28 Days Later - 23 Days to go

So we will wake up (or sit through) 23 days from now to a new UK ruling party or hung parliament (should all be hanged anyway har har har;).  It will more than likely be the Conservatives, there is a slim chance it will still be Labour and there is next to no chance it will be anyone else.

"I'll vote for a third party candidate" , "Go on, throw your vote away"

Whatever the outcome, the Lib Dems get my vote.  Not because I live in the west country and all the disenfranchised farmers vote Lib Dem though.  Nope, purely because of the PPB I just saw.  I like it :)

 

Dawn of the Dead - All Rise

DoTD is an all time favourite. Zombies hunt on instinct and there is no reasoning with that level of commitment. If their ultimate goal is to eat you alive, then all in all that's pretty scary. With the upcoming Blu Ray release on the Horizon and looking like another improvement in the visual stakes, I decided to dust off the Ultimate DVD edition for a final watch before upgrading. Three versions of this film, The Theatrical cut, The Extended cut and The European Cut. Unfortunately I went for the European Cut.

Bad move. I have obviously never seen this cut of the film before and it really struggles due to being a combination of a bad editing and an unfamiliar familiarity.

Dario Argento. A horror maestro who's films I have rarely seen, helped to get funding for this film. He was allowed Euro (non english apparently) distribution and editing rights in exchange. What we get is a faster cut (over 20 minutes off the original cut) and new music. But I'm unsure what the goal with this was. It still runs at nearly 2 hours for a horror movie and so no benefit there. And the 'tighter' editing just seems to make the film jump. The music is the biggest let down though as the original soundtrack is entrenched in the memory for me and the new stuff just sounds tagged on like a laughter track.

I'm not sure what Dario was trying to achieve. Why did he think he could edit this film better than George, and given the mans already respected output (so I'm told) why did he feel he needed to?

My advice to you if you've never seen this horror classic is avoid the Eurozone and head for the US Theatrical or the Extended cut. I'm going to refresh the brain with one of them very soon.