictures Classics] ($10,939)
3. The Band's Visit [Sony Pictures Classics] ($4,908)
4. In Bruges [Focus Features] ($4,530)
5. A Man Named Pearl [Shadow Distribution] ($3,308)
6. Still Life [New Yorker] ($2,933)
7. Undoing [Indican Pictures] ($2,897)
8. George A. Romero's Diary Of The Dead [Third Rail Releasing] ($2,540)
9. La Traviata [Emerging Pictures] ($2,503)
10. The Year My Parents Went On Vacation [City Lights Pictures Releasing] ($2,485)

Source: IndieWire.

Forgotten Films: "Demon Lover Diary" (1980)

Phil Nugent — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 21:00:00 GMT

With George Romero's Diary of the Dead, the "horror movie as pseudo-home video artifact" category that already includes The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield (and, in a way, Brian De Palma's Redacted) is an official subgenre, one that has been handled by spirited amateurs, old masters, and slick, gimmick-seeking pros. Yet the unacknowledged granddaddy of this type of film may be an actual documentary that, despite having developed a healthy cult status from festival appearances, has never been legally distributed or released on video. It's the 1980 Demon Lover Diary, a record of the making of a no-budget fright flick in the mid-1970s. That movie was released in 1976 and alternately known as The Devil Master and The Demon Lover. (Not to be confused with the 2002 Olivier Assayas film demonlover or the 1987 Scott Valentine vehicle My Demon Lover, though now that we mention it, does anybody know what ever happened to that movie's lead actress, Michele Little? She was cute as a bug's ear.) The documentary was shot by Joel DeMott, the girlfriend of Jeff Kreines, who had been hired to work on the horror picture as cinematographer. (DeMott and Kreines were both MIT grad students who had studied with documentarian Richard Leacock.)

Kreines and sound man Mark Rance were induced by director-writer Donald Jackson and his star and co-director and co-writer, Jeff Younkins, to sign on to help them realize their labor of love, partly with an agreement to allow DeMott to record the process. But it soon became clear that Jackson (who installed his new friends in a room at his mom's house) and Younkins were flying by the seat of their pants and that they didn't exactly love having their incompetence preserved on film for posterity. From what we're shown, Jackson and Younkins have no visible talent of understanding of the craft of film, but they do have something at least as important to anyone hoping to make a career in The Industry: a scary, mesmeric ability to get their way, at least temporarily. (The cast of their movie included Gunnar Hansen--"Leatherface" from the original Texas Chain Saw Masssacre--as a professor of the occult, and Marvel Comics artist Val Mayerik. They also somehow talked Ted Nugent --no relation, thanks for asking!-- into lending them the use of his house and some of his well-stocked arsenal.) Jackson appears the be the more convincing talker, but Younkins really puts the "labored" into "labor of love". His character in the movie wears a single black glove throughout his performance; it turns out that this is because he lost a finger in an industrial accident, which, it's strongly implied here, was staged deliberately so that he could plow the insurance money into the movie's budget.

The ghouls in The Demon Lover are pure plastic, but the galloping paranoia, delusion, personal resentments, and general sense of festering mania captured in Diary are the real thing. Anyone who's spent time around no-frills filmmaking sets will experience a shiver of recognition as the outsiders, who have ceased to hide their contempt for the true believers, hole up in their corner of the house where they are not welcome, begin to feel the effects of sleep deprivation, and snicker and giggle while chanting, "The Demon Lover sucks, The Demon Lover sucks, heigh-ho the derry-oh..." The movie ends with our heroes getting the hell out of Dodge, fleeing Ted Nugent's property by car and convincing themselves that they're being followed and can hear gunshots. The strangest thing about all this may be that it did not signal the end of the careers of the central players. More than half a dozen years later, DeMott and Kreines made Seventeen, a cinema-verite film about teenagers that was deemed too gritty for PBS, which had commissioned it, but which went on to win the Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the 1985 Sundance Film Festival. More surprisingly, Donald Jackson has subsequently forged a long career for himself as a writer, producer, and director of movies with such eye-catching titles as Roller Blade Warriors, Lingerie Kickboxer, Rollergator, Guns of El Chupacabra and Hell Comes to Frogtown, which starred Rowdy Roddy Piper and Sandahl Bergman and which I once watched most of on USA Up All Night while blitzed out of my mind!. As for the nine-fingered Jeff Younkins, he is the author of the well-regarded Combat and Survival Knives: A User's Guide.

Indie Box-Office Roundup: Weekend of February 15-17, 2008

Paul Clark — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 00:17:00 GMT

Continuing its strong appeal to arthouse audiences, Eran Kolirin's The Band's Visit has moved up to #1 atop this week's Indie Box-Office Roundup. The Israeli comedy, released in the US by Sony Pictures Classics, managed an impressive per-screen average of $11,267, up from $9,642 last week. At a time when the big Hollywood releases are opening big and falling fast, it's good to see a movie that really catches on with audiences like this. A movie like The Band's Visit may never pull in Cloverfield grosses, but in its limited release it should have more staying power than most would-be blockbusters.

Also maintaining a strong showing over President's Day Weekend was last week's chart-topper, Focus Features' In Bruges, now at #2 with a $10,420 per-screen average in its second week of release. Martin McDonough's film is still expanding its release, so expect the averages to dip somewhat in the following weeks.

The weekend's top premiere was George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead, the inaugural release from Weinstein Company offshoot Third Rail Releasing. Romero's film, his fifth Dead movie to date, garnered a solid $6,549 per screen, and will expand to 10 more markets for the weekend of February 29.

Rounding out the top 5 were Cao Hamburger's The Year My Parents Went on Vacation (City Lights) and the self-distributed David and Layla. Also of note was Magnolia's program of 2007 Oscar-nominated Short Films, which finished #9 on the list. However, I find their figures more than a bit dubious, considering I had to pay separate admissions for the Animated and Live-Action programs.

Finally, Juno-watch! The movie that Roger Ebert called "his true love" finished just outside the top 10 this week, raking in $2,993 per screen, finishing ahead of last week's top wide-ish release, There Will Be Blood. Next week could see a bump in a number of current limited releases, depending on how the Oscars pan out. So hopefully we'll get a nice surge for PT Anderson, not so much for Diablo Cody and Ivan Reitman's kid.

Top 10, Weekend of February 15-17:
1. The Band's Visit [Sony Pictures Classics] ($11,267 per screen)
2. In Bruges [Focus Features] ($10,420 per screen)
3. George A. Romero's Diary Of The Dead [Third Rail Releasing] ($6,549 per screen)
4. The Year My Parents Went On Vacation [City Lights Pictures Releasing] ($5,430 per screen)
5. David & Layla [David & Layla, LLC] ($5,007 per screen)
6. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days [IFC First Take] ($4,808 per screen)
7. How To Cook Your Life [Roadside Attractions] ($3,704 per screen)
8. The Business of Being Born [International Film Circuit] ($3,608 per screen)
9. 2007 Academy Award Nominated Short Films [Magnolia Pictures] ($3,605 per screen)
10. Caramel [Roadside Attractions] ($3,360 per screen)

Source: IndieWire.

The Tree Of Libertas Is Watered By The Blood Of Idiots

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 19:30:00 GMT

As longtime readers will know, I am a dirty stinking liberal. I complain about the depiction of Arab terrorists in movies about Arab terrorists. I make fun of right-wing cultural pest/William F. Buckley son-in-law Brent Bozell on a regular basis for his alleged resemblance to Ghostbusters bureaucrat/asshole Walter Peck. I infiltrate conservative polticial conferences in order to take pills and mock bogus documentaries featuring Ben Stein. I think one of the most irritating things about the modern-day Democratic Party is that they pretend to care about stuff like violence in video games and smut in movies. I would rather watch Ben-Hur ten times in a row than spend five minutes hearing Charlton Heston gas on about gun control, and I'm a gun owner who hates Ben-Hur.

But let it never be said that I don't play fair. I believe in a level playing field, and I've decided that it's about time, given all the posts I've made here linking to bastions of communism like the Guardian and the New York Times, that I give some props to my favorite right-wing movie blog: LIBERTAS!

Founded as the internet component of Jason Apuzzo's Libertas Film Festival, a tiny annual symposium of conservative cinema, the Libertas blog has grown from a mere forum for right-wingers to complain that their values aren't honored by those crooked pornographers in Hollywood to a wonderful full-service site featuring movie news, reviews and writing from the perspective of angry cranks! (As an aside, Libertas and their ideological counterparts love to point to the poor commercial performance of anti-war documentaries as evidence that America isn't interested in such subversive flapdoodle. So where does that leave their claim that no one ever makes movies from a right-wing perspective?)

If you visit Libertas this very day, you'll see an exciting array of crazy cooterness: a review of Definitely, Maybe that condemns its "distasteful display of Hollywood values"; a review of Diary of the Dead that laments George Romero's "increasingly strident politics"; an article which condemns the mainstream media for failing to report Bob Geldof's recent praise of President Bush (although a quick Google News search reveals that it was covered by such non-radical papers as the International Herald-Tribune, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and Investor's Business Daily); a review which calls the new Harold and Kumar sequel "unfunny and mean-spirited" even though the reviewer has not seen the film; and a pre-emptive condemnation of Iron Man for possibly containing anti-war sentiments. Now that's good film blogging! Enjoy, folks!

Review: Diary of the Dead

Peter Smith — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 18:07:00 GMT

Diary of the Dead is the latest in George Romero's now forty-year-old "[Noun] of the Dead" franchise. It's back-to-basics in tone and production, after 2005's massive Land of the Dead. It would be easy to accuse Romero of trend-hopping, based on the film's "found footage" presentation and release in proximity to Cloverfield and Brian De Palma's Redacted. But the film parts from the recent surge of Blair Witch-ian diegesis by opening with narration: a character explaining that she's edited and produced the film you're about to watch with the intent not just to record but to frighten. Instead of coming off as pretentiously meta, this contextualizing helps you suspend your disbelief. Romero makes the most of that suspension, and the result is a strange movie that succeeds far more often than it fails.

Foregoing the established continuity of the previous Dead films, Diary begins on day one of the zombie apocalypse. A group of film students are shooting a horror movie in the woods when they hear on the radio that the dead are rising from the grave. It's a simple set-up, colored by Romero's trademark winking humor, but it works thanks to the reactions of the cast. There's no panic, just a dumbstruck acceptance. Protagonist Jason continues to film as the group begins their journey to his girlfriend's home. Where Cloverfield and Blair Witch used a camera-wielding character to emphasize how technology acts as a buffer between humanity and disaster, Jason's compulsion to keep documenting the end of the world is actually the core conflict in Diary of the Dead. The camera, the character it's tied to, and its angry, incredulous subjects emphasize conflicting human impulses during disaster: do I document or do I help. As one puts it, "I want to help them, but I can't, cause I'm fucking plugged in," and to Romero, that about says it all. — John Constantine

Take Five: Romero Alive!

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 21:30:00 GMT

George Romero's Diary of the Dead opens this Friday, and it's the fifth in his legendary zombie film series. We thought about dedicating this week's Take Five to an overview of each installment, but not only could we not swing a screening of Diary (dammit!), but we figured, what better time to look at some of Romero's other films? Yes, it's true: the man who invented the modern conception of the zombie, who's responsible for one of the most durable and appealing of the Famous Monsters of Filmland, has actually made a couple of movies that do not feature the living dead! We're the first to admit that we're suckers for the low-budget, foul-mouthed, expatriate Pittsburgher, though, and while he seems to save his best stuff for the zombie pictures, that's not all there is to the man. True, he sticks with bloodshed and horror — we aren't expecting a Shakespeare adaptation or a minor-key family drama from him anytime soon — but at least a few of his non-zombie pictures are worth checking out for various reasons. So if you're in one of the many cities where Diary of the Dead won't open for a while, head to your local grindhouse video emporium or fire up your rent-by-mail queue and have a Romero-fest in which the dead don't walk: they just die.

THE CRAZIES (1973)

Romero's fourth film overall, and his best to immediately follow the original Night of the Living Dead, this is similar to his original zombie masterpiece in many ways: the Pittsburgh-area filming locations, the largely amateur cast and the ultra-low budget, and the dreadful atmosphere of paranoia and nameless fear. It concerns the government's attempt to control a bizarre outbreak of a strange virus that causes instant, violent insanity in all who contract it; but the government, as it often is, isn't telling all that it knows, and the faceless federal agents in stark white biochemical hazard suits quickly become as menacing as the maddened townsfolk. A fascinating, underseen movie that creates a terrific mood of terror and insanity, with some of Romero's pointed social commentary; he's currently working on a big-budget remake.

MARTIN (1977)

Perhaps George Romero's most underrated film is this suspenseful, character-driven horror film made just before the release of Dawn of the Dead (and financed by Romero's direction of a TV movie about O.J. Simpson called Juice on the Loose, which would only take on horrific dimensions much later on). Martin Madahas — played compellingly by the young unknown John Amplas — is a drifter of Eastern European descent who has come to believe that he's a vampire, and for everyone who's determined to talk him out of it before he wields the straight razors that compensate for his lack of fangs, there's someone else who's trying to convince him he's right. The ambiguity over Martin's true nature, and his own feelings towards the urges he can't deny, are what make this such an interesting movie. Definitely worthwhile.

CREEPSHOW (1982)

We've discussed this one before, in our Stephen King Take Five, but it's a longtime favorite of ours and one of the gems of Romero's catalogue — not to mention the only time he really seems to relax and have fun. It's his first truly big-budget picture, and while the effects and film quality are much improved, the most he gets out of the money he's given to play with is populating the cast of this campy good time with tons of appealing character actors, from Fritz Weaver and Ed Harris to Leslie Nielsen and E.G. Marshall to King himself and an uncredited Tom Atkins. This isn't high art by any means, but it perfectly captures the atmosphere of giddy vileness in the old EC Comics it emulates, and it's a highly enjoyable romp if, like King and Romero, you surrender completely to the pulp tone of the thing.

MONKEY SHINES (1988)

Monkeys share one thing in common with zombies: they are awesome. As single-word punchlines, only robots can rival them. But with Monkey Shines, a film about a homicidal helper chimpanzee, Romero manages to prove that monkeys are only as successful as the stars of horror movies if they are a hundred feet tall. Monkey Shines isn't nearly as bad as its reputation or its horrible name (it's hootily subtitled An Experiment in Fear); it has a compelling psychological angle, an interesting undertone of moral ambiguity, and a light touch with the social satire. Then again, it ain't all that good, either, and it's largely sunk by dud after dud in the supporting cast, from charmless Jason Beghe in the lead to completely baffled pros like Stanley Tucci and Janine Turner. Still, it's got a monkey, plus Stephen Root, so you'll laugh at least once.

BRUISER (2000)

We were quite excited when we heard about the impending release of Bruiser back around the turn of the century: not only was Romero back, but he appeared to be directing a movie that was more psychological thriller than gorefest. Unfortunately, despite tight direction and some swell performances (especially by Peter Stormare), the story of a repressed, simpering executive who explodes into rage and revenge gives the game away too soon and drifts aimlessly in its latter half into a fog of serial-killer cliches. This is a movie that could have benefited hugely from dwelling on the psychological state of its lead character and leaving open a degree of ambiguity and uncertainty about his actions, the way Martin did, but instead, it's a statement of the kind of potential Romero always has but doesn't always deliver on.

The Rep Report (February 14-21)

Phil Nugent — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 18:00:00 GMT

NEW YORK: A dependable annual treat, the "Film Comment Selects" series at the Film Society of Lincoln Center (February 14-28) gives the writers and editors of that magazine a chance to decorate the screen of the Walter Reade Theater with a wide-ranging selection of films, new and old, that they love a lot more than the U.S. distribution business does. There are new films by George A. Romero (the opening night selection, Diary of the Dead), Jacques Rivette (The Duchess of Langeais, to be shown with the actress Jeanne Balibar in attendance), Ramin Bahrani (Chop Shop), Olivier Assayas (Boarding Gate), Lukas Moodyson (Container), and Alex Cox (The Searchers 2.0). The weird revivals include Cox's 1987 Walker, Crispin Glover's 1992 Rubin and Ed, and a couple of Richard Fleischer movies, the 1971 English true crime story 10 Rillington Place starring Richard Attenborough, and the mind-boggling 1975 Southern slave-owners' potboiler Mandingo.

"Milos Forman: A Retrospective" (February 14-28) at the Museum of Modern Art covers the expatriate director's career from his early, attention-getting work (Loves of a Blonde, The Firemen's Ball), traces his American work from the 1971 Taking Off to his finding a groove as a respected Hollywood pro (from the Academy Award-winning smash One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest to Amadeus and The People vs. Larry Flynt); it also includes some items from off the beaten tracks, such as his contributions to the omnibus films Visions of 8 and I Miss Sonja Henie.

CHICAGO: For one week starting February 15, the Gene Siskel Film Center is showing a new print of Jean-Luc Godard's exploration of youth culture, revolutionary leftist politics, and bright, shiny primary colors, La Chinoise (1967). This is an important film in the career of a major director and a unique experience on its own terms, and it's never been available on home video in this country, and it doesn't get out to play very often, so I'd advise the curious to brave whatever disaster-movie weather you have to brave to make it to the theater.

Trailer Review: George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead

Paul Clark — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 17:00:00 GMT

I actually saw this in Toronto at the world-premiere Midnight Madness screening, and while I was lukewarm on it the first time around, I'm curious to catch it again. For one thing, having recently seen Cloverfield, which uses a similar first-person shooting style, I'd like to be able to watch this again for comparison's sake — to contrast the stylistic gambit in the hands of a genre master with the director of the David Schwimmer vehicle The Pallbearer. Diary of the Dead may prove to be the most love-it-or-hate-it of any Romero zombie movie yet — it's got both the gore and the sociopolitical messages one has grown to expect from a Romero zombie movie, although how well he does by the latter is up for debate. But regardless of how you feel about it, a new Romero zombie is still something of an event.

Morning Deal Report: Behind My Camel

Peter Smith — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 15:00:00 GMT

Spider-Man 4 lumbers gradually into production. Sony says this will include a mere two villains, instead of their originally planned 846. Whatever.

Gerard Butler has fled the Escape From New York remake, just after news that Brett Ratner had split for the outer boroughs himself.

The underused Gillian Anderson will star in The Smell of Apples, a drama set in '70s South Africa. Nice to see her again.

That George Romero just really likes zombies, apparently; Diary of the Dead's not even out yet and he's already planning a sequel.

Speaking as the "Andy Summers" in a Police cover band, I'm delighted to hear that the real Andy Summers' autobiography is becoming a documentary. That it's from the director of Tupac: Resurrection is a little less encouraging, but we'll see.

— Peter Smith