April Showers ... With Zombies

April Showers each night!

Have you ever seen Cemetery Man (1994), a schlocky Italian horror flick from 1994 starring Rupert Everett as the titular character? He fends off pesky zombies including his lover (the busty Anna Falchi) with some regularity.

Despite my long dormant Everett fandom (I was there right at the beginning with Another Country / Dance With a Stranger), I've still never seen this one all the way through. I was just thinking about this because I was in Nashville and some years ago when I juried there with Nick Davis, who loves the movie, he showed me pieces of it.

Everett's character Francesco Dellamorte apparently takes a lot of showers and apparently he's used to getting attacked by zombies -- just part of the job. more... But on this particular night in the movie they come earlier than expected. The lights go out in the shower, he sees one approaching in shadow (shower curtains = scary in movies), and then the zombies, in what looks like boy scout uniforms (hee!) begin to attack. He does what one does in these situations, shooting the zombies in the head.

The most hilarious thing about the gorey sequence is that Rupert is attacked in the shower but when he fights back in the very next cut he's wearing pants. How did this happen? Zombies move slowly but slow enough for their victims to slip on a pair of pants before finding a weapon? It's not for some 'no nudity' clause either -- since Everett gets naked elsewhere in the movie.

This final post shower attack makes me giggle. Who can blame the little shit for wanting a nibble?

If you were a zombie, which Brit beauty would you consider fine dining come shower time?

Burning Questions: Can You Really Separate A Performance From The Film?

Hey everybody. Michael C. here. Growing up in the dark days before Twitter, back before I could get my Oscar gripe on 24/7, I had to focus all that emotion on Siskel and Ebert’s annual "Memo to the Academy" special. Watching year after year, one of the refrains the duo drilled into my head was that the Academy should expand their idea of what constitutes an Oscar-worthy performance. Don’t lazily jot down the names of those appearing in best picture contenders. Evaluate each performance on its own merits, apart from the film that contains it. They were adamant on the subject. 

Or at least they were, until the 1998/99 episode when Gene found the limits of Roger’s open-mindedness by suggesting James Woods receive a Best Actor nod for John Carpenter’s Vampires. After Gene went on for a bit about Woods’ talent for commanding the screen, Roger demurred, “Yeah, but if you’re gonna nominate someone for Best Actor you kinda want them to be in a little better movie, don’t you think?”

Gene wasn’t having it: “No. I want the performance. I don’t care about the movie.” 

This altercation zeroed in on a question that has always nagged at me. If even a harsh critic of stodgy thinking like Ebert has to draw the line somewhere, is the issue that cut and dry? Is it really possible to separate the performance from the film? [more]

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Link Grams

Today's Must Read
New Yorker Screenwriter Alan Zweibel on his two run-ins with Roger Ebert (who gave him his worst review)

More Links 
In Contention Melissa Leo's gone Hollywood. Are the new films beneath the LEOgend's skill set?
Open Culture Alfred Hitchcock masterclass on film editing 
Cartoon Brew Disney destroys its hand drawn animation division. Honestly I'm shocked that this only happened now. It's been so long since they were in the hand drawn business. (Sigh)
The Playlist Abbie Cornish, Colin Farrell, and Anthony Hopkins in a movie about FBI agents with psychic abilities. Sounds terrible. 

And Four For You, Glen Coco! 
Hollywood.com has an empirical breakdown of the seven women of Mean Girls and who is doing best for themselves 9 years later. I almost didn't link though because of the weird lapses in facts just to praise Rachel McAdams. Yes, Hollywood.com, she has also had flops. And more than one of them.
i09 on why the western/sci-fi mashup is such a hard sell for audiences
MovieLine wonders why there's no remake of Near Dark (1987) in the works. Ugh. So glad there isn't! There's no topping Bill Paxton's "finger lickin' good" vamp.
Entertainment Weekly Matt Damon's new physique for Elysium 

The Hermione Granger Franchise

Today's Must Read
If you're interested in the Harry Potter series or gender you must read this editorial "In Praise of Joanne Rowling's Hermione Granger Series". As most of y'all know I'm not really a Potter person and this article gets at my biggest problem with it. Honestly I hate the "Chosen One" crutch in genre stories... from Potter to The Matrix to Star Wars to The Bible it's so hard to escape. It usually excuses lazy characterizations and plotting. Even two franchises that I could hardly love more (Terminator and Buffy) rest on it. I wish I could declare a cross medium moratorium on it for at least 5 years. Wouldn't you love to see what kind of fictional heroics might emerge if writers couldn't use it? And wouldn't it be better for our global character if we defined heroism & specialness through something other than accidents of birth or (the worst!) predetermined fate?

The Best of Sci-Fi & Fantasy: Saturn & Nebula Awards

Though the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) isn't inordinately fan of the sci-fi, fantasy, and horror genres, those specialized types have enough devotees to generate their own Best of... discourse each year. Both the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFFWA) who give out the Nebula Awards and The Academy of Science Fiction and Fantasy Films (ASFFF), a fan-based group (since anyone can join) who hand out the Saturn Awards each year, just announced their nominees for the Best of 2012. 

Bet you didn't expect to see John Carter mentioned during Oscar week! It's up for the Nebula & on Saturn Award

The Nebula Awards have only one category that suits our topic of choice here at The Film Experience and it's called the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation. [Nominees, Book Recommendations, and Oscar connections are after the jump.]

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