Shaun Of The Dead has been getting good reviews, and therefore attracted my attention. It didn’t disappoint, technically a horror/comedy, let’s say there much more comedy than horror. Overnight London is populated by zombies, much like Danny Boyle’s excellent 28 Days Later. Shaun is a sort of slacker type, who has a dead end job, isn’t serious with his girlfriend, and always wants to go to the local pub with his pot selling, video game playing roommate-who’s claim to fame is his crowd pleasing orangutan impersonation. When faced with the zombie crisis he breaks into action to save his friend, girlfriend and her roommates, as well as his mother. Along the way, he is faced with several complications, if bitten by the zombies eventually the person bitten becomes a zombie as well.
Vanity Fair is one of the movies I picked up while on vacation as well. I was intrigued since it was a book I read in college, and I felt that Becky Sharp, the devious social climber was one of he great literary creations. It turns out that the movie (or Reese Witherspoon) lacks the teeth to present her as Thackeray did. However, it is a sumptuous period piece with great scene locations and costumes. I particularly liked the party in the garden and the final scene that took place in India. Realistic? No, Cinematic? Absolutely.
Shaun of the Dead: Netflixed it and made the mistake of working late when Yuki watched it. She's a big fan of both Dawn of the Dead movies and just about everything in the genre, but yawned through Shaun and returned it before I got a chance to judge for myself though I caught the "playing video games with zombie buddy" at the end. Perhaps a cultural gap. We both loved 28 days, even though I tire of the obvious military fascist metaphors that perhaps started with Romero's Day of the Dead - or more likely before and influenced by Dr. Strangelove and many a 50's - 60's scifi B movie. Why not a mad band of enviromentalists or NGO-ists? I'm reading Paul Theroux's Dark Star Safari and these "self-righteous boorish" types get ranked below the gun toting African military "termites" but perhaps just a hair above the road bandits.
I haven't read Vanity fair, but should. Perhaps the only movie I've seen that gave a great book justice was Remains of the Day - the book by Kazuo Ishiguro. Digression - Pat have you read his "An Artist of the Floating World"?
Posted by: Arie | March 26, 2005 at 04:22 PM
I think the subtlies of comedy are har dot translate, so Yuki may have missed some cultural references, etc...You should check it out again, Shaun Of The Dead was very entertaining.
I was doing a paper on "reader response theory" and one study used Vanity Fair as the text to respond to, and so many of the responses were hostile to the book and the Becky Sharp character that I felt I had to read it-and I quite enjoyed it. It seems like the movie couldn't provide the nuances of a novel.
Yes I have read An Artist of The Floating Wolrd-quite possibly a review of it sometime last year on my blog-I'll see if I can find it. Anyway, I liked it a lot.
Posted by: MC | March 27, 2005 at 09:58 PM
I found it from 4/21/2004:
http://patrickmccoy.typepad.com/lost_in_translation/2004/04/an_artist_of_th.html#comments
Posted by: MC | March 27, 2005 at 10:03 PM