TS & S/D: Carpenter vs Romero

Of John Carpenter movies, I really like: Starman, Christine, The Thing, Escape From New York, The Fog, Halloween, Elvis, Assault On Precinct 13, Dark Star, Big Trouble In Little China, They Live, Escape From L.A., Ghosts of Mars, & Vampires.

Taking sides? It's a tie. I love night, dawn, and day so very much. Night & Dawn are masterpieces if you ask me.
And I love The Fog, Halloween, & The Thing just as much. Actually, I can live without Day Of The Dead, so that makes 3 Carpenter films I couldn't live without to Romero's 2, so Carpenter wins!

The formidable Robin Wood on George Romero:

http://www.filmlinc.com/fcm/jf08/deaddiary.htm

Looking back over the five films, one is struck by an inherent contradiction: one cannot believe that they were planned as a sequence, each having its own individual characteristics (there are no carry-overs from one film to the next). Yet the more one reflects upon them the more one is struck by an inherent logic in the overall structure, a logic confirmed by the remarkable new film: the first four in the series cover and demolish, systematically, the central structures of what we still call our civilization, establishing Romero as the most radical of all horror directors.

I can't choose between these two.

Monkey Shines has a good build-up, and then it hit that point halfway through where I thought, "I guess from here on in it's just people getting ripped apart by monkeys." But the second half was better than that, and the (what I'll call) Carrie shot near the end was a good one.

JUST people getting ripped apart by monkeys?

http://shewalkssoftly.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/hedonismbot.jpg

I may have understated the appeal of unadorned monkey carnage.

No threads bumped for this yet?

RIP Romero

Oh I see the rolling thread. Anyway, just put on Night.

I mentioned this in the rolling thread, but Arrow just this week announced that they're putting out a bluray set of There's Always Vanilla, Season of the Witch, and The Crazies: http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=21692 (scroll to the bottom).

"I guess from here on in it's just people getting ripped apart by monkeys."

massive lols at this. great movie btw.

I got a little choked up last night when a brief clip of Night of the Living Dead popped up in Kumail Nanjiani/Michael Showalter's the Big Sick

There's another prominent film where the opening scene of Night turns up on a TV...Halloween? (That might be The Thing there.) It's not an obscure film.

I couldn't compare the two directors for their entire bodies of work--so many films I haven't seen. But as much as I love Halloween, I'd give Night the nod there. It just works on so many levels above and beyond being a great horror film.

xpost Halloween II and both of the Rob Zombie remakes, plus dozens of other movies beyond those.

Love both of these dudes but NOTLD is at least five times better than Halloween (honestly one of my least favorite Carpenter joints).

co-worker is going to loan me his copy of Romero's Martin, which I've never seen. Looking forward to checking that out

Night of the Living Dead is public domain, so turns up fairly frequently in other movies, tv shows etc.

Forgot Romero was living in Toronto. They had a big public service for him yesterday at Mount Pleasant, the city's largest cemetery.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/george-romero-remembered-by-fans-friends-at-public-memorial-service-1024052

upcoming NYC Romero retro is pretty exhaustive

https://www.bam.org/film/2019/living-with-the-dead-the-films-of-george-a-romero

watched romero's "knightriders" on criterion. very odd movie (renaissance fair troupe travels around and performs on motorcycles while living by a strict code of loyalty to their "king" ed harris) but ultimately charming. definitely felt like romero's ode to independent film of the late '60s, with the motorcycles and I JUST GOTTA BE ME AND LIVE HOW I NEED TO LIVE ethos and everyone dressed in renaissance garb.