Review: The Walking Dead, Episode 2.11

If they wanted us to receive the message "this is not the comics", then message received pretty loud and pretty freaking clear.

In the comics, our buddy Dale lives long after many others are gone. He lives to see plenty of death and destruction, including the amputation of his leg after a zombie bite and the amputation of his other leg at the hands of cannibals. But now, while still on the darned Greene farm, Dale has become a walker buffet. I can only assume that the show's producers wanted to keep things fresh and keep people guessing. Goal achieved. Of course, I did read this spoiler before watching tonight's episode. I really wanted it to be a lie. Damn you, internet.

Overall, this episode was pretty good, plenty of drama and tension. I even shed a few tears when Herschel handed over his watch to Glenn...I know, I'm a girl. My only complaint right now is that even I, the loyalest of loyal Walking Dead fans, have become a little frustrated with the pace. It's not that I mind things moving slowly; I don't. It's more that I am assuming there are at least three things (finding the prison, Shane dying, and Michonne showing up) that are likely to happen before the end of the season. That just seems like a heck of a lot to shove into two episodes, so I wish they'd get on with it if that's the end point for the season. If they save it all for the finale, then the finale better be three hours long.

Your thoughts on tonight's episode? What do you hope to see before the show goes on break? If Shane does in fact bite the dust, who do you think will pull the trigger? If you're itching for next week's episode already, check out the preview below.

News: Guest Announcements for Flashback Weekend

For Chicago horror lovers, Flashback Weekend is often a summer must. This convention has been around for a decade, and it delights in bringing some big names in horror to the Chicagoland area. This year's highlights for zombie lovers will be Ken Foree of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead. He also made a brief appearance in the 2004 version (you can check out my post on that here). I've met Mr. Foree during past conventions and can attest that he's a very chill dude. Additionally, and this is their headliner, the great John Carpenter will be present and signing autographs. If I have to list some of his movies for you, you're likely on the wrong blog, but my personal favorite (and I know it's not his best...but still) is Ghosts of Mars. I guess you could sort of say that's an "infected" movie.

There are plenty of other horror and zombie themed guest making an appearance at Flashback this year, so check out the convention's webpage here. Hopefully I'll see you there this summer! The convention will be held at the Crown Plaza in Rosemont on August 10th-12th. I'll post more information as it comes through.

News: Chicago Zombie Pub Crawl Registration is Now Open!

The Chicago Zombie Pub Crawl hits the streets of the windy city on April 28th, 2012. This is the fifth anniversary of the annual event, and with the rise in "zombie awareness" recently, it's likely to be even more jam packed than usual. The crawl will be from 2pm-8pm on that Saturday, and the idea is that you come in your finest zombie attire for a few drinks and a few bites. Andersonville is the place, and the poor, unsuspecting lesbians and hipsters will never know what hit them. So bring your ID and a thirst for the blood of the living!

If you register before March 15th, you will get to take advantage of a better price and some better offers. Before the fifteenth, tickets to the crawl are $20 and include a t-shirt, a glass, access to drink specials, and a few extra surprises! This rate will go up to $25 after March 15th, so get on it. Wondering where the money goes? Aside from the obvious operating fees of the event, The Chicago Zombie Pub Crawl is actually a fundraiser for a local theater company, so if you are a fan of eating the flesh of the living and encouraging the enrichment of arts and culture...come on out!

Click here for more information and to register!

Check out this video on last year's event if you're wondering what it's all about!

Review: Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave

I'm a big fan of mindless and crappy movies on SyFy Saturdays. The disaster movies are personally my favorite. When there was a zombie-themed Saturday a couple of weeks ago, I decided to DVR Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave for a future mindless day of R&R. That's how 1pm today found me on my couch with a bowl of frosted mini wheats and the TV remote.

This movie is bad, but I knew that would be the case going in. What I didn't know, however, is that it wasn't going to be like funny bad; it was just going to be sort of bad-bad. It had all the usual low budget identifiers: horrible acting, bad writing, random topless scenes. In addition to these symptoms, however, it just wasn't engaging. It was too silly and not in a good way. My personal favorite moment was when two frat zombies started talking: "Come on, Jimmy. We're frat brothers. We share everything." "Including internal organs!". I almost turned it off right there. Zombies should never, ever speak...not even to say "brainssss".

I'm not saying this flick doesn't have some of the fun of a bad, campy movie (it certainly does), but at times it crosses the line into just plain stupid and honestly kind of boring. My last negative comment would be that some of the "conceptual" stuff was super dumb or irritating. For example, one of the zombies is basically just a corpse who spends the last 20 minutes trying to hitchhike to the rave. Ridiculous and not funny. But worse than that was the choice to shoot an entire scene with a strobe light. Now that was just flat out irritating.

On a positive note, the zombie makeup was very nice, and the blood effects were usually pretty realistic looking and gross. My personal favorite was when a zombie bit a guy's cornrow off of his head. Delicious. While the dialogue and acting were horrible, the plot was at least somewhat original (the idea of idiot teenagers accidentally selling a rave drug that turns people into zombies), and it followed the plot as logically as it possibly could have. The two INTERPOL agents were kind of funny, but also just kind of randomly casted.

Overall, it was pretty much the usual SyFy Saturday offering. Maybe a smidgen worse. There are much better campy zombie movies...but I would suppose there are also probably worse ones out there. Not many, but some. I'd say skip it, really...unless you're as bored and lazy as I am.

News: The Governor Has Arrived...and maybe Michonne?

Walking Dead, now into the second half of its second season, has begun casting announcements for season three with one of my favorites from the comics--The Governor (aka: Phillip Blake). The Walking Dead website announced today that they have cast David Morrissey as the infamous villain, and even though I am not at all familiar with his work, I have ultimate faith in the producers of this show.

Fan sites and other not as trustworthy news sources have been leaking another potential casting decision that I've, personally, been looking forward to hearing about...namely, which lucky lady will get to play Michonne, the samurai sword wielding lawyer turned bad ass. Rumors are currently reporting that Michonne will be played by Rutina Wesley of True Blood fame. While she's a little young for the role as it's written in the comics, I hear that True Blood is good and she does look the part. Can't wait until an official announcement though!

Review: The Dead

Ever since I saw the preview last year, I've been dying to get my hands on the British indie flick--The Dead. Unfortunately, it wasn't being released for the states until Valentine's Day, but fortunately I have a husband who truly understands what makes me tick...and so guess what I got for Valentine's Day? I'll give you a hint; it wasn't chocolates.

The DVD actually ended up arriving a few days after the release date, but the minute it came in the mail I made my husband watch the whole thing with me over dinner. First note? This is not an "over dinner" movie. I have a pretty thick skin, but some of the images here were super gory (and therefore also super awesome). Check out this movie if you want to see a few cars run over zombies, zombies dining on the flesh of the living, bones sticking out of skin, and about a million disembodied limbs adorning the set. Everything looks really gross and really real; clearly they were doing this the old fashioned way.

Aside from the well done gore and effects, this movie was successful in its ability to creep you the heck out. I was sure that I'd have nightmares (but I didn't), and I had a number of audible gasps and shrieks. Also on a positive note, the movie takes on an appropriately bleak tone throughout. They've picked a stark and frightening...and yet hauntingly beautiful...background that suits the tone of the piece well. As a viewer, you can feel the oppressive emptiness and futility of the situation. They aren't safe, not even for a moment, and neither are you.

Overall I liked this flick, but it does have a few larger flaws that are certainly worth noting. The acting...especially the acting by Lieutenant Brian Murphy, played by Rob Freeman. Freeman emoted visually very well, but the directors should have cut every single one of his lines. Some of his line readings were literally laughable, which is such a shame. There have to be better actors out there, even for a small budget piece. I mean I'm watching crappy SyFy channel movies right now and the acting is better in most of those. Sgt. Daniel Dembele (Prince David Oseia) is a little better. Not great, but he makes the stoniness of his character a little more believable and a little less Acting 101. The good thing though is that the dialogue in the movie is less than abundant. It's largely a flick about moving through space and trying to outrun the inevitable, and that apparently just doesn't involve a lot of chit chat. So if the dialogue starts to bother you, just remember that each scene of dialogue will be followed by at least five minutes of bleak visuals and a pretty darn nice score.

The only other complaint I'll make is about a cut away scene that happens at the climax of the film. The conversation it involves had to happen from a plot point of view, but I'm still not sure why we needed to see the speaker on the other end of the radio. All of a sudden the effects looked extremely cheap and the quality of the picture instantly dropped like 50%. Why couldn't the conversation happen in voice over? Changing locations like that was generally unnecessary and robbed the ending of some of the punch it deserved.

But it's definitely worth a watch. I'll watch it again. If nothing else, I have to commend this film for its grittiness and tone. It is truly a zombie film for old fans of the genre, with a simple storyline and good, old-fashioned shuffling ghouls (as opposed to those new-fangled running ones). And if none of this grabs you (or you need a selling point to make your girlfriend watch it), Prince David Oseia is hot...like really hot...and there's a sort of unnecessary scene with him shirtless at a water pump...so there's that.

Review: Can You Survive the Zombie Apocalypse by Max Brallier

As a child of the 80s and 90s, I read my fair share of choose your own adventure novels. As a geeky child of the 80s and 90s, I used Hyperstudio to write, illustrate and program my own choose your own adventure. Wow. It's really a wonder anyone ever chose to marry me.

Anyway, when I heard there was a new novel out that was a choose your own adventure novel for adults AND it had to do with the zombie apocalypse? I had to order it. So Friday, during a very boring and long day of jury selection (I was sent home eventually...thank goodness), I chose my own zombie adventure...over and over and over again.

The novel has its positives and negatives (what book doesn't?), but I'd say my overall take was that it was definitely worth the $10.88 I paid for it. I spent virtually 7-8 hours reading it and I still didn't complete all of their paths. While it's no piece of prize-worthy literature, it is a lot of fun. It would be the perfect read for a vacation or a particularly boring professional development day.

At first, the character really irritated me. The novel claims to alleviate all of the "I would never have made that dumb mistake!" of traditional zombie literature, but it often doesn't because the character is still kind of an idiot. For example, when his cell phone rings and it's his mom, you can either chose to ignore it and sit in the house drinking beers or call her back (but then you end up having to follow her directions...who would do that?). Still, after four hours of reading, the protagonist grew on me a little bit more. They make him vague enough that you can see yourself in some parts of him, even if you think you'd do a better job. I guess I also get a little frustrated that women are never the narrators in choose your own adventure novels, but I guess that's not really the majority of the market. I'm used to it; I used to get the boy's happy meal as a kid.

When it comes to the choices you get to make, this novel is hot and cold. Sometimes the choices you get to make are the most important ones and the options are all logical, but sometimes the choices are relatively mundane when compared to the ones that the novel makes for you, but I accept that a writer can't write a path for every single decision. They'd never end up finishing that million page masterpiece.

Otherwise, the plot is engaging and fairly realistic. It's infused with "geek" at every turn, which is usually endearing, but it very occasionally gets to be too much. The description of a zombie battle at the New York Comic Con is funny. The author literally brings in every cosplay persona they could dream up, but the joke gets a little stale somewhere between Sonic the Hedgehog and Mr. T. Still, it's nice to know that it's a novel for geeks and by a geek, not just some failing writer hoping to capitalize on the zombie fad.

Lastly, the writing is about what you would expect from a choose your own adventure. It's publishable, but mostly concerned with action and plot rather than description. Don't come to it expecting a lot of visual detail or sophisticated description. The author writes like people talk, which I guess is good, but sometimes the poor usage of the English language and disregard for punctuation rules gnawed at me like a hungry walker. However, I will reiterate that that's clearly not the function of this novel. It's there to entertain, and entertain it does. If you're a resident of NYC (which I'm not), you'll be especially delighted by all the local references...which I had to look up.

Overall, I thank Max Brallier for giving me something to make a day at the courthouse more palatable. It was funny (especially the ending...you'll know which one I mean), and it did provide the reader with plenty of different paths and endings for hours of fun. So will you live or will you fall to the mercy of the flesh-eating ghouls? Check out Max Brallier's Can You Survive the Zombie Apocalypse to find out!