As you may know from our weekly Movie Houses of Worship feature, we love to celebrate cinemas and the act of seeing films on the big screen. Part of that column focuses on these favorite theaters’ repertory programming. Most of the businesses and non-profit organizations we showcase play classic films, some of them solely doing so. And that’s because so many of us like to see these oldies on the big screen and with fellow cinephiles — even titles we own on Blu-ray and/or have seen a million times. We hate to see any of these cinemas close down (see tomorrow’s MHoW), and we love to see communities band together to save and re-open local theaters, both for the preservation of the history and the continued experiences that shall happen there. Fans of the feature and hopefully other readers will be interested in a new documentary titled The Rep. It’s about those independent repertory houses and the struggle they deal with in order to keep the pastime of moviegoing alive. In addition to theater owners and patrons (mostly those of the Toronto Underground Cinema), the film features interviews with Kevin Smith, John Waters, George Romero and Edgar Wright. Following a world premiere last fall at the Austin Film Festival, The Rep is now ready for a theatrical release. And its distribution plan is quite uncommon: filmmaker Morgan White is offering the doc to any movie theater interested in booking it free of charge.

October continues, and we’re moving to our next batch of favorite on-screen monsters. This week we’re talking about zombies and all the glorious ways George Romero changed that sub-genre forever. Originally an urban legend in Voodoo culture, the term “zombie” was forever married to an image of mobs of the undead searching for flesh to sink their rotting teeth into. It’s a friendly image, no doubt. We’ve already turned our eardrums over what Romero had to say on the commentary track for Dawn of the Dead, the sequel to this groundbreaking classic, but now we’re going back to the source. This time around, Romero has brought along two members of the cast and his co-writer, John Russo, so the conversation should be a bit livelier than creatures they all had a hand in creating on screen. So here we go, all 26 things we learned from the commentary track for Night of the Living Dead.

“Movie House of Worship” is a regular feature spotlighting our favorite movie theaters around the world, those that are like temples of cinema catering to the most religious-like film geeks. This week we look at a currently relevant but always excellent movie house in Canada. If you’d like to suggest or submit a place you regularly worship at the altar of cinema, please email our weekend editor.  Name: TIFF Bell Lightbox Location: 350 King Street West, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Opened: September 12, 2010, as the official hub and screening venue for the Toronto International Film Festival, as well as the home for TIFF programming and events throughout the year. The theater is located in and part of a newly constructed complex. No. of screens: 5 Current first run titles: For the past ten days, the 2012 festival has naturally monopolized the theater’s screens, but starting Friday, September 21st, there is Beasts of the Southern Wild, Tabu and the new Canadian releases Laurence Anyways and Rebelle.

Zombies! Of all the movie about the walking dead, one of them continuously appears on the best of lists time after time after time. Okay, maybe more than one of them shows up all the time, but this one’s considered by many to be the best of them. I’m inclined to agree. George Romero‘s Dawn of the Dead is more than just an improved follow-up to 1968′s Night of the Living Dead. It the film that made living in a zombie apocalypse fun. It’s the film that really introduced us to what Tom Savini could do with some plaster and a machete. It’s the high watermark for epic, zombie storytelling, and, for 34 years, no film has come close to topping it. Who better to take us through Dawn of the Dead and show us how it all came to be than Romero, Savini, and George’s wife, Christine, who served as assistant director on the film. The commentary on this Anchor Bay Divimax is moderated by the DVD’s producer, not something we’ve come across before in this column. It could be a nice, organized way to handle information from the commentators. It could be such a slog it makes us wish Hell would run out of room. However the path it takes to get here, here are all the things we learned listening to George & Chris Romero and Tom Savini talk about Dawn of the Dead.

It’s rare that uttering the phrase, “we’re watching The Exorcist” would be laden with arrogance. Prior to the inception of Mondo News, the indescribably cool Alamo Drafthouse offshoot and purveyor of unbelievable movie posters and tee-shirts, few situations would have arisen for those words to have adopted their arrogant new subtext. But that was before Mondo’s Mystery Screenings turned everyone into detectives. The basic idea behind the Mondo Mystery Screening is that you buy a ticket for the screening of an undisclosed film; your admission also securing you an extremely limited-edition Mondo poster of said film. It’s a bit of a gamble because you are paying top dollar for a poster sight-unseen not knowing A.) whether you’ll like the poster or B.) whether you even like the film its celebrating. Mondo goes to impressive lengths to keep the showcased films and the corresponding posters hidden from the public until they’ve gathered at the Drafthouse. But this time around, Mondo Mystery Screening IX was taking place at an off-site location which, just days before the event, was revealed to be a church. Prior to that announcement, all we had to go on was that the screening was touted as the biggest event Mondo had ever conceived. Ravenously, we purchased our tickets and, upon hearing that the screening would be taking place at a church, found the words “we’re watching The Exorcist” escaping our lips with misplaced self-satisfaction. So certain were we that we had decrypted the Mondo cipher that we completely

Shuffle. Shuffle. Groan. Crawl. Shuffle. And commentary on all of it. It’s the Halloween season, so you know the zombie movies are out there in force. But we always like a few lot of laughs with our scares. What better movie to dish out both of those along with an ample helping of heart – figurative heart, as in emotion, not actual bloody hearts being tossed about, though we have that here, too – than Edgar Wright‘s Shaun of the Dead? What’s even better, Wright has brought along a familiar and jovial voice to help him recollect some of the fun and interesting times on set. Simon Pegg is helping out with the color commentary, that color being red more than likely. So it’s time to head on down to the Winchester – provided they have a DVD player – grab a pint and your best cricket bat, watch the ball go from bat to wicket – that’s a cricket reference just to show I know a thing or two. That’s two things. I’m out. – and hear what Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg have to say in this week’s Commentary Commentary. Shuffle. Crawl. Shuffle. Groan. Brains.

“They’re coming to get you Barbra!” This movie is a lesson to never, ever abide your elderly mother’s wishes and visit your father’s grave hundreds of miles away. If you do, you’ll get eaten to death. Or, you’ll have to hole up in a farmhouse that’s slowly but surely becoming overrun with the hungry undead. Night of the Living Dead is the first film from George A. Romero, the one that started a massive genre craze, the movie with working titles like Night of Anubis and Night of the Flesh Eaters and Monster Flick. It was a case of accidental racial and social commentary that has resonated throughout decades. It is the standard for how zombies should look and act like. Yet, for some strange reason, it doesn’t have a pie fight.

When the calendar page turns to October, we Rejects have only one thought: horror. To celebrate this grandest and darkest of months, we’ll cover one excellent horror film a day for the entirety of the month. That’s 31 Days of Horror and 31 Films perfect for viewing on a dark, chilly, October night. If you, like us, love horror and Halloween, give us a Hell Yeah and keep coming every day this month for a new dose of adrenaline. Synopsis: A small town is turned upside down when a military spawned virus is accidentally released into their water supply, turning them into raging, blood thirsty crazies with little regard for human life. With no way of stopping the assault, Sheriff Dutton attempts to lead a small group of survivors out of town. Killer Scene: Things get pretty intense inside of a car wash and people you’ve picked to survive drop like flies throughout the story, though the best scene for my money is the ending scene. Sheriff Dutton and his wife have finally made it to the military rendezvous point and discover just how the government planned on dealing with any survivors. While deciding what to do, the group is attacked by three crazed bikers leading to an epic battle in a trucking garage.

It doesn’t matter if you’re this close to graduating, and you’ve finally “found yourself.” Unless you’re going to the University of Baltimore, you have to admit that your school doesn’t have the stones to create a class called “Zombie 101″ where you learn to survive a Zombie Apocalypse. If your brain gets eaten soon, it’ll be their fault. Because, yes, the University of Baltimore has created just such a class.

On a recent trip to Ogden Marsh, we drank the water, lost our minds, and reviewed the Blu-ray of one of 2010s Best Horror Films – The Crazies, starring Rob Hunter’s boyfriend Timothy Olyphant.

You wouldn’t know it if you aren’t a top-ranking member of the FSR staff, but it’s been a busy week around here.

When I first heard that George Romero was going to remake Dario Argento’s Deep Red in 3-D, I was pissed. My initial reaction was a typical knee-jerk lament: “Hollywood has run out of ideas.” That’s my usual statement whenever I hear that yet another classic horror film is slated for a remake.

This week, on a very special episode of Reject Radio, Eric Vespe from Aint it Cool News pitches Jaws: The Revenge of the Sith and sticks the landing.

Your daily recommended allowance of random movie stuff, stories that fell through the cracks, and news you can’t use.

The horror icon is starting to look like Michael Jordan during that ill-advised baseball stint.

Rob Hunter loves movies. He also thinks the 80s are going to be the best decade ever in the world of film. These two joys come together in the form of cash money payments that he receives every week and immediately uses to rent more movies on VHS.

Early this morning — about 10 am, which is early to any movie blogger — I sat down with director Breck Eisner to talk about The Crazies. It was a unique situation for both of us. I had spent 4 of the last 12 hours of my life running a crash-course on the 27-year existence of The Crazies, watching both George Romero’s 1973 original and Eisner’s remake seemingly back-to-back. For Eisner, today is opening day.

We have one (1) prize pack of four original George Romero film including – Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Season of the Witch and the original The Crazies. Who wants it?

In early February, we debuted three exclusive new photos from the upcoming Breck Eisner directed remake of George Romero’s The Crazies. In fact, I noticed that more than a few sites debuted photos over the past few weeks. There were a lot of images floating around, but they all resided in different places around the web. Now that Overture Films has released their final press kit, we have all of the photos from The Crazies — in one place. Now you can see some of the scary ones, the funny ones and the ones with the ever-lovely Radha Mitchell. The Crazies is in theaters February 26, 2010.

The Coroner takes a hike up Staunton Hill and thinks the view is pretty rotten – and not in a good way.