Budget AUD $1 million (which in USD that’s $0.75 million)
A fisherman punching zombie fish and when that doesn’t work he starts shooting them …. and then inconveniently gets abducted by aliens. I hate it when that happens …
It should be no surprise that that Day of the Dead 2: Contagium rings in as another Yellow Puss. Probably it should be Red Blood. I’ll tell you what I have to say about this film, but first please read these which I found under “Reception” on Wikipedia….
Peter Dendle called DOTD2 Contagium a “boring, transparent feature” that was “forgotten almost as soon as it was released”.
Steve Barton of Dread Central rated it 0/5 stars and wrote, “This is a sequel in name only, created solely to generate revenue from ill informed fans.” Contagium
Joseph Savitski of Beyond Hollywood wrote that the film “is not only an exercise in incompetence, but also a blatant attempt at false advertising.”
Dennis Prince of DVD Verdict wrote, “There is no warning too strong that would urge you to avoid this DVD at all costs.”
So what does BagpiperDon think of Contagium?
Bearing in mind that this film hand a whole whopping $1M budget in 2005 — that should already tell you that this is a nothing film. It was confusing as to the significance in light of the 1985 “Day of the Dead” not to mention the “Day of the Dead” from 2008. It seems like a film that wants to have a few good new ideas to the genre. Also, it had the fun of being a simple, low-budget Z-film ….. but in the end… it’s a waste of time.
I’ve wanted to watch the 2005 film “Joyeux Noël” (AKA Merry Christmas) for years — finally got to and I’m very glad I did! One could easily say that every piper, every musician, and every person ought to.
We all know the setting…
The Great War, which of course later came to be known as World War I and lasted from 28July1914 to 11November1918. It is viewed as being the first modern war and the most destructive.
Scottish soldiers in a WWI trenchEmerging from the trenches with Silent Night in the film.
During the first year of the war there were a number of informal and unauthorized “Christmas truces“, where men on both sides of the Western Front line stopped fighting to celebrate the holiday … and in some cases met in the middle to celebrate together. Joyeux Noël is a dramatization of a group of French, Scottish, and German soldiers. Having heard Silent Night on bagpipes from trench and the singing of the classic song by a German vocalist in another trench, they rose and met on No Man’s Land in one of these truces.
Maybe I think too much, this gets listed as an anti-war film. I’m not always sure what makes a song or a film (etc) an anti-war piece — or to say, some are more obvious and direct than others. What I am clear on is that Joyeux Noël shows that we as different cultures can set aside our differences, meet together peacefully, and share what we have in common. To me some of the significance of this film has to do with universal languages — among those I believe are math and music. As musicians we bring people together — in good times, in bad times, and bridging our different languages. The lyrics may sound different but the music is the same.
Here are my side-notes on this film — in other words, these are the not important things I observed …
To me this film looked great — the costumes were good, there were four languages in this film (so long as you count the priest delivering a sermon in Latin), the acting was good, and so far as I could tell everything was period correct. According to Wikipedia, Joyeux Noël had a budget of $22 million and brought in only $17,709,155 at the box office. This happens — a well made film with a beautiful message … clearly it did not go unnoticed, and from when I’ve talked about wanting to see it the film apparently resonates in the collective conscious … but I’m saddened that this didn’t get as much notice in the theater that it profited let alone broke even.
As a musician I of course enjoy seeing when singers and instrumentalists are given focus in a film or in a TV show — especially when pipes are featured in a film. I’m also accustom to these not actually featuring singers or musicians. In the case of this film the actors-not-singing is glaringly obvious — the lip syncing is painful. The bagpiping in this film is also synced (pipe-synced?), which is understandable — finding actors who play bagpipes is uncommon (yep, sorry — Viggo Mortensendoesn’t actually play pipes in Captain Fantastic, although the filmmakers did a very good job of making it look like he did and Viggo trained hard to look as-so). The pipe-syncing is both good & bad in Joyeux Noël. When pipers start playing and then stop playing but the tune continues … that’s bad. However, at times in this film the actors-not-pipers are seen playing and they actually do a considerably accurate job of appearing to play … so to some extent these guys actually trained — WOW!
The one other hang-up I had, or call it that if you will — there were four sets of bagpipes in the film. Four clearly bran new, shiny sets of pipes. I find it hard to imagine that pipes exposed to such conditions would be in such good shape, but this is a small thing so let’s look past it.
Okay, before I get any more into the weeds, let’s just say this — Joyeux Noël was a heck of a film — see it, it well deserves its time in the sun.
Undead (2003 – US release 2005 … shucks, why’d we have to wait?!?)
It should be no surprise that that Day of the Dead 2: Contagium rings in as another 
