I finally got around to seeing the new re-make of Dawn Of The Dead last night on video. As remakes go, it was not great, but not bad either. The script was a bit stupid in places, and Matt Frewer was criminally underused. About the only thing in common with the original was the fact that there were a) Zombies and b) some people holed themselves up in a shopping mall for a while. I really disliked the fact that the zombies in this movie were like supermen, being able to sprint and jump. Usually death brings about a kind of rigor mortis and decay that stiffens muscles and impedes movement. So the whole fast moving thing really put me off. It did still manage to be creepy in parts, but did not have the guts to slow things down and really let the tension mount like the original had. I do have to give it points of partial success: last night I woke up at 430 am from having a protracted "zombie nightmare dream" and couldn't get back to sleep. Of course it could have been the spicy spaghetti sauce I had at dinner.

immediately following the movie I had to pop the Billy Crystal/Jack Palance opus: City Slickers into the DVD player so I could chase the zombie horror with a palette cleansing comedy. Of course I fell asleep on the couch about 45 minutes in. When I was having trouble getting back to sleep at 4:30am I kept trying to think about City Slickers, but somehow my thoughts kept going back to Dawn Of The Dead. I know that it is not real and completely unrealistic, but something about zombie films just unnerves me. I don't know if it is a fear of death or an uneasiness facing a hopeless situation over which you have no control.

In other, more relevant news, I worked on the new website design a little bit on Friday night. Hopefully I will have that rolled out before too long. I just need to buckle down and make it a priority. It is very minimalistic compared to some of the other things I have done in terms of color and background. New sections will be added and some old sections will be going the way of the dinosaur! Should be fun when all is said and done.

Talk to you all soon!

--Doug