June 20 , 2005

The setting for the world premiere of George A. Romero's Land Of The Dead couldn't be any more appropriate. All you had to do was to change the title to "The Walking Dead Will Double Down On Eleven Against An 8."

Actually, the best part of the evening, except for the film itself, which delivers relentlessly, was the after party at the Aladdin casino's trendy nightclub, Moist or Damp, or Greasy or whatever the hell it was called. (Every casino now has an "edgy" club with an water-based adjective for a name.) Universal provided the walking dead, each of which had its own unique style and weaponry. Very clever. But even better, watching a room full of revelers, differentiating between the dead and the living was a challenge that made one consider the nature of human interaction.

(In what is now becoming a running gag for Universal trips to film festivals, CineVegas shared with Sundance's Inside Deep Throat party the appearance of barely dressed dancers on platforms around the party. The best dancer on Saturday night, however, was not the most nude girl, but the dead one on the first platform you saw as you entered the space. She didn't look terribly hot from a distance... but only as you got close could you see that she was actually dead... and dancing.)

George Romero, who is slowly aging into Swifty Lazar, brought his film to Vegas to close the festival and it couldn't have been a better decision by Universal. The images coming out of the event will be better than anything they could have gotten in L.A. and might break some of the resulting materials into news rotations that are a bit overwhelmed by massive budget films. The very long pre-screening speeches made it clear that getting G.A.R. back behind the camera was an act of passion by a lot of people. The film made it clear that everyone was dead right in making the effort.

George A Romero's Land of the Dead is a variation on the expected zombie movie in that it starts in a world already years into responding to "the zombie problem." There is a military/police infrastructure that protects an island of the living, in the center of which is a luxury high rise that approximates the "normal" life experience of the past. Around there is a community of street people, who are "not the kind" to live in the luxury building.

The first zombie we meet is Huey D. Newton (the "D" is for "dead"), although he is in the credits as "Big Daddy." This gas station attendant in life, zombie rebel leader in death, is the start of something big. The zombies are starting to form a community and to take intentional action rather than just reacting.

Meanwhile, the walking alive in the luxury world are also in conflict, even if they don't know it. Some want to eat them, others just want to bleed them of their money and others wouldn't mind blowing them up out of spite.

But of course, overwhelming all else is Romero's proficiency with zombies... and with technology moving forward since his last outing, they are doing new zombie tricks that will surprise and delight (if zombie gags are your proclivity) even the most jaded critic.

Ironically, just before the Land of the Dead screening, I saw the Jury Award winner, In Memory Of My Father, which also centers around the dead, in its case a dead father who spends the whole film in his bed while a wake goes on in the house.

The film, written produced and directed by Christopher Jaymes and starring, it seems, his acting class, many of whom are very fine young actors. Unfortunately, the film feels like a big, long acting class exercise with a lot of quality scenery chewing. And central to this is the lack of a legitimate undercurrent that a man who was important in the lives of many of the characters is actually dead.

The only performance that really rang true to me in context was Judy Greer's, playing a young girl who married an old man and is a bit off her rocker. She had the same kind of goofy, showy, hyperreal stuff to do in the script, but somehow I felt her ownership of the bed she and her now-dead husband had slept in and that her pretending he wasn't lying there cold was much the same as it had been in their marriage. Etc. etc.

It is a sad note about how tough things are in the indie world that this film, which was an acceptable triffle but little more, wins a festival jury award in a field of 12. The film will make a nice calling card for almost every actor, but as a movie.. purely 2am Sundance Channel kinda stuff.

If only Mr. Jaymes has brought the father back to life!!!

E-ME. Are you ready for some zombies?