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Blast from the Past: Bush Versus Zombies
I’m pretty tired tonight, so it’s time for a stroll into the old archives. Here’s an old youtube clip that I remember a couple years back. It’s a pretty clever interview with President Bush whereby a reporter calls him out on his fifty billion dollar defense spending allotment to combat zombies. It’s a pretty funny watch being how everything is put together. It’s so well done you get the sense that this actually happened and that Bush really did decapitate a couple of tourists. Check it out.
Bush Vs. Zombies (youtube.com <- new window)
A World on Fire Status
Feeling the air in his lungs, hearing the footsteps around him, smelling the rot in the air, Andy wished he were dead, for the mind need only die once. Or so he hoped.
How long had he been on the floor? His forehead burned from where the bullet had a cut a narrow groove across the wide span of flesh. One inch to the left and he would have been one of the lucky ones – one of the ones who wouldn’t come back. As it was, he was trapped.
Other Zombie Project News
We’re Alive Scores One Million Downloads
KC Wayland and Shane Salk, co-creators and producers of the most excellent audio series We’re Alive, sent me a press release the other day which dropped my jaw to the floor, prompting … Read more »
Harrodsburg Zombie Walk
I tell ya – no matter how crappy the day – just seeing some pics from a local zombie walk will always produce a smile from me. In fact, just the … Read more »
Cinemassacre Visits Night of the Living Dead Cemetery
In the past few years, Cinemassacre has become a bit of magnet for all types of geeks – video game geeks, film geeks, and yes, even board game geeks. The site … Read more »
Eric Brown Intervews Tony Faville – Author of “Kings of the Dead”
Take a break from blogging and the whole world changes in but a blink. Last fall, I remember listening to a reading from Tony Faville’s self published book, “Kings of the Dead”. Six months later, it seems that Tony got his book picked up by Permuted Press and went on sale last week. Where the hell have I been?
Tony’s a pretty awesome guy. I discovered him when I was trolling through Twitter back in the day and decided to check out who George Romero followed. Turns out that Tony was at the top of his list, so I was like, Hell Bells, I’ll follow him too.
A little detour – I’m not a big fan of Twitter. It tends to get awfully noisy, awfully fast. There’s a crap load of self promotion mixed with daily inanities that can be a little nauseating. Mind you, I’m not opposed to self promotion – when you gotta get the word out, you gotta get the word out – it’s the d-bag self promotion that drives me to drink. Describing it is kind of like describing the smell of dog poop. You can’t really describe it, but you know it when you smell it. Couple that with the asinine behavior of a twelve year being recorded by a television camera and you can see why I have little stomach for it. Thankfully, there are some good pockets of Twitter and I’m happy to say Tony’s right in the center of one, hanging out with other zombie writers and bloggers.
Post Apocalyptic Six Flags
Zombies and apocalypses go together like peanut butter and chocolate. They’re just so damn good together that each one feels kind of empty on its own. When I bump into a zombie movie that does not have an apocalyptical element, I can’t help but to feel disappointed like I paid full price for half a movie. The same goes with straight old apocalyptic films. But mix them together just right with a dash nihilism, I’m all set for the rest of the day.
And then things get weird when I see pictures of a real life apocalypse. I’m always looking around the edges of the photo for our zombie friends. Alas, this set of pictures does not have zombies in it, but it does provide a glimpse of a world without people in it.
Pride, Prejudice, and Zombies Moving Forward
For those of you are waiting with baited breath for the forthcoming movie adaption of Pride, Prejudice, and Zombies, you’ll be happy to hear that the project has just confirmed its third director, Craig Gillespie. According to Comic Book Resources, Gillespie recently finished a remake of the eighties schlock vampire film, Fright Night. Whether this guy is a good fit is yet to be seen, but I guess we should be happy that something is happening.
I just have this bad feeling in my stomach that this film is going to be pretty terrible. I usually don’t get that stomach turning nausea, but this film seems to be eating people alive (har, har). I remember awhile back that there was great whoops of delight when Natalie Portman had agreed to star in it, but she seems to have gotten a bad feeling as well and dropped out of the production last year.
Funereal Home Advertises for The Walking Dead
In what can only be described as “you got to be kidding me”, an English funeral home managed to do two things at once. One side of the building provided assistance and planning for the death of a loved one. The other side promoted a show that gave instruction on what to do when that loved one has returned as a zombie. I’d say that’s one funeral home that has all the bases covered.
Evidently, the funeral home was farming out its ad placements through Clear Channel who filled the billboard space with the brainless efficiency of one who hates his job but has nothing better to do. Honestly, I think the home could have really capitalized on the placement by opening a gun shop on the other side of the home.
Minecraft – The Last Minecart
Let me just state for the record that Minecraft is pretty damn awesome. It’s an indie computer game developed by a dude in Sweden. There is no way to “win” the game. You start in a strange new world where you build things by day and hide from zombies, skeletons, and spiders by night. The world is massive and you can alter it in any way. It’s a virtually lego set with homicidal monsters included. A fan made this pretty awesome trailer you can view over here that gives you a little perspective of the game.
Well, in honor of Minecraft, a group of fans created this pretty kick ass video about a zombie apocalypse. I gotta say, besides the funny inside jokes about Minecraft, the video itself is really well made. It starts with a view of a post-apocalyptic looking city with the simple words, “13 Days After the Infection” and it gets better. Honestly, I would love to see this crew make a bona fide zombie film. Hell, even a buddy picture zombie film a la Zombieland except without the last half of the movie.
For those of you who haven’t played Minecraft, here’s a couple insights to the jokes but you might want to read them after you see it lest I ruin it for you.
Over Entusiastic Zombie Hunter Arrested
Yesterday, I posted a story about a woman who was admired by the police for her zombie hunting creativity. Today, I found another zombie hunter in the news only this time, he scared the crap out them. Zombies are no joke and you can never be too prepared, but this guy went a little overkill.
Honestly, I can go a little overkill myself. I actually thought about buying one of those car window breakers in case I accidentally drive into a lake (I’ve already flipped my car going 50mph). And whenever I go into the woods, I carry the equivalent of a hardware store on my back for day trips. But this guy puts me to shame.
Kalamazoo County Department of Zombie Removal
Emily Midling isn’t an ordinary woman. She owns a beat up ford explorer and she enjoys zombies movies so on a lark, she decided to detail her car, notifying all passerbys that she is an official member of the Kalamazoo Country Department of Zombie Removal. Now, whether this department survives the next round of budget cuts is yet to be determined, but one thing is for sure, it is pure awesome.
The thing I did enjoy about reading this article was the picture. Looking at it from a distance, my first thought was that she is holding a break action double barreled shotgun. It was when I was resizing the photo did I notice she is actually pumping gas. Granted, I’m going on four hours sleep right now so I’m seeing shotguns everywhere, but I like my original interpretation. She just needs to drape a bloody axe over her shoulder to make the picture complete.
Are you Ready for the Zombie Apocalypse?
Here’s a pretty funny article written by Pablo – founder of the Daily Pygmy. In it, Pablo reports that America is pumped for the upcoming zombie apocalypse. I don’t know about you, but I have the shotgun primed and ready to go. Can you imagine if the news accidentally did announce a zombie apocalypse? Half of our neighbors would probably be gunned down before the error would be corrected. Hell, if it worked for this guy …
In any case, the article is well written and pretty funny. I really liked this part here:
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Women Role Models in Zombie Films?
Does anyone still go to Gawker sites these days since they employed their post-apocalyptic redesign (i.e. they want to see what life looks like without any people around). I used to go to io9 daily, but these days, I can’t visit the site without my browser having a seizure. Every once and awhile, I’ll fire up Kotaku, if my browser survives the initial page load, I find that I’m unable to focus on any of the content because of the annoying ads that occasionally block the first story. So it’s no surprise that I missed this interesting rant. I’d found out about it by cruising the headlines over at The Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse. If you ever want breaking zombie news, that’s the site to visit.
In any case, Kelly Faircloth puts forth the argument that there just isn’t enough female driven zombie movies. While she does mention that there are strong female characters, often times, these women are shifted to the background so the men can take over. Here’s an interesting quote:
Movie Review: Survival of the Dead
Here’s an old movie review I wrote before my extended vacation. If you are interested in seeing Survival of the Dead, it’s currently streaming on Netflix with plenty of clips available on Hulu.
Some time ago in the quaint state of Pennsylvania, a group of young filmmakers had the idea of creating a new type of horror movie. They all pitched in five hundred bucks and formed a company called Latent Image. Their idea centered around flesh eating corpses. A young filmmaker named George Romero was tasked with writing and directing it. They shot the film in a little farmhouse and called it Night of the Flesh Eaters which was later named to Night of the Living Dead by the distributor. Little did Romero know that he and his friends would capture lightning in a bottle.
Years later with a dozen or so movies under his belt and a career that by all accounts was over (by Hollywood standards), George was brought back from the dead when zombies returned to the forefront of the public’s eye. There he went on a zombie making spree, shooting three movies in five years with the last film being Survival of the Dead. Alas, this movie should have remained dead like the walking antagonists.
Zombie Crisis: Prologue – Free for the iPhone
I was visiting the fine folks over at Destructoid.com when I saw a blog post about a free game for iTouch devices called Zombie Crisis: Prologue. While not the most original title, Zombie Crisis features hordes of flesh eating bad guys whom you must repel with knifes so prepare to flick that iPod like you have a booger at the end of your finger.
I would have given the game a spin on my own iTouch but alas, it is currently missing in action. Hopefully, I’ll be able to dig it up soon, but in the meantime, if any of you give the game a whirl, let me know if you think it’s worth the download. Here’s a snippet of what Destructoid thinks:
A World on Fire Book Update
It’s pretty hard to believe I’ve been working on this series of books on and off for the last three years. Only a few months after my daughter was born, I started the first draft of the first book. Now, she’s running around, talking a storm, and we’re already investigating some schools for her. And yet, the project continues.
The first half of the first book is pretty polished. Even though I have plans to rewrite some small sections, I believe it is production quality. The second half … not so much. The problem isn’t actually writing, but rewriting. It’s a long process. I reached a scene a few weeks ago and realized I was missing key information about one of the characters. So I had to stop writing to “meditate” on this character after which, I had to go back and start all over as my previous perception was incorrect. It’s all two steps forward, one step back. But at least, there is some forward progress.
A World on Fire Back from the Dead? April Fools!
Oh crap, wait … it’s no longer April 1st. I guess this means, A World on Fire is really back? Hells Bells yes.
On an aside … I will say one thing … April Fools is probably my least favorite “holiday” type thing. Where jokes were once constrained to the odd whoopie cushion in the boardroom prank, it’s gone global thanks to the web. I hate April Fools because I can be pretty gullible some times and the web just gets clogged with phony stories. I actually made it through the entire day without taking any bait until I strolled over to The Zed Word and learned of George Romero’s passing. My wife was talking to me when I was like “Holy Shit! Romero is dead!” while coffee shot out of my nose. It was when I was cleaning my snot caffeinated monitor that I realized I had been suckered. Damn you Zed Word :)
Dead Set = Zombie Reality TV
While watching reality TV shows like Big Brother do you ever say, “I wish Zombies would eat these idiots.” Well until the Zombie outbreak comes we have Dead Set, a Zombie TV mini series airing on The Independent Film Channel starting October 25 – 29 at midnight eastern and a Halloween marathon starting at 7:30 pm eastern.
This critically acclaimed program by English writer Charlie Brooker originally aired in the UK in 2008 and now for the first time can be seen in the U.S. on the IFC. Stephen King called it one of the best 2009 TV shows saying, “This send-up of reality TV is bloody, raunchy, grisly fun.” (EntertainmentWeekly.com)
So here is what it’s about:
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