Cinecultist has been in a bit of funk lately, even with the leisurely long Labor Day weekend barely behind us. We feel a little like Chicken Little, though instead of calling out the "sky is falling" to our neighbors, we've been huddled for the last week over our laptop reading the New York Times hurricane Katrina coverage obsessively. It's glum work, we don't have to tell you.
On Friday night we had the rom zom com, Shaun of the Dead in from Netflix and we thought surely the defying of genre conventions and droll British wit would perk us up. Except, like the time we rented Moonlight and Valentino with our friend whose Dad had just died and we realized too late it was a comedy with Jon Bon Jovi noless about death, a movie about the zombie apocalypse seemed a bit too close to home. Looting, shot gun use, vainly trying to save one's Mum can all be very cute if it's not happening but a few states south of your little apartment.
Granted, this is a darn clever movie with good acting and a bright premise. Ordinarily we would've enjoyed it very much and found it's joking tone and good-natured but reverent ribbing on the zombie movie conventions quite diverting. Instead, a ranting call from our Mom put the movie on extended pause and once we got off the phone, we spent a good 20 minutes glued to the television Nightly News. Sigh. The zombies looked much less threatening than what was happening in New Orleans.
Dude, even Thomas Crowne, er Pierce Brosnan is coming out to say the whole kit and caboodle has been poorly handled. At this point in time, even escapist movies can't help us keep our fingers over our eyes. We need to do, and then after that we can go back to the regular daily business of art-making.