Diary of the Dead! Woo!

I'll post my thoughts on the film later, but put simply I dig it. I think I liked Land of the Dead more, but Diary was still great fun - and definitely had the more entertaining gore gags ... and the jabs at running zombies throughout were supoib.

I figured I'd post about the experience first though. After months of waiting to see the film, and counting down the days to it's release - today, March 7th 2008 - I finally got to see it. I nipped over to my nearest Cineworld for the 2:40 showing and was somewhat surprised to see two other people in the cinema. A fourth came in just after me, and then the film started.

Half way through, the fourth person left - clearly it wasn't his cup-o-tea - but while that was somewhat entertaining in itself (3 people fled Land of the Dead when I saw that on the opening day, September 23rd 2005), it didn't detract from the fun of the film.

What did, for a short while anyway, was when something wiggy happened with the project and the image dropped a third of the way down the screen, so that the bottom third was cut off. So some certain text written on a chalk board couldn't really be seen properly.

I was thoroughly British about it all and figured a reel change would be coming shortly, but a few minutes later I yelled towards the projection booth to "SORT THE PICTURE OUT!" - but nothing was fixed.

Oddly enough, when I saw Land of the Dead the opening credit sequence was shown in the wrong aspect ratio, a 2.35:1 image stretched vertically to fill a 1.85:1 space *sigh*. But while that didn't disturb things at all, this dropped image was a bit of a nuisance.

A minute or so later, one of the other viewers asked me if the image was supposed to be like that - no, not it was not - he tapped on the projection window, but nothing. He went outside and fetched someone and finally, the picture was fixed. The projectionist obviously fucked off elsewhere during the reel, but remained there throughout the rest of the film - precisely - do your fucking job! *sigh*

It wasn't a major disaster at all, kind of a funny story. You could see all the important stuff, and Pan & Scan is a worse experience by far...and I've seen tons of those, so I can deal with it, ha.

Anyway, then I was able to relax fully into the film and rather enjoyed it. At the end, the bloke who'd fetched someone to fix the problem, said he wasn't too keen on the film, but I said I dug it - and I do. On the way out I even had a brief conversation with a young woman who was working there and told her what the film was like when she asked...I was quite surprised, and pleased, to see other Romero fans in the flesh in the form of complete strangers. I recommended the flick, weighing it up fairly. I hope she enjoys the movie when she gets to see it.

While the other two viewers tried to get their money back, I just left for the car. Despite the projectionist fucking up, I wanted my money to go to those behind the film, because it was rather spiffing...and here I am, back at home a couple of hours later blogging up some thoughts on the experience.

Roll on the DVD - I do hope it gets the proper treatment, Land unfortunately got a bit of a bum deal DVD wise. Double disc presentation please!