Diary of the Dead, George A. Romero's first independent zombie film in over 20 years, follows a group of student filmmakers who, making a low-grade horror film in the woods, drive back to civilization ... only to find it isn't there anymore. We watch the film unfold as footage they shoot travelling through desolate and deadly buildings, neighborhoods, towns, cities -- coming to grips with the fact that the dead are walking and hungry and everything they knew is over. Shot outside of Toronto, where Romero now lives (but, as tradition demands, set near Pittsburgh), Diary of the Dead played both the Toronto and Sundance Film Festivals; Scott Weinberg's review from Toronto can be found here, while Jette Kernion's review is here.

Writer-director George A. Romero spoke with Cinematical about his zombie film legacy that stretches back to 1968's Night of the Living Dead, his concerns about the possibilities and perils of user-generated media, which Presidential candidate he thinks would have the best handle on attacking armies of the dead, and the undying popularity of the undead he created. " (If) I created anything ... it was the "neighborhood zombie" ... the guy with Nikes and a sweatshirt. ... Neighbors are scary, and when they're dead they're a bit scarier. But once you have that, it's idiomatic ... I half expect the zombies to show up on Sesame Street hanging out with The Count. ..."

Cinematical: I've read several notes and quotes from you saying that Diary of the Dead essentially felt like a new beginning.

George A. Romero: For me, it was a new beginning; I made four zombie films before this, and they sort of tracked, they were along a single storyline, even though they were 10 years or more apart, each of them. And they were just getting too big. The last one (George A. Romero's Land of the Dead) was a studio-supported film, which, you know, I turned around and looked at it: They let me make the film I wanted to make, I loved working with Dennis Hopper and Leguizamo and people like that, but I felt the film and I had sort of lost connection with the origin of the series, which was a little guerrilla movie that a bunch of amateurs made in Pittsburgh all those years ago. And I wanted to go back to ... I wanted to see if I had the chops and the stamina to make a little guerilla movie. I happened to have an idea that I wanted to do something ... all of my zombie films have had this kind of socio-political satire underneath them, and I've always used them as snapshots of the time in which they were made.

I got an idea that I wanted to do something about emerging media, with the mainstream losing its power and Joe Blow from Oshkosh taking over on the blogosphere. And it all sort of fell into place. And I thought 'Well, I can make a little film, do it pretty inexpensively, about students who are out shooting a student film when the sh*t hits the fan, when zombies sit up and start walking around.' I said 'We can go back to the very first night, and we can try to pretend ' -- even though that was 1968 and this is now --- 'that this is the same first night, when this phenomenon first begins to happen.'

In the midst of all the speculation regarding the big-screen version of Watchmen, the musical score probably wasn't all that high on the list -- but it can be just as important. As any moviegoer knows, sometimes the music can make or break a movie (for a good example of how music can ruin a flick, look no further than The Perfect Storm or The Last Samurai). ComingSoon.net is reporting that Tyler Bates has been signed to compose the score for the film.

As any fan-boy can tell you, Watchmen is Zack Snyder's adaptation of Alan Moore and David Gibbons classic graphic novel. The story is set in a fictional New York in the 80s where "masked vigilantes" have affected the events of everything from the Vietnam War to Watergate. Over the last year, the rumors flew fast and furious about the cast until Malin Akerman, Billy Crudup, Matthew Goode, Jackie Earle Haley, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Patrick Wilson were all officially announced.

Tyler Bates started his career back in 1993, when he wrote the music for a sci-fi B-movie called Blue Flame. By 1997, he had already released his own album with his band Pet, but the album failed to become a hit and he has been in the movie business ever since. Bates has a long standing relationship with director Zack Snyder, having done the score for 300 and Dawn of the Dead. Snyder was quoted as saying that Baker's Bates' score for 300, "...moves the film into mythology cauterizing the images as you view them, making them something they could never be alone." So, I guess he is looking for the same kind of magic for the equally mythic story of Watchmen.

I love George A. Romero for what my Cinematical colleague Ryan Stewart does not -- the "symbolism bat," which allows Romero the freedom to use zombies to comment on whatever he wants. To me, that's a strength, not a weakness. Plus, Dawn of the Dead made me afraid of shopping malls, Day of the Dead made me claustrophobic and Land of the Dead made me wish I didn't work for a corporation.

His latest, George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead, debuted at Toronto and fairly well divided audiences. I've heard from supporters, detractors and those in the middle -- Scott Weinberg was on the positive side -- but I can't wait to see it for myself. And hey! Romero made it completely independently, so that's in his favor. Jason Morgan at AMC's Monsterfest blog points to Box Office Mojo, which lists a release date of February 15, 2008. (Our friends at Moviefone also have this release date.) However, neither The Weinstein Co. site nor the film's MySpace page confirm the date yet, so plan your life accordingly.

Another independent horror film just found its leading lady. Brittany Murphy has signed to star in the psychological horror flick 3:30 a.m., according to Variety. Murphy has dipped her feet into the horror pool in the past (The Prophecy II, Cherry Falls, arguably Don't Say a Word). Mick Davis wrote and will direct 3:30 a.m., which is "about a young woman who leaves Gotham after the death of her father to work in a country hotel." The film is said to explore "the connection between dreams and reality." Davis is credited as a co-writer of The Invisible, one of the worst-reviewed movies of the year, but also wrote the original Swedish version; he is currently filming Dylan, starring Kevin McKidd as the Welsh writer Dylan Thomas. 3:30 a.m. is scheduled to begin filming in January 2008.

Well, since it is Halloween after all, it makes perfect sense to get a little horror-related news. The Hollywood Reporter announced that Artfire Films and Romero-Grunwald Prods. have already given the go-ahead to a follow-up of George Romero's Diary of the Dead. This means they must be pretty eager considering the first film is not expected to be released until next year. Diary of the Dead centers on a group of young filmmakers in the middle of making a low-budget zombie flick who have the unfortunate luck of running into the real thing. According to THR, the sequel will focus on survivors from the first film, "Fighting their way out of a mansion through a horde of ravenous zombies, the survivors of "Diary" escape to a remote island only to be plunged into another battle with the dead".

So if you are not a fan of zombie movies (and I know there is at least one of you out there), it's going to be a rough year at the box-office . Only yesterday, Zack and Deborah Snyder confirmed that the follow-up to Dawn of the Dead now has a completed script and that they are on the hunt for a director. So we can add Diary of the Dead 2 to a growing list of films about the 'living-challenged' slated for 2008 (with my personal votes going to Brad Pitt's take on World War Z and the Vampire-Zombie hybrid, Virulents). Diary of the Dead is slated to begin principal photography this coming Spring.

You know, sometimes it's like the universe wants to prove you wrong. No sooner did I make one little offhand comment that Zack Snyder had probably abandoned his follow-up to Dawn of The Dead when his wife and producing partner, Deborah Snyder, tells Shock Till You Drop that Army of the Dead is alive and well (sorry, I couldn't resist). The script was written by Snyder and Awake's Joby Harold. Deborah Snyder summed up the story to Shock as follows: "Basically, something happened in Vegas and there was this huge outbreak of these zombies that were killing people...So to contain it they basically contain Vegas. The city is this wasteland with walls around it and all of these zombies are inside" -- and it could just be me, but that sounds awfully similar to Resident Evil: Extinction.

As we all know, Zack Snyder is hard at work on his big-screen version of Watchmen, and he will only produce the 'sequel' to his 2004 remake of George Romero's zombie classic. Deborah Snyder tells Shock that they are currently on the hunt for a director for the project, but that it is "...a little hard [to do] because we're here [on set] and every day is killer. We want the right person for it. The script has been turned in to the studio and they're really happy with it, with pretty minimal notes back, so they said, 'Hey, let's get a director.'" As soon as they do find their director, we'll be here to let you know who it is. Any ideas?

[via Justpressplay.net]

Zombies appeared in movies early on, in White Zombie (1932), I Walked with a Zombie (1943), The Last Man on Earth (1964), and -- to some extent -- Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959). But the infectious, flesh-eating, undead creatures we know today originated in George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968). No other horror movie was such a cornerstone, breaking new ground for its time, establishing the hard and fast rules for an entire subgenre and remaining a much-copied source nearly 40 years later. On top of all this, it's actually a great film, and hardly dated at all. When I first saw it, all alone in a dark room late at night, it gave me the shivers. But it also gave me food for thought.

Many have studied the complex relationship between the film's human characters, all trapped in an abandoned house trying to survive the night. Barbara (Judith O'Dea), after losing her brother to a zombie, becomes nearly catatonic. She's like the child of this twisted family. Ben (Duane Jones) is the leader, and though Romero apparently hadn't written the role for a black man, he evokes echoes of the Civil Rights movement that was brewing at the time. Harry Cooper (Karl Hardman) is white, middle-class America, with a wife, Helen (Marilyn Eastman) and a daughter (Kyra Schon). And Tom (Keith Wayne) and Judy (Judith Ridley) are typical teenagers, hoping to get married and settle down. It's easy to see all kinds of social commentary within this group of characters and their behavior, but even without all that, the film works very simply as a dramatic clash of personalities.

That last R-rated clip from 30 Days of Night was pretty cool, but wait'll you get a load of this new one. It's definitely more my kind of thing, since I prefer zombies to vampires, and the clip makes the pic look more like a zombie movie. What could be better than Mark Boone Junior driving around in some kind of chainsaw-esque tractor, slicing through multiple baddies while simultaneously blowing away others with a shotgun? Exactly. Nothing could be better. In fact, I think I like this scene better than that sequence in Dawn of the Dead where they're driving the modified bus around. But that partially has to do with my appreciation for Mark Boone Junior. He just looks like the perfect guy to be in charge of a task like this. Anyway, once again you have to prove you're 18 (or otherwise get through the sign-in page) in order to watch the clip. Or you could just wait until Friday when the movie hits theaters.

Cinematical wimp pansy editor-in-chief, Erik Davis, saw the film and loved it, even though he's probably back to sleeping with a night light. He even claims it's the most beautiful horror film he's ever seen. For those still out of the loop, the movie is based on Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith's graphic novel about a small town far up north where the sun disappears for a whole month -- ripe time for a crop of vampires to go on a rampage. Directed by David Slade (Hard Candy), it stars Josh Hartnett, Ben Foster, Melissa George, my favorite supporting actor these days, Danny Huston, and, of course, Mark Boone Junior.

I'm not much of a horror buff myself, but if there is more stuff like this new clip, I'm pretty much sold on going to see it. And though I don't think I've ever needed a night light, I bet I'll have at least one nightmare as a result. It just looks like that kind of movie. At the very least, I'm sure I'd at least get freaked out the next time I'm walking around late at night in the snow. Between 30 Days of Night and the recently released The Last Winter, I'm pretty set never to go up to the arctic circle.

There are many directors who I think should be barred from making films, but Courtney Solomon is near the top of the list. He disappointed gamers everywhere with Dungeons & Dragons (some people humorously feel it is worth watching), a movie even he admits is awful, and then tried to redeem himself with the not-much-better An American Haunting. As head of After Dark Films, he has gotten into more than one controversy regarding his advertising practices -- going so far as to be made an example of by the MPAA -- and still hasn't even put out a decent-enough release to make the company worth Lionsgate's trouble. Now the director is looking to annoy us some more by attempting to revolutionize the zombie genre, a plan that he claims is desired by horror fans.

Solomon isn't revealing the title for this proposed movie, which he thankfully won't be directing, but describes it as a "zombie version of Underworld," which sounds bad even if you like Underworld. Worse, though, is his explanation that the zombies in this movie will be fast and emotional, something he says is completely new for the creatures (did he not see the running zombies in the Dawn of the Dead remake or the seemingly conflicted zombies in Land of the Dead?). I'm all for new takes on the genre, but I hope Solomon has more ideas than this. Supposedly the movie will feature a whole new lore for zombies (actually, he calls them part human, part zombie, which is redundant, I think) inspired by conversations had on the web between Solomon's people and real horror geeks, but unless the movie has a good sociological undercurrent -- as the best zombie movies do -- the tweaking of the genre is simply an unnecessary attempt to create something original. But if Solomon truly wants to do something original and to please us movie fans, he needs to make a good movie.

Thanks to the enormous success of 300, director Zack Snyder can probably set up as many dream projects as he wants right now. He has already been able to get Watchmen up and running and he would certainly be offered the 300 sequel if it happens. Another project that he's just set up is a return to the zombie action-horror genre. It is called Army of the Dead and while it sounds like a sequel to his first big hit, Dawn of the Dead, the fact that this will be made by Warner Bros. instead of Universal makes me think it is definitely not related. Snyder wrote the story, which takes place in a quarantined Las Vegas, and he will co-produce with wife Deborah, but he hasn't announced whether or not he'll direct.

For now it is only known that a script is being written by Joby Harold and that Snyder wants the movie to be a sweeping epic with a style similar to that of 300. I am one of the few zombie movie fans that wasn't too crazy about Snyder's Dawn remake (it seemed to me more a scene-by-scene remake of Maximum Overdrive that substituted zombies for trucks), but because I will watch any movie with zombies, I'm willing to give him another shot. Plus, I love the idea of zombies in Vegas. Whenever I'm at a casino, I already think of the people around me as being like the living dead, and I can certainly imagine zombies blankly playing the slots. Of course, since I'm envisioning a campy movie closer in style to Romero's original Dawn of the Dead, I doubt I will be satisfied. Still, I can't completely dismiss it just because it is different than what I would do, and I'm excited to see what Snyder claims will be the biggest-scale zombie movie yet.

One of my very favorite topics of film-related conversation would have to be that of the infamous "horror remake." Could be a J-horror re-imaganing, a revisit with truly classic material, or a quick-buck PG-13 junkpile that shames the name of its predecessor. (Heck, I posted a similar article last March, and I even went as far as to bang out a master list of horror remakes at my very own website!) Well, apparently the movie geeks over at Premiere.com are also big time horror nerds as well, because they've just posted their list of the 15 Best Horror Remakes.

OK, having just perused their 15 choices, I gotta say: I know it's got to be hard coming up with 15 really good horror remakes, but jeeeeez. Just lower it to a Top 10 and get The Fog, The Amityville Horror and 13 Ghosts OUTTA there. And ... am I on crack or did the Premiere squad neglect to mention Cronenberg's The Fly AND Carpenter's The Thing??? I mean, good job on throwing some love towards The Blob, Dark Water and the 1978 version of Body Snatchers, but come on! You guys omitted the two best horror remakes ever made!!!

(I'll include their full list after the jump, just to incite some discussion, but definitely check out the Premiere article before you dive in, you crazy gorehounds, you.)

We've been covering the long-discussed movie version of Alan Moore's Frank Miller's Watchmen since October of 2005, and now it looks like that project will have a lot riding on the success of Zack Snyder's current project. The highly-anticipated adaptation will most likely happen, but things like casting and budget may hinge (at least a little) on the response earned by Snyder and Miller's inaugural collaboration: the frankly awesome-looking 300 (which opens March 9 and boy I can't wait).

According to a nifty little mini-interview with SuperheroHype.com, Mr. Snyder seems all set to go on Watchmen, which could actually begin production this summer. The young director also covers the various subtextual/political elements that could be part of the Watchmen story, the importance of its 1985 setting, and the ways in which 300 has already made things a little easier where the Watchmen project is concerned. So with Dawn of the Dead and now 300 under his belt, and Watchmen almost definitely on the horizon, Zack Snyder looks poised to become the next King of Guy Movies. That seems fair, right? The ladies get Nancy Meyers, Nora Ephron and Richard Curtis -- and the guys get Zack Snyder, Quentin Tarantino and ... Rob Zombie, I guess.

If there's one thing the media really loves to do, it's lump a bunch of barely-connected people into an ill-fitting group -- and then give that group a clever name. Whether it's The Rat Pack, The Brat Pack or The Splat Pack, I just get irked whenever a new "pack" makes it into the cultural lexicon. Oh, you're not familiar with that last one? Yeah, it's a moniker that's been given to a bunch of "new" horror filmmakers, one that seems to imply that these guys get together every weekend to smoke weed and watch Halloween 2 together.

According to a recent article in Time Magazine, one that seems to approach horror flicks the same way a prissy schoolmarm would approach some inappropriate comic books, the members of "The Splat Pack" are Eli Roth (Cabin Fever, Hostel), Neil Marshall (Dog Soldiers, The Descent), Alex Aja (High Tension, The Hills Have Eyes), Rob Zombie (House of 1000 Corpses, The Devil's Rejects), and James Wan, Leigh Whannell and Darren Lynn Bousman of the Saw trilogy. (Apparently Wolf Creek director Greg McLean was part of the original pack, although he goes unmentioned in the Time article, probably because he hasn't made much money yet.)

But what do these guys have in common, really, other than the fact that they all make horror flicks? I see Americans, Brits, Aussies and a Frenchman in the mix, and while some of the guys are fresh-faced and 20-something, guys like Roth have been toiling away in backstage anonymity for years. Plus, c'mon, Rob Zombie is 42 years old, so how exactly does he tie in with these kids? And why is it that Neil Marshall never seems to be quoted in these articles? Is he just included because his horror movies are ... GOOD? Apparently the Splat Pack label was created by Alan Jones of Total Film, and I'm sure the guy's an absolute expert on horror flicks -- but labels create limits, exclusions and oversights. And, ultimately, articles like this one, I suppose. (Either way, I bet Jones bangs out a book called The Splat Pack by the end of 2008.)

The UK's Christopher Smith (Creep, Severance) is young and horror-heavy, so why isn't he a member of The Pack? Shouldn't (Dawn of the Dead screenwriter, Slither director) James Gunn be one of the den mothers? Lucky McKee has made only two feature films (May and The Woods), but they're both downright excellent pieces of horror. Why's he not a member? Uwe Boll's done a bunch of horror flicks that could be accurately described as " laden with torture," so why not throw him an invitation? You want a guy who loves the word splat? Try Jake West, the guy who directed Evil Aliens. Plus I read another article a while back in which Jonathan Liebesman (Darkness Falls, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning) was considered a member of The SP! Now, if that guy can be considered some sort of "future of horror," I'll eat my hat.

The common themes among the Splat Packers are ... what? They all like horror movies, they don't shy away from intense chills, harsh themes or copious gore, and they're all carbon-based life forms, I guess. But really: Does anyone out there think the work of Eli Roth is even remotely similar to that of Neil Marshall? Does a Rob Zombie flick remind you of what was seen in, say, High Tension? I mean, if you're going to define a term, then define it. And as a big fan of just about all these movies, I just gotta scratch my head when I hear these guys lumped together in one basket.

And what happens when guys like Ryan Schifrin (Abominable), Adam Green (Hatchet), J.T. Petty (S&Man) Scott Glosserman (Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon), Jon Levine (All the Boys Love Mandy Lane) and Adam Mason (Broken) start to make their way up the ranks? Will we have the arrival of Splat Pack 2: The New Generation? Back in the late '70s/early '80s, did we need a goofy little heading to remember names like Carpenter, Hooper, Craven, Dante, Landis and Cunningham?

Ultimately, I have no real point. I'd just seen the phrase "Splat Pack" one too many times and felt the need to vent. Opposing viewpoints are welcome, as long as they agree with my own opinions.

I wasn't all that thrilled when I first heard about this Day of the Dead remake; I wasn't exactly elated when Steve Miner (Friday the 13th 2, Halloween 7) was handed the director's chair; and now that I've seen the extended trailer for the new Day of the Dead -- I'm still not entriely convinced. But hey, I was wrong about the Dawn of the Dead remake. Happily wrong, I might add.

OK, so I'm being a little tough on Steve Miner. The second Friday was pretty solid, but then again, he also directed that 3-D one. Ugh. Other flicks in Miner's rather eclectic filmography include the amusing House, the uncomfortable Soul Man, the goofy Warlock, the painful Big Bully and the snarky Lake Placid. So at least the guy knows where to point a camera. The man adapting Romero's Day is Jeffrey Reddick, he of the original Final Destination and the not-so-original Tamara. Cast members include Ving Rhames, Mena Suvari, Nick Cannon and ... Ian McNeice? Interesting.

Bankrolled by Millennium Films, the new Day of the Dead looks to be shooting for an early 2007 release. No word yet on who'll be doing the distributin'.

It seems a  fairly obvious observation, but horror flicks are pretty "hot" these days. The current cycle of scary flicks can be attributed to box office hits like Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead, Marcus Nispel's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, James Wan's Saw, and probably a half-dozen others, but moreso than any other genre, the popularity of horror movies seems to arrive in "waves." Apparently we're knee-deep in one of those waves right now. And now with one quarter of 2006 behind us, it's time for the first of four "progress reports," in which you and I wade through all the horror flicks presented in January, February, and March, and then decide if the studios and the indies have been treating the Gorehounds kindly.

1/6/06 -- BloodRayne (Romar) -- Kristanna Loken, Ben Kingsley, Michelle Rodriguez, and Michael Madsen humiliate themselves through the latest hilariously bad offering from the adorably inept filmmaker known as Uwe Boll. (It's a horror movie in that it features vampires -- and it's an absolute horror to sit through.) Jam-packed with laughable dialogue, dime-store costumes, non-sensical plot-churnings, and hyper-inept editing, BloodRayne is the kind of flick that should be required viewing for any and all film students. It's precisely the sort of movie that's so bad it's good -- although I suspect Boll is beginning to do "amazingly awful" on purpose, which sort of takes some of the fun out of it... Grade: D- (DVD release: 5-23)

• Breaking News - Hong Kong action director Johnny To delivers this watchable Woo-alike about a police force that loses the support of the public when a robbery goes bad and is covered by a local news program. The set pieces are pretty tight, even if the drama and the statement To tries to make about the power and responsibility of the media doesn't fully come through.
• Free Enterprise: Special Edition - A self-effacing turn akin to Marlon Brando's in The Freshman and Pauly Shore's in Pauly Shore Is Dead is William Shatner, sending up the cult of personality that has followed him since the original Star Trek series ended its five year mission two years early in 1969. When fanboys Rafer Wiegel and Eric McCormack meet their boyhood idol, he is far from the super-cool man for all seasons they have long worshiped. He's bent on staging a one-man musical version of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, a great running joke that culminates in the brilliant payoff that is the Shatner/The Rated R rap duet, "No Tears For Caesar". Writer-director Robert Meyer Burnett has created a love letter, not just to Trek, but to anyone who has ever loved anything with fanatical passion, and this long-overdue 2-disc treatment gives it the respect it was not afforded when it was first released in 1999. Check out the Pop-Up Video style trivia track, which annotates the geekery, new special effects, the making-of feature Where No Man Has Gone Before, and the unaired TV pilot, Café Fantastique, which features the real fans who inspired this smart, hardy-har-har trek. A sequel, My Big Fat Geek Wedding, has been listed on the IMDB for nearly 3 years now, and Mindfire Entertainment's website features a rudimentary mention of it, though no firm details are available as yet.
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Special Edition - Death, and the gloomy heft that comes with it, visits Hogwarts in the fourth and most satisfying installment in the ongoing series so far. When an evil thought vanquished literally rears its ugly head again, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermoine (Emma Watson) team up to expose it. Like the overwhelmingly dark Revenge Of The Sith, this is the first to bear the PG-13 rating (for "sequences of fantasy violence and frightening images"), though its decidedly down ending makes it feel more like The Empire Strikes Back. It is not unreasonable to expect studio Warner Brothers to keep their three leads on through Harry Potter and the As-Yet-Unwritten-and-Untitled Year 7 Story. This, of course, is despite the fact that they will be in their early 20's by then, but let us not forget that at least one of the 90210 kids was practically eligible for Social Security by the end of that run. Even at 157 minutes, the book has still been truncated, but it is doubly encouraging to know that kids will know what is missing and will sit still for that long in order to be able to go on smartly about it. The second disc is chock-full-o' extra goodies, and is available in full- and widescreen editions. A single disc version is also available.