posts tagged with: zombies
Adam sent me this, which had somehow slipped my radar. I felt the need to share it, and to offer some observations.
Firstly, this is great news! The Walking Dead is probably the best zombie literature to ever be written. No matter that it’s in comic book form- the only people who make distinctions about that sort of thing are people too blinded by their perceptions to see brilliance. (See also: The World Fantasy Awards, Gaiman’s Sandman)
However, one quote in the article gave me reason to pause:
“This is not about zombies popping out of closets,” said AMC SVP of programming, Joel Stillerman to Variety. “This is a story about survival, and the dynamics of what happens when a group is forced to survive under these circumstances. The world is portrayed in a smart, sophisticated way.”
Clearly, this is a person who knows absolutely nothing about zombie cinema, except the vision of zombie cinema they’ve developed in their own head.
I can say this with confidence as someone who has consumed a massive amount of zombie-related media. There is only ONE zombie movie I can think of that involves zombies popping out of closets. Unfortunately for Joel Stillerman, it is probably also one of the deepest zombie movies ever made, a “story about survival, and the dynamics of what happens when a group is forced to survive under these circumstances” where “the world is portrayed in a smart, sophisticated way.”
I’m talking, of course, about the 1978 Romero version of Dawn of the Dead. Don’t believe me? Check it out. The scene is also the only occurrence of “fast zombies” in a Romero film.
I suppose one should know their roots before they knock them.
Why haven’t I seen this movie yet? It doesn’t appear to be on Netflix, that’s probably a good reason. Must still be a VHS-only movie :(
It seems right up my alley, what with all the sillyness, and the zombies, and the stupid religious zealots getting (I imagine) eaten. Plus, the ridiculous comedy / horror / song mashup seem to be along the same lines as the wonderful Cannibal! The Musical, which, as you may know, I loved.
Here’s one of the musical numbers, which I found today on ectomo, and which prompted this post:
Edit: Found it on DVD!
Via Rue Morgue, a stop-motion silent film and bloodbath.
And, via jwz, another good installment in the series:
May you enjoy the brains of many eggs and not be eaten by any zombie rabbits.
You can get more Creepy Easter Zombie Day pictures over at The Seven Deadly Sinners.
Via, I have seen the whole of the Internet, the best quiz I’ve yet taken:
Via Rue Morgue, here’s a fan-made trailer for an imaginary movie, that were it real, would surely be one of the best things to ever happen to geekdom.
Watch, and long for an alternate reality better than our own, where a thing can exist simply because it SHOULD exist, regardless of the politics and egos of rights holders and producers.
For some weird reason, almost nobody came to work today. It snowed last night, but only a few inches and this is Ithaca, so people should be well used to that by now.
It probably says a lot about me that on days like this I wonder if the zombie apocalypse has started and I’m missing it. Of course, I’d surely find out later (with my luck, I’d leave work only to be munched on my way out the door).
In quasi-related news, studded snow tires: 4/~$850. Yep. Life is a money-sucking misery.
I do not like Brian Keene.
I read his first zombie novel, The Rising, after reading good things about it on the Internet. I hated it. The thing I remember most about it was how repetitive everything in it was- either that, or how stupid all the characters were. I don’t mean normal genre stupid here, I mean characters who are completely incapable of realizing that the speaking undead are capable of reasoning, planning, or being led, despite them spewing exposition and outsmarting the living all over the place. The idea of the dead being reanimated by demons as a way to get them out of hell (I think it was something like that) was new (to me at least), but the execution was excruciating.
Anyway, I was ready to ignore Brian Keene forevermore after that, but then I was at Fangoria, and so was he, and there was a boring time in the schedule and I had time to kill, so I decided to sit through his panel. And I got to know Mr. Keene a bit better, and I got to liking him a lot less. I know he’s apparently horror fiction’s golden child (bleaaargggh), and that everyone is calling him the next Stephen King (gah!) but that is no excuse for metaphorically strutting about so during the panel. The only enlightening datum I got from him was when he responded to a question saying something along the lines of “I don’t read my own work- once I write it, I’m done with it and the first draft is basically what you get.”. That’s a paraphrase, but I don’t think it’s too far removed from the actual statement. Anyway, I appreciated that because it explained a lot- mostly, how a book can start with an interesting concept but end up with such terrible, repetitive, and sometimes inconsistent execution – it’s basically like a train of thought, or an idea. Which actually means that his stuff is pretty good, for what it is. It just isn’t much of anything.
Carrying on. Sometime after that, Matt Staggs posted a review of Keene’s new book, Dead Sea, in his blog. After reading that, specifically the part where Staggs said, “I was one of a handful of people who didn’t like Keene’s ‘The Rising’”, I decided that the thing might have potential afterall, so figured I’d give Keene another shot.
Note the difference in subject matter between the covers of the two novels- I think that really gives one a feeling of the kind of thought and originality that goes into all of Keene’s writing.
Anyway, suffice to say, ‘Dead Sea’ is a better read than ‘The Rising’. The characters are significantly less stupid, but the writing isn’t; and I’m just not the type of person who can gloss over stuff like that. If you want to turn in first drafts to the publisher that’s your own lookout, but don’t publishers usually hire editors to take care of glaring inconsistencies?
Here are a few examples:
- Toothbrush
Page 105: “Mitch had a tube of toothpaste in his backpack.”
Page 125: “‘You stayed here during the collapse?’ Murphy, the man who’d lent us toothpaste earlier, asked.’ - Gore
Page 249: “He’d apparently died in his sleep, even as Hamelin’s Revenge coursed through his veins. His mouth was crusted with blood and he clutched a half-eaten heart…”
Page 250, two paragraphs later: “<He> immediately stopped his attack and greedily devoured it, dropping the intestine and using both hands…”
I know, I know- nit-picking. But when you are actually paying attention to the details of a story and it starts spouting inconsistencies at you, it really knocks you out of it and makes it hard to get back into things. That’s what it did to me, anyway, and I wasn’t looking for errors- I wonder how many I would have found if I were actually trying to perform an editor’s job?
As to the actual content of the story- it’s nothing new. In my opinion David Wellington covered undead animals much more effectively a few years back, in Monster Island; and I felt the expository meta-fiction (as Staggs referred to the Professor’s dialog) just came off as being rather self-important. And while people seem to appreciate Keene’s use of a hero who is not only black but also gay, I don’t see it as actually adding anything to the story; instead it just seemed to reinforce stereotypes. I’d actually like to know what people from either demographic think of the characterization, but then they’d have to read the book and I wouldn’t wish that upon anyone.
From Skullring, Bush asks for a 50 billion dollar emergency defense supplemental to protect America from zombies.