ACTION!
Some novels trust you to be able to stick with strange decisions and styles to push through to a few final pages or chapters or lines that achieve the near-impossible, they redefine and reframe the previous ones, they shed a new light, and radically change your thoughts on the previous material/project as a whole.
That happens in this film. To discuss it any further is to completely ruin it. Suffice to say, it is every bit as good as it is being touted as. It's got clever commentary and a style of comedy that means you can actually be laughing before they even show you anything. I'm still laughing about it today, and I think it even manages to take Zombies and be the first film of this decade to give them a new thematic meaning.
It's got a denouement too many, but they've earned it: I watched this film at the Sitges film festival and the filmmakers and cast received a standing ovation, at which, I was almost in tears, not only because they thoroughly deserved it, but also because they managed to make a film about what making a film is about. It captures almost all of what it feels like in an authentic and different way to usual, and it uses its budget to make a film about making a film at that budget perfectly.
I have no doubt that this cast and crew (of whom none have a single IMDB headshot image!) will get One Cut of the Dead will get a distributor and achieve worldwide success and acclaim, it's just too special and genuine and innovative not to.
And it even manages to correct that fact that it 'should' have been called One Take of the Dead in a way that satisfies a pedant like me! Time to get off my arse and make something...
Some novels trust you to be able to stick with strange decisions and styles to push through to a few final pages or chapters or lines that achieve the near-impossible, they redefine and reframe the previous ones, they shed a new light, and radically change your thoughts on the previous material/project as a whole.
That happens in this film. To discuss it any further is to completely ruin it. Suffice to say, it is every bit as good as it is being touted as. It's got clever commentary and a style of comedy that means you can actually be laughing before they even show you anything. I'm still laughing about it today, and I think it even manages to take Zombies and be the first film of this decade to give them a new thematic meaning.
It's got a denouement too many, but they've earned it: I watched this film at the Sitges film festival and the filmmakers and cast received a standing ovation, at which, I was almost in tears, not only because they thoroughly deserved it, but also because they managed to make a film about what making a film is about. It captures almost all of what it feels like in an authentic and different way to usual, and it uses its budget to make a film about making a film at that budget perfectly.
I have no doubt that this cast and crew (of whom none have a single IMDB headshot image!) will get One Cut of the Dead will get a distributor and achieve worldwide success and acclaim, it's just too special and genuine and innovative not to.
And it even manages to correct that fact that it 'should' have been called One Take of the Dead in a way that satisfies a pedant like me! Time to get off my arse and make something...