The Zombieslayer

Undead or Alive 2007. Directed by Glasgow Phillips. Starring Chris Kattan, James Denton, Navi Rawat

Undead or Alive is a “zomedy,” a zombie comedy filmed with a Wild West theme. Navi Rawat plays Geronimo’s niece, and before Geronimo was driven off a cliff, he cursed the white man with the dreaded zombie disease. Of course those who know American history know that Geronimo wasn’t driven off a cliff and died an old man and his autobiography is freely accessable (and well-written I should add).

Chris Kattan takes his usual unfunny self and stinks up the movie, along with James Denton playing the other main cowboy role. All the characters offer nothing but bad dialog and even worse acting. The movie also fails to follow any of the zombie movie rules, like a shot to the head doesn’t kill a zombie, only a decapitation.If you want to see a funny zombie movie, rent Shaun of the Dead. Skip this one at all costs. One dead zombie for at least Navi Rawat being cute. Yes, it was that bad.

Firelight 1997. Directed by William Nicholson. Starring Sophie Marceau and Stephen Dillane.

It’s the 1830s. Sophie Marceau plays Elisabeth, a struggling woman who agrees to bear a child and give it away to a Gentleman in return for a large sum of money. After losing her child, Elisabeth keeps a journal complete with watercolors imagining how her daughter Louisa is growing up.

She decides to search for her daughter and that’s when it really picks up.

I won’t give too much else away, but this may be the best period piece I’ve seen in years. The acting was nearly flawless and the sets and costumes did their jobs splendidly. It’s in fact so well done that it will move you in many directions.Every main character has a struggle to overcome. Several characters are developed, not just Elisabeth. And Marceau can act. She’ll play your heartstrings in ways you haven’t felt in years. I’m actually going to buy this one, it was that good.

9 dead zombies. It’s a shame Nicholson only did this piece, for he definitely has talent.

World War Z, a novel by Max Brooks. 2006

A follow up to the most important book ever written, The Zombie Survival Guide, WWZ (as it’s abbreviated) is a look into the future, after the zombies have been defeated and the world is in a recovery stage. It takes place in the next decade, and is basically a collection of interviews from survivors of the great zombie wars, from all over the world.

Brooks is a master at geopolitics, showing how each nation counters the zombie plague. You’ll see that some were more effective than others. Brooks obviously put a lot of research into this, and it shows in the writing.

The book’s flaw is its lack of flow. It had some humor, but not as much as his first work. I didn’t even read it in one night like I do with most books, for it failed to keep my attention.It’s still a good read, but if you haven’t read his first one, pick that one up first.7 dead zombies

Ozzy Osbourne - Randy Rhoads Tribute by Ozzy Osbourne and Randy Rhoads. Transcribed by Wolf Marshall. 1987

This one is really for musicians. It’s a note-for-note transcription of the Ozzy Osbourne live album Randy Rhoads Tribute. Marshall not only gives you every note played on the album for guitarists and vocalists, he gives you a good biographical summary of the late, great guitarist. Includes some good black and white pictures as well.

If you don’t know who Randy Rhoads is, he was Ozzy’s first guitarist after Ozzy was fired from Black Sabbath. Rhoads unfortunately died prematurely in a plane crash in 1982 and we only have two studio Ozzy Osbourne albums, one live album, one E.P., and two poorly recorded Quiet Riot albums featuring his playing. It really is a shame, not just because a life was cut short, but also because of the amazing talent he possessed. If you’re a guitarist, pick this up. You’d be surprised just how much of an influence Rhoads was on modern electric guitarists.

10 dead zombies . I haven’t been this glad to buy a book in years.

Celebrity prediction - I’m predicting the next celebrity to end up in a loonie bin is one of the Olson Twins. The big question is, which one?

The year is 2500. Mankind has become universally stupid for three reasons:

1) Stupid people breed like rabbits. Smart folk use birth control,
2) Rampant anti-intellectualism,
3) Corporations intentionally dumbing down the populace through deceptive advertizing and manipulation.

Two people from today get stuck in an army experiment gone wrong and are trapped in suspended animation until they’re shockingly reawakened in 2500, only to see an overpopulated world full of garbage, corporate logos, and stupidity. Our heroes from the present time are Joe, a one-hundred IQ army librarian who will turn out to be the world’s smartest person in 2500, and Rita, a prostitute continually on the run from her pimp.

So Joe and Rita are awakened when a giant garbage mound collapses to find a dystopia where people have barcodes stamped on their arms and corporations have complete control. People spend almost every waking hour watching mindless television shows, ones that are so bad they make today’s reality shows look intelligent. The most popular movie is simply called “Ass” where the camera shows a naked rear end close up that every once in awhile farts, sending the moviegoers into hysterics.

Joe finds himself ridiculed because he speaks in complete sentences. Rita finds her job is extremely easy, because men are horny, but without enough attention spans to realize they’re getting screwed out of their money without getting screwed.

I happen to be a big fan of Mike Judge, who directed this movie. He did a great job with both Beavis and Butt-Head Do America and Office Space. This movie, he had all the subtleties that made his other works funny, but with poor execution.

Joe is not likeable. It takes him way too long to figure out what’s going on in the world. Rita isn’t likeable either, spending too much time worrying that her pimp is going to somehow find her even though they’re trapped 500 years in the future.

One bit of credit I will give the movie though is it slams corporate advertizing and actually has the guts to name names. More power to them. But no wonder this movie never made it anywhere - they scared away all potential advertizers. I was seriously hoping it would be good enough for me to hype it, but it’s not. It just falls flat. The concept is brilliant, the script stinks, and the timing and execution aren’t there.

It’s just not funny. Everyone who saw Office Space can quote at least two or three lines, and can identify with at least one of the characters in the movie. In this one, I like neither Joe nor Rita and there are just no memorable lines.

Four dead zombies. Even that’s a stretch, but I got to give them props for having the guts to taint corporate logos. This movie will never make cult classic status.

Luck. Luck determines a lot in life. With any plague, there will be those who will have immunity to it, and those who don’t. The Native Americans who perished from smallpox were in better physical shape and had better diets than the Europeans who carried it over from the Old World. It’s just luck.

Wannabe pretentious critics can dismiss Will Smith’s Robert Neville character as the last survivor of an apocalyptic disease, who just happens to be a genius, a top scientist, and a military tough guy, but let’s just say it was luck and watch the movie. Or at least the movie hints that it was luck. I don’t see it as an implausible plot hole. There were other people immune to the virus. They just got eaten.

Francis Lawrence directs the 1954 novel I Am Legend, with a few modern day plot changes.  This time around, a scientist “cures” cancer by using a genetically mutated virus. Good intentions. Bad results.

So Robert Neville and his dog Sam are the last survivors on Earth. By day, Neville and Sam are safe. By night, the monsters, half-zombie, half-vampire, come out with a super human fury, looking to feast on everything living.

Lawrence does a great job in portraying Neville’s loneliness. He talks to mannequins. He talks to Sam like Sam’s a human. And he watches a lot of t.v.

Neville’s also a classic “good guy.” Despite everything that has gone wrong, he still has hope that he can find a cure.  One dimensional? Not at all.  Smith does a fine job in fleshing out his Neville character.

Lawrence throws in his scares. I saw several people in the theater jump when Sam ran into a dark subway tunnel and Neville had to retrieve his only friend, knowing that they were there.

A great film? No. It doesn’t do enough to differentiate between the scores of other apocalyptic, other than knowing the virus was caused with good intentions. It did have an underlying point that we were too quick to play God. Or maybe I read that into it.

Smith does a fine job as Neville. Smith has matured into a decent actor, and once again, his son was casted as his son. But I think there was a slip in the film when they showed Neville had a daughter instead of a son. If anyone else caught that, by all means, let me know.

Is it worth seeing? Sure. But don’t expect to see something great because it’s just another Hollywood blockbuster that will generate big money, let you talk about it for a week, then forget it by the end of the year. 6 dead zombies for entertaining me for two hours.

Based off the children’s book Northern Lights, the Golden Compass was a film about an orphan girl named Lyra and her fantastic adventures. The Catholic League called this film offensive and called for a boycott. Although the book is supposedly anti-religion (I never read it), the movie itself isn’t that offensive, as the “bad guys” are a monolithic power hungry government body called the Magisterium.

In this parallel universe, humans stand side by side with their souls, which take animal form. Children’s souls, called daemons in the film, change shape for children still haven’t figured out who they really are yet. With adults however, their daemons remain one animal. A death to either is a death to both, and causing pain to one affects both.

Lyra is given a golden compass, which always tells the truth. The Magisterium was supposed to confiscate them all, but apparently she got a hold of one and only a select few people in the world, including her, can actually read the thing.

The Magisterium wants to dominate all thought, and suppress people’s concepts of magical “dust,” which I guess we’ll learn in the second film the relevance of. The movie ended prematurely without solving much. Usually with an obvious sequel, you at least have some resolution, but this one left it wide open. And yes, it’s a bad thing and dead zombies will be docked.

The other criticism I have of it is the flow. It flowed okay, but in some parts was rather choppy. There were too many main characters and only a few of them got developed, but of course, even those were one dimensional.

The special effects were quite good, but effects don’t impress me. Only dialog and good storytelling do. Both were mediocre at best.

I really wanted to like this film, for it’s a fantasy, but as usually happens in a fantasy film, too much is spent on awing the audience with neat-o special effects. That doesn’t fly to a pretentious critic. You must also have dialog, a storyline, and character development. Lyra, the evil Marisa Coulter, and everyone else were one dimensional and predictable. A few years from now, I’ll completely forget seeing this movie, as I have almost forgotten about the fantasy movie Eragon.

4 dead zombies

OK.  This post is for movie buffs.

These are my top ten memorable scenes.  These scenes went deep into my psyche for some reason or another and stayed there.

01. Dr. Strangelove - Major Kong rides the nuclear bomb like a rodeo cowboy.  One of the more surreal moments in film history.

02. The City of Lost Children - “The Octopus,” two evil Siamese twins, are smoking.  One inhales the smoke and the other exhales it.  If you saw it, very bizarre and almost spooky, as was the entire movie.  Terry Gilliam loved this flick, and yours truly’s a big fan of Gilliam, as you probably already know.

03. Mulholland Drive - David Lynch has a way of getting deep inside my psyche.  I don’t know if it’s just me, but of all the scary movies I’ve seen, besides Ju-on 2, I find Lynch movies the scariest.  I watched this one in the theatre and the dumpster scene made my heart skip a beat.

04. Lost Highway - David Lynch again.  Fred Madison is in bed with his wife explaining a recurring nightmare.  He says in the nightmare, he’s in bed with his wife and it’s her, but it’s not her.  Suddenly, he looks over at her and it’s not her.  If you saw the movie, you’ll remember what I’m referring to.

05. Pulp Fiction - Tarantino’s best moment by far.  I don’t care what wannabe pretentious film buffs say.  This movie’s head and shoulders above Resevoir Dogs.  The fact that that dumb movie Forrest Gump won best picture above Pulp Fiction made me lose all respect for the morons who decide who gets Academy Awards.  Anyways, I digress.  Vincent Vega and Mia Wallace made one of the cutest screen couples ever, and I’ll never forget “Don’t be a Square.”

06. The Producers - “Your hats.  Your jackets.  Your swastikas.”  I saw both versions and enjoyed the musical even more than the original.  And I absolutely loathe musicals, so that’s really saying something.  I laughed harder at that scene than any other in that movie.

07. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - The three-way shoot out.  The best scene of perhaps the greatest American Western ever (even though it was an Italian movie shot in Spain).

08. Clerks - I don’t ever think I’ve laughed so hard in a movie when Dante and Randall are arguing about the morality of blowing up the Death Star, for there were every day workers on it.  Imagine, you have to feed your family so you get offered a job on the Death Star to work on the plumbing.  Do you deserve to die? The way they answer that question is classic.

09. Once Were Warriors - Grace’s suicide.  Yeah, movie suicides are often melodramatic and almost stupid, but this one hit me.

10. Blue Velvet - David Lynch is not my favorite director.  He’s just the guy who gets inside my psyche.  I love Isabella Rosselini, but the scene I remember the most from this movie was without her.  It was when Ben sings Roy Orbison and Frank listens, going from melancholy to rage halfway through the song.

Any film scene buried deep inside your psyche that pops out every now and then but you’ll remember it until the day you die? These are ten of mine.