shaun of the dead Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Does anybody remember movie novelizations? They've made a bit of a comeback in recent history, but whoo boy was I a fan of them back in the '80s. Of course, as an adult that love has turned into nostalgia, and to this day, my Lost Boys novelization holds a prominent location on my bookshelf. But I'm not the only one with a soft spot for those books, because over at Spacesick they have won my heart by creating the "I Read Movies" series. Granted, these books don't exist (and how I wish they did), but you have to love these retro covers they've created for everything from Shaun of The Dead to Ghost Dad.

We do plenty of poster launches around here, but sometimes it seems like we just don't see the same effort being put into our movie one-sheets like we used to. You know you're in trouble when fictional book covers are more impressive than your average studio marketing campaign. But before I start to sound too much like a crotchety grandpa, I'm going to focus on the positive and that's where the fans come in. Take a look around and you'll see some pretty awesome work being done, so we can only hope that some of that creativity rubs off on actual studio releases.

Check out some of our favorites in the gallery below.

"Listen to this!" A friend pressed the ringer on his BlackBerry, and it played the theme to The Omen, "Ave Satani" by Jerry Goldsmith, which he'd assigned to a particularly heinous client of his. Another friend had, for a time, assigned a relative the unforgettable score from Halloween as composed by writer/director John Carpenter himself. And I'm sure somewhere there is someone with the theme from The Exorcist, which was written by Mike Oldfield.

Ringtones aside, there's no denying that a deft soundtrack or score can ratchet up the tension in any movie, especially one that uses droning noises and other disturbing, almost subliminal effects that can slip past the viewer and straight into our brain. Some of my favorite spooky soundtracks sure to make the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end include the above, naturally, but there are a few that need some love as well.

Read the rest at Horror Squad!

Just when it seemed that October might be super-serious with its horror and dramatic offerings -- Shutter Island to Sorority Row, The Stepfather to Saw VI -- we get our first look at the fun-looking Zombieland, an action-horror-comedy in which Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone (!) and Abigail Breslin all team up in the post-apocalyptic wasteland and whoop some undead ass.

The tone of at least the trailer (I could see the narration carrying over to the film) strikes me as something like Shaun of the Dead crossed with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and I for one don't think that intersection's a bad place to be.

Read the rest over at Horror Squad ...

In case you weren't sure, Zombie Strippers is exactly what it sounds like: a horror comedy about zombified strippers. And like most zombie movies, it has political subtext, though you don't have to worry about it being headier than something titled Zombie Strippers should be. Sure, it claims to be based loosely on Eugène Ionesco's classic absurdist play Rhinoceros and, sure, it features allusions to a number of philosophers, including Camus and Sartre, but really it's dumb and silly and a heck of a good time. Particularly if you're anything but sober. And if you're just looking for a grindhouse sort of guilty pleasure to pass the time.

Zombie Strippers opens with a montage that sets the scene: it's sometime in the near future, and Bush has just been reelected to his fourth term. Already, we know this movie will be a complete farce, but the ludicrous exposition continues, explaining that government scientists have developed a virus that allows soldiers in Iraq to continue fighting after they're killed. Yes, these super soldiers are zombies, a minor twist on Joe Dante's anti-Bush short Homecoming, which was one of the more critically celebrated episodes of the cable series Masters of Horror, and which featured Iraq War casualties rising from the dead in order to cast their vote against Bush's reelection.

It's only a working title, but it will do to wind us up for now. Edgar Wright gave a hint as to what will complete the three-flavored Cornetto Trilogy begun by Shaun of the Dead -- rather appropriately, it will be The World's End.

The Guardian caught Wright at a London press conference, where the director announced a two-film deal with Working Title Films -- World's End with Pegg, and a separate action thriller currently titled Baby Driver.

Wright wouldn't give up much on what genre it would be, but admitted it might be a doomsday sci-fi piece. "It's kind of going in that direction." Sci-fi does seem to be an appropriate choice for the mint chocolate chip Cornetto that is supposed to appear. (The Cornetto theme is a tribute to Krzysztof Kieslowski and his Three Colors series, and a different flavor has appeared in Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.

If you like to eat ... and you like to eat, there is no greater holiday than Thanksgiving. Part of what makes Thanksgiving so damn special (apart from Mom's super awesome homemade pumpkin/apple/whatever your favorite thing is pie) is getting to sit around a table with the ones you love and give thanks for being able to do just that. But what if you had a chance to replace that wacky uncle with one of your favorite movie characters? Who would you choose? Keep in mind you'd have to pick someone the rest of your family would get along with; someone who'd help take your Thanksgiving dinner up a gigantic notch.

Would you really want someone like Ferris Bueller there? He'd probably eat fast and then bolt, giving some lame excuse that incorporates computer-generated belching sounds. You probably wouldn't want a heartthrob (Brad Pitt's character in ... anything) or a hottie (mmm, Rose McGowan with a machine-gun leg) because then your family would fawn all over them, snapping photo after photo until the character eventually freaks and does something bad. You're going to want a movie character who adds enjoyment and, perhaps, someone who would bring some tasty treats along with them. We asked seven Cinematical writers which movie character they'd invite to Thanksgiving dinner, and why. Feel free to click through our answers, and then tell us who you'd love to stuff in between the turkeys at your household.

Patrick Walsh would invite ...

This list was harder than I thought. I honestly thought it would be easy to scrape up a handful of funny horror movies, or scary comedies, or even unintentionally funny, Ed Wood-type movies. But the more I started poking around, the more I discovered a healthy and thriving subgenre, packed with potential classics. This year's hilarious, disturbing Black Sheep is just one example, as well as Fido (which I missed). There were also many shades within this subgenre, ranging from flat-out comedies with supernatural elements (Beetlejuice, The Witches of Eastwick) to horror movies with just a hint of the absurd (The Invisible Man, An American Werewolf in London) to spoofs (Young Frankenstein, Scary Movie) So I stuck with my original impulse and went with the ones that I found the "funniest" that were actual "horror" movies. Oddly enough, most of my choices went -- arbitrarily -- to zombies. I guess vampires and ghosts just aren't as funny.

1. Shaun of the Dead (2004)
I've seen this four or five times now, and I just don't get sick of it. On a purely technical level, it moves beautifully, from the camera setups and tracking shots to the fluid editing. It's so well executed that the jokes are more or less imbedded within the film, rather than jumping out of the film, so that it remains funny each time. Some of the subtler jokes get better each time, such as Ed's "two seconds." What's even more amazing is how well it works as both a character-driven movie and a zombie movie. It's so good, it even earned the seal of approval from the zombie master, George A. Romero (the boys, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, went on to make cameos in Romero's Land of the Dead).

2. Army of Darkness (1992)
The debate rages on around Sam Raimi's Evil Dead trilogy: which one is best? I love them all, and Evil Dead II is my admitted favorite, but this third entry -- at one time entitled "Medieval Dead" -- is definitely the funniest. Bruce Campbell earned himself a lifelong cult following with his deadpan readings of lines like "boom stick," "primitive screwheads," "gimme some sugar, baby," etc. The drawback is that this film is definitely the least scary of the three films, but it does have its share of monsters, gore and creepy Harryhausen-like effects.

I'm no horror buff, but I do love the zombies. Well, I love the idea of zombies. I'm not really that interested in watching all the low-budget zombie movies, all the Italian zombie movies, or all the non-Romero Living Dead movies. But it's funny, I was looking over Ryan's recent Cinematical Seven of reasons he doesn't care for zombie movies, and it dually serves as my own list of reasons I like zombie movies. Or at least those zombie movies that apply. Primarily, I like zombie movies for the first reason: the symbolism.

Shaun of the Dead may be a comedic zombie movie, and it may not have any political undertones or serious social commentary, as do Romero's films and other prominent examples of the genre, but it does permit a scholarly subtext reading nonetheless. And because I'm a scholarly sort of gent (or maybe really I just like to over-analyze everything), I'm going to take this opportunity to look at this deeper level of the movie. Sure, I could just write about why I think the movie is one of the most hilarious I've ever seen, but that would be boring; plus, I respect that some people don't have the same sense of humor as me.

Shaun's symbolism comes in the form of the romantic story. The movie, often referred to as a "rom zom com" (romantic zombie comedy), actually serves as a sort of cinematic relationship guide, comically instructing us about dealing with commitment issues. Look at the order in which the members of Shaun's party are killed (killed dead, not undead): #1: his stepfather (Bill Nighy); #2: his mum (Penelope Wilton); #3: the other guy who loves his girl (the underrated Dylan Moran, who must be seen in Run Fatboy Run); #4: his roommate (Peter Serafinowicz); and finally, #5: his immature best friend (Nick Frost). These are the people that have to die in order for Shaun (Simon Pegg) to devote his full attention to Liz (Kate Ashfield). In real, non-lethal terms, they are the people Shaun has to let go of before he can fully connect in a relationship.

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.