Chicago band Wilco have made their reputation by touring relentlessly for many years and have released seven albums (and two with English singer/songwriter Billy Bragg) since 1995. They have also been lauded as a hard working, risk taking and ambitious group of musicians who have a strong fanbase in North America and abroad but have eluded conventional commercial success (i.e., no Top 40 hits). Led by singer/songwriter Jeff Tweedy, Wilco has gone through several lineup changes while continuously experimenting with their music.

The concert documentary “Ashes of American Flags: Wilco Live”   features the six member band touring through America, while observing the major changes the country has gone through, all the while embracing their lives as rock and roll road warriors with faithful fans.  The film makes it’s Ottawa theatrical premiere at the Mayfair this Wednesday July 14 and also plays Thursday. If you’ve seen the band live, the next best thing would be to see them on the big screen.

Ashes of American Flags trailer

A rare 35mm print of George A. Romero’s third zombie film Day of the Dead is coming to the Mayfair Theatre for one night only: Friday July 2 at 11pm! Presented by Zombie Info.

Night of the Living Dead showed you a desperate group of survivors holed up in a rundown farm house. Dawn of the Dead showed us a battle for the control of a shopping mall between two groups of survivors with the zombies in between. With Day, Romero puts his human characters deep in a mine, with zombies on land and zombies in captivity as science experiments several feet under as scientists go head to head with an iron-fisted military man and his soldiers. The scientists want to study the phenomenon and find a solution to the problem, the military just want to blast the undead bastards away. Who will prevail? Again, the zombies aren’t necessarily the villains. Especially when one test subject, a zombie nicknamed “Bub” (played brilliantly by Howard Sherman) starts to show rudimentary intelligence and even a sense of humanity.

Day is considered underrated by many of Romero’s fans, especially considering makeup f/x artist Tom Savini’s showstopping gore is among his best work. Romero envisioned this film to be his zombie epic, with his original script featuring a zombie army and major production design. However, he could only get the money to make the film he wanted if he cut down the gore and agree to make an R rated film (Dawn of the Dead was released unrated). Romero then chose to make the film at a lower budget and make big changes to the script in order to have the freedom to make an unrated picture. Many ideas removed from the original script were later utilized in 2005’s Land of the Dead.

With it’s claustrophobic setting, dark humour and eye-popping gore and an exciting action packed climax, Day of the Dead is a must for any zombie film lover.

Day of the Dead trailer