The Big Picture: Schlocktober 2013: Bio Zombie
- Thread starter MovieBob
- Start date
Bleh, i kinda hate drama in front of the zombie apocalypse, like it's done in Walking dead so often; the world has ended and some of those people can not put their differences aside?
You can really stumble over you own background there.
Got this same experience with the "terra Nova" show. The scene when the main family just came into this new world and the son is bitching with his father about him having one more child then was allowed to in the place they where coming from.
And he brings that up in the middle of this encampment, this colony of humanity in another time that is surrounded by Dinosaurs.
Back to walking dead again, you'd think they would love to either found or find a settlement to join where they can somewhat relax behind a wall. I would have tried very hard to resolve any possible differences between my group and any other survivors. Instead they have to have stupid drama with each other over silly bullshit that is ultimately insubstantial because the world has ended.
You can really stumble over you own background there.
Got this same experience with the "terra Nova" show. The scene when the main family just came into this new world and the son is bitching with his father about him having one more child then was allowed to in the place they where coming from.
And he brings that up in the middle of this encampment, this colony of humanity in another time that is surrounded by Dinosaurs.
Back to walking dead again, you'd think they would love to either found or find a settlement to join where they can somewhat relax behind a wall. I would have tried very hard to resolve any possible differences between my group and any other survivors. Instead they have to have stupid drama with each other over silly bullshit that is ultimately insubstantial because the world has ended.
My favorite piece of "zombie media" has to be the video game Stubbs the Zombie. It has many a good laugh.
Wait, this guy did Ip Man? I love that film. May need to legitimately look into this film. Although that House of the Dead joke my have sold it alone.
Just make sure to aim for the head! I'm sorry, I couldn't resist.CrazyGirl17 said:
OT: As tired as I am of the whole zombie fad, this was a unique look at zombies from a different perspective. And the House of the Dead bit was just genius! Well done today, Bob.
Now it makes me wonder how The Walking Dead comic books lasted so long with that premise. I now the old saying "Conflict is the essence of drama", but not when it's meaningless.Madman123456 said:
captcha: john Steinbeck
I'm not sure if a writer of his caliber can save the show now.
VCDs were pretty big here in Mexico at the end of the 90's, early 2000's, when people still didn't know how to mass pirate DVDs. And I absolutely loved my GameBoy Camera, I still own it and a GameBoy Printer too! 
As for The Walking Dead... if it isn't TellTale's version, I absolutely and positively DON'T CARE.
As for The Walking Dead... if it isn't TellTale's version, I absolutely and positively DON'T CARE.
You've never heard of Hong Kong cinema, or the Hong Kong action movie genre? Hong Kong cinema is where it's at- especially in the 90's / amidst the UK/China government handover, where they were cranking out movies that UK censors no longer cared to police and the Chinese government hadn't yet begun to review. All the big name chinese martial arts actors you'd know from hollywood got their start there, and tend to gravitate back.themilo504 said:
A lot of good TV programming comes out of HK as well, such movies/serials from TVB.
Since I'm sick to death (no pun intended) of zombies I have no real need to add another one to the collection.
Or how about we get something completely different like giant man eating... trees.Pogilrup said:
Except that Dawn of the Dead is from 1978.Mr.Amakir said:
(and that was a great year to be alive in)
Well they did do "Day Of The Triffids" actually.canadamus_prime said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_of_the_Triffids_(film)
To be honest the entire thing is kind of popular, it's from a book written in the 1950s which saw a sequel in the 2000s called "Night Of The Triffids". It's also spawned two TV series, and a few radio plays.
The basic concept is that a meteor flies over earth and blinds anyone with the misfortune to be outside with their eyes exposed to it. Then giant man-eating plants start making snacks out of everyone. The origin of the plants varies, either being delivered by the comet itself, or a bio-weapon that escapes due to the crisis unleashed by the passing meteor.
It's classic enough where it's referenced in "The Rocky Horror Picture Show".
To be honest, as I've said before though I think the problem is less that any particular monster, including Zombies, is overdone, than the simple fact that people keep doing the same things with them over and over again. The bottom line is that movie makers are generally afraid to offend anyone so they choose to stay within safe territory and pretty much just produce minor variations on things that other people have already done and they know won't get too much in the way of actual backlash. In general horror is something that makes people uncomfortable, and not everyone can deal with, or enjoy, being made uncomfortable, even retroactively. This ultimately winds up putting real horror fans at odds with most other people (including, and perhaps especially, horror poseurs).
The last real revolution with horror was actually the so called "torture porn" genere which succeeded in taking people out of their comfort zone. It delighted horror fans, upset horror poseurs (who tried to talk around what it did by claiming it was gross and not scary), and got a lot of criticism from people who were uncomfortable with the entire thing which was the entire point. "Saw" the franchise which launched it went on to see like seven movies (I think it was) but like most things it was the imitators who never really "got it" and just started churning stuff out based on a formula, not wanting to mess with it, or push things to the point of potentially negative attention that might eclipse the big names, and well... the whole thing crashed.
The thing is that Zombie movies almost always wind up retreading the same ground which has already been done perfectly, so all you see are inferior copies of something that was once good. There are a lot of things that can still be done with "Zombies" as a concept and some good movies out there, but the problem is that so few creators want to get past the idea of having a story that is fundamentally about reprehensible people bringing doom upon themselves. You also see people wanting to expand the scope without doing the work needed to make it click. Something like "Walking Dead" will never be more than "okay" for example because it pretty much does the expected with the trappings but doesn't build enough of a world for them to make sense. For example even early on one has to wonder how exactly the military was overrun, the zombies as portrayed in that series couldn't have done it. How do Zombies exactly go about taking out a properly supported tank? (an abandoned/overrun tank being a key prop/scene point early on). Zombie concepts which have been better done are careful to avoid things like this, or to explain them as part of the concept in fairly believable (allowing for it being horror) fashion. A lot of horror creators learned early on that it's much easier to work conceptually with a smaller scale environment, having say an outbreak in a town, or monsters attacking an isolated cabin, rather than say over running the world. Especially seeing as the more over the top you get in terms of what the outbreak is doing globally, the harder it is to justify relatively normal people surviving (or turning things into an action fiasco by deciding Darwinism has already occurred and the only survivors are by definition abnormal buttkickers).
Oh and while I'm rambling, M. Night Shyamalan also did a killer tree movie called "The Happening" which met with much mockery. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Happening_(2008_film)