Fear The Walking Dead 1x01 memes...

Find more FTWD memes HERE. 

So we've finally had a look at what 'Fear The Walking Dead' is all about. When I first heard about the idea way back when I was a little wary of the idea, but having seen the opening episode, I must say I'm pleasantly surprised - and very much looking forward to the second episode.

Whether I end up doing memes for every episode (like I do with TWD) remains to be seen, but I had a couple of ideas that made me chuckle ... so here they are.

Click each image for FULL SIZE.

Click to Enlarge: If only...

Click "READ MORE" below for the rest of this week's memes...

The Wrestler...

I hadn't paid a great deal of attention to the run-up to this flick, but I was aware of it - I'd seen the hype getting built up, Rourke all over the interview circuit, awards talk and so on ... but it still wasn't quite on my radar until the lads and I needed something to go and see at the cinema (especially as one of our intended flicks to see is currently not available due to technical difficulties, and another has one measily showing at half nine, which wasn't do-able).

Despite the annoying fizzle from the half-buggered-out speaker to the mid-right in the somewhat pokey theatre the film showed in, it was a bloody great film. It really was.

Rourke has certainly never done better, and it is most definitely the victory flag planted atop the mountain of his career comeback which has been developing over the past few years. I've not really seen much of Rourke's pre-boxing phase career, but quickly noticed him in several post-boxing phase flicks - such as Spun, Once Upon A Time In Mexico and of course Sin City.

Having seen Aronofsky's Requiem For A Dream (excellent, but gruelling by the end, and the best anti-drugs movie that should be - but isn't - shown in schools), I had an idea of what to expect from The Wrestler. Indeed it's at times a dark film about missed opportunities, faded career hopes, dreams and everything in between. It's about lost family, lost connections and even about mortality and our bodies failing us when we need them most.

In a really quick summary, it's like Rocky Balboa meets Requiem For A Dream ... Requiem For Rocky Balboa then. There's more flair and a feel for the dramatic (in this case, the wrestling scenes), but this is probably the more realistic tale of an old war horse battling onwards despite being long past his prime.

Balboa was that 'one in a million' story ... The Wrestler is far more down-to-earth, and far more in touch with the reality of what becomes of every other person in that million who didn't make it, who didn't have a winner's story. It sounds depressing, I'm sure - but it works.

You root for Rourke's "Ram", you suffer with him as he struggles to keep himself going, as he desperately tries to reconnect with those he has left behind, or those he wants to join with to start afresh.

The ending - and don't worry, thar be nay spoilers ahead - is almost annoyingly open. Almost. You can make up your own ending, the post-script if you will, but on screen we're left with Ram doing what he does best - what defines him, what is his entire world.

Rocky Balboa certainly pushes the popular buttons and provides aspiration and hope, and is also a great film, while The Wrestler gives you both of those, but with a dose of reality check, and a lot more post-viewing food for thought. Both movies do what they do wonderfully, and indeed they both star two resurrected war horses hitting back triumphantly after troubles, strife and obscurities.

It's only mid-January, but already this is a strong contender for the best film of 2009 for me.

A recent spot of weird dreaming...

I've been known to have some really weird-arse dreams, and bearing in mind I once had a dream where I attended a news conferance held by my barber, in my high school hall (facing the opposite way to normal), about her going on holiday ... can women be classed as "barbers" or is that more a male label, like "actor" versus "actress" ... then all of a sudden we're in a sewer system just underneath the main hall with gerbil assassins trying to kill me as I surf a pepperoni pizza atop green, gooey water gloop which rushes through a system of toy fire stations from Ghostbusters (anyone remember those brilliant toys from the 1980s, swivelling fire pole and everything...brilliant)...so aye, I've had some corkingly odd dreams before...where the following two fit, by comparison, I certainly don't know.
Nature must have been calling because not being able to get into a toilet was a key theme...basically, I was some kind of agent - along the lines of Agent Mulder - so it's a bit X-Files, but less stoic...anyway, myself and my fellow agent are staying with some Indian family - because for some reason we're in India.

This family literally has about 100 kids - but oddly of all colours - and I just wanna use their bog, but there's a constant stream of kids flocking in and out constantly (as there's so many of them) trying to use it, there's no lock and the curtains for the windows have one of those pulley thingies you yank on, although you have to pull it for AGES to make it move a mere distance.

Ultimately I give up when a swarm of these various kids of this family swarm into the bathroom and scare me out so I suddenly end up on the outskirts of this town at the side of some dirt road with my agent partner investigating some sort of mass murder case - turns out the family we'd been staying with/are staying with are the murderers. So we freak out about that...but then all of a sudden we're sifting through various decomposing - and REALLY F*CKING GROSS - remains (severed hands mainly). Anyway, they're absolutely disgusting, they absolutely stink and they're all slimey and falling apart as I pick at them with tweezers until eventually I'm confronted with a picture list of all the body parts found and there's this one of a severed head with the face all mashed up like a rotten piece of fruit and at that point I start gagging in my dream and then snap awake where I'm also actually gagging, seriously just about to chuck up all over my bedroom wall, hahaha...fortunately I didn't, but how bloody weird.

Then I went back to sleep, concentrating hard on *NOT* thinking of that picture list of rotting body parts found in the town's outskirts, and end up having a new dream where I end up going to some hotel type building which I vaguely remember living at - but due to a car accident I don't even remember, it f*cked up my memory...I know I lived at this place, but have no recollection of it...so I'm there to see if they remember me or not and they seem to, but they're about ready to call up the psychiatric ward and get me thrown away...and this is where it gets really bizarre.

Now, this dream is set in a Miami type place, but in England - just as a side note of information. Anyway, the weird bit, I'm there at the reception with ... dun-dun-dun ... both an Alien and a Predator, but they aren't enemies, mainly because the Alien doesn't know the Predator also hunts his kind. We end up scarpering up the elevator shaft (me being pulled up by the Alien and the Predator) and we end up at this apartment that was apparently mine before this mystery accident...anyway, inside it's actually the Predator's apartment and having seen Predator 2 I know there's gonna be an Alien skull somewhere, so I'm running around trying to find it so I can cover it up, lest the Alien see it and go mental. There's a load of really bizarre skulls all over the walls and it looks like the Predator ship at the end of Predator 2...

And then I woke up...there was a bit more at the start of that second dream, but I forgot it...anyway, bloody weird dreams, eh?