After a few weeks of not showing up, DIARY OF THE DEAD suddenly appeared on amazon.com last week. Now it is gone again.

Did anyone successfully preorder a copy from them?


thanks!
marc

My copy shipped May 9 from Axelmusic.com, but I have not received it here in Sweden yet

Diabolik and Xploited seem to have gotten it.

Just got this from Netflix... I'll just say, even as someone who really stuck up for Land of the Dead, I'm glad I rented it instead of blind buying. :(

Well, if you were looking for straight horror (not saying you were, just saying) then I can see why you were disappointed. Diary is his most humor-driven entry of the series... and when you step back and look at everything after Night, all of them can be taken as pitch-black comedies.

No new news there, of course. Dawn and Day had their comedy, but it was more stealth... a balance was maintained in order to please the fanbase. But in the years that separated Day and Land, I think (pop psychology, here) that Romero became more comfortable with his situation... that he had hit a home run with his first swing, and no matter how much he wanted to play another metaphor, everyone put him back in his place.

He made a monster movie to get noticed, and he got noticed like nothing else. And a very special place was reserved for him...

Making zombie movies.

Not just zombie movies, but by the demands of his fanbase unrated ones that trapped him into not really making them the way he wanted. And he had things to say, observations on the world around him... that he was only allowed to really say through the lowliest form of subgenres, the zombie flick.

There's a certain absurdity to his situation, and I think that he's more at ease with letting the absurdism come out in his forays, these days. There was a lot of stealth comedy in Land, such things as the zombie cop taking "a bite out of crime" and a chunk of a looter's arm.

And Diary is the next step towards Romero just saying screw all and making a flat-out zombie comedy. Maybe it'll be perceived as a case of biting the hand that feeds him, but where he's at in his life, I don't think he's all that hungry anymore.

So... Diary of the Dead is what it is. A zombie movie made by someone that hasn't been able to really escape that niche for the last forty years. He's the Zombie Dude, but (like the Ramones) he's never really gotten the bennies for the movement he created.

So at this point, he's making the zombie flicks he wants to make. And laughing at the absurdity of it all.

More power to him.

I'm all for comedy, but I usually like it to be at least a teensy bit funny. :P
All his previous zombie flicks were much more fun (as well as scary and all around genuinely effective) than this one. ...IMHO, of course.

And if you want to skip the USA DVD and get this Hi Def, then head over to the UK for a Blu-Ray release at the end of June!

Diary Of The Dead [Blu-ray] [2007] - will Europe (initially) get more Blu-ray releases because of co-producers, or even just local liscensors, I wonder?

I've read the detractors' comments, but damn if I didn't love DIARY OF THE DEAD. Seriously, this gem has shot right up near the top of my list of favorite Romero films. DIARY 2 can't come soon enough IMO.

Vincent

Are there two different 'Diary of the Dead' movies or something? :D

Nope... Vincent saw the one everyone else did, I imagine. :lol:

I'm going with Vincent's camp on this one... I, too, REALLY dug DIARY OF THE DEAD. I saw it theatrically in LA and had a blast (and so did the audience I saw it with... at the Burbank Town Center Mall).

I know we seem to be in the minority but, I gotta say, I liked it a HELL of a lot more than LAND OF THE DEAD.

I didn't like it more or less than Land... or for that matter, any of his other entries since Night. Hands down, I prefer Night, but each of the other ones have something going for them (or weaknesses) that balances it all out in the end. But as each film is a mirror held to the era in which it was made, they're also a snapshot of where Romero was at in the same period.

So for that matter, I was one of the few folks that wasn't disappointed with Land.

. . . I got my copy of DIARY OF THE DEAD a week or so ago and finally watched it today - very pleased to report it can now remain proudly on the shelf next to the first three in the series (sorry, no space available for the misbegotten LAND OF THE DEAD - Romero needs to stay away from studios and do these things on his own as much as possible) . . . to me, this one was very well acted by a young cast of folks I did not recognize, scary enough, darkly funny, full of fresh ideas (well, the video stuff was not really "fresh", but I think he did a great job presenting his take on the idea), and another interesting commentary on our current life and times that places it squarely within his body of zombie work . . . to each his or her own, of course, but to me this one towers over much of the current American horror/sci-fi cinema scene, and is a welcome return to form by an old favoirte who was looking like he might be past his prime . . .

Similar to THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE series, which I've always seen as a reflection of American Horror Cinema at the time each entry was made. The prequel or beginning or whatever it was called was the first one I haven't liked (indeed, I thought it was really poor) so I guess that pretty much sums up the state of things right now.

The Blu-Ray disc arrived today and we watched it tonight, having not seen it at the Cinema. The picture quality of the film itself is very good (but shaky camera made us move it down from the projector to the TV!), and continuing the film's theme the disc's opening Menu is like a web browser loaded with YouTube style clips (which aren't really interactive).

I enjoyed the film as it was, but missed the actual emotional connection that was enabled in Dawn Of The Dead - sequences which were pastiched here e.g. Clean Up squads entering a house where the families are hiding the Dead of the ain kinfolk and then getting it in the neck; main characters who have been bitten and then dying coming back to life as Zombies only to killed suddenly by someone who cared for them, etc. played out as scripted - perhaps the 'format' of the film limits the amount of directing that can actually be done? My girlfriend said it was all like a video game in plot and acting, and the camera work was like a First Person Shooter. The web enabled 'chattering' (from around the Globe) that underlies the reason for the film within the film to keep being shot made sense, and purposed the actual Diary Of The Dead, so I would say mission accomplished Mr Romero!