Posts Tagged ‘400 Lonely Things’

Be Still Life - A Short Film by Michael and Phil Harrell

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

We are honored to be able to post this short film / long-form music video by Michael and Phil Harrell, that was inspired by the music of 400 Lonely Things. (Thank you, sirs). We hope you enjoy it. If so, please share it / comment on it / embed it.


Watch it here.

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Win a cd and poster of Tonight of the Living Dead

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

A World On Fire is giving away a cd and poster of Tonight of the Living Dead this month - contest details are right here.

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Flyway Transmission Three: 400 Lonely Things on Colin

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

Tonight I’ll be writing about Marc Price’s film Colin, and I take great pleasure in doing so, as it was such an unexpected treat. More than a week after our initial viewing of this movie, my wife (who doesn’t like zombie films) and I were still talking about it and remembering Colin with warmth and outright fondness, enjoying the novelty of it coming from such a traditionally unlikely place.

I had not heard of Colin before being invited to the Flyway Film Festival’s International Zombie Summit, and read just a little about it online before departing. I was intrigued by the poster art, and the film’s rumored $70 budget - but mostly by the long overdue concept of telling this type of story from the inside out. You see, Colin is a zombie movie - but it’s told from the zombie’s point of view. A zombie named Colin.

The best zombie films often make us think about what it means to be Human. Since Romero established the tradition with Night of the Living Dead in 1968, zombie films are often allegories for their time, in that they say something about the current direction in which humanity is traveling. No one has really done this better than Romero, whose subtext is often social and political and speaks of The Big Picture.

But Colin teaches us more about The Big Picture by making us think of what it means to be a human in the “little h” sense of the word; the idea of what it means to be a person, an individual, ourselves… It does this by showing what it means to Colin to be Colin.

In the opening moments of this film we watch our protagonist die with no real sense of who he is. He shortly awakens - undead - with even less of a sense of his identity than we have. Colin is reduced to a relentless core of need that is nameless - but that drives him on an obscure journey to reconnect with the phantom limb of his humanity. Along the way, scenes of mayhem unfold, some of which would feel familiar (such as the zombie siege inside the apartment building), but through the uniqueness of their approach come off as being told for the first time, the very freshness of these scenes should cause them to become legendary. However, as intense and enjoyable as these moments are, they often have little to do with Colin’s story, which is gradually told through flashbacks both intimate and personal. It’s in these qualities that I feel Colin finds its ultimate uniqueness and strength. It’s a strength that may alienate Colin from fans of horror culture junk food, but is likely to win new fans (like my wife) who just like good movies, and enjoy a little nutrition when faced with so many empty calories.

In the world of horror cinema (and especially within the zombie sub-genre) it’s not often that a film this quiet and unique gets made, and somewhat shocking when it gets noticed. The habitat of the horror film is frequently a crowded landscape of volume and violence, dominated by big-budget gore with no heart and no risk (and subsequently, no tension), all shouting through studio-mandated, gold-plated megaphones “LOOK AT ME!!!” But Colin is just the opposite of this: a hypnotic, lingering study in Zombiance that shows though the body may be dead - the soul is still very much alive. Colin is all the more remarkable in that it’s modest and quiet and keeps to itself. Don’t get me wrong, there is some pretty nasty gore and loud, shaky scenes of panicky chaos in this film - but while the rest of the world goes on shouting and struggling and fighting around him, Colin himself as a zombie is uninterested in the carnage and spectacle, feeding only out of a distracted necessity. He stumbles about lost, looking for pieces of himself to form a breadcrumb trail - more a victim of amnesia and long-term introspection than a shambling corpse. Along the way, we gradually learn what it is that drives him so - and in the end, something obvious and profound is revealed.

That humanity is always looking for the way home.
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P.S. - As a post script to this entry, I must make special mention of its score, written by Daniel Weekes and Jack Elphick (and also written by director Marc Price). We were invited to Flyway to premiere a music video from the 400 Lonely Things album Tonight of the Living Dead(see Flyway Transmission One, here). Our music often deals with the personal language of homesickness, and that loss of the sense of belonging that I feel, at our core - hiding beneath the idea of ourselves - we always long to return to. I apologize for the self-promotional nature of these comments and this forum, but I can’t shake the feeling I had that 400 Lonely Things had found kindred spirits in Colin - as this idea of homelessness and homesickness is at the core of Colin’s humanity. I also feel that the incredible music in this film did as much to advance this feeling as the writing, acting and directing. I would love to hear more, and I’m honored that we had the chance to share a screen and audience for a night. Perhaps we’ll do it again sometime.

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Interview with 400 Lonely Things in latest issue of Scars Magazine

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

This month’s issue of Scars magazine features a four-page story on Tonight of the Living Dead (with some amusing graphics and a ridiculously in-depth interview).  Read it here. Click the cover image, and a scan of the print edition will open full-screen. Our story is on page 42.

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Audio interview with 400 Lonely Things at Flyway Film Festival

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

Craig Varian of 400 Lonely Things was interviewed by Matt Gamble from Where The Long Tail Ends just moments before the premier of their video at the Flyway Film Festival.  The video is for the song Tonight from the 400 Lonely Things album Tonight of the Living Dead, and was an opening feature for the film Pontypool. Listen to it and interviews with the other artists in attendance here.

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400 Lonely Things to Debut Video at Flyway Film Festival’s International Zombie Summit

Friday, October 9th, 2009

400 Lonely Things will be debuting a world premiere video at the Flyway Film Festival in Pepin, WI (October 22-25).

The video is part of an all-day event entitled the International Zombie Summit at the Historic Opera Hall in nearby Stockholm, WI and will be shown alongside the most talked about independent zombie-themed horror cinema of the year, including underground Cannes hit Colin, and the hotly anticipated Norwegian Nazi-zombie grind-house flick and Sundance entry Dead Snow.

The video for the 400 Lonely Things song Tonight is from their fourth album, Tonight of the Living Dead. Like the album’s music and packaging, all elements for the video are taken from George A. Romero’s 1968 horror classic, Night of the Living Dead and retooled into a dark ambient, poetic collage that is both madly compelling and quietly creepy. The video is a collaboration with film-maker Phil Harrell, who is currently working with the editor of Rusty Nails’ forthcoming documentary Dead-On: The Life and Cinema of George A. Romero.

Specifically, 400 Lonely Things’ video will serve as an appropriate lead-in to the 7pm screening of the moody and cerebral Canadian viral thriller Pontypool, adapted by Tony Burgess from his own novel, which has drawn favorable comparisons to Night of the Living Dead.  The film stars Stephen McHattie and is considered by many to be a game-changing intellectual zombie film, expanding the potential of this increasingly important and popular sub-genre of horror culture. Pontypool was just named as “One of the 25 Greatest Zombie Films of All Time” by Entertainment Weekly.

400 Lonely Things helmsman Craig Varian will be in attendance as a panelist with other artists whose films are being screened, participating in a discussion about the role of the zombie in pop culture.

International Zombie Summit
Schedule of Events:
Saturday, Oct. 24
1pm - Redneck Zombies - Director in attendance
3pm - Zombie Girl - Director in attendance
5pm - Colin - Director in attendance
7pm - Music video Tonight by 400 Lonely Things - Artist in attendance
and Pontypool - Producer in attendance
9pm - Dead Snow

TBD: Round-Table Panel Discussion, Poster and Merchandise Signing

Click here for information on the International Zombie Summit.
Click here for information on the Flyway Film Festival.

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400 Lonely Things’ Tonight of the Living Dead reviewed by Zen of Zombie author Scott Kenemore

Friday, June 12th, 2009

Scott Kenemore, author of The Zen of Zombie: Better Living Through the Undead just reviewed Tonight of the Living Dead on his Zombie Blog, calling it “an eerie and moody meditation on the original film.”  Read the whole review here and check out his book here.

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