Showing posts with label zompocalypse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label zompocalypse. Show all posts

Friday, November 7, 2008

Dead Set (UK TV October 2008)

Dead Set was a series aired on British teevee in October 2008. It was written by Charlie Brooker and directed by Yann Demange. The IMDb sums it up as follows:

During a fictional series of Big Brother, a zombie outbreak occurs, but the house-mates are unaware of the impending doom outside of the Big Brother House.

While I recognised the actress who played Alex and the guy who played Patrick, I had to go to the IMDb to get the "where" (she played the medic in Resident Evil and he was in Death at a Funeral) no one in this show was familiar to me. I don't watch any Big Brother, much less the UK version, so I suppose that most of the jokes and cameos simply went over my head, the rest of the series was easily grasped by an American like myself.

The visual influences on the film are easily recognized: it's the 28 movies' cinematography mixed with the Shaun of the Dead make-up on the Dawn of the Dead remake's running zombies while stealing two set pieces from the Romero Day of the Dead (Rhodes' death and Torrez's beheading.) It's understandable; as far as I'm concerned, those are two of the best deaths in zombie cinema. The effects were fantastic and the cinematography could have been less jumpy, but it looked good.

While running zombies are scarier, they lessen the impact of the message of a well-written allegory. They were perfect for Dawn of the Dead because, let's face it: it lacked the heart of the original. In this series (released on British DVD November 3 -- no news on an American date and thankfully no news on an American remake) the runners provide more tension for the ending, otherwise the shamblers probably would have sufficed.

Charlie Brooker's script (lauded by Simon Pegg in his MySpace blog at: http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=213643855&blogID=446170305) was fantastic. I thought it was a bit slow in the beginning, but it gets much better as it progresses and the ending is incredibly intense. As an allegory, it's absolutely wonderful and as a basic idea, I thought it was brilliant.

Overall: this is seriously one of the top ten best zombie flicks ever if for nothing other than the last episode. So great. If you can get your hands on it, I highly recommend it!

Saturday, June 7, 2008

A meme I couldn't resist that goes a long way in showing off how geeky I am...

This is a meme currently going around LiveJournal. Since it's about zombies, my favourite screen monster, I couldn't resist.
 
You are in a mall when the zombies attack. You have:
 
1. one weapon.
2. one song blasting on the speakers.
3. one famous person to fight alongside you.*
 
* Weapon can be real or fictional; you may assume endless ammo if applicable. Person can be real or fictional.
 
1. one weapon.
 
(real) You know, everyone chooses guns. Not only that, they choose big guns with massive firepower. I say: guns run out of ammo and aren't built for bludgeoning so bugger what the meme says about "endless ammo." There are no codes for endless ammo in Real Life. Give me a blade, man. Nothing too heavy, either. A katana is nice and light and you look like a badass decapitating ghouls even if you have no sword skills (not unlike me!).
(fictional) Gunblade...you know, like in Final Fantasy because then I'd have a gun AND a blade. One of those is ginormous, though...but since we're going with fictional weapons, maybe I have fictional strength to match! Or a lightsaber...but I have a problem using things I can't fix (in a zombie apocalypse scenario.) True, I can't fix a blade, but a blade would be easier to maintain than a lightsaber with those off-planet crystal thingies and knobs and stuff.
 
2. song
 
"Get Your Body Beat" by Combichrist.
 
3. one famous person (dead or alive) to fight alongside you.
 
(real) Easy. Jackie Chan. I thought about putting Tony Jaa here, but his main move is elbows to the head and that's a little TOO close combat. He'd get bitten in his first attack and then there goes my backup. Jackie can use the entire environment as his weapon and once we've eradicated the zombies, because we'd totally kick zombutt, he can tell me behind-the-scenes stories of his movies.
(fictional) Not so easy since I watch a lot of badass cinema. All of the easy picks aside (the survivours of Romero's Dead Cycle for one...) I'd want someone like Beatrix Kiddo or Invisible Girl (a Michelle Yeoh character, not the Fantastic Four chick.) Coffy. Mace Windu (c'mon, Samuel L. Jackson AND mad blade skillz?) Snake Pliskin. Jack Burton. R.J. MacReady...how many awesome characters has Kurt Russell played anyway? Roland Deschain. Paul Muad'dib. Ripley. The list of possibilities goes on and on!
 
~~~~~
 
Speaking of zombies, have you ever assessed your workplace's zombie safety and preparedness? I have because I'm weird like that.
 
I used to work at a video store. The whole front was glass, and there was a little used backdoor, but had zombies broken out, it wouldn't have been the safest place to hunker down. I also worked at a bookstore. Also crap for survival. No weapons and no food.
 
But the theatre...specifically the projection booth...now there's a good place to hide. My friend Shawn also worked for the same theatre and brought up the booth as a safe hiding spot, but it's gotten even better because they've moved the stock to the locked room. At the time he worked there, the booth would be great for hiding, but you can't eat film and survive. Now, at least there would be food even if it's candy. And, there's a locked roof hatch. If you're nimble enough, you can use it to get to the parking garage as a means of escape should zombies somehow manage to infiltrate your defenses.
 
Projection booths also have weapons. Well, make-shift weapons. Exploding xenon bulbs and lots of metal and motors and heavy things. Great place to get weapons that will get you through until you find the real thing.
 
Personally, in the event of a Zompocalypse, I wouldn't want to stay any place too long. Long enough to rest, maintain my equipment, and decide where I'm going next. No place is truly ideal (boats are like basements and islands and only to be used as a last resort) because in the end, one of them always gets in. Then there's the Romero-fact that when you die, unless you put a bullet in your brain you come back. Logan didn't come back in Romero's Day of the Dead, that we saw anyway, but in the director's cut of Land of the Dead, the suicide-by-hanging did and that was an indetermine amount of time after Day.
 
As far as zombies are concerned, I take Romero's word as law because running zombies, like those in Return of the Living Dead or the Dawn remake, are too scary to consider. For serious.
 
*****
 
ON A SIDE NOTE...
 
If you look at the side of the blog (and scroll down a bit), you'll see a carousel of movies. I'm a capitalist and need capital to ist and a portion of the proceeds from sales of those movies come to me. I'm working on one for books and one for video games, but that particular widget is ginormous, but won't let you have too many things to spin around. I'm just experimenting so don't feel compelled. :D