When the trailer for Watchmen hit the web a few weeks ago, I was as pumped as anyone. I’ve always been a fan of comics, but when I finished reading Alan Moore’s opus for the first time, I closed the back cover, starred into space, and solemnly said, “This changes everything.” Seriously, it’s that good. And the trailer looks good, it appears to be a faithful adaptation of the source material.
The key word here is appears. The visuals are stunning, some sites even took the time to do shot by shot comparisons with the book. But I’m not worried at all about that, I’m more concerned with how the film will be edited. Like most comics/graphic novels, Watchmen is practically a story board waiting to be transformed into a film. But what made the book so revolutionary was not the art, it was the story, and the way the story was told. Watchmen is a dense web of complicated interconnected stories. Multiple generations of characters deal with epic personal, philosophical, and political struggles, all woven into one masterwork.
Watchmen, the book, excels at the graphic novel version of cross-cutting. Several pages contain nine panels that are set up like a checkerboard, alternating between two separate stories that intimately inform one another, albeit across expanses of space and time. On the one hand, this seems like source material for a final-scene-of-The Godfather level of powerhouse editing. But on the other hand, it could just be a huge mess.
After the jump, Snyder says why he feels up to the challenge…
The deadline for our Presidential Zombie Photoshop contest has technically already passed, but due to the madness of Cannes and the holiday, we haven’t started judging yet, so we thought we’d give stragglers a bit of extra time. If you still want to enter, you have until midnight EST tonight. See our rules and regulations here.
In our never-ending quest to find new ways to mock contemporary popular culture whilst celebrating the classics, we bring the first ever (ever!) SpoutBlog Photoshop Contest. We have a George Romero DVD two-pack to give away: a copy of the new Diary of the Dead, and the 40th Anniversary edition of Night of the Living Dead. Here’s the quip from the press release:
The NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 40TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION DVD features a fully restored and remastered version of the original 1968 classic film and bonus materials, overseen by the master himself. This DVD marks George A. Romero’s long legacy with great interviews and multiple featurettes that emphasize the quality of this ultimate horror classic. The DIARY OF THE DEAD DVD bonus features include an optional audio commentary by George A. Romero, character confessions, a making of and the top five Myspace contest shorts.
Find out what you have to do to get the discs after the jump.
George Romero’s Diary of the Dead opens tonight. In an interview with him at Sundance, our eyes were opened to what an eloquent artist he is. We watch Night of the Living Dead to examine the origins of the zombie genre and compare it to Diary. Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Karina Longworth gets personal with the loneliest movie going experience ever: Watching Build a Ship, Sail to Sadness.
(Subscribe to FilmCouch in the iTunes store and an episode will download each Friday)
Michelle Morgan and Shawn Roberts star in George Romero’s latest zombie romp, Diary of the Dead. The film follows a group of film students whose efforts to produce a zombie movie are thwarted by an actual undead apocalypse. They quickly turn the cameras on themselves, documenting their struggles to survive, uploading their videos to the internet whenever possible. As with many Romero films, the campy delights of exploding zombie heads are lovingly blended with social commentary, this time about the ineptitude of mainstream media compared to “bloggers and hackers” self-publishing their experiences. In this interview stars Michelle Morgan and Shawn Roberts talk about the mood on set, not knowing if their characters will undergo zombification, and their favorite zombie flicks.
You can check out the Diary of the Dead trailer on the film’s MySpace page.
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FilmCouch #85: Death Race, Crispin Glover’s What is It?
Some movies are violent, some are disturbing, and others are just plain wrong. Paul W. S. Anderson’s Death Race is a fun ride with some gnarly crashes, but it can’t hold a candle to its demented predecessor, Roger Corman’s Death Race 2000 (1975).
Cinema’s favorite weirdo, Cripsin Glover, is taking his film across the country, personally [...]
