Tag Archives: Frank Darabont

The Walking Dead gets the AMC greenlight

Posted on by Arleigh

AMC greenlights “Walking Dead”

Just in from Variety is the news that cable channel AMC has greenlit the pilot for the Frank Darabont and Gale Anne Hurd produced adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s critically-acclaimed and popular zombie comic book series, The Walking Dead. The news in early 2009 that Darabont, Hurd and Kirkman have come to an agreement to pitch the series adaptation to AMC (home of Mad Men and Breaking Bad) was one of the big news for comic book fans and the industry.

The Walking Dead is about a band of survivors in a world which has undergone and succumbed to a zombie apocalypse. Police Officer Rick Grimes leads this band of people in search of a safe haven from the uncounted zombies which now roam the devastated American landscape. Author Robert Kirkman has written just under 70 issues of this on-going series, so far. Cast for the series have changed on a regular basis to illustrate the extreme danger of this new post-apocalyptic landscape. The danger doesn’t just come from the roaming undead but from other survivors as well as rules of civilization and society have crumbled away to be replaced by rules of survival.

The series is known for some exceptional writing with heavy emphasis on character dynamics and interactions. While the series does have zombies in it the highlight of every issue for fans and critics alike is Kirkman’s ability to posit moral situations on the survivors which sometimes doesn’t get the kind of answer we’re used to in our protagonists. I think this is what has drawn Frank Darabont and Gale Anne Hurd to the property. Kirkman has taken the societal commentaries inherent in all the great zombie films and stories and has created a series around it. As one guest commentator for one of the trade paperbacks have said about The Walking Dead, “The series picks up after the end credits have started in a George Romero zombie movie.”

With the pilot now greenlit by AMC the inevitable casting call rumors will start to ramp up. Fans of the series are some of the most loyal and have been talking of dream casting the series for years. I’m sure those dream castings will get brought back out into the light with fans arguing if actors chosen for the role are the right ones or not. The one thing this news doesn’t say is how much will AMC allow in terms of violence shown. The Walking Dead is not a superhero series with over-the-top violence. It’s violence is similar to Romero’s zombie films in that they’re brutal and extremely gory. While I can understand that some of the more extreme scenes in the film could be shortened and inferred, I do hope that AMC will allow for most of the brutality in the series to remain intact since they help in creating the tone for the series.

Now, all that’s left is the waiting game and wonderings of when the pilot will air on AMC.

Source Gateway: Horror-Movies.ca

20 Best Horror Films of the Past Decade

Posted on by Arleigh

The Aught’s, as some people have come to call this decade about to end, was actually a pretty good decade in terms of the amount of quality horror that showed up on the big-screen. We had some channeling the nastiness of the 70’s exploitation era while a couple ushered in this decade’s era of the so-called “torture porn.” There were more than just a few remakes of past horror films. Most of these remakes were quite awful compared to the original, but more than a few managed to end being good and held their own against the original.

Some of the titles I will list will eschew gore and the shock scares for a more subtle and atmospheric approach. More than a few straddled not just horror but other genres like comedy, drama and sci-fi. If there was one major observation I was able to make, when collating what I thought was the 20 best horror films of the decade, it was that the Foreign studios really came into the decade with a vengeance.

While I consider these horror films on this list as “the best of…” it is still my opinion and I am sure there will be people who will disagree, but even if people do not agree with all my choices it would be hard to dispute any of them as not being good to great in their own way. Like my similar Sci-Fi list this one will be numbered but only for organizational sake and doesn’t determine which film is better than rest. They’re all equal in my eyes.

  1. The Mist (dir. Frank Darabont)
  2. Splinter (dir. Toby Wilkins)
  3. Let the Right One In (dir. Tomas Alfredson)
  4. Hostel (dir. Eli Roth)
  5. A Tale of Two Sisters (Kim Ji-woon)
  6. The Descent (dir. Neil Marshall)
  7. Martyrs (dir. Pascal Laugier)
  8. 28 Days Later… (dir. Danny Boyle)
  9. Bubba Ho-Tep (dir. Don Coscarelli)
  10. Dawn of the Dead (dir. Zack Snyder)
  11. The Devil’s Backbone (Guillermo del Toro)
  12. Frailty (dir. Bill Paxton)
  13. Kairo (dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
  14. Shaun of the Dead (dir. Edgar Wright)
  15. American Psycho (dir. Mary Harron)
  16. Inside (dir. Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Mary)
  17. The Orphanage (dir. Juan Antonio Bayona)
  18. The Devil’s Rejects (dir. Rob Zombie)
  19. Slither (dir. James Gunn)
  20. Audition (dir. Takashi Miike)

Honorable Mentions: Saw, Haute Tension, Drag Me To Hell, Trick ‘r Treat, Dog Soldiers, Ju-On, May, Midnight Meat Train, The Ruins, Jeepers Creepers, Ginger Snaps, Funny Games (remake), Shutter, Frontier(s), Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon…just to name a few.