Oh man, it's been a good weekend so far.

On Friday we got to see the entire Dead trilogy one after the other- apparently the first time it's ever been done, anywhere! After DotD finished, we were treated to a cool presentation by Greg Nicotero, a top notch SFX/ Make up/ Prosthetics guy (Day of the Dead, Land of the Dead, Dusk to Dawn, Serenity etc).

He ran through some off-set footage from Land of the Dead, as well as examples of their mock ups and animatronics for LotD and other projects his worked on. The 20 mins of stuff we saw was excluded from the DVD cut of the movie, so it won't be seen again by Joe Public. Cool!

Anyway, as we were leaving we heard one of the organisers chatting to someone about the "signing".... Naturally, ears were immediately swivelled in his direction- apparently George Romero & Greg Nicotero were doing a short signing/ meet & greet session at The Cinema Store on Saturday morning.

Saturday morning dawned, and after a leisurely breakfast of eggy bread I lazily thumbed the PC on to see if their website listed the time for the signing: 10 to 12. It was 10:30 already.

I set a personal record, throwing myself into a pair of jeans and a suitably clean shirt and hurtling to the station to get the first train in. By 11:30 I was in the queue, enjoying the antics of the 2 fully made up zombies lurching around aside the store.

It was particularly funny when they lurched after the oriental tourists! You could tell they knew it was some sort of display, but when the man-with-ripped-face went "Urrrrrh" and snapped at their necks that glint appeared in their eyes, the glint that says "but what if--". Much shrieking for them and laughter for me.

Yes, yes, small things and small minds, but so what, I'm easy to please.

Anyhoo, the moneygrabbing fucknuts at the store had decided that unless you were one of the elite geeks with the Weekend Pass from Frightfest you had to buy a movie poster for £20 and get that signed. I was miffed, to say the least- I had brought along the DVD cover for my copy of DotD to get that signed, as it was the first movie Greg & George had worked on together.

I grudgingly handed over my card and received my shiny poster. I tell you what, some of the stuff in that shop is hideously pricey. E.g: we're fans of Pirates of the Caribbean, and on a visit to Forbidden Planet we bought one of the reproduction cursed Aztec coins for £7.99. The Cinema Store is flogging it for £39.95, although theirs apparently comes in a special box. Wow. So thats £8 for the coin and £31 for the box then? Give me a break.

And yes then I got to meet Mr Zombie himself! I shook his hand, he said "How're you doing?", and I for once didn't geek out and gibber "M-m-m-movies, you d-do m-m-movies!". I managed a perfectly civil "Fine, thank you, how're you?" Hardly the smooth and witty reparteee I'd been trying to work on while standing in the queue, but better than just grinning like a psycho and spraying drool on his (huge) glasses.

I am now the proud owner of a LotD poster signed by both of them - tomorrow we're off to Ikea to buy a big enough frame and it's going up in the lounge, front & centre.

As a bonus, after George had left Mrs G arrived, having taken the later train. Greg was still hanging about the shop (buying figures that had been made of monsters he'd designed)- he was happy to stand and chat and to sign my DVD cover after all. What a genuinely nice chap!

Our movie yesterday, btw, was Wild Country. A Scottish werewolf /horror movie- not too terrible, it would have been better if the dipshits at the Odeon had turned off the lights completely though, as the movie is mostly shot in gloomy lighting. But, still cool, particularly the scene where the farmer gets munched.

The director and two female leads were there, as this was the first screening for a public audience, which was nice. They werea bitt overdressed though- I'm not sure what they were expecting crowd wise but I don't think it was the black t-shirt brigade.

Tonight, we're off to see Night Watch, which sounds very promising. Apparently Fox pictures will have security on site confiscating mobile phones.. huh?Camcorderss yes, but mobiles? I don't mind really - this way I won't have to endure any more simpletons texting or talking during the movie.