Fantastic Fest 2007–Diary Of The Dead/The Last Winter/Aachi And Ssipak
“God or what the fuck is not letting you die!”–George A. Romero
When there is no more room in Hollywood, George A. Romero will walk the indie line.
And we’re all the better for it.
It’s that time of year again, kids. Time for what is fast becoming my favorite film festival. It’s so fuckin’ low key and awesome. Not to mention that it features some of my favorite genres.
But enough about the festival. This was the first night and I saw some doozies.
DIARY OF THE DEAD (2007)
Directed by: George A Romero
Written by: George A Romero
First up was George Romero’s new Dead movie, Diary Of The Dead. But it doesn’t take place in the continuity of the first four. This is a complete restart. Not that it retells the events of Night, but it starts at the beginning.
Much like The Blair Witch Project, the story is of some film students who set out to make a mummy movie. What they didn’t realize is that a zombie movie would actually take place right before their eyes. And the nation was fall as a result.
There are no stars this time out. Romero had some problems on the Land Of The Dead shoot (although he said that Columbia was actually great to work with), so he decided to go totally indie on this one. He shot it quickly, like he used to. And it has a much more convincing commentary on modern life than Land did.
Jason (Joshua Close) wants to record everything for posterity. He realizes that the news is bullshit (they re-edited the initial zombie attack so that it didn’t look as bad as it actually was), so he wants to post the “real story.” In fact, he wants to do this so much that he often keeps shooting even when his friends (or his girlfriend) are in trouble. He’s very popular with them by the end.
Now, if you’ll all remember, I actually liked Land Of The Dead. It wasn’t a great movie and was the weakest of the Dead movies, but I still liked it.
Diary Of the Dead brings Romero back among the living. I think this movie will do for fans what they really wanted Land to do. It may not be Dawn, but it’s certainly better than Day or Land.
One complaint: the Texas girl is WAY too stereotyped. “Don’t mess with Texas!” Shut up! She was hot and feisty, but, ultimately, annoying.
If you’re a fan, the man is back. Check it out.
And listen for some famous folk doing audio cameos. Stephen King’s is the funniest.
Directed by: Larry Fessenden
Written by: Larry Fessenden
The Last Winter is an ecological horror movie. Matt Dentler (one of the directors of the festival) said that it was kind of like if An Inconvenient Truth had been written by Stephen King. I can kind of see that, but I think Stephen would have come up with a better ending.
Ed Pollack (Ron Perlman) is the leader of a team in northern Alaska trying to get equipment to an oil drill site. Unfortunately for them, the Earth seems to be working against them in pretty strange ways. They start to go a little bit crazy one at a time. Even the ecologists on the team (James LeGros and Jamie Harrold) are falling victim.
Director Larry Fessenden (Habit and Windigo) sure knows how to build tension. I was feeling just about as claustrophobic as the people stuck at the camp. And the Arctic Circle is a great place to stage a horror movie, especially one that deals with paranoia and slow insanity. (John Carpenter knows all about that.)
Fessenden’s film plays out a little bit like Session 9 taking place on The Thing’s set. The tension builds and the paranoia grows until it finally explodes all over the screen.
Unfortunately, he chooses to manifest the insanity in a rather silly looking ghostly creature. It was ok while they were just streams of light in the snow. It looked kind of cool, actually. And it could have been the peoples’ imaginations. But when we actually see the creatures, it’s just kind of lame.
Overall, though, it’s not a bad movie. I actually liked it quite a bit up until the moose monsters were revealed.
And I kind of liked the 2001-like monolith in the middle of the snow. That was pretty awesome.
Directed by: Jo Beom-jin
Written by: Jo Beom-jin/Yeon-won Jeong
Aachi And Ssipak had no such problem, though. This Korean animated film was crazy in ways that even the Japanese aren’t really sure what to do with.
Um…story. Right.
The world has run out of energy, so scientists have come up with a way to create energy from human feces. The more you poop, the more reward you get. That reward is a “juicybar,” an addictive popsicle type thing. The side-effect of the juicybars, though, is that people are starting to mutate into an endless supply of adorable little blue guys who are incredibly stupid. So stupid, in fact, that they don’t always seem to realize that they are dying in really horrible ways.
The leader of these mutants (called the Diaper Gang because they wear diapers on their heads) is a very evil dude who will stop at nothing to get more and more juicybars. He kidnaps a girl that he thinks can poo ten times a day.
It’s up to a couple of hoodlums, Aachi and Ssipak, to save her…and the world. But are they too stupid to do it? Or are they just stupid enough to accidentally do it?
This is one of the strangest animated movies I’ve seen in a long time. The animation is, at times, almost Yellow Submarine-ish (especially with all the blue dudes) and always very cool. The action is almost non-stop and the references show up everywhere. (Misery, Aliens, Temple Of Doom, Paris Hilton…you name it, it’s there.)
It’s certainly not the best movie (the comedy kind of let up occasionally), but it’s a lot of fun…if you have the stomach for it. It’s pretty offensive in just about every way. But there’s really nothing wrong with that. In fact, it really kind of endeared it to me. I can’t say that I loved it, but I had a LOT of fun with it. Definitely worth seeing if you like movies about diaper wearing feces stealers who are addicted to popsicles.
And who doesn’t?
A couple of shorts showed up tonight, too.
Directed by: Jon Spira
Written by: Jon Spira
Suityman (played with The Last Winter) was about a guy (in a suit, of course) who woke up planted in a field. He had no idea who he was or why he was planted there. When a farmer showed up, he was no closer to finding out.
The farmer told him that he was take him to where the other Suitymen hung out…the train station. But where is it? And can Suityman trust Farmer?
It was a pretty interesting little short that ends pretty ambiguously, but I think that’s the point. You never know where you’re going or who you can trust.
Directed by: Guilherme Marcondes
Written by: Guilherme Marcondes/Andrezza Valentin
Based on poem by: William Blake
Tyger (played with Aachi And Ssipak) is based on William Blake’s poem of the same name. A tiger roams around a city, devolving the people and buildings into much more natural things than they originally were.
This was a very inventive short with some really cool ideas in it. The people were all animated, but the tiger was a puppet that was controlled by guys dressed in black body suits. You can plainly see them, but the tiger is much more interesting.
Very cool. Look for it. I’m hoping that I can see it again online somehow.
