A Perfectly Cromulent Blog

Is the blood still orange? If so, I'm there, Dude!

My wife is out of town this weekend, and that can mean only one thing: it's time to watch zombie movies. Last night I watched the new Dawn of the Dead.

It was good to see that, even though the zombies seem to be faster nowadays, the four basic archetypes of zombie survivors continue to persist. They are:

1) The Thinker. Usually exists for leadership. Creates a plan and implements it. Doomed.

2) The Empath. Exists to feel sorry for people who are being eaten. Has the best chances of survival.

3) The Badass. Primary goal: destroy things. Secondary goal: utter witty lines. Very low rate of survival.

4) The Dick. Exists only to be a dick. Oddly, has second best survival rate, since horror movie directors like to be perverse.

I'm curious how Land of the Dead falls within this paradigm.

Pete, you have yet again written another subpar review. If you failed to understand the GRIPPING SOCIAL COMMENTARY in this film, then maybe you been blinded by the 'sky flowers.' This film deals with today, right now, in relation to the events around us. When Kaufman yells out, "YOU DONT HAVE THE RIGHT!" What do you think that means? He doesnt negotiate with terrorist, and so on. It also deals with what it means to be HUMAN in the worst of all possible situations. You need to read Toe-Tags Pete, and maybe you will understand Big Daddy more. If not, then, you are just lost. This film easily ranks as the second best of all four films. You are just another old man geek, with meddling expectations, that taint your review with bile and bias. Easily, few comments have been more idiotic, then yours stating Land has no social commentary. If you miss that point, then you missed the entire point of the film. Not only did you fail in your duties of being a critic Pete. You failed in your duties of being a fan. You are the worst of fandom. Get your head in order, watch Land again, and get a clue.

Pete didn't say it had no social commentary. He said it had some that didn't work.

Calling Pete's review biased is ludicrous. He lives, eats, breathes and shoots the brains out of Romero's zombie movies. If anything, he should be biased *towards* a favorable review, not against. The fact that he gave it 2.5 stars tells me that he's making a conscious effort to ditch his bias and give an objective review.

Pete's duties as a critic directly oppose his 'duties', whatever the hell that means, of being a fan. If you can't understand that, don't waste your time reading movie reviews, and try to not crap all over the people who write them.

And hey: didn't Pete's review say that if you disagreed, you should say something about it on the Film Threat forums? Why didn't you post this screed over there?

I mean this in the nicest possible way when I say, "Fuck you, Riley."

I was there at the screening (filled with other critics and fans who got promo tix) with Herr Vonder Haar, and I can guarantee you that we were the biggest Romero/zombie/horror geeks in the theatre.

And after coming out of said theatre and discussing the film, no one was more pained than us that the film didn't work as hoped.

Land of the Dead is a great horror flick, a great zombie flick, a great date-night popcorn flick, but not a great "Romero flick." In a nutshell, the film was a) too broad, and b) too "slick."

Let's examine your most grammatically-correct point:

It also deals with what it means to be HUMAN in the worst of all possible situations.

No, the film DIDN'T deal with it, and that was its biggest flaw. We get glimpses of a post-apocalyptic society, where the Haves live in a gilded tower, and the Have-Nots in an (alleged) slum. All of these questions begged to be answered:

) How did this society form in the first place, and why is Kaufman the big cheese? He said he "made" the town, but how?
) If everyone in the slum hates Kaufman and his elite so much, and everyone--rich and poor alike--seems to be walking around with firearms, why would they tolerate such inequity? (And don't gimme that whole "people are stupid and follow pre-set behaviors" idea--it don't wash. Not only did Romero address this in much greater detail in his previous works, but it logistically doesn't hold up. It's trite, and Romero is anything but trite.)
) Speaking of inequity...why did paper currency carry such value; hell, how did the economy genuinely operate off of it? If Mad Max taught us anything, it's that toilet paper, stroke mags, and beef jerky are the the currency of choice after Armageddon. (And again, the whole "but people are dumb creatures of habit" doesn't work.)
) And why did the slum seem more like Lilith Fair's vendor area instead of a hellhole? Everyone seemed hale-n-hearty (except for one obligatory sick kid, who was more like the default orphan from The Simpsons), and there was plenty to eat, and a rowdy tavern for entertainment. Where was the rampant disease due to lack of plumbing? Where was the raising of cats, dogs, and chickens for food? Why did everyone in the ghetto have electricity, instead of needing to make lamp oil out of the fat of their deceased lovedones? And why, oh why, is there a scene of a road crew repairing the asphalt with a jackhammer, when NO ONE BUT THE MERCS WHO RAID THE OUTSIDE WORLD DRIVES A FREAKING VEHICLE?

I could go on about the other problems, but that would only make me seem more like a stereotypical 'Net pedant instead of the loving, caring fan I am.

Know something else? We've even been charitable enough NOT to blame Romero, despite that this was his baby. After seeing/hearing the newest rounds of publicity for the film, it becomes apparent that the murmured whisperings about Universal's continuous interference may be valid. The Suits seem behind Land's problems, and I'm willing to cut Romero mucho slack.

And since this seems to be a pissing contest about who is a bigger nerd and who has the most properly placed loyalties, I'll let you in on a little secret: I outgeek Pete in every way, especially when it comes to comics. (An aside...this gives gives him major leeway with The Wife, because he call always say to her, "You think I'm bad? Look at him Then she realizes what a bullet she dodged, and thanks the Almighty, and Pete gets extra sweet, sweet lovin'.) My point in mentioning this comic dorkiness is that I can say with authority--as a zombie fan, horror fan, Romero fan, AND comic fan--that Toe-Tags was an unreadable mess. I instead recommend you track down the SOURCE material for Toe-Tags, called The Death of Death. What's that, you ask? It is/was a text novel--written by Romero himself, I might snidely mention--about how the zombie plague came to be, and the events the audience didn't see while Night, Dawn, and Day were unspooling. That'll learn you the what fer.

So, here's a word of advice, Riley--any time you wanna come back and have a chat about the ravenous undead 'round these parts, I'd suggest you come better prepared. Use your critical faculties instead of acting like a guy who wanks off to the pics in Gorezone, because you're out of your league.

So endeth the lesson.

Um, we ARE talking about a movie where zombies' brains are splattered from here to kingdom come, right? Just checking.

BabyJane, are you saying that you fail to grasp the vast sociological and cultural significance behind flesh-hungry ghouls and the way they've shaped the development of the human race as we know it?

I bet you think that The Simpsons is just a cartoon.

Philistine.

(Insert obligatory smiley here, and, yeah, I'll admit that I went overboard. I chalk it up to waking up on the wrong side of the bed, the meth, and the gall at having a stranger come in and take a crap in the community pool.)

The whole "Toe-Tags"/Death of Death argument raises yet another problem with LotD: if I have to read/watch secondary material to make a movie understandable, that's lazy filmmaking, Whether you're talking about LotD, the Matrix sequels, or Star Wars, I shouldn't have to read a comic book/watch a TV series/play a video game to enjoy a movie on its own.

As for "Riley," or whatever name he's going by this week...who cares? There's no point arguing with a guy who shits on other people's work, never grasping the stupidity inherent in bitching about "another subpar review" that no one forced him to read in the first place

RileyDenbo is an anagram for "briney lode".

Draw your own conclusions.

It had the common horror movie problem of "the monster is only dangerous if the humans act like morons". I believe the previous one also had a good dose of this, if the movie I'm thinking of with the chick in a helicopter was Romero's.

I did notice that theatre patrons coming out of a zombie movie shambling and yawning look an awful lot like zombies.