Saw WARM BODIES yesterday...

I can't decide if Warm Bodies is a zombie movie with romance and comedy or if it's a romantic comedy with zombies. Either way, I enjoyed it.

(Yeah I'm making two posts in a row about zombies. I'll refrain from overkill by stating here that we also saw the trailer for World War Z and it looked much better than that ad that ran during the Super Bowl"big game".)

Warm Bodies is something I haven't been familiar with before: a zombie movie from the zombie's point of view. R (played by Nicholas Hoult) is a recently undead who wanders around the ruined shell of an airport. The shambling corpses are split into two varieties: the "regular" zombies who continue to shuffle along in mimicry of the patterns of their former lives. And then there are "bonies": those zombies whose decomposition has brought them too far gone to be helped. And all the while we're getting a running commentary of monologue from R courtesy of voice-over. Sorta like the flip-side of the Zombieland coin.

R's "life" is in the shadow of an armed enclave of normal humans (led and controlled with an iron hand by John Malkovich) which sends scouting parties out on a regular basis to find food, medicine and ammo. Unfortunately one one such mission a party is attacked and R encounters Julie (Teresa Palmer), the bossman's daughter.

What ensues is like a classic age-old tale of star-crossed lovers. Except she's young and smart and beautiful and he's... dead.

I know. It sounds like twelve degrees of total hokey. And to be honest I wasn't too crazy about Warm Bodies when I heard about its premise. But having seen it, I cannot but confess that it was a cute little movie and quite worth spending an afternoon watching (especially with a girlfriend). In a genre that has become stretched thin and tired and oh so terribly anemic, Warm Bodies is a refreshing breeze that succeeds admirably.

And the zombie genre could learn something from it, too!

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How George Washington nearly became our first zombie President

Immediately following his death in 1799 at the age of 67, a plan was proposed to reanimate the corpse of George Washington.

The strange but true tale of raising up the first President of the United States as one of the undead is found on IO9.com's Secret History feature. It's long been known that Washington likely died from waaaay too much bleeding at the hands of physicians who were trying to treat the great man's case of sore throat. Back in the day it was prevailing wisdom that one of the primary causes of illness was "bad blood". Get a flu or fever or something and the village doctor would come over with his bloodlettin' instruments (or in some cases, live leeches) and commence to draining the precious red vino of life from your veins. And that's what happened to poor George, who probably would have survived the sore throat if left to his own devices.

Anyhoo, Washington's body was put on ice until time to bury him (he'd instructed that to wait a few days so he wouldn't be prematurely buried). And that's when William Thornton comes into the story. The designer of the United States Capitol building had the radical idea of thawing Washington's corpse with blankets, then pumping the lungs full of air and giving it a transfusion of lamb's blood (thought at the time to have magical reanimation powers). This would, theoretically, bring George Washington back to life.

Washington's family didn't give Thornton a chance to attempt his experiment. Maybe it was for the best.

(Living or dead or undead, George Washington still has more leadership and intelligence than everyone working in the city bearing his name put together.)

Mash down here for more about the saga of Zombie George Washington.

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Review of THE WALKING DEAD: The Complete First Season Blu-ray

When its first season aired this past fall I didn't write anything about AMC's mega-hit series The Walking Dead. Heck, I wasn't writing about much of anything at the time. But I had heard only good things about the show (adapted from the Dark Horse Comics graphic novel series of the same name) and tuned in to watch the premiere episode.

And like so many others, I got hooked on The Walking Dead.

This is not a story about a zombie apocalypse. Personally, I'm sick and TIRED of the whole "zombie genre". It's been done too much in recent years. Now I loved the movie Zombieland, because in my mind that was more of a comedy with some legitimate undertones of human drama. I can watch that movie a dozen times and not get bored with it.

And that's how I am with The Walking Dead. This is a series about real people and the depths and contradictions of human nature. It also happens to boast what might be the best use of the undead in pop culture history: the zombies in The Walking Dead are arguably the most gruesome creatures to ever hit television. But the zombies are merely the catalyst accelerating the foibles and weaknesses of its very personable cast of characters. Watching this show, it's very easy to empathize with these people (I myself am a huge fan of Jeffrey DeMunn's character Dale, the older dude who drives the RV). Heck, I was even on the verge of tears at the beginning of the third episode, "Tell It To The Frogs", gazing at Merle and how pitiful he had become.

The second season won't begin until this coming October but in the meantime, The Walking Dead: The Complete First Season just hit the streets on Blu-ray and DVD this past week... and it is chock full of rotting goodness! That is on top of the gloriously gruesomely amazing picture quality. I don't get AMC in high-definition, so I had to watch the first run of The Walking Dead in standard definition. Getting to see it in 1080P on Blu-ray was like an entirely new experience, and I picked out details that I hadn't noticed before (why does it disturb me so much that the little zombie girl in the very first minutes of the show is wearing braces?). The sound quality is also exceptional: the destruction of the Center for Disease Control at the end of the season finale literally shook a Darth Sidious action figure from his standing pose on my desk.

The Blu-ray of The Walking Dead Season 1 comes on two discs. Those include all six episodes of the first season, along with a considerable amount of special features. A half-hour long documentary gives a behind-the-scenes look at production of The Walking Dead. Each episode is also given a five-minute long mini-feature about that chapter's characters, themes, and place in the story. "On Set with Robert Kirkman" follows the creator of The Walking Dead comic series as he strolls around where the first scene of "Days Gone By" is being filmed. "Bicycle Girl" reveals what it took to bring the legless, hideous zombie woman in the series premiere to "life". For those who want to go against the living two special features stand out: "Zombie School" (chronicling how extras were taught how to walk and talk zombie-ish) and a fairly extended piece demonstrating how anyone can look like a zombie with common household items like gelatin and oatmeal. Jeffrey DeMunn takes us "Inside Dale's RV": the set piece that fast became synonymous with The Walking Dead's sense of human community. "Hanging With Steven Yuen" is the actor who plays Glenn giving a tour of the first campsite. But the most startling extra feature by far might be "On Set with Andrew Lincoln", focusing on the actor who plays main character Rick Grimes. I didn't know until watching this that Lincoln is British who normally speaks with a remarkable English accent. That he is able to turn on that Southern accent for his characer in The Walking Dead... it's just totally wild! Lennie James, the actor who plays Morgan (who found Rick after his escape from the hospital) is also British, and if you only watched the show you might have been none the wiser.

The Walking Dead is the one show on right now that I'm investing my time to watch and enjoy. And though Season 1 was all too short (but happily Season 2 is already slated for thirteen episodes) I will be enjoying even these few chapters on Blu-ray until this coming fall arrives. Highly recommended, even if you haven't seen the show during its run on AMC yet.

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5 real diseases that could turn you into a zombie

But none of them will turn you into THAT kind of a zombie, thankfully! And the image on the right is the first pic to come from The Walking Dead, an upcoming horror series on AMC helmed by director Frank Darabont (he made The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile so he probably knows what he's doing...)

But anyhoo, io9.com has put together a list of five real-life maladies that could make you something like an undead horror. You'll have a whole new appreciation for rabies shots after you read this, along with knowing more about leprosy and necrosis than you probably ever wanted to have floating around your gray matter.

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US court ruling gives zombies free speech rights

Constitutional rights are no longer applicable only to living citizens, but to the undead ones as well.

Here's the story from Metro.co.uk...

US court rules 'Zombies have free speech rights'

A court has allowed a group of protesters dressed as zombies to continue with a lawsuit against police who arrested them for disorderly conduct.

The appeal court overturned a previous finding that the group had correctly been arrested over a 2006 protest in a shopping centre.

The group had been wearing makeup designed to make them look like and extra in a horror flick, with white faces, fake blood and black circles round their eyes.

They then proceeded to stagger round the shops, urging consumers to "get your brains here".

They also carried audio equipment, which police described as "simulated weapons of mass destruction", even though they were mobile phones.

The appeals court ruled that the police had no reason to imprison the protesters simply for "dressing as zombies, and walking erratically in downtown Minneapolis."

Thankfully, everyone else still has our Second Amendment rights and will be ready to employ it when the inevitable zombie apocalypse descends upon us :-P

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U.S. military developing zombie pigs

Those mad scientists at DARPA (who previously brought us such curiosities as the Internet) are now actively engaged in research to produce semi-undead swine.

Yeah you read that right: the Pentagon is working on zombie pigs now.

Before you reach for the nearest shotgun or chainsaw though, you should know that there's some practical applications being sought from this. The problem is severe injuries of military personnel in combat situations: massive blood loss from wounds that without immediate (and often nearly impossible) treatment leads to death or debilitating lifelong trauma that may stand a chance of being averted. So the eggheads at DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) are experimenting to see if a state of hibernation can be achieved in pigs, similar to squirrels and other mammals. If it can be made to work in pigs, humans could be the next step. Artificially slowing down brain and heart functions long enough to get an injured soldier to proper treatment could save many more lives from the battlefield.

'Course, another idea to drastically lower the number of combat deaths and injuries is to stop waging wars with no damn purpose or definite goal! But, that's just me...

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It's an odd commentary on our culture...

...when all the literature on the front shelves of the bookstores is about either vampires, zombies, or Sarah Palin.

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Mathematicians model zombie attack and survival odds

"Hit hard and hit often." That's the conclusion reached by a group of Canadian mathematicians who have produced a model of epidemic rates of a hypothetical zombie attack and how one might be survived.

According to the researchers, an infestation in a city of 500,000 people would find the living outnumbered by the undead within three days. However, a strategy of "impulsive eradication" adopted early enough would be adequate to deal with the crisis.

It is good to know such things, yes?

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It's Han Solo and Chewbacca versus zombies!

Check out this gnarly promotional art for Joe Schreiber's upcoming Star Wars horror novel Death Troopers:

Hey, if we can have Pride and Prejudice and Zombies on the bookstore shelves, why not everyone's favorite space smuggling duo against the undead? I've heard a lot of fans are jazzed about this novel: the first serious foray that the saga has taken into the horror genre.

Death Troopers arrives this October 13th.

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Quentin Campbell fights the Zombies!!!

So a few days ago en route to see Star Trek at the Wachovia IMAX in Raleigh, good friend/fellow blogger Phillip Arthur and I stopped by HyperMind in Burlington, 'cuz Phillip is a fellow geek in good standing and I thought he'd get a kick out of this place, and we had plenty of time before the 10 p.m. showing (we also hooked up with Chad Austin, who really needs to update his blog sometime 'specially since he now has only 26 days left as a free man before taking the vows). But anyway...

While we were in HyperMind, I spotted this game box and took a picture of it with my new cellphone. It's something called Zombies!!!, the "Director's Cut" version. And I've been told that it's a pretty popular tile-based strategy game. But what caught my eye was the chainsaw-wielding protagonist fighting off the undead on the front of the box.

I can't figure out if that's supposed to be Quentin Tarantino or Bruce Campbell.

Just for fun I took it around the store and showed it to some more people. The opinions were pretty evenly split: about the same number of people thought it was Bruce Campbell as thought it was Quentin Tarantino.

What do you think? If you need a better look aim your sights at the Zombies!!! entry on BoardGameGeek.

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