Cut to Black Edition: The Walking Dead 6x16 Memes...

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Well, that was tense! Now it's a looooong old wait until October!


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Click to Enlarge: Pride before the fall, Rick...

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Wake Up and Smell the Crazy Edition: The Walking Dead 4x10 Memes...

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Two episodes deep into the back-half of season four now, and it's been a sucky time in the woods for the survivors this week - shake off Lizzie's sheer creepiness with a six pack of memes...

Click to Enlarge: You should see her dream journal...

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Triple Bill Mini (and Cine) Musings: The Inexplicable, the Okay, and the Horrible...

Resident Evil Afterlife:
N.B. Sarcastic spoiling of the entire movie follows...

The fourth instalment in the inexplicable videogame-to-movie adaptation franchise (again written and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson) kicks off with a very stylish, but mostly unintelligible attack - by a bunch of cloned Alices - on yet another impossibly labrynthine underground Umbrella Corporation complex. Then Mrs W.S. Anderson is flying around in a plane that is seemingly fuelled by magic in search of the paradise promised in the third movie (which was decidedly indebted to George A. Romero's far superior Day of the Dead). It's nowhere to be found, so her and Ali Larter sod off in their magic plane and end up landing on the roof of what looks like a hotel casino, but which is apparently a high-rise prison (eh?!).

We're introduced to 1) Asshole Producer, 2) Tough & Buff Black Guy with Incredibly Precise Facial Hair, 3) Random Asian, 4) Deluded Brunette Who Happens to be Good at Swimming, 5) Some Guy Called Angel or Whatever ... oh, and Wentworth Miller ... who's imprisoned, but he knows a way out (good thing he had all that Prison Break training, isn't it?) Then some zombies with weird mouths turn up, as well as some giant sack-headed creature with a massive axe/hammer (who's presumably from one of the games, but who is totally unexplained in this movie), and so a bunch of action happens - in slow motion - as Anderson makes full use of the 3D cameras (although I was watching it in 2D on my telly).

Fast forward, a bunch of cannon fodder has been gotten out of the way, and now we're on a boat. Then a bunch of nonsensical "muahahaha, we're an evil corporation" gibberish happens - and looks all shiny and slow-motioned and 3D in the process - and then the fifth inexplicable movie is set-up and we all fall down. It's a pretty face, with a handful of cool zombie apocalypse shots, but the plot makes little-to-no-sense - so you don't give a bollocks about anything that's going on. It's a movie for 13 year old boys who spend all their time testing the theory of "if you don't stop, you'll go blind" while intermittently rage-quitting from Call of Duty death match marathons.


Skateland:
Adventureland was a coming-of-age drama set in the 1980s starring one of the girls from Twilight (Kristen Stewart). Skateland is a coming-of-age drama, with a rather similar title, set in the 1980s starring one of the girls from Twilight (Ashley Greene) ... and it was also made in 2009, the same year as the pitch-perfect, involving and justifiably nostalgic Adventureland.

Skateland, on the other hand, expects our sympathies immediately - launching straight into nostalgia without having earned the right. We don't know who these characters are, nor what their relationships really are for the most part, and we don't know what the timescale of the entire movie is. We're not brought along for the ride from the get-go, so we spend the rest of the movie playing catch-up ... it's like being on the outside of a really good joke being told by another group over there somewhere, or being told a nostalgic story of an event you missed - perhaps you had to be there, eh? Suffice to say, it's a bit confusing, and Shiloh Fernandez's confused slacker teen comes off more as a lazy jerk, who's occasionally a bit-of-a-dick, than the identifiable, self-concious, kid-in-the-background played by Jesse Eisenberg in Adventureland. Indeed, Fernandez (also seen in DeadGirl) - half of the time - has this odd smirk on his face that just makes him seem like, to quote Scott Pilgrim, a "cocky cock".

There's some lovely visual moments and a great soundtrack, but the heart of the movie is lost for the most part thanks to confused plotting which lacks focus. If you want a coming-of-age drama (with a bit of comedy thrown in for good measure) that's set in the 1980s, then go directly to Adventureland, which is a wonderful film. Skateland on the otherhand, is sadly just okay.


Horrible Bosses:
While Mark Kermode (my film critic of choice) went off on a tangent by having a whinge about Jennifer Aniston being too fit for her role as a female dentist/sexual predator (summed up as "phwoar, Jennifer Aniston, phwoar, hey?") - I'd only half agree. While yes, you could have played it more dangerously as the dentist being a bit of an old boiler, on the other hand part of the joke is that the other two males from the central trio of protagonists (Nick and Kurt) cannot understand why their friend (Dale) doesn't like being felt up by a hot dentist. Indeed - Jennifer Aniston ... phwoar, hey?! Speaking of which - it's good to see Aniston in a more daring role that's actually a bit different, and in a movie that isn't utter naffness like The Bounty Hunter.

Anyway - three guys (including the ever-reliable Jason Bateman) find themselves in the employ of three horrible bosses, and (as you'll have surmised from the trailer) they decide to kill off each other's bosses. Suffice to say, things don't go exactly according to plan, as they bumble their way through attempts to 'gather intel'. It's not a comedy classic, but it's a good time nonetheless (the audience in the cinema where we saw it would have to agree), helped along by a dirty mind, solid central casting, and a strong core idea - even if the middle portion somewhat loses the spark before rallying itself for a satisfying sign-off.

Dead Snow, 2009 offerings, and the running zombie "hook"...

2009 has been a slightly disappointing year for movies ... there's been plenty of hype surrounding certain movies (T4, Transformers 2 etc), but there's not been an awful lot of jaw-dropping awesome sauce to spare. Not like last year which had the jaw-dropping action extravaganza of Rambo, the super-hero superbness of The Dark Knight, and the animated perfection of WALL.E to name but three of my absolute favourites of 2008.

To get to September and to have only just gotten my Top 5 of 2009 is quite something. I'd easily achieved that a good couple of months earlier in 2008 ... so, the top five thus far are:

The Wrestler
Crank 2: High Voltage
Drag Me To Hell
Inglourious Basterds
District 9

I will add that I'm yet to see Moon, I never got a chance to see it in the cinema unfortunately - but the DVD is pre-ordered, oh yes, so I can see that fighting it out for a space in the top five. Nor have I yet seen Let The Right One In ... so I guess there's always room for improving my extended outlook on 2009's cine-offerings.

Quite easily though, I have at least my #6 - Dead Snow - a bloody entertaining Norwegian horror movie that you simply can't not love for two simple reasons.

1) The tagline is "Ein! Zwei! Die!".
2) It's got zombie Nazis in it.

To be honest, if you've got zombie Nazis, you're onto a winner - and you can pretty much do whatever the hell you want. Along with the two Deadlands movies, and Charlie Brooker's TV series Dead Set, Dead Snow now joins the limited ranks of "running zombie movies I'm totally cool with" ... a list that will most likely grow one larger when I get to see Zombieland (which is already pretty much off the running zombie hook thanks to having Woody Harrelson in it, as well as the notion of "zombie kill of the week" - illustrated by an old lady luring a zombie into a doorway so she can drop a piano on it's head).

Back to Dead Snow however and, put simply, it's everything you'd hoped it would be.

Heavily indebted to Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead, and very much within a "the gore the merrier" school of thought, the set-up is simple. A bunch of medical students head off to a remote cabin in the snowy Norwegian mountains, and while there they become aware of a local legend about a group of gold-obsessed Nazis who were chased out of town by the locals.

Obviously, as you'll have long since known about, said Nazis are very much still out and about - as zombie Nazis.

The pace is a tad on the slow side for the first 40 minutes, with only the odd punctuation of horror - but this is very much how The Evil Dead went too. Admittedly I was fearing it wouldn't live up to the hype ... but at that very moment, the zombie Nazi action kicked off for good. Like many horror flicks, such as The Evil Dead, the build up is gradual while the pay-off is constant and seriously gory.

Shotguns, hammers, axes, chainsaws and trees - they're all used to dispatch the goose-stepping undead in gleefully OTT fashion. If you don't cackle with laughter and let slip the odd, impressed "nice!!!", then you're as dead inside as the purveyors of this zombie holocaust ... ... perhaps one pun too far, but I was mostly going for a play on the title of the movie by the same name (aka Dr. Butcher M.D.)

Anyway - is it fun? Hell yes. The only one downside is that there is no dubbed version on the DVD, which considering it's a simple tastes horror hellride, would allow those who don't fancy reading a horror movie the opportunity to just lie back and enjoy ... even still, once the real meat and potatoes that the trailer promises kicks off (in spades) it's just all-out action.

Like I said earlier - put simply - this is a movie that has zombie Nazis in it ... if you don't already have a copy of this in your zombie-loving paws right now, then what the fuck are you still doing reading this? Go! Go buy it now!

Hush...

There have been a series of low budget British indie horror flicks coming out in recent years, some very much on the indie end (such as the grim Mum & Dad - made for £100,000) and others on the bigger end of the spectrum (such as Jake West's first big calling card - Doghouse - which followed on from his other, more indie projects such as the rather enjoyable Evil Aliens).

Somewhere in the middle and here we are with Hush - a road-horror-movie in the tradition of The Hitcher or Road Games, but taking place at night on and around the rain-soaked M1 motorway and its various service stations along the way.

While the opening ten minutes that introduce you to the lead characters and their faltering relationship can at times feel a bit clunky in the dialogue and delivery side of things, the atmosphere makes up for it. A near-empty motorway, a car meandering its way through the lashing rain, and a sinister-but-average-looking lorry up ahead.

Considering the indie budget, the atmosphere afforded through the crew's dedication (lots of consecutive night shoots, a lot of rain to be manufactured) really helps spur the film along - especially when the plot takes a more sinister turn when leading man Zakes catches a brief glimpse of a naked and caged girl in the back of the aforementioned lorry.

From this point on, and with the relationship establishing stuff gotten out of the way, the film really gets into its groove and becomes quite an effective low-fi cat & mouse chase flick. Pleasingly there are a few little twists dotted throughout that really keep you guessing, and on the back foot throughout most of the flick. All-too-easily this movie could have ended up as entirely predictable, but these few turns - as well as the previously adored atmosphere - manage to keep the plot fresh enough to keep you going through the not-too-short-not-too-long running time.

There are a couple of obvious moments, where you can see what's going to happen from a mile off, but it's still bloody good fun regardless.

I wasn't necessarily expecting great things from Hush, so I was pleasantly surprised to find more than I was hoping to. A very solid debut from Tonderai, and a really enjoyable British indie, which - on a final note - has further inspired me, as a fellow filmmaker looking for a way to get my boot wedged in the door.

Doghouse...

June's double-flick cine-trip's second movie kicked the ass of the last 'second in a day' movie we saw at the cinema (which was the utterly pish Observe & Report) - plus we'd had Pizza Hut between screenings, so my gut and blood sugar was thoroughly happy after an ice-cold Pepsi and a delicious individual-size (i.e. the literally perfect portion) Meat Feast pan-pizza ... it makes me want one right now just talking about, so I'd better shut up and start blog-juicing about Doghouse!

Was it ever going to be Shaun of the Dead? No it wasn't, and neither was Lesbian Vampire Killers, but that's not the point, and when you think about it for a moment, it's not even a fair target to aspire to. Shaun of the Dead was simply too good to be beaten.

Shaun of the Dead "ish" or "like" perhaps - as in, it's a "British horror comedy".

It'd be far more worthwhile to compare LVK and Doghouse - so which one wins out of the two (both released this year) - Doghouse wins. It's got a far more consistent style than LVK, it has more gore, it's funnier, and it's better constructed.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Lesbian Vampire Killers, but it generally felt a bit inconsistent and rushed, and then it all kind of fell apart towards the end. Doghouse on the other hand sticks to its guns, and provides the viewer with a greater sense of consistency from start to finish. You're not rushed into things - you get the required set-up time - but you're not left checking your watch either.

I rather enjoyed Jake West's previous flick Evil Aliens, so I'm really glad to see he's getting to play with a bigger budget and bigger names. Doghouse (adapted from a cult comic) is a horror film for horror fans, it's for the 'nerds' in the crowd, the sort of person who relishes in the gloopy gore of The Evil Dead ... primarily at least. It plays well to those not versed in the world of Sam Raimi before Spider-Man or the 1990s, or 'pre-Rings' Peter Jackson, but it certainly helps if you're a lover of Sam Raimi's madcap horror stylings.

Doghouse has a better-than-average bucket of gore to chuck around (although a few more stand-out gore-gags like in Evil Aliens would have been welcomed by the Evil Dead lovers in the audience), Danny Dyer's 'geezer schtick' doesn't wear thin, and the general feel of utter daftness was a real pleasure to watch.

It doesn't dawdle - which was ideal for a second-screening on a double-dip trip to the cinema like we were doing at the time - and, put simply, it's a good fun slab of Grindhouse-ish exploitation horror comedy. Buckets of fun - so here's hoping that it gets a spiffing treatment on DVD for the genre fans to lap up.

Drag Me To Hell...

Sam Raimi's return to horror - it's about time (not that I haven't loved the Spider-Man flicks, or superb films like A Simple Plan). The Evil Dead is one of my favourite all-time movies, and is one of my enduring inspirations for my own filmmaking, so I was cautiously optimistic about Drag Me To Hell.

I have to say I was a bit "dude, lame..." when I heard it was going to be a PG-13 in America, but fortunately that equated to a softer 15 here in the UK ... but I needn't have worried, because in this particular case, the film worked outside of the rating. Actually, it felt a bit hardcore for a PG-13 ... it felt ideal at a 15 I though.

As it was my birthday weekend, I managed to convince my usual troupe of cinema goers to join me in seeing this movie (one of the group is an avowed anti-horror fan - he just doesn't like it). Two of the other lads were a bit in-between about it going in, and one (plus myself) was all up-for-it.

By the time we came out, everybody had had a bloody good time - heck, the entire audience had had an absolute blast (and there was quite a number in the cinema too). Everybody jumped in unison, or went "oooh, ewwww, urrgghh!" at the right moment, and there were even a few hushes shrieks of sustained terror from some of the ladies in the audience (clearly there on a date with their boyfriends).

I've seen many horror movies in my time, and few have really left me on the edge of my seat - or necessitated me to try and soften the blow of the horror jolt by tentatively trying to anticipate the scare (like the entire audience was doing). I've also been to a lot of movies at the cinema, and until Drag Me To Hell, I've never seen an audience so worked up, so unified by their shared terror, and having so much fun before - illustrated perfectly by the trembled laughter that would jangle from the audience's bones after they'd been tricked by Raimi's skilled hands into a bloody good scare.

I've heard many filmmakers talking about how they like to scare the audience, and how they sometimes sneak into a screening and watch the audience's reaction - and finally, thanks to Drag Me To Hell, I was able to witness thost very reactions first hand - sat amongst it, and performing those reactions myself.

There's a couple of moments where I was a good leap ahead of the characters, and indeed one plot angle is a bit of a tricky sell, but I quickly got over the couple of mild script wobbles simply because the film was so charmingly entertaining (in a scary-arse way). It really is like one of those theme park horror house rides, that's exactly what it feels like.

Considering what happened to the leading lady on screen, it's no wonder that Ellen Paige sodded off after Juno caught Oscar fever ... she does what she does well, but she does come off in interviews like she's above being gummed on the chin by a slimey-gobbed witch ... yes, I am having a bit of a joke, but Paige does come off, in all seriousness, a bit egotistical. Back on track & topic though, the official line was "scheduling conflicts" - which it may very well be ... but you do wonder (and I'm not the only one to think it certainly), was there an element of "I don't have to get witch-gummed anymore"? Hmmm...anyway...

Regardless ... her sodding off felt a bit like a slap in the face ... but on the other hand Alison Lohman more than fills Paige's vacated wardrobe. She is continually impressive throughout - and she really gets dragged through the mincer throughout, making her turn even more impressive - it is a surprisingly gross-out horror movie for a PG-13.

All I need now is the film getting the proper double-disc special edition, feature-packed treatment on DVD - it deserves it. I want to see how the flick was made, I want to see the gleefully icky set pieces coming together, I want to see Raimi pratting around having fun behind the camera, and I want to enjoy the Evil Dead nods again and again.

As for Evil Dead nods, with my horror nerd cap on, the main ones were referencing 'going to a cabin in the woods', Raimi's own "classic" Oldsmobile car (looking menacingly creepy here), the 'dancing' and airborne possessed people, and the bit with the goat all provided me with plenty of fanboy love. In terms of Raimi's horror filmmaking, this feels like that scene in Spider-Man 2 (where Doc Oc's tentacles go to town on the doctors & nurses) mixed with Army of Darkness. He's got the money to make his horror stylings slick now (but in a good way), and you know what Drag Me To Hell really made me salivating for (as did My Name Is Bruce)?

Yep - Evil Dead 4 - I don't want an Evil Dead remake, no way, no how - I want Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi together again ASAP giving us a slice of awesome cake in Evil Dead 4. If DMTH is anything to go by, it would make for one hell of a wild ride (and a gory one - providing it would retain the necessary "R" rating).

My Name Is Bruce...

I'd heard some mixed things about this flick, and after being a bit let down with The Man With The Screaming Brain (it looked just a bit too cheap - even though the behind-the-scenes stories as told by Campbell are great), I was a bit apprehensive about MNIB.

But from the trailer and the more favourable reviews (compared to TMWTSB), it was looking good - and indeed it was a good movie. I rather enjoyed it in fact, and it proved to be the ideal antidote to a depressing afternoon of Pan & Scanning a series of images of animal torture and factory farms (for the educational DVD on the environment I'm currently doing, at the time of writing).

It made me laugh, Bruce Campbell rocked from start to finish, that little country ditty jingle was pleasantly catchy, and the DVD package was solid throughout - indeed, you got as much, if not more entertainment from the extras than you did from the movie (which isn't intended to be a back-handed compliment).

I enjoyed seeing the making of MNIB - indeed, the making of truly indie flicks/low budget movies/horror genre heavy weights, are the most entertaining behind-the-scenes docs in the world of DVD (30 Days In Hell, the making of The Devil's Rejects is perhaps the best Making Of out there). I was also pleasantly surprised to see a variety of easter eggs on the second disc (I'd thought they were only on the Blu-Ray - perhaps the BR has a few more though).

As a long-standing Bruce Campbell fan I really enjoyed this flick, and as a young filmmaker myself it was the source of further enjoyment (and education) to me.

I think back a few years to the summer of 2004 (when I made my rough-and-ready Hi8 horror short "my NIGHTMARE") - it was my mate Gareth and myself (as well as ECB for part of the filming - she was in 2005's "Trapped") out there in the woods with a camera and a bottle of fake blood just enjoying ourselves. Indeed, we joked that he was "my Bruce Campbell", and I was "his Sam Raimi" ... I must say I did torture him a little bit while filming - spraying him mercilessly with cheap-arse fake blood mix (unshaken washing-up liquid with red food colouring), to the point where he was drenched with the stuff.

Not only that but I had him scurrying about a rat-infested barn (which had a rotting, dead calf in the corner), but we were yomping through the woods, over gates, under trees, through stinging nettles, and so on, all the while being bitten by midgies (for me) and red ants (for him - when he was propped up against a tree, splattered with fake blood, for when his throat is 'slit').

Point being, that was a really fun experience ... now five years ago, blimey (time, and my filmmaking, has really moved on since then) ... and it's films like The Evil Dead which have inspired me, and films like My Name Is Bruce which continue to inspire me, but which also bring back my own fond filming memories.

Scripting round the bend...

Tried to create a funky title, but failed miserably...so on with the blog-juice.

Finished my "Round the Bend" memory-lane sesh, it has to be said that Doc Croc is officially awesome, nuff said.

Also fancied a re-watch of Jake West's excellent "Evil Aliens", after reading an interview with him in the Guerrilla Filmmaker's Handbook. I loved the film when I first saw it, still love it. It's superb British indie horror-comedy at it's finest, plenty of gore, plenty of flesh, plenty of gags, and plenty good ideas well executed.

Also recently re-watched the cast commentary on "Deadlands: The Rising", all inspired to do so after seeing some of the behind the scenes pics and video for "Trapped", Gary Ugarek's new indie zombie flick that's currently filming and is sure to be awesome. I certainly look forward to seeing it.

But what with being ousted from the TV room because of the Rugby, I sat down to do some script writing. Both 'banking' a one-page-script for a football-themed comic short (strange for me as I despise football), but it's based on (or really just a proper script write-up of) an idea I had for the Nokia Shorts 2005 competition - something which I ended up not getting around to filming. I'd entered the year before with an experimental short using footage shot during a location scout for "my NIGHTMARE" in the summer of 2004.

The main thing though, is that I knuckled down - again with a reluctant muse evading me - and bashed out the second draft of "Signing Off". I might do a small polish for a third draft, but I don't know - depends if there's anything I suddenly think of wanting to add to the monologue. I think I said before, but can't be arsed to look, but I'm writing it for Sean Connell, brother of Ben Connell who played 'BenZee' in "I Am Zombie Man 2", and appeared in the likes of "Smack Addict" and "Trapped" - speaking of "Trapped", Sean also appeared in that and officially became a legend when he took a throat-load of fake blood (food colouring & washing up liquid) after his brother over-zealously gushed a load of it in his face. Bravo to Sean for providing some quality gory-blood-dribble shots before literally washing his mouth out with soap - ergo - LEGEND.

More information on "Signing Off" will be posted as-and-when, same goes for "I Am Zombie Man 3", on which I've been trying out some rough ideas for the title sequence, rendering out raw shots to use later - get some of the leg work out of the way, you know.