2nd Dawn viewing, miscellaneous movie musings

[Brother Ragnarok]

Upon second viewing of Dawn, here are a few more thoughts.
1.  I really dig the wide aerial shots of the devastation.
2.  In the baby stuff store where Luda is tied down, there are some various food items set aside on a shelf for them.  One of them says, in the same font as the Spam logo, Smeat.  A nod to our favorite meat byproduct?
3.  A two or three frame flash from the camcorder at the ending shows in that nifty night-vision feature newer cameras have, Nichole and Terry kissing, so presumably at least they escaped the island.
4.  As long as they were using found music in the soundtrack, there was one obvious place they could have stuck a great song:  when they drive the buses through the wall and into the zombie crowd.  I even though of the perfect ass-kicking "drivin' a big ol' truck around smashing zombies" song - "Demise of Sanity" by Black Label Society.
Miscellaneous stuff --
1.  Hellboy is still going to RULE.
2.  Just because you guys are the only people who would appreciate such a find, I picked up the Blood Island Vacation box set (Beast of Blood, Mad Doctor of Blood Island, Brain of Blood, and Brides of Blood) for $8 at a used DVD/CD store near the theater.
3.  When Dracula turns from human to monster in the Van Helsing trailer, his monster form looks a whole lot like Rawhead Rex.

[Amanda]

I've still only seen this once so far, however, I really liked it.  I saw the Smeat thing and busted out laughing right there.  And yeah, the aerial shots were fantastic.  I didn't catch the night vision frame you were talking about!  I have to go see it again to catch that.  Thank you for pointing that out!

[Ronin47]

I also love the department store that is called "Gaylen Ross", haha - and that atonal MUSIC in the climactic "escape" action scenes, make it seem all kinds of disturbing.
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[jmc]

I liked "Gaylen Ross" too.  I think that was my favorite little homage.  

I'm still going to be disappointed though if a sequel winds up showing that some of them got away.  Maybe they were just showing that to make it seem worse that those two were now zombie chow.    One of the things I liked the most about the remake was that its ending had the same nihilistic tone as the original NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and a lot of the Italian zombie flicks where they reach the place they're trying to get to only to find themselves surrounded.  

Another part I liked was when Ana's husband is chasing her then decides to go after a neighbor instead.  I laughed out loud at that part.

[Brother Ragnarok]

Apparently Smeat is a bit like Tarantino's Red Apple cigarettes.  It appears in Waterworld and multiple other genre movies.  There is also a band called Smeat, and a site dedicated to making sausage origami among other things.  Whodathunkit?

Brother R

[Amanda]

The music, my god the music.  What about that nice piano bar version of the sickness?  *LOL*

[Brother Ragnarok]

We covered that in another thread, I think.  Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine.  They do covers of popular rock songs and have several albums out.  They are decidedly unfunny, but in the context of the movie fit quite nicely.  I also am not a big fan of Disturbed or any of their nu metal ilk, but the lyrics for Down with the Sickness actually made sense "get up, get down with the sickness" in the movie's context.  They still probably could have found a better song, though.

Brother R

[jmc]

I didn't really like the found music except for the Johnny Cash song, but it's only at a few spots in the film...it's not like it permeates the entire movie--I think it's maybe 10 minutes of the running time, and most of that is the opening and closing credits.
It could have been much, much worse.

[Ronin47]

Did you guys notice the WGON traffic-copter?