Zombie film delivers the gore
From:Sydney Morning Herald
Date:Aug 4, 2005
The zombies are restless and hungry for brains.
There's eight of them trapped behind an old, rusty steel fence and on the other side are some frightened, cowering humans.
It's dinner time for the zombies.
Looking a little malnourished, the zombies need a feed.
A bath and some Rexona under the armpits might be nice too.
Some are missing arms, others have just one eye.
Acne medication is not going to help the complexions of this rotting bunch, not that they seem self-conscious about the look of their horrid faces.
It's brains they want.
Fresh, warm human brains.
The zombies just have to break through the wire fence to get at the smorgasbord of humans screaming on the other side.
They rush the fence and begin shaking it, but as the hinges weaken and this motley crew is about to break through, gunshots stop their decaying bodies in their tracks.
Zombie heads explode.
Blood spurts from chest wounds. Hunks of what appears to be flesh is catapulted in the sky.
One by one the zombies drop to the ground.
Bullets to the head do the job.
The humans are safe, their brains intact.
The zombies ... well, they won't be eating tonight.
They're lying in a crumpled pile at the bottom of that steel fence.
"Great," Matt Birman, the stunt co-ordinator of the new George A. Romero directed zombie film, Land of the Dead, says as he emerges from behind a white sheet.
Well, it used to be white.
The sheet was placed around the camera to protect it from the mess and, after the head and body explosions, the sheet is splattered with red.
"That looked great guys," Birman says, clapping his hands after watching the footage on a monitor.
The zombies were actually highly-trained stuntmen and women who had small explosives and fake blood implanted in the prosthetics and make-up on their faces and bodies.
It is just one of the gory scenes from Land of the Dead.
The film is 65-year-old New York-born Romero's return to zombie films after a 20 year break. It is a genre he is considered the master of since he made Night of the Living Dead in 1968, a classic horror film with plenty of blood, but an underlying political message.
Romero followed that up with Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Day of the Dead (1985).
Land of the Dead is the final chapter and opens in Australia today.
Romero has specific rules. He does not want fast moving zombies like the zombies in the 2000 horror hit, 28 Days.
Zombies are humans with rigor mortis. Their neck muscles are weak so their heads should slant a certain way. They should be slow moving.
That's Romero's way.
A quiet, mysterious figure with big dark owl rimmed glasses, Romero has cast Australia's Simon Baker as the Land of the Dead's hero, or anti-hero.
Although Romero has invited me to to watch a night of filming of Land of the Dead, he is not up to talking tonight.
He is too busy.
With a budget of just $US14 million ($18.32 million), it is a tight two month shoot schedule.
Land of the Dead is being made in Toronto, Canada, in the middle of winter. Most of the scenes are shot at night, so Baker and the other cast members, including Dennis Hopper, John Leguizamo and Asia Argento find themselves attempting to act in minus 10 degree Celsius weather at the painful hours before sunrise.
There is also snow.
When it rains, the rain drops are so cold they feel like nails.
"Killing the zombies, that' the easiest part," says the Tasmanian-born Baker, who plays Riley, a mercenary whose job is to protect the humans from the brain hungry zombies.
"The hardest part was the night in winter in Canada. It was freezing.
"There's scenes where we can't talk properly."
When shooting moves indoors it does not turn tropical.
Romero has taken over Toronto's Downsville Military Base, a former home of the Canadian airforce.
The military planes are no longer stored there.
With huge hangars lying dormant and the Canadian film industry booming, the military base is now a centre for film production. It is impossible to heat up such large spaces so it is still near freezing inside the hangars.
While Birman and his splinter film unit, nicknamed the "splatter unit", are blowing up hungry zombies in one hangar, Romero is walking through some scenes with Leguizamo and Baker in another hangar about a five minute drive away.
It's 2am.
Romero is a big man, about 193cm tall, with a grey beard and one hand always holding a cup of coffee.
"He's a chain-smoker, he's a coffee drinking addict and he's always wearing that vest that looks like standard issue from the Director's Guild of America and he's got those big owl glasses that I don't think they make anymore," Leguizamo says.
"But, he's got a great sense of humour about the thing. He's very specific and he's really focused on the acting. It's not just about the special effects."
Romero disappears, probably for a smoke, leaving Baker and Leguizamo to chat.
They are laughing and seem like best buddies.
Later, when Leguizamo finds out I'm Australian, he shakes my hand and says: "G'day, howya going (expletive)".
"That's how you Aussies greet each other isn't it?" he asks.
In the cold, quiet moments between scenes, Baker apparently has been filling in his curious 41-year-old Colombian-born co-star with some Australian slang.
"Hornier than a five dicked dog," Leguizamo says.
"You say that one downunder don't you?
"How about 'Gone off like a bucket of prawns in the midday sun'."
Leguizamo, one of Hollywood's busiest actors, arrived late to the set of Land of the Dead as his previous project overlapped rehearsals.
But, he says, soon after his plane landed in Toronto he made contact with Baker. Leguizamo plays Cholo, Baker's second in command of the zombie killing unit, so the two had to form a relationship off-screen as well as in front of the cameras.
"I called him up and said let's spend some time together," Leguizamo said.
"We'd work some things out in our trailers and go and show it to George."
Land of the Dead is an interesting career move for Baker, 35, who has built up a nice resume in Hollywood with his TV drama The Guardian, L.A Confidential with Russell Crowe and The Affair of the Necklace with another Oscar winner, Hilary Swank.
It was only the insistence of his manager, a huge Romero fan, that he took a meeting with Romero and Land of the Dead producer Mark Canton in Los Angeles last year.
"I wasn't really that familiar with the genre before I took the job," Baker confesses.
"I met George and he was just one of the nicest guys I've met in Hollywood.
"I looked him up on the Internet and there's a lot of information and there's a lot of people who put him up on a pedestal.
"I walked into the room and there was this very warm, lovely, self-effacing guy who was not overly confident. He didn't say 'I'm going to make the best movie ...'
"He said 'We're going to make a movie and have some fun'.
"I was drawn to that.
"It was very real.
"I thought 'These are really nice guys'. George's wife was there, Mark was there, who I had worked with before, so we had a bit of a laugh.
"I enjoyed the meeting which is rare."
It's now 2.30am.
It's snowing outside.
Romero re-appears smelling more like cigarettes than he did half an hour earlier and he has a fresh cup of coffee in his hand.
The cameras roll.
Baker and Leguizamo are peering out a window.
It's time to kill some more zombies.
From Sydney Morning Herald.
Date:Aug 4, 2005
The zombies are restless and hungry for brains.
There's eight of them trapped behind an old, rusty steel fence and on the other side are some frightened, cowering humans.
It's dinner time for the zombies.
Looking a little malnourished, the zombies need a feed.
A bath and some Rexona under the armpits might be nice too.
Some are missing arms, others have just one eye.
Acne medication is not going to help the complexions of this rotting bunch, not that they seem self-conscious about the look of their horrid faces.
It's brains they want.
Fresh, warm human brains.
The zombies just have to break through the wire fence to get at the smorgasbord of humans screaming on the other side.
They rush the fence and begin shaking it, but as the hinges weaken and this motley crew is about to break through, gunshots stop their decaying bodies in their tracks.
Zombie heads explode.
Blood spurts from chest wounds. Hunks of what appears to be flesh is catapulted in the sky.
One by one the zombies drop to the ground.
Bullets to the head do the job.
The humans are safe, their brains intact.
The zombies ... well, they won't be eating tonight.
They're lying in a crumpled pile at the bottom of that steel fence.
"Great," Matt Birman, the stunt co-ordinator of the new George A. Romero directed zombie film, Land of the Dead, says as he emerges from behind a white sheet.
Well, it used to be white.
The sheet was placed around the camera to protect it from the mess and, after the head and body explosions, the sheet is splattered with red.
"That looked great guys," Birman says, clapping his hands after watching the footage on a monitor.
The zombies were actually highly-trained stuntmen and women who had small explosives and fake blood implanted in the prosthetics and make-up on their faces and bodies.
It is just one of the gory scenes from Land of the Dead.
The film is 65-year-old New York-born Romero's return to zombie films after a 20 year break. It is a genre he is considered the master of since he made Night of the Living Dead in 1968, a classic horror film with plenty of blood, but an underlying political message.
Romero followed that up with Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Day of the Dead (1985).
Land of the Dead is the final chapter and opens in Australia today.
Romero has specific rules. He does not want fast moving zombies like the zombies in the 2000 horror hit, 28 Days.
Zombies are humans with rigor mortis. Their neck muscles are weak so their heads should slant a certain way. They should be slow moving.
That's Romero's way.
A quiet, mysterious figure with big dark owl rimmed glasses, Romero has cast Australia's Simon Baker as the Land of the Dead's hero, or anti-hero.
Although Romero has invited me to to watch a night of filming of Land of the Dead, he is not up to talking tonight.
He is too busy.
With a budget of just $US14 million ($18.32 million), it is a tight two month shoot schedule.
Land of the Dead is being made in Toronto, Canada, in the middle of winter. Most of the scenes are shot at night, so Baker and the other cast members, including Dennis Hopper, John Leguizamo and Asia Argento find themselves attempting to act in minus 10 degree Celsius weather at the painful hours before sunrise.
There is also snow.
When it rains, the rain drops are so cold they feel like nails.
"Killing the zombies, that' the easiest part," says the Tasmanian-born Baker, who plays Riley, a mercenary whose job is to protect the humans from the brain hungry zombies.
"The hardest part was the night in winter in Canada. It was freezing.
"There's scenes where we can't talk properly."
When shooting moves indoors it does not turn tropical.
Romero has taken over Toronto's Downsville Military Base, a former home of the Canadian airforce.
The military planes are no longer stored there.
With huge hangars lying dormant and the Canadian film industry booming, the military base is now a centre for film production. It is impossible to heat up such large spaces so it is still near freezing inside the hangars.
While Birman and his splinter film unit, nicknamed the "splatter unit", are blowing up hungry zombies in one hangar, Romero is walking through some scenes with Leguizamo and Baker in another hangar about a five minute drive away.
It's 2am.
Romero is a big man, about 193cm tall, with a grey beard and one hand always holding a cup of coffee.
"He's a chain-smoker, he's a coffee drinking addict and he's always wearing that vest that looks like standard issue from the Director's Guild of America and he's got those big owl glasses that I don't think they make anymore," Leguizamo says.
"But, he's got a great sense of humour about the thing. He's very specific and he's really focused on the acting. It's not just about the special effects."
Romero disappears, probably for a smoke, leaving Baker and Leguizamo to chat.
They are laughing and seem like best buddies.
Later, when Leguizamo finds out I'm Australian, he shakes my hand and says: "G'day, howya going (expletive)".
"That's how you Aussies greet each other isn't it?" he asks.
In the cold, quiet moments between scenes, Baker apparently has been filling in his curious 41-year-old Colombian-born co-star with some Australian slang.
"Hornier than a five dicked dog," Leguizamo says.
"You say that one downunder don't you?
"How about 'Gone off like a bucket of prawns in the midday sun'."
Leguizamo, one of Hollywood's busiest actors, arrived late to the set of Land of the Dead as his previous project overlapped rehearsals.
But, he says, soon after his plane landed in Toronto he made contact with Baker. Leguizamo plays Cholo, Baker's second in command of the zombie killing unit, so the two had to form a relationship off-screen as well as in front of the cameras.
"I called him up and said let's spend some time together," Leguizamo said.
"We'd work some things out in our trailers and go and show it to George."
Land of the Dead is an interesting career move for Baker, 35, who has built up a nice resume in Hollywood with his TV drama The Guardian, L.A Confidential with Russell Crowe and The Affair of the Necklace with another Oscar winner, Hilary Swank.
It was only the insistence of his manager, a huge Romero fan, that he took a meeting with Romero and Land of the Dead producer Mark Canton in Los Angeles last year.
"I wasn't really that familiar with the genre before I took the job," Baker confesses.
"I met George and he was just one of the nicest guys I've met in Hollywood.
"I looked him up on the Internet and there's a lot of information and there's a lot of people who put him up on a pedestal.
"I walked into the room and there was this very warm, lovely, self-effacing guy who was not overly confident. He didn't say 'I'm going to make the best movie ...'
"He said 'We're going to make a movie and have some fun'.
"I was drawn to that.
"It was very real.
"I thought 'These are really nice guys'. George's wife was there, Mark was there, who I had worked with before, so we had a bit of a laugh.
"I enjoyed the meeting which is rare."
It's now 2.30am.
It's snowing outside.
Romero re-appears smelling more like cigarettes than he did half an hour earlier and he has a fresh cup of coffee in his hand.
The cameras roll.
Baker and Leguizamo are peering out a window.
It's time to kill some more zombies.
From Sydney Morning Herald.
posted by nikita | 8:21 PM
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