Zombieland and Sweeney Todd
So, both movies were pretty GD awesome. Zombieland was kind of like an American attempt at zombedy much like Shaun of the Dead put a uniquely British spin on the genre. It’s not subtle. At all. But it was definitely a fun movie, even for those who may not generally go for the Zed word. Partake in the awesomeness of Zombieland and Sweeney Todd
October 3, 2009 at 10:51 am | Random | 2 comments
Lou Dobbs can Derelique my balls
Those of you who know me know that I do not like to talk politics. It’s just one of those things that I don’t like to do; you can have your opinion, I’ll have mine, and we’ll all be friends in the end. However, tonight will be a short tirade atop my (short) political soapbox.
Four or five days a week I run on one of the treadmills at the gym, and I specifically choose to run on the treadmills connected to a television so that I can focus on something other than how much I hate to run. Since my limited channel selection consists of ABC News, FoxNews, CNN, ESPN and the Lifestyle Family Fitness Network (hip-hop and bad techno music videos combined with commercials for Wal-Mart and propaganda for how great Lifestyle is), I watch CNN unless I actually like the song on LFFN. Since this generally occurs after work, I usually catch roughly one-half-hour of The Situation Room before I listen to about 5 minutes of Lou Dobbs during my cool down. However, tonight traffic was bad and I started running at just the right time to catch about 5 minutes of TSR and almost a half-hour of Lou Dobbs Tonight.
Don’t get me wrong: it’s good that Lou Dobbs is on CNN because he gives a pseudo-liberal news station a shot of conservative watch-dog-ism. However, he really REALLY pisses me off and tonight broke the bank for me.
Among his general douchebaggery, Dobbs tonight focused on an item currently passed by Obama that made me want to punch the monitor in the hopes that he would actually feel it. The thing of which I speak is of course the plan to assure health care to 11 million children in the United States. Now, one of the major drawbacks is that the plan will allegedly make it easier for illegal immigrants to get health care as well, and Dobbs and his evil little correspondents keep pointing this out. However, the also point out that the American people will be footing the bill for this health care through raised taxes. HOWEVER AGAIN, their sound bite let it slip as to where those taxes are being raised: the tobacco tax.
The correspondent then played a clip in which an opponent to the bill talked about how Obama claimed that he wouldn’t raise taxes for the working class, but that in his first two weeks he has now raised taxes on the lower classes who I guess happen to use more tobacco. Of course, Dobbs jumped on this, echoing that Obama is raising taxes and explaining how Americans are now funding illegals’ health care. All I can say is this: Are Lou Dobbs and the people who support this viewpoint f*cking retarded? How is this a negative?
Obama is telling people that smoking is stupid and he’s doing so by allowing people who are consciously killing themselves support the health of our children. And if illegal immigrants can get to it easier, that’s fine by me; I’m not paying for them. Neither are most of the educated individuals in this country. Now, if you smoke, I’m sorry. If it was decided that I’d have to pay a tax every time I fired up my PS3 I’d be pretty pissed as well, but I’d still do it, just like people are going to keep smoking. It seems like there’s some sort of correlation between the number of people who smoke and higher education. Maybe putting money into schools to stimulate the economy in the long run isn’t such a bad idea. Then people could afford health insurance for their kids so that tobacco users don’t have to pony up the bill.
And don’t get me started on the NEA funding. I know a lot of artists and—bless their souls—I wouldn’t trust most of them with infrastructure projects that my life depends on every day. If throwing $50 billion at them keeps them from building the overpass I drive across on my way to work in the mornings, then I’ll gladly give them my tax money. It’s an odd reference, but in Max Brooks’s World War Z he actually talks about trying to rebuild society after the zombie hordes nearly wipe humanity off the face of the earth. In the book, many of the characters refer to the years it took to teach people how to live without modern comforts because, in general, many people are not physically capable of meeting the demands required for many blue-collar jobs.
Give people jobs they can do with the understanding that not everyone has the ability to quit their office jobs and go build a road. The only reason it worked in WWZ is because it literally became a life-or-death situation. Luckily, we have the chance to fix the problems before it gets to that point.
Life-or-death situations, I mean. Not zombie outbreaks. Although I’m prepared for that, too.
February 4, 2009 at 10:20 pm | Random | No comment
George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead
Be warned, this is a LONG entry, but it touches on a lot. Even racism! Woo hoo!
So, to treat myself tonight while I’m holed up with a bad back and two (now) unused tickets for the Tampa Bay Lightning and Carolina Hurricanes game, I decided to watch George Romero’s most recent foray into the canon he himself crafted: the zombie genre. If you’re unaware, the foray of which I speak is Diary of the Dead, a film that looks to re-invent the “of the Dead” series.
The plot follows the typical zombie fare—reasonably attractive individuals realize something screwy is happening and then try to escape their shambling pursuers, with a number of them dying/coming back/dying again. While it doesn’t sound much like a re-invention, Romero himself explains that this is a story about the beginning of the outbreak, the first few days (much like Night of the Living Dead) not a continuation as seen in the previous three movies succeeding Night (Dawn, Day and Land).
Another piece of this un-dead puzzle is that the entire film is supposedly seen through the lens of a student-filmmaker who is using prosumer HD cameras to capture and re-tell the events that transpired. Throughout, there are also clips interspersed that have been downloaded from the internet, clips that build upon the myth and give it a truly global reach. While this is a novel idea and gives this zombie movie a new, emotional and involving twist, it also causes the film to feel a little bit shaky (metaphorically more so than literally).
First of all, if you haven’t seen a movie shot in POV, then go watch The Blair Witch Project and/or Cloverfield. I’ll wait until you’ve had the chance to watch them.
Done? Good.
Now, go watch Diary of the Dead. See the difference? Now, I understand that Diary opens with the main heroine, Deb, explaining that the movie we’re about to watch was shot on two HD cameras and was cut by her on a laptop. Okay, Romero, you’ve covered your butt. However, when you actually watch the film, it feels anything BUT home-made.
What’s that Mr. Romero? All of the protagonists are in film school? That would explain how their shots are all expertly framed and how, in general, the action is pretty well in-focus. But, the protagonists’ credentials don’t excuse the high-quality YouTube footage of a girl in Tokyo or a couple of rednecks who sure as hell wouldn’t have the cash to purchase an HD camera, let alone the chops to edit the footage. Add to that all of the astonishingly high-quality surveillance equipment and the viewer will have to suspend disbelief in order to accept that a good chunk of this movie is supposedly “found footage.”
My other issue with the filming is that there wasn’t any humanity in it. People are being attacked, and the camera rolls. Scratch that—BOTH cameras roll. There were a plethora of scenes in which I wanted to scream at the TWO people holding the cameras when one of their friends is being eaten no more than three feet away. Who cares if you can’t see the zombie’s head explode; put the damned camera down and help your friend.
Oh, wait—everybody is dead and so you have to hold the camera because the only other living person is currently being attacked. Oh now it all makes sense. For a moment I thought it was just that you were a jerk, but instead it’s because you’re an ass. Nice job, ass. I hope your friend comes back to life and chews on your face.
For me I had problems connecting to characters who failed to come to the aid of their good friends for the sake of getting it all on camera. I watched a lot of blurry, shaky ground and feet and darkness in Cloverfield and still hope that more people will survive the next time I watch it. Diary left me feeling kind of empty.
However, I suppose some of that emptiness was due, in part, to the ham-fistedness of the cardboard cutouts who were on-screen. I will admit that all of the stereotypes that I expected were broken half-way through the film and everyone settled into their characters. It just sucks that all the characters were pretty much the same. It sucked even more that “the same” was angsty, clichéd and fairly unlikeable. I shouldn’t be rooting for a person to live just because I know that someone HAS to live.
And what was with the weird racist vibe I got from all of the black characters? At one point in the film, the protagonists get ambushed by a trio of powerful and armed black men. After being taken to their hideout, an exchange occurs in which one of the captors explains their reasoning for staying behind saying something to the extent of “We’re finally in power. When all of this went down, everyone without a sun tan left.” Maybe it’s because I just read a couple articles on whites vs. the world and watched American History X, but here is how I break down this group of decidedly “outsider” individuals:
1) The black men and women are ALL big and strong. It’s like that one Vogue cover with Lebronn and Gisele; I would like to be the first person to welcome back loaded stereotypes and will do so with a firm handshake and warm smile. I really missed you.
2) What’s the deal with the power comment? They’re 65 miles from Scranton, PA; while I understand that America subconsciously holds racism close to its heart, wouldn’t that area have been northern territory from the start? Had they been in the deep south, I would have understood the implications. Could you have made it any more implicit that as soon as white guys drop their guard, black people will rise up and take control? And now that I think of it, I don’t remember any non-white zombies anywhere in the film.
3) I sure am glad that, in a moment of confusion, the black people kill a non-zombie black man on accident and a white guy saves the day by killing the actual black zombie. Thank heavens that a white guy was there to save the others from themselves.
And I guess this leads me to my final disappointment with the film. One of the things Romero has been lauded for is his ability to weave social commentary into his horror stories. Night of the Living Dead? Race and paranoia. Dawn of the Dead? Mass consumerism and humanity’s emotional shortcomings. Day of the Dead? Military control, seclusion and the balance of force vs. reasoning. Land of the Dead? Mass paranoia, again, and the failures of public reliance on the perceptual good-intentions of governing bodies. Don’t worry, I’m not going to say that Diary does not have a social commentary. It does. And, thankfully, it’s made glaringly obvious in the first 5 minutes of the movie. And it’s not told through anecdote or action or subtlety; it’s beat into your brain by a voice-over. It’s kind of like admitting that the movie wasn’t quite good enough on its own without explaining it to the audience.
Overall, it wasn’t bad, but it’s definitely not my favorite zombie movie. The idea was novel, but the execution was lacking. Kudos to Romero, though, for re-defining the of the Dead mythos but I think that to succeed, the series is going to need a little more punch to re-animate its shambling, undead roots.