Apparently, director Frank Lawrence and Will Smith didn’t think that I Am Legend was a clunker.
According to Lawrence, who directed the apocalyptic flick, Warner Bros. has begun work on the prequel to I Am Legend, which amazingly grossed $584 million internationally. Amazing because the movie was so bad.
Lawrence will return as the director and Smith is also slated to reprise his character Dr. Robert Neville. He will also co-produce the movie through his Overbrook Entertainment partner James Lassiter as well as Akiva Goldsman. The script, written by DB Weiss, is reportedly already finished. The story was based on an outline that Smith, Goldsman, Lassiter and Lawrence collaborated on.
The basic premise is that the movie will feature the final days of of the virus outbreak that kills the earth’s population, leaving Neville alone.
Movie Review: Diary of The Dead
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Popular media has been deluged by reality shows and the massive availability of video recording equipment has made everyone a chronicler of sorts. The world has become heaven for the voyeurs who peep into the lives of other people – as seen in Youtube and various blogging sites that chronicle the life of celebrities or even the mundane lives of the normal joes.
This is the kind of world that George Romero wanted to take to task in his newest movie Diary of The Dead.
This latest edition of his zombie series is a rejigging of the whole mythos that began with the seminal cult hit Night of The Living Dead. Diary of The Dead happens right alongside the events that happened in the first movie. A bunch of college film students are shooting a horror film in the woods when reports of the dead coming back to life reach them. They retreat back to their RV and attempt to find a safe place to hide in as the whole world goes upside down.
Romero’s cinema verite style that evokes The Blairwitch Project is very visceral and immediate. Zombie movies, even Romero’s feel fantastical because of the very mythos it presents to the audience. But not Diary of The Dead, the gung-ho reality style makes you feel that the dead suddenly reanimating is entirely possible. You feel more for the people who only have their RV as their flimsy sanctuary. What also helps is that Romero has employed a bunch of “no-name” actors. You get a feeling that these are real people and not paid talent acting out their characters.
This decision to use untested talent is also the biggest flaw of the movie. The way some of the actors react to some of the situations they’re in are just too amateurish sometimes. You know these are greenhorns. I guess Romero is also partly to blame for this. Managing his actors better would have resulted in a more believable film. As it is, it’s the very actors in the film that occasionally shatter the illusion that what we’re watching is an actual documentary. In a sense this is where The Blairwitch Project really excelled. The movie had three tyro actors that really knew how to act and they helped sell the movie.
The effects employed in the movie are quite superb and believable despite the shoestring budget. It may not be the big budget gorefest that Land of The Dead was but the effects were not only passable, they were even quite realistic at some point. Romero has made some setpieces and imagery that will become part of the zombie canon. I especially loved the floating zombies in the indoor pool. It was a dreamlike vision that is made horrifying knowing that it was someone’s family down there.
Diary of The Dead is a flawed movie but it is still a cut above the rest of many of the horror movies that Hollywood has been churning out. It may polarize many moviegoers but for me, this is a worthy addition to the Romero zombie mythology.
Rating: B –
Jovovich in Clock Tower movie
Milla Jovovich is making a niche for herself acting in movie adaptations of video games.
The Resident Evil star is now set to work on Clock Tower, a horror game that was available on the Playstation. She will appear alongside Brittany Snow and Alyssa Jayne Hale. Jovovich will play the character of Alyssa Barron.
The movie will be based on the second Clock Tower game, in which the main character is trapped in a psychiatric hospital while she tries to escape from the curse that haunted her family.
Romero starts filming new zombie movie
Director George Romero is set to make another zombie movie. Principal photography for the as yet untitled film has begun. As most Romero zombies go (except for Land of The Dead) this movie will feature not so popular actors.
The movie will reportedly be set on an island located off the North American coast. The residents of the island witness their relatives coming back from the dead and laying havoc to the community. The leaders then get into a moral dilemma of whether to kill their reanimated relatives or to keep them in a safe place in the hope that a cure can be found.
Movie Review: Day of The Dead (2008)
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There has been a resurgent fascination for zombies in popular culture. This is not only apparent in literature but also in such popular cultural forms as comicbooks as well as in movies. I’ll be reviewing different zombie-related movies for my next series of reviews.
First up is Day of The Dead.
Hollywood is so devoid of imagination right now that when zombies became popular again, instead of thinking of new stories to present to audiences, they just take the lazy route and just rehash old zombie movies and present them as “remakes” or a “retooling” of classic horror films. This is what’s been done to Day of The Dead, a remake of the classic George Romero movie. Day of The Dead basically completes the Romero series of zombie movies that have been remade. All of them, unfortunately, sucked.
The new Day of The Dead remake is different from the other Romero remakes in that the story has been drastically altered from the original. The new movie tells the story of a “flu-like” epidemic that ravages an unnamed town in Colorado. The military has been issued an order to cordon off the area and prevent people from leaving. Corp. Bowman (Mena Suvari) is part of the military contingent and is coincidentally also a resident of the town. She decides to visit her mother and discovers that she is sick from the flu and decides to bring her to the hospital along with her brother and his girlfriend. While in the hospital, the flu victims turn into zombies and all hell breaks loose.
That small synopsis is enough to show Romero fans that this was not the story of the original film. Gone are the almost philosophical musings of what makes a man, civility and baser instincts. What is left in the 2008 version is an oversimplification of the whole original concept – an MTV version that substitutes depth for gore, senseless violence, and a kindergarten level story. I also have to take exception to this whole “fast zombie” phenomenon. It’s a big insult to zombie lore and just makes zombies more unbelievable than they already are. And Day of The Dead makes the stupidest version by actually making the zombies cling to walls and ceilings!
Mena Suvari’s talents are wasted in this movie. This is such a big demotion compared to her star-making turn in American Beauty. She tries to come off as a strong femal e character but ends up looking lost and bewildered. Ving Rhames is another talent that is wasted here. The fact that he only had almost twenty minutes of screen time for a character that is not even memorable leads one to believe that Mr. Rhames just needed the paycheck for accepting the movie. The inclusion of Mr. Mariah Carey Nick Cannon has also led me to the conclusion that any movie with his name attached to it is liable to suck big time.
I am not even going to try and talk how director Steve Miner did in this movie. This is not the Steve Miner who managed to make Lake Placid such an entertaining ride.
The bottomline here is that if you want your zombie movie fix. You’re better off looking for it elsewhere. Or better yet, track down the original for a more cerebral fix.
Rating: F
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