Film Friday: “An Interesting Thought” / Torontoist

“Now here is an interesting thought, readers. Grindhouse, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’ homage to classic trashy double bills comes out this week, and, if you want to see it, you have to see it in a multiplex, because not one of the independent cinemas here (or we imagine anywhere else) are showing it.

Now, we understand how distribution works (kinda) and know it’s just easier (and more profitable) to ensure that it goes to the big corporate cinemas, but it’s hard not to think that Tarantino et al haven’t really been all that true to their material when they haven’t asked someone that works for them to give it to the indies straight off (although, having said that, maybe they did). As it is, frankly, we can’t really imagine watching Grindhouse somewhere that isn’t as cool as the Bloor, so we’re just going to ignore it for weeks until it hits the second run circuit.”

According to that ever lovable, ever reliable source (for journalists) Wikipedia, “Rodriguez first came up with the idea for Planet Terror during the production of The Faculty. ‘I remember telling Elijah Wood and Josh Hartnett, all these young actors, that zombie movies were dead and hadn’t been around in a while, but that I thought they were going to come back in a big way because they’d been gone for so long.’”

This is an interesting reminder to any pop culture observer, because there was a fairly long period where zombie films had completely fallen out of favor. If you think about it, though, at a point during that period the Resident Evil games hit. So although, taking into account the way things fall in and out of favour as time passes, you could say the games simply anticipated the return of zombies to cinema, there is a lot of evidence to say that at least had some influence on it. You only have to look at Spaced (the TV series created by Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg, who went on to make Shaun of the Dead) which featured Resident Evil rather heavily on one episode, not that I can find any particularly useful reference links after roughly 0.0023 seconds of Googling.

One could even argue that Zombies Ate My Neighbours was the source point. Which therefore means it’s of utmost cultural importance that it gets put up on the Wii Virtual Console as soon as possible.

Not that Nintendo ever listens to what people want from the VC. I mean, where the hell is Punch-Out? (Other than released in Japan and Europe, annoyingly.)

April 6th, 2007 : Columns, Torontoist