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PLEASE NOTE: Michael D's is currently in READ ONLY MODE. Anything submitted will simply not be written to the database.
Lots of stuff is still broken, but at least reviews can now be looked up and read.
Diary of the Dead (2007)

Diary of the Dead (2007)

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Released 6-May-2009

Cover Art

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Details At A Glance

General Extras
Category Horror Main Menu Audio & Animation
Featurette-Making Of
Featurette-Romero Interview
Featurette-Romero Introduction
Interviews-Character
Theatrical Trailer
Featurette-First Week on Set
Featurette-Isolated Voice Overs
Gallery-Photo
Trailer
Rating Rated MA
Year Of Production 2007
Running Time 91:17 (Case: 95)
RSDL / Flipper Dual Layered Cast & Crew
Start Up Menu
Region Coding 4 Directed By George A. Romero
Studio
Distributor
Artfire Films
Madman Entertainment
Starring Michelle Morgan
Joshua Close
Shawn Roberts
Amy Ciupak Lalonde
Joe Dinicol
Scott Wentworth
Philip Riccio
Chris Violette
Case Amaray-Transparent
RPI ? Music Norman Orenstein


Video Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame None English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio 1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
16x9 Enhanced
Video Format 576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio 1.85:1 Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures Yes
Subtitles English Smoking Yes
Annoying Product Placement No
Action In or After Credits Yes

NOTE: The Profanity Filter is ON. Turn it off here.

Plot Synopsis

    A group of film students and their professor hit the road to escape a zombie apocalypse, which has broken out whilst they on location for a film shoot. As they head cross-country in a Winnebago, one particular member takes it upon himself to document the things that he encounters with his camera and share it with other survivors online. Sadly, all he manages to capture a string of unoriginal peril sequences and some lame CGI.

    It is sad to have to finally admit it, but George Romero has finally lost it. This coming from a reviewer who thoroughly enjoyed Land of the Dead (despite its overly commercial formula, which alienated some die-hard fans) and has defended the barely-released Bruiser. Everything is wrong with Diary of the Dead. The acting is bad, even for a next to no budget horror flick, but that could be forgiven if the story had been remotely interesting or the effects any good. Alas the the story is a haphazard mash of loosely joined scenes populated with clichéd one-note characters spouting drab dialogue. To call the effects poor would be generous.

    Instead of the insightful social and political allegory that underlies Romero's past zombie flicks, Diary of the Dead serves up a clumsy, and already outdated, stab at social media, fame obsession and generation-Y values. Countless productions have the same issues and many have done a far better job (Dead Set, South Park, even The Blair Witch Project immediately spring to mind).

    The special effects are a mish-mash of clumsy prosthetics, painted over with even clumsier CGI. Simply awful at every turn. No amount of shaky camera and poor focus can hide how bad they look. Line up whoever thought CGI "blood" was a good idea. They deserve to be shot just so they can see what it really should have looked like. Needless to say that Tom Savini, the effects master behind Romero's best work, was not involved and is probably rolling around in his grave (not that he is dead, rather that he always struck me as one of the few living people that probably has one at home).

    Fellow George Romero fans are likely to check out Diary of the Dead regardless of what any review tells them. The only advice I can offer is to keep your expectations low. Any other potential viewer should steer clear at any cost. How about you grab that nice Dawn of the Dead Blu-ray instead?

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Transfer Quality

Video

    The film is presented in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio and is 16x9 enhanced.

    The film was shot digitally and the video on this DVD looks as though it has been a purely digital transfer. The image is deliberately a little soft, to give a "recorded on video" feel to the movie, and features all manner of deliberate video artefacts (many of which look awfully artificial and don't integrate well with the CGI creature effects). The image is overly bright, rendering most blacks looking like dark greys. Skin tones are pale and a little muddied.

    Mild aliasing and macro blocking are both noticeable in the video and are a little distracting, although it is hard to tell whether this is a deliberate effect or an unintentional one. Either way, this is deliberately not a great looking film and, for better or worse, the video is certainly watchable.

    The film features yellow English subtitles, which are reasonably accurate to the spoken word and reasonably well timed.

    This is a dual layer disc but the main feature is entirely contained on one layer of the disc, so there is no layer break in the feature.

Video Ratings Summary
Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The film features a single English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kbps) audio track.

    The audio track is serviceable, but nothing more. The track is quite clear and the dialogue is easy to understand at all times. The audio appears to be well synchronised with the video.

    The movie features a very sparse, and awfully dated, alternative guitar-based score.

    The surrounds are used rather clunkily, which suits the amateur vibe of the movie but does not make for a great sonic experience. There is not a lot of activity in the subwoofer channel.

Audio Ratings Summary
Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Extras

    The disc features a solid assortment of extras, though it is in some cases a case of quantity over quality. Undoubtedly, the extras in this package are of greater worth to fans than the movie itself, even for those that don't mind the movie.

Making Of Featurettes

    Split into five meaty chunks (so meaty they may have wanted to carve them...), this series of making of featurettes are well and truly the highlight of the disc. Though a little padded, these featurettes remain interesting for the duration. Far more interesting than the film itself (particularly if you are willing to take the George Romero fawning with a grain of salt).

    Each featurette takes an interview-based approach to explain its subject and features plenty of valuable on-set and in-studio footage to illustrate. The title of each is pretty much all the explanation of each that is needed: Master of the Dead: Writer/director George A. Romero (13:22), Into the Camera: The Cast (17:09), You Look Dead!: Make-up Effects (11:00), A New Spin on Death: Visual Effects (19:04), A World Gone Mad: Photography and Design (20:27).

Speak of the Dead Featurette (15:57)

    George Romero yaks about his movies, primarily Night of the Living Dead at a Canadian convention in 2007. The interviewer is a bit wordy, but delivers a good deal of fan knowledge to supplement Romero's own recollections. Worth a look.

Character Confessionals Featurette (20:39)

    "Confessionals" featuring four of the characters spilling their guts about their feelings about the situation they are in, at various points of the film, directly to the camera. This makes for a moderately interesting glimpse of the actors fleshing out their characters for key scenes in the film, but each confessional runs far longer than is welcome and they become somewhat of a chore to watch.

The First Week Featurette (4:21)

    A tragic fanboy filmmaker, Michael Felsher, follows the crew on the first week of filming. Tragic and, thankfully, brief.

The Roots Featurette (2:07)

    George Romero talks some press-kit BS about how Diary of the Dead is a return to his roots, complete with a URL for the movie's MySpace page embedded at the end of the video. Ugh!

Familiar Voices Featurette (2:07)

    A number of celebrities provided random chatter to be used as background noise on radio broadcasts and the like throughout the movie. Three of these recordings are presented here unedited. Rambling on here are Guillermo Del Toro, Simon Pegg, and Stephen King. This lot are all pretty funny, particularly Stephen King's biblical rant.

Theatrical Trailer

    An appropriately mediocre trailer for the film.

Stills Gallery

    Does anybody really care about these pointless collections of stills from the film? Really? If you do, there are 15 of them here.

Madman Trailers (2:07)

    Trailers for Fear(s) of the Dark, Pulse and Gruesome follow a needless anti-piracy clip.

R4 vs R1

NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.

    The Region 4 release almost mirrors the Region 1 USA release in terms of content, however we miss out on an Audio Commentary with George Romero, director of photography Adam Swica and editor Michael Doherty and a series of five short films entered into a MySpace competition related to the film.

    The 2-disc Region 2 UK edition features even more extras than the Region 1 edition, most notably an 83 minute doco on Night of the Living Dead, which makes it the version of choice for die-hard fans. That said, casual fans will probably be more than content with the local release (particularly if they don't bother watching the movie itself).

Summary

    George Romero has finally lost both his artistic flair and social relevance, sadly both on the same movie. Diary of the Dead is awful.

    Despite featuring a terrible film, this disc features a substantial assortment of extras. Better yet, some of those extras don't have anything to do with the film.

    The video and audio are both mediocre, somewhat deliberately.

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Adam Gould (Totally Biolicious!)
Thursday, July 09, 2009
Review Equipment
DVDSony Playstation 3, using HDMI output
Display Samsung 116cm LA46M81BD. Calibrated with THX Optimizer. This display device is 16x9 capable. This display device has a maximum native resolution of 576i (PAL).
Audio DecoderPioneer VSX2016AVS. Calibrated with Video Essentials/Digital Video Essentials.
AmplificationPioneer VSX2016AVS
Speakers150W DTX front speakers, 100W centre and 4 surround/rear speakers, 12 inch PSB Image 6i powered sub

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