As 28 Weeks Later is about to be released interest in zombie films is on the rise again (pun intended). I was interviewed for this article at Movies.com. Check it out: Zombie Fever!
It used to be aliens; now, everywhere we turn, the undead are lurking! Whatup with our zombie-movie bloodlust? Plus, the 15 zombie movies we can’t live without!
By Joal Ryan
Living Dread
In times of uncertainty, film zombies feed on our anxieties
By DUANE DUDEK
Journal Sentinel film critic
Posted: April 20, 2007When Marlon Brando roared into town in “The Wild One” in 1953, it was as the sneering postwar poster boy for the looming seismic spasm in generational priorities and aspirations.
“What’re ya rebellin’ against, Johnny?” a sweet young thing asked him.
“Whaddya got?” he snarled.
He was the fear of the new, in leather and jeans astride a chrome mushroom cloud of his own making. Change doesn’t always announce itself so clearly, but fear of it is a subconscious constant in our lives. It pads on cat’s paws into the collective cultural imagination, and bats intent and perception around like a stunned mouse.
If the marketplace is in any way responsive to fear itself, then death is on our minds. And one way this has manifested itself lately is in the rebirth of the undead.
Let’s face it: The zeitgeist is crawling with zombies, just in time to address our post-Sept. 11 anxieties.
What’re ya rebellin’ against?
How about terrorism, disease, war, illegal immigration, gun violence, fear of the other and the so-called clash of civilizations?
“Whenever there is a time of upheaval and uncertainty, we turn on the zombie tap,” said Max Brooks, creator of “The Zombie Survival Guide,” a scientifically rigorous parody (in which “everything is real, except the zombies,” he said), and “World War Z,” an oral history of a zombie war that was inspired by Studs Terkel’s World War II chronicle “The Good War.”
Zombies, Brooks said, “are a way to explore our apocalyptic fears in a safe way.”
“If you had a bunch of movies coming out about real plagues or terrorists nuking America, that’s pretty scary stuff. You wouldn’t sleep at night. But if you’re watching a zombie movie, you can exorcise your demons in a way,” Brooks said.
[more at source]
Con Artists Productions have come up with a great little Flash game to fufill your zombie killing needs when you’re not near a console. The Last Stand has you taking on the role of a hapless hero who has built up a big barricade to stop the onslaught of the zombie hordes. At night, you do what you can to pick off the zombies one by one while the day time hours are spent searching for survivors, finding stronger weapons and reinforcing your barricade. Will you be able to survive the night? Hit the link and find out! Flynn De Marco
The Last Stand [Free Web Arcade]
[source kotaku]
28 Weeks Later: Special Featurette - Six months after the rage virus has annihilated the British Isles, the US Army declares that the war against infection has been won, and that the reconstruction of the country can begin. In the first wave of returning refugees, a family is reunited — but one of them unwittingly carries a terrible secret. The virus is not yet dead, and this time, it is more dangerous than ever.
[source bloodydisgusting.com]
An older video by DanceFloor Tragedy helmed by Automaton Transfusion director Steven C Miller and Through the Heart Pictures. Love it!
Hey, Steven I need a job… overweight, bearded, long haired actor/producer available to eat the flesh of the unwilling, to run screaming from the undead or to field some phone calls or arrange a travel schedule.
As “300″ continues its march through the worldwide box office, director Zack Snyder is mustering another sort of army.
Snyder and Warner Bros. are reteaming on zombie action-thriller “Army of the Dead,” based on an original story by Snyder. He’s producing with wife Deborah Snyder through their recently launched shingle, Cruel & Unusual Films, based at Warners.
It’s too early to say whether Zack Snyder is considering “Army” as a directing vehicle for himself. He will next direct “Watchmen” for Warner, based on the Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons graphic novel about a group of retired superheroes who reunite to save the world from disaster. He’s set to begin lensing at the end of the summer, with the studio eyeing a 2008 release.
Snyder and Warner have set Joby Harold, who penned the upcoming “Awake” for the Weinstein Co., to pen the script for “Army.” Cruel’s Wesley Coller is exec producing.
Set in a quarantined Las Vegas in the not-too-distant future, “Army” revolves around a father who tries to save his daughter from imminent death in a zombie-infested world. (Snyder got his first taste of zombies directing the remake of “Dawn of the Dead” for Universal.)
Snyder, who has been on a press tour promoting the opening of “300″ domestically and overseas, told Daily Variety that he wants “Army” to have a sweeping, epic quality, along the lines of the highly stylized “300.”
“I feel like there hasn’t been a zombie movie on the scale that we want to do it,” Snyder said from the Bahamas, where he is shooting a commercial.
He said it’s too early to say how “Army” will be shot — “300″ was filmed entirely in front of a green screen — but that the project is likely to borrow some of the same techniques.
Cruel & Unusual also is developing action-fantasy “Sucker Punch,” which Snyder is co-writing with Steve Shibuya from an original story by Snyder.
Zack and Deborah Snyder are repped by CAA. Harold also is repped by CAA.
[source Variety.com - Warner, Snyders enlist in new 'Army']
Cool poster! Here’s the sneak peek trailer as seen on foxatomic.com:
This looks awesome. The budget’s slightly (read a lot) larger than 28 Days Later and it looks like they’ve put the cash to good use. I can’t wait to see this one.
“Babylon Fields” is an upcoming, 1-hour dramatic CBS TV pilot, set to film in Long Island, New York mid-March.Premise of the show has resurrected dead people aka ‘zombies’, working at normal jobs.
Michael Cuesta will direct from a teleplay by Michael Atkinson and Gerald Cuesta.
Amber “Joan of Arcadia” Tamblyn will star, playing ‘Janine Wunch’.
Casting is still looking for:
‘JIMMY VISKUPIC’
22. One of ‘Lester Viskupic’’s sons, kind, and level-headed, he’s scared of the zombies, not to mention his dad’s sudden military nut-job act. Jimmy wears a metal crutch on his arm and sports withered, shortened legs. He ushers ‘Shirley’ and ‘Janine’ inside the house for their safety and worries when Janine runs off to confront ‘Ernie Munch’.
‘DALE’
22. He is Jimmy’s dimbulb ex-jock brother; probably not the best man for the job of mixing chemicals to create bombs in the Viskupic make-shift military production line.
[source SNEAKPEEK.CA]
As NOTLD is public domain Wednesday 13 has made good use of some of the footage in their cool assed Horror Punk video, “I Walked with a Zombie”:
The House on Dame Street is a short animated film from 1999 featuring a zombifeid head that’s a bit bitey and an extremely foul mouthed zombie. It’s available for download in the short films section on the director’s site, but you can watch it right here too:
a short story set in a world of pure chaos, of pure evil where people’s heads are slightly bigger and hardly anything is reflective because it takes too long to render…
…the secret of eternal life has just been found…
Director Ruari Robinson’s short, 50 Percent Grey was nomintaed for an Oscar, which although technically not starring a zombie the lead is quite dead. A very funny little flick and worth the download.
I’m about to sit down to watch his film Silent City as well. I love his stuff. I’m hoping to see a feature from him soon.
If a zombie falls on the mall escalator and no one is around to hear it does he still go "Rarrrrr"?
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