George A. Romero's Land of the Dead

[modage]

The rated edition (runtime 1 hour 33 minutes) will be available in full frame only, whereas the unrated edition (1 hour 37 minutes) will be presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen.

[MacGuffin]

[modage]

they could've done better than that.

[analogzombie]

The rated edition (runtime 1 hour 33 minutes) will be available in full frame only, whereas the unrated edition (1 hour 37 minutes) will be presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen.

SUCK! so any word on a "Director's Cut"? Romero said something about how he had plans to do one all along. Or is this emasly 4 minutes more the director's cut? if so that'll make Land of the Dead as short as Night.

[MacGuffin]

SUCK! so any word on a "Director's Cut"? Romero said something about how he had plans to do one all along. Or is this emasly 4 minutes more the director's cut? if so that'll make Land of the Dead as short as Night.

Already asked, already answered:

http://xixax.com/viewtopic.php?p=192557#192557

[bonanzataz]

mac looks pretty today. your redirects are so... perky with cameron diaz smiling at me like that.

[analogzombie]

SUCK! so any word on a "Director's Cut"? Romero said something about how he had plans to do one all along. Or is this emasly 4 minutes more the director's cut? if so that'll make Land of the Dead as short as Night.

Already asked, already answered:

http://xixax.com/viewtopic.php?p=192557#192557

hmmmm, maybe i should start reading posts that are longer than 3 lines.

oh well, that's depressing about it only being an additional 4 minutes. i was hoping there would be enough of a change to make it a good movie. Looks like the Romero dead films will have to end on a lacklustre side note instead of a exclamation.

[GodDamnImDaMan]

It's been months since i've seen this movie and I still can't come to a conclusion if I liked the film or not...

I love Zombies, LOVE Romero, Loved Night, Dawn, and Day...

Someone tell me what to think of this film.

[bonanzataz]

think that it's sexy. you want to fuck it.

[modage]

materials (that) display dismembered fingers . . . is unacceptable under Advertising Administration standards.

REVISED UNRATED ARTWORK HERE: http://www.dvdanswers.com/index.php?r=0&s=1&c=7475&n=1&burl=

TAKE THAT MPAA!!!

[MacGuffin]

Uncut Dead in Theaters
Romero's uncut version to enjoy one-night-only theatrical exhibition the night before being released on DVD.

On October 17, 2005, one night before George Romero's Land of the Dead is released on DVD in both R and unrated versions, Universal Studios and Fangoria Entertainment scheduled a once-in-a-lifetime (if you're alive, anyway) opportunity to see Romero's film in its uncut form. 36 Regal, United Artists and Edwards movie theaters will offer high-definition, cinema surround sound exhibition of the feature, which features four minutes of additional gore not seen in the original theatrical release, as well as an exclusive interview with Romero himself that will not be shown anywhere else after this special event.

[MacGuffin]

Interview: George Romero
The master of horror speaks about Land of the Dead, the MPAA and how he'd fare in an all-out zombie war.

After a hiatus of over 20 years, the original zombie guru George A. Romero got an opportunity to revisit the genre he almost single-handedly launched with the groundbreaking Night of the Living Dead. Following that in the Seventies with Dawn of the Dead, a film which many consider to be the best horror film of all time, and then in the Eighties with Day of the Dead, Romero had made a habit of creating one amazing zombie film per decade.

While events in the Nineties prevented him from a fourth film, he returned this year with the latest, Land of the Dead, hailed by many critics as a return to the form and style that made the previous three so influential. We recently got an opportunity to talk with the horror master about the DVD release, why the MPAA isn't all that bad, and how he would fare against a zombie apocalypse.

IGN DVD: What is going into the unrated cut that didn't make the theatrical?

George Romero: Well, I guess everyone is expecting miles more gore. It's not that… The movie itself is only about five minutes longer than the theatrical release, and half of that is a scene that we cut, a story scene, not a gore scene, because I just didn't think it came off as well as it might have. Obviously, there are some things that [Greg] Nicotero did, a few gore moments that we didn't even try to get past the MPAA. But by and large, I got away with murder with the MPAA. I don't say that facetiously; I used tricks. I walked zombies in front of a green screen so that I could have them walk in front of some of the gory stuff and that would cut frames out of it and we would be able to keep the stuff in the movie, so the film itself has very much the same intention as a theatrical release.

Usually when they talk about "oh, director's cut," it's supposed to be wildly different and it's supposed to be as if I had a battle with the studio and I wasn't allowed to put stuff in the movie. It's not true at all in this case. Universal, across the board, was wonderful to me and very respectful and let me make the movie that I wanted to make, so this cut is not that different. It's a little harder and I think that the most fun, and the stuff that the fans will dig, will be the commentary track and the extras. John Leguizamo made his own little film and the guys from Shaun of the Dead, Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright, made their own little movie while they were on the set shooting this. And I think that's the most fun. It's really sort of behind-the-scenes stuff.

IGN: How aware are you of the MPAA when you're shooting? When you go to plan gore effects and such… With the green screen stuff, it sounds like you had a back-up plan.

Romero: Well, yeah. I actually came up with that later. The studio gave us three more days to shoot after we finished the regular schedule and were basically editing the film, and we showed cuts of it to the studio and they were diggin' it, and so they said, okay go back and shoot for a couple more days. That's when I came up with that idea, that "boy, I can do this and then I can keep some of this stuff in there." That way, nobody will notice naturally what it was. So that was just a sort of after-the-fact kind of deal.

When you're shooting the film, I don't know. We just shot it. Nicotero came and did his thing and we just shot it and then you worry about it later, and you hope that you can get as much of it in as you can. They don't want to be censors, and in fact, in all fairness, they're not. They don't want to spoil anybody's work or anything like that. They just have to… due diligence or whatever. You know, it's just the way it is.

IGN: When you go to do a commentary track, what's the process for you?

Romero: It's usually made very easy by the people that do it. The process is what? They set up some equipment, and you sit down and just chat. I dig it. Part of me says, "Why does anybody wanna see this?" But, at the same time, I remember when I was a kid loving movies. The movie that made me wanna make movies is—everybody always says "what?" when I say this, but it was a movie called The Tales of Hoffman, which Michael Powell made. Years later, I got to meet him and I just was enthralled. I mean, I was a fan; just a total geek sitting down with the cat that made the movie that I loved most in my life. So I guess there's a part of me that figures, well, I like letting people in on it. Just being able to chat about what's going on behind the scenes. And it's totally fun because there's usually other people around; you know people who worked on the film, and it's always fun to reminisce.

IGN: Does it go in one take or do you do multiple viewings and they piece it together.

Romero: No. We did this one in one take with a break. There was a break; a cigarette break. I'm a smoker. So there was a cigarette break over there but we just went on from where we were. We didn't stop and go back or erase or anything like that. Pretty much straight ahead and most of the ones that I've done have been really straight ahead. The one I did for Knight Riders, I mean we all sat there and we were crying, you know, remembering. So, it usually goes pretty much straight ahead.

IGN: When you look at all of the zombie movies that are being made, do you ever think, "Man, look what I've started here?"

Romero: [Laughs] Well, started? I don't know. Did I start something?

IGN: I think you did start something.

Romero: I don't know. I think of it as not having started something. You don't think of yourself that way. You don't think that, "Jesus, I'm an innovator," or I did this or I did that. I don't think that, anyway. I honestly feel like I'm a guy who's still learning how to make movies. It's very hard to think of yourself as somebody that was influential in that way; the way that you're talking about… so, no. I don't think of it that way.

IGN: If zombies began to walk the Earth, you'd be better equipped to handle them than an average person?

Romero: [Laughs] No, I don't think so. I'm a wimpy guy, man. No, I don't think so. Just give me a big Uzi or something.

IGN: I think you would get the honorary rocket launcher or shotgun.

Romero: [Laughs] Well, I hope so. Give me some kind of weapon.

IGN: Land of the Dead was a full twenty years after doing Day of the Dead. In the time in between those movies, how many times did you think of revisiting the genre?

Romero: Almost constantly. I never felt that I'd left it. This has been a platform for me. I do one of these every once in awhile, love doing them. I missed the Nineties. I did Sixties, Seventies, Eighties and I developed this conceit that I wanted to do one every decade, and then I missed the Nineties because my partner and I got involved in Hollywood development deals that never went anywhere; made a lot of bread, didn't make any flicks and was just frustrated as hell, and basically fled and made a little movie called Bruiser that hardly anybody has seen.

As soon as I finished that, I sat down to write a script for this and it was called Dead Reckoning and it was not that different, but it was pre-9/11 and when I sent it around, it was literally a couple of days before 9/11. Nobody wanted to make hard-ass flicks then, they wanted to make soft, fuzzy popcorn flicks. So, I put it away and then took it back out sometime after the Iraqi invasion, and I found that I didn't have to change that much of it. A lot of it just stood up; a scene with a hundred people driving through a village blowing people down, and wondering why they're pissed off. It just sort of resonated for me after 9/11. I didn't have to change that much. I made the tower taller; you know, a few things like that. Threw in some junky dialogue about "we don't negotiate with terrorists," and that was it.

IGN: In this movie, the zombies have the ability to organize…

Romero: Well, I don't know if they're organized. They're just sort of imitating each other. I think in Day of the Dead I had this character named Bud, who I think in the end, was further advanced than Big Daddy. I mean the cat damn near spoke. But, Bud was basically all imitative behavior. He was imitating the scientists' behavior. Now, it's just that the zombies are imitating Big Daddy's behavior which makes them that much more dangerous from a human perspective. And so, I think that's really all. What I did was I made him—in the other films the lead male, the lead human, was African-American, and this time, I made the lead zombie African-American, to sorta say, "Hey, it's about time we should completely switch allegiances here, because they don't lie, they're the straight shooters. They're just victims of circumstance."

IGN: How long have you known Greg Nicotero?

Romero: I've known Greg since he was knee-high to a grasshopper. I mean I knew an uncle of his, Sam Nicotero, was in a film I made called The Crazies. So I knew about Greg, but I'd never met him. Then I was over in Rome, actually writing the script for Dawn of the Dead and I was at Alfredo Restaurant and this kid came over to me and he said, "Hi. My name is Greg Nicotero. You know my Uncle Sam. I live in Pittsburgh," ba-da-boom, all that. And that's how I met him. He was a kid, and I thought his dad was gonna kill me, because he said, "I'd really like to work in movies," and I said, "Okay, why don't you go over and see Tom Savini," and he did. His dad was a physician and wanted Greg to be a doctor, and I swear, for years I thought Greg's dad was gonna come after me with a shotgun or something for steering him wrong. But he went out and made it. He built that company and he's just terrific.

IGN: You steered him right.

Romero: I don't know. I don't know if it's right, but at least he's making a few dollars. [Laughs]

IGN: Well, that's kinda what it's all about.

Romero: Yeah. Except I have to tell you. He invested money in this project. He wanted to do this project so badly because of the other ones and the history that we have together; he actually wound up investing. We didn't have near enough money to make this movie. But, somehow we did it, and it was thanks to guys like Greg, who… I mean, the crew was just [an] unbelievable crew and everybody just put in 120%, and I'm telling you, Greg invested bread in this.

IGN: So you have him to thank for the movie turning out so good.

Romero: I have a lot of people, man. There's about 50 people to thank for the way the movie turned out, and, I don't know. You say it's good, some other people say it's good. Who knows? Whatever it is, it's there because of a lot of work by a lot of people.

[Weak2ndAct]

I watched the director's cut, and it's an improvement over the theatrical version.  Some extra nasty bits of gore, more blood.  The most dramatic-- and best-- change was the addition of two scenes with Leguizamo in the first reel.  They really give a better sense of what his real role is in this society (the guy who takes out the dirtiest garbage).  Cholo makes a whole lot more sense.  I don't know what Romero was thinking, not including them in the first place.  Oh well.  Great flick, better than I remembered it.  Commentary's a snooze.