Dawn of the Dead

I'm back from work and watching a rerun of The West Wing on Bravo. It's too bad that the new episodes don't approach the über-ness of the first two seasons, but few shows could. I wanted to say a few words about the remake of Dawn of the Dead before nodding off. George Romero's original version is, in the view of many (myself included) one of the best films of the 1970's. (A caveat: my list of "best films" of that decade is a rather extensive one, including titles like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Richard Pryor: Live in Concert, so such a declaration may not be saying much in my case.) Dawn of the Dead and the original Night of the Living Dead were scary for me as I was growing up, but - oddly - they've become for me the cinematic equivalent of comfort food. (I'll let the spectator-as-zombie metaphor linger there, without offering any resolution to it.) Part of my adult experience of seeing Night of the Living Dead is the memory of seeing it in childhood, especially when it would be screened on Creature Features, a Saturday night movie show hosted by Bay Area T.V. personality Bob Wilkins. Similarly, the original Dawn of the Dead is gruesome, and the mall scenes have been (rightly) characterized as a satire of American consumerism, but my memory of the film (and my critical response to it) is softened by memories of youthful times spent at the mall. I mean, what kid wouldn't find it cool to be have the run of a place like that? Alas, I'm beginning to nod off sooner that I was anticipating, and haven't even started to comment on the remake. Short response: it was okay, but nothing like the original. Perhaps more on both movies in a future post.