Zombie Nation (a.k.a. the worst movie ever)

So I have a pretty low standard when it comes to what I consider a "good" movie. Just ask my wife...my philosophy is mostly that unless the movie is ridiculously migraine-inducingly terrible, I'll sit through the whole thing. My Netflix history is full of a lot of 3-star ratings, because it takes a special kind of movie to make me rate it lower. I think there's only been a 1 or two movies that I've intentionally started watching and not sat through. One of them was for a specific "gross out moment" that occurs close to the beginning, but otherwise I would not have watched the movie. It also didn't help it was a foreign film, not that that has a lot of impact on my watching a movie (One of my favorite movies, The City of Lost Children, is French), but if I'm totally not interested and I have to read subtitles, I'm gonna be done with that pretty quick. But anyway, so my point is if I tell you a movie is the worst movie ever, you can be pretty sure that you never want to see it.

Now bear in mind, Zombie Nation isn't the worst movie I've ever seen. Of all the movies I've watched, I'd say there's one other film that's probably worse than Zombie Nation, but not along the same line. ZN is a bad film all the way around: quality, acting, believability, etc. The one movie worse isn't poorly made or badly acted, really, it's just really really really really really (I can't emphasize this enough) REALLY fucked up. But that's a blog for another time. For now, let's get back to the abomination that is Zombie Nation.

Where to begin. First off, the box art is ridiculously deceptive. Check it out:

This looks like a bad-ass zombie movie, doesn't it. That's what I thought when I saw it on the shelf at Blockbuster. But I never got around to renting it. Eventually, I found it On Demand. So I settled in for what I thought was going to be a good, potentially low budget zombie flick. I've seen some OK films with little to no budget that were still ridiculously gory. A little schlocky perhaps, but still good, so I wasn't too worried. 

This movie is the epitome of "don't judge a book by its cover." Except usually people use that phrase to indicate the inside is better than what's on the surface. Not this turd.

Also, in case you were wondering, this is not based on the 1990 NES game of the same name. Just so you don't get the idea that I was asking for it by watching some obvious early Uwe Boll work. Although I kind of wish it had been, this plot sounds cool (from the Wikiz):

"The plot of Zombie Nation takes place in 1999, when a meteor known as "Darc Seed" crashes in the Nevada desert. Darc Seed then shoots magnetic rays and turns the people of the United States into zombies. Darc Seed also brings the Statue of Liberty to life to follow its commands. The magnetic rays also allows Darc Seed to control many deadly weapons, including the most powerful weapon of all - the legendary samurai sword Shura.
The head of the samurai, Namakubi hears of Shura falling into Darc Seed's clutches. He then heads to the United States to destroy Darc Seed, free the American people from the looming zombification, and reclaim the samurai sword Shura."

Back to the movie. It's been a while since I watched the movie, and have no desire to see it again, so some of the details might be a bit rough, but they're close enough. So there's this cop named Joe who I think is supposed to be a middle-American beat cop. Except for his ridiculously thick Russian accent. But that's cool, no one else (who for the most part have no discernible accent) seem to notice. So Joe is a cop with a bad temper. Who likes to kidnap random women, take them to a secret loft he has, drug them, and then murder them. He does this several times. Once he "arrests" a woman for something irrelevant (jaywalking, maybe), but instead of taking her downtown, he takes her to his loft and gives her the old dope and choke. 

One of his victims comes under some voodoo protection before being killed. So this ends up being the trigger for the zombies. That's right, these zombies didn't come from a comet, or toxic waste, or a government experiment gone wrong. They're voodoo zombies. I suppose it may have been some nod to the origins of concept of a zombie. Whatever the reason, these "zombies," far from looking anything like the cover art, are just a bunch of chicks with raccoon eyes. Seriously. Oh, and they're coherent and fully mobile. So for this movie, "zombie" is a secret code word for "goth hooker." These zombies proceed to eat the first couple of men they come upon. Unremarkable except for the fact that one of the guys apparently gets the idea (and who can blame him when confronted by a bunch of skanks with too much eye makeup) that he needs to whip out his dork. One of the zombies goes ahead and snacks on it for him. Completely unnecessary, but there ya go. A might fine how-do-you-do.

Back to Joe for just a bit. While hanging out at his murder loft, Joe is visited by a doctor of some kind. I think the director felt the need to make a cameo, but didn't want to have his dong gnawed off. For probably a good 15 minutes, he is pushed around Joe's loft in a wheelchair asking "Is it safe?" While I can appreciate a nod to Marathon Man, there's no fuggin point. Even in the context of the movie. It doesn't move the plot, it doesn't reveal some inner issue Joe is having. It's just Dr. Wheels repeating the same phrase over and over and over and over again. Now that I think about it, 15 minutes may have been a conservative estimate. Cuz if felt like for-fuckin-ever.

So, goth hookers on the prowl, lookin' for revenge. Spoiler alert: they find Joe and kill him or eat his wiener or something, I don't even remember. By the time it got to the end, I was hopeful a brain aneurysm would save me. No such luck. But, the good news is that after dispatching Joe, they find that the local cop shop is shorthanded, so now we get Charlie's Skank-gels. That's right, the formerly dead, back by voodoo magic zombies are given jobs as cops. Oh, and guess what. Turns out they weren't the type of zombies that fed on human flesh. So now they're zombie goth cannibal whore cops with a think for peenor. Which actually would have made a better movie plot. I bet that dude is pissed he got his junk eaten for nothing.

So in case I haven't made it clear: don't be fooled by fancy box art. This movie is the shit. If a jerk has been picking on you in school, tell him he should watch this movie. Then, he won't bug you anymore cuz he'll probably have stabbed himself in the face. If some jerk cuts you off in traffic, just toss him a DVD of Zombie Nation. He will never, ever cut anyone off again. I guarantee it. 

As far as a rating goes, even Ron Perlman wouldn't have given this movie a second look. In fact, I'm pretty sure this is the face he'd make if you asked him for his thoughts on the script. So no Ron Perlmans for you:

I will say there is one small upside to having seen this movie: from now on, when somebody says "I went to see X and it wasn't very good." I can always come back with "Eh, I've seen worse..."

Chris

From My Playlist
	Artist:	Evans Blue
	Song:	Dear Lucid: Our Time Is Right Now
	Album:	The Pursuit Begins When This Portrayal Of Life Ends

Season Of The Witch

Looking back, book reviews are hard. I think I may avoid those in the future. For now, here's a movie!

Season of the Witch stars Nicholas Cage (Behmen von Bleibruck) and Ron Perlman (Felson) as knights of the Crusade who, in order to avoid punishment for deserting, agree to ferry a suspected witch to a local monastery for trial. Sufficed to say, things don't go as planned.

First off, I'm gonna go ahead and get this out of the way, since it goes through my head every time I think about the title:

"She's a WITCH! Burn her!"

You may be saddened to know there was little to no newt transformations going on here. There were plenty of other minor distractions that didn't hurt the film, but what kind of amateur critic would I be if I didn't complain about them anyway, amirite?

First off, as with most period pieces, everybody has some pretty nice looking teeth, especially for being the 14th century. We're talking blindingly bright white teeth here. There are several times when it seems like the director put out a memo that said something along the lines of "Even though we're all European types from the 1300's, don't waste your time trying to have some kind of accent." Nicholas Cage ignored this memo, and apparently went with a "pretentious American" accent. Regardless of whether there was a memo or not, Ron Perlman went ahead with a "Ron Perlman" accent.

It didn't bug me at the time, but the more I thought about it, the more I was confused. At one point in the movie, Nic Cage's character tells a joke involving how he and Perlman came to join the Templar army. The jist is that Felson was enticed by the promise of absolution of sin through service, and jokingly signs up for "10 years." The problem is the duo are threatened with a death sentence for desertion, but the timeline of the battles they're in goes from 1332 to 1344...which is more than 10 years.

Speaking of their epic battles and desertion, these battles are filled with tons of slow-mo hack and slash action, mixed with slightly sped up killing. And, it's during the battle of Smyrna in 1344 when Cage has his crisis of conscience and deserts after taking issue with the killing of so many innocents. I'd say it's pretty impressive to have fought for a dozen years or so and never killed an innocent. Almost makes you feel bad he ruined a good kill streak.

A couple of new things I learned:

• If you come across a plague-ridden homestead, you've lucked into some free horses. Good work.
• When someone draws a sword from your closed fist, if you're wearing gloves, it sounds exactly the same as a sword being drawn from a scabbard.
• Christopher Lee is f-old and looks terrible with a hairlip and giant head tumor. This may apply to more people than just Christopher Lee, but they weren't in this movie.
• Middle Ages doctors are creepy looking. I'm not sure who thought it would be a good idea to practice their craft while looking like a raven, but I'm glad they knocked that off.

Probably the best way to summarize this film is Lord of the Rings where the ring is a witch, the fellowship is about a quarter the size, the trip is waaaaay the hell shorter, Gollum looks a lot like Eagle-Eye Cherry, and all that extra in-between shit has been cut out so you don't have to clear your schedule for the next week and half to watch it. Regardless of all these issues, the movie was pretty OK. Nothing spectacular, but if you've got nothing better to watch, give Season of the Witch a  go. There are worse things you could do with an hour and a half. Though if you're close to curing cancer, I'd stick with the research.

Since this was my original plan for rating movies, it's only fitting that we start with one he's in. I give this movie 3 Ron Perlmans out of 5. I figure it's a good rating scale since it seems like he's in just about every movie, whether you realize it or not.

Chris

From My Playlist
	Artist:	The Decemberists
	Song:	Rox In The Box
	Album:	The King Is Dead

Bioshock: Rapture

And here we go, first one out of the gate.

Bioshock: Rapture is a novel by John Shirely that, as a prequel to the blockbuster game series, introduces us to the various characters whose audio diaries relate the tale of the ill-fated underwater city known as Rapture. The book primarily follows Bill McDonagh through the 1940s and '50s as he goes from fixing toilets in Andrew Ryan's penthouse to fixing leaky bulkheads in Rapture. Ryan (whose name is apparently an allusion to Ayn Rand's similar socioeconomic viewpoints), an immigrant from Russia who has amassed a vast fortune, fears what he sees as a coming apocalypse of both the nuclear and the socialist variety. In the time of FDR's New Deal, all Ryan sees are parasites looking for a handout. He respects men like Bill who only want an honest day's pay for an honest day's work. He spends vast amounts of money to build and keep secret his underwater city of Rapture, where he intends to let the invisible hand of the free market (here known as the Great Chain) reign supreme. Every man who wishes can ply a trade, can work his way up and make something of himself in Rapture, but can never leave, and can have no contact with the outside world. There is virtually no regulation in Ryan's city, as he sees regulation as a hindrance of progress. This gives the reader a peek into what life might be like in a truly free market society. Cocaine stores open up, medical ethics go out the window, the rich get richer, the poor are forced to live in crowded squalor, and in one of the book's most poignant examples, a grocer who also happens to own the area trash removal services offers to pickup trash at a competing grocery store...for 10 times the normal price. When the struggling grocer complains about his inability to afford pickup of the ever growing piles of trash, he's told by Ryan that he, the grocer, should solve the problem himself, like a man, and stop complaining that he's not getting a fair shake because the fellow (literally) across the street is running a successful business. The grocer takes Ryan's advice and proceeds to shoot and kill the grocer/trash collector before taking his own life, one of the first of many lives lost in Rapture.

Meanwhile, the underwater city has been infiltrated by Frank Fontaine, a man who killed the name's original owner in order to find out what Rapture was and potentially come away with a good chunk of Andrew Ryan's money. Thinking possibly of blackmail, Fontaine soon discovers that in Ryan's new utopia, there's nothing to stop him from becoming top dog and usurping Ryan's control over the city entirely. With the creation of Plasmids, injectables that give the user special abilities, and ADAM and EVE, the two components necessary to use Plasmids, Fontaine gets one gigantic step closer to taking over Rapture. And the fact that the Plasmids are highly addictive keeps him supplied with all the money and resources he needs to enact his master plan to both bring down Ryan and place himself at the top of the heap.

As Plasmid use grows and conditions in Rapture worsen, Ryan begins to take drastic measures that force those around him to face the sad truth that utopia's days are numbered and ultimately lead to the shattered conditions found at the beginning of the Bioshock video game.

If you've played and enjoyed the game Bioshock, I'd definitely recommend giving this book a read. I will say this: you really should play the game before reading the book. You'd only really need to play Bioshock. I don't recall anything that would ruin Bioshock 2, although there is a mention of the events that occur at the beginning of Bioshock 2. I'm guessing the book was written with the reader being familiar with the events of the game in mind. The book pretty much gives away several of the major plot twists that made the game so interesting to play.

It's kind of neat to see the path that leads Andrew Ryan to Rapture, as well as the life and times of Rapture's occupants as they deal with pretty much living inside a glass bubble, separated from the rest of the world. They're cut off from new music, new trends, as well as family and friends. You're given a sort of behind the scenes look at how the convergence of the game's primary antagonists (Ryan, Fontaine, and a psychiatrist named Sofia Lamb) lead to the undoing of Rapture. The book presents the events that occurred when several of the audio diaries found throughout the game were recorded, so there's a very slick tie-in with the game. The book is well written and evenly paced, but as stated, will definitely spoil a lot of the plot points of the game. So if you enjoyed Bioshock, were drawn in by the characters and story, and are ready to take another trip to Rapture, head back to where it all began (to fall apart) with Bioshock: Rapture. And be sure to keep an eye out for Bioshock: Infinite, the next game in the Bioshock franchise.

I'm still working on a good rating system for books, so for now I'll just give this book 4 Big Daddies out of 5:

Chris

From My Playlist
	Artist:	Pendulum
	Song:	The Vulture
	Album:	Immersion

Introductions

I suppose any good blog starts with an introduction.

But I can't be sure. I don't read many. I suppose for me to be a successful blogger, I'll have to get on that. I'll also apparently have to invest in a better keyboard so I don't go on some tirade about my inexperience being a booger.

Anyway, so here's me: A proud father of 2 great kids, who'll probably end up with another baby brother or sister before too long; A loving husband/smarmy jackass depending on the day of the week; An avid video gamer (XBox 360 being my drug of choice) whose great achievements include ridiculously negative kill to death ratios and average lifespans in the single digits...seconds-wise. I lead a pretty uneventful life in a fairly mid-sized city that has a reputation for having as many strip clubs as it does churches (and it has a lot of churches).

Work-wise, I'm a mild mannered developer/software engineer at a major mid-west manufacturer. It's actually a pretty awesome job. I get to hang out with my friends all day solving problems that primarily involve me using a computer. I previously worked at Best Buy, first as an in-store technician (before there was a Geek Squad), and then as the Double Agent (the official name at the time for the in-home tech), before being moved back to the store. I guess when you have a problem convincing people to pay $120 to install a RAM stick that takes you all of 5 minutes to put in, they'd prefer someone better at up-selling. But it was pretty alright at the time. It paid the bills, and I once got to help a guy set up his wireless webcam (notable only because I found as part of his failed installation, he had already named the webcam "Mr. Naughty"). More on those (mis)adventures later, I'm sure.

But I digress.

This basically means that I'm the resident computer guy. It's not a bad deal since I seem to be pretty decent at fixing them (or at least I used to be, my mojo may not be as strong as it used to be). Although thanks to my many years at Best Buy, I have developed a deep seated (and fairly justified, it seems to me) hatred of the general public. There's a line in a Men In Black that I think covers it pretty well: "A person is smart, people are dumb, panicky dangerous animals..."

Which actually brings me quite nicely to the point of this blog. My intention here, as has been suggested by several co-workers and relatives, is to present my views on the various movies, books, and TV shows I end up watching. I'm sure there are far better reviewers and review sites out there, and most likely I will contribute very little. But hopefully by starting this blog (and maintaining it better than some of the ones in the past) I'll be able to be resurrected by aliens in the far flung future. Or at least I'll get some enjoyment out of it. Or somebody will like it. Or not, I guess it really doesn't matter to me.

So now we know each other. That wasn't so hard.

Next go round I won't feel so much pressure to wear pants.

Last Song I Listened To*:
	Artist:	Eagle-Eye Cherry
	Song:	Don't Give Up
	Album:	Sub Rosa

*I listen to a lot of music during the day, so I thought I'd share some of the random junk I end up listening to. I'll work on a better layout as we go along.