Tonight’s latest episode of The Walking Dead had a climactic scene which mirrored something similar in one of my favorite films ever. I’m not talking just favorite horror film ever, but just favorite film in general with George A. Romero’s original Dawn of the Deadthat was released in 1978.
This was the film which codified what to me was what every zombie apocalypse stories and films should be. It was epic in scope despite having such a small leading cast. The film’s story expanded on the rules of the zombie apocalypse but also expanded on the idea that its not even zombies who are the biggest threat to other survivors. It’s almost become a cliche in zombie films nowadays that every major threat to the main group of survivors would be bikers and/or raiders who used chopper bikes to get around.
The scene I always saw as one of my many favorites in this film occurs around the 7:00min mark after the video starts. It’s the raiders and bikers finally getting their comeuppance for bursting into the secured mall compound the survivors sacrificed so much to make their own. This scene matches the same scene spiritually since make-up effects work had improved from 1978 to 2012 where The Walking Dead lives in. the effects work may look cartoonish and fake, but it still doesn’t minimize the impact of seeing someone disemboweled and eaten while still alive and screaming.
“This new world is ugly. It’s harsh. It’s survival of the fittest and that’s a world I don’t want to live in.” — Dale Horvath
[some spoilers]
All the episodes since The Walking Dead returned from it’s mid-season break has shown a change in pace through most of it’s episodes. The first episode since the break looked to continue the much slower pace of the first half of the season but finished off with a literal bang and the two episodes following it up just continued this faster pace to the second half.
“Judge, Jury, Executioner” returns everyone back to the farm and has to deal with the conundrum that is Randall. The farm has become a symbol of the show hitting the breaks instead of keeping pedal to the metal. It happens once more tonight as the bulk of the episode was mostly Dale trying to convince everyone and anyone away from Rick’s decision to kill Randall. It’s a decision we’ve been expecting as Rick readily admitted it to himself and his erstwhile friend Shane in the previous episode that Randall will probably have to die to protect the group and the farm from the unknown group lurking out there.
Jeffrey DeMunn seems to have had a tough time having to play the role of Dale Horvath who was suppose to be the voice of decency and morality in a show that was veering away from such pre-zombie apocalypse notions. It’s a sort of character that will always look out of place in a world written to be lawless and tooth-and-nail survival. Most post-apocalyptic stories will always have such characters to try and keep the rest of the group from becoming savage and amoral. It’s a tough role and made even tougher when those who behave without conscience and without morals seem to look more like hardy survivors while those who try to stay decent end up being shouted down or killed outright for their naivete.
It didn’t help DeMunn that his character seemed to come off as spinning his wheels whenever he tried to speak up to the group about the dark path they’ve been traveling down since the end of the first season. Tonight went a long way to making Dale’s point of view make sense as it did show him as the only person who seemed to be the only one who wanted to hold onto his humanity in the face of apathy and amorality. Whether his ideas and point of view was correct or not doesn’t matter. He was that angel on everyone’s shoulder who was fighting for control of the group’s morality over the devil that was Shane.
While the outcome of the decision to kill Randall wasn’t too much a surprise, Rick may be learning to be pragmatic about his decision making, he still has a soft spot in trying to be a high moral role model for his son Carl and killing Randall wouldn’t be a good way to keep up that illusion. The outcome in regards to Dale was a major surprise and should continue the show’s off-the-rails decision to deviate from the comic book in terms of who lives and who dies and when it happens. Seeing the zombies attacking Dale and with him vainly keeping the snapping jaws from his face made the scene almost being set-up as a way to convince Dale that those who were going to save him were the same people he was accusing of being amoral and inhumane. So, it was a major shock when the zombie remembered it had more than just it’s snapping teeth to kill and decided to use it’s clawed fingers to rip Dale’s midsection open.
As surprising an ending that the Sophia story-arc ended up doing with the character this one with Dale was even more so.
Just like episode 8’s “Nebraska” which started off slow and was much more focused on intellectual and philosophical debates about the right and wrong things, tonight’s “Judge, Jury, Executioner” went down a similar route until an ending that also had a literal ending with a bang. With just two more episodes left in this second season of The Walking Dead Glen Mazzara and his team of writers need to close off this Greene Farm location and find a way to get the group back on the road and have it make sense. I’m much more confident that this new showrunner and writing team will pull it off than the previous regime.
Notes
Dale looks so lost trying to get people to listen to his talk of decency and humanity. Everyone either looks at him like he’s talking crazy or just plain tired of hearing the same litany of why the group needs to retain it’s sense of humanity. Even the one person he thought he had in his corner in Hershel pretty much admits that his convictions in the decent thing to do were mistakes.
I know it’s getting old, but it’s sort of hilarious watching Dale and Shane trying to sidestep the fact that when it comes down to the bones of it they both want to kill each other.
Good to see Hershel make a decision about Glenn and his daughter. It’s definitely a much better scene than how it was handled in the comic book.
It was very surprising to see Andrea suddenly switch gears and support Dale during the group’s confab inside the house. I’m still not sold on her sudden change of heart. I think some of it was Dale’s unwavering conviction and near pleading to the group not to go down a path hey may never recover, but I also think her reaction to Shane’s advice to do some sort of coup over the Rick/Hershel leadership might’ve shown Andrea to what extremes Shane would go to. She might be regretting calling Shane as her good teacher in regards to survival.
Carl was a major part of tonight’s episode and probably highlighted the very things that screamed “Dumb things TV kids do” for everyone watching the show.
The dumb things he did sneaking into the barn to get his close look a Randall and then sneaking off with Daryl’s gun off into the nearby creek and finding the zombie might be the only thing people will remember about tonight’s episode, but deeper down Carl was the very symbol of how things were taking an amoral turn for the group that Dale was railing against.
Carl the tv version looks to be much farther along the path of becoming a sociopath than his comic book counterpart. I think having Shane live past the first six episodes of the show and still alive with season 2 winding to a close has had a much more detrimental effect on the child of Rick and Lori Grimes than in the comic book. This makes the character much more interesting moving forward but it also could blow up in the writers face if they make him too sociopathic and amoral that redemption would be too late for the boy.
Daryl’s moment in the episode showed him at his worst, badass and best. Worst in how he continues to try and distance himself from the rest of the group. Badass in how he’s able to get the very info about Randall’s group when others from RIck and Shane have failed. Best in how he dealt with Dale and how he may be the one person Rick should listen to moving forward.
Daryl is not idealistic like Dale, but he seems to be more observant about how the group is doing and handling things than people give him credit for. He’s willing to follow Rick’s lead even if he doesn’t agree with most of it, but at the same time won’t upset the group’s leadership dynamics. The fact that he knew Shane killed Otis but not as guessing, but observing Shane the moment he got back without Otis makes Daryl less the dumb, hick redneck he’s shown to be.
Some people have been theorizing that killing off Dale was because Jeffrey DeMunn was a Darabont regular thus was going to be on the chopping block because of that professional relationship. If that is the case instead of a creative decision to shake up the show’s group and storyline even farther from the comic book then Laurie Holden should be worried in her role as Andrea since she is also a Darabont regular.
T-Dog makes an appearance and I think he had one or two throwaway lines. Please, Mazzara and writers just kill him off and bring in Tyrese who at least brings some backstory that could be mined to better effect than what T-Dog has contributed.
I wasn’t fortunate enough to be able to attend last year’s Toronto International Film Festival. If I was there I have a feeling that a little Indonesian action film would’ve been the highlight of my time at TIFF 2011. The film is The Raid (it will get the Redemptionadded for it’s American release) and from the look of these two trailers it just speaks the language of awesome.
All I can say is that it should put the Indonesian martial arts style Pencak Silat on Hollywood’s map the way Ong Bak did for Muay Thai a decade ago.
I’m surprised that this is the very first post I’ve made for “Song of the Day” that’s unfiltered blues. I’ve posted songs which have blues influence in them from blues-rock to rhythm & blues, but never just pure blues. To rectify that slight mistake I’ve picked one of my favorite blues songs from one of my favorite bluesman with Taj Mahal’s dixieland blues jazz track, “Irresistible You“.
Right from the start this song just hooks it’s upbeat blues tempo with jazz trumpets and percussion plus Taj Mahal’s raspy, lived-in vocals. Most people equate blues to dour, downbeat songs, but just one listen to “Irresistible You” should disabuse that sort of musical stereotyping. This song may sound like dixieland jazz, but it’s a blues song true and true even when the piano section show’s up later to be followed by some solo horns before it leads to the final chorus.
I’ve listened to this song for an uncounted number of times and it always reminds me of my time when I visited and vacationed in New Orleans. When down and out this song always does it’s job in picking me up and telling me everything will be alright.
Irresistible You
Your magic hands … your lovin’ eyes Kissable lips … Baby, mine oh mine I’m in love … I’m in love And I know it’s true Tell me… who-o-o wouldn’t fall for irresistible you.
I don’t know what you got But it’s got me and I’m hooked Like a fish in the sea You make eagles call from above Make the Devil fall in love An-a … who-o-o … irresistible you.
Ohhh, come on … Lets walk awhile … I wanna talk … Talk talk talk to you honey child … You’ve been blessed … And you’re much … too much … There’s a wonder of a love in your touch.
Don’t ever fret … Don’t you worry about me I’ll never regret … How much you mean to me I love you … I love you My whole life through Tell me … who-o-o w=couldn’t fall for irresistible you.
Lets twist awhile …
Don’t ever fret … Don’t you worry about me I’ll never regret … How much you mean to me I love you … I love you My whole life through But tell me … who-o-o wouldn’t fall for irresistible you.
One of the big surprises for me film-wise in 2010 was a CG animated film that came out of left field. It wasn’t by Pixar and it didn’t come from Dreamworks Animation. No this CG film came from a little-known animation studio called Illumination Entertainment. Their very first full-length animated film would turn out to be a critical and box-office success. I’m talking about Despicable Meand while the character Gru (voiced by Steve Carell) and the three girls he adopts in the film were quite good it was Gru’s minions who stole the film from the bigger names.
In 2013 we’ll have the sequel to this film and what better way to lead off the first teaser trailer for Despicable Me 2than get the beloved minions announce the film’s arrival.
We’re just a little over two months away from the release one of this summer’s most-anticipated films. It’s a film that’s been 4 years in the making. The first pieces that set it up were 2008’s Iron Manand The Incredible Hulk. This was followed up by 2010’s Iron Man 2then finished up by the double-shot of 2011’s Thorand Captain America: The First Avenger.
It’s now 2012 and those five films will finally see it’s culmination with Joss Whedon’s The Avengers. It’s a superhero ensemble film starring each lead from all the aforementioned films with only Mark Ruffalo replacing Edward Norton in the role of Dr. Bruce Banner and his Hulk persona.
This latest official trailer from Marvel Studios gives a bit more insight as to the meat of The Avengersstory. Where the previous teasers and trailer just showed the Avengers team in action with explosions happening around them this new one shows some of the initial dysfunctions which will plague the team when it first goes into action against a resurgent Loki and his invading alien army. We also get more scenes with Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk not to mention some action sequences involving Captain America, Iron Man and Thor.
To say that the release of this trailer elicited a global geekgasm would be an understatement. Even now the interwebz is rife with theories as to what is the huge serpent-looking machine that chases Iron Man before the trailer ends.
The Avengersis set for a release date of May 4, 2012.
The video above was released today by 20th Century Fox as part of their marketing machine to help create buzz for their upcoming summer blockbuster scifi film Prometheus.
It’s a clip of a fictional keynote speech by one Peter Weyland at the TED 2023 conference. Guy Pearce plays the role of Peter Weyland and talks about how technology’s influence in human history from the beginning with fire (he mentions the Greek myth of Prometheus stealing the technology of fire from the gods and giving it to man) all the way to artificial intelligence and realistic cybernetic constructs.
Anyone who has been a fan of the Alien franchise will recognize the name Weyland. It’s the fictional transnational corporation which has become a major part of the films in the franchise and, to a degree, even to the Predatorfranchise. They’re the corporation which sends Ripley and the crew of the ore mining hauler Nostromo to the desolate planet of LV-426 where they encounter the very lifeform that would become one of film’s iconic monsters. It is also the corporation which 70+ years later would send a terraforming colony to the very same planet which would become a major part of the plot for Aliens. Even the David Fincherdirected third film, Alien3, would use the corporation as the monolithic badguy behind-the-scenes.
Weyland is just part of the corporation’s name as through the years it would combine with another corporation to become Weyland-Yutani. While the aliens in the franchise have been the immediate threat in all the films in the franchise it would be Weyland-Yutani who became the face of the corporate evil that continues to try to get samples of the very alien the franchise is known for.
It’s going to be interesting how this viral video ties into the upcoming Ridley Scott “prequel” to Alienand whether Weyland-Yutani will play a major role in the film’s plot. One thing I’m sure is that Pearce definitely plays a convincing corporate visionary with a God-complex that’s part Steve Jobs and part Richard Branson (if both iconic businessmen channeled their inner-darkside).
The latest AMV of the Day comes courtesy of AMV creator Rider4Z. Outside of Chiikaboom, his amv creations have become some of the best I’ve seen and have earned a place on my favorite list.
This time around his latest anime music video takes a song from one of my favorite metal bands and uses it to score a well-edited selection of scenes from the romance-fantasy anime series, Romeo x Juliet. While some fans of the video has nitpicked and pointed out that it spoils the ending to the anime I just laugh at such fools. Fools I say! I mean how can an anime series adapting Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet be spoiling anything.
I like the song choice of Within Temptation’s track “Faster” from their 2011 concept album, The Unforgiving. This is not the first time Rider4Z has used this band’s symphonic metal sound to score one of his videos. Each and everytime he uses this band’s music it just makes those videos very epic in tone and scope. This video has already won some early year accolades. It recently won Best Drama in the Katsucon 2012 AMV contest. I have a feeling this video will be making the rounds at this year’s anime conventions and should pick up a few more awards.
Last week we saw the cinematic “Take Earth Back” trailer for the upcoming Mass Effect 3rpg title from BioWare and EA. During tonight’s latest episode of AMC’s The Walking Dead we got to see another trailer for this upcoming game. This time around we get a live-action trailer about Earth being visited upon by the main antagonists of the series and that’s the giant, extragalactic biomechanical alien race who call themselves “The Reapers”.
For a live-action trailer this one does a great job at emphasizing the fact that Earth is royally screwed and that the player in the guise of Cmdr. Shepard must lead an army to take it back from the brink of destruction. I like how even in this future Earth once the proverbial crap hits the fan everyone will begin to riot instead of actually trying to band together to fight the invaders.
Mass Effect 3is set for a March 6, 2012 North American release date.
The Glen Mazzara era of The Walking Dead has done a very good job of speeding things along after an almost glacial pace that we got from the first half of the season. While the mid-season premiere with “Nebraska” continued some of the flaws which viewers and fans complained about in regards to the first half of the season it ended with a sequence which showed that Mazzara and his writers may have turned a corner from the more cinematic storytelling-style Darabont brought to the show. With last week’s episode, “Triggerfinger”, the show continues to make strides in adding a sense of desperation to the proceedings even when zombies are not involved.
Fans of the comic book and genre fans will always be thankful for Frank Darabont and his diligence in getting the comic book adapted to the tv screen, but with these last two episodes and then tonight’s “18 Miles Out” now in the bag we’ve begun to see that Frank’s style of drawing things out may have been hampering the show this season. Whether it was his vision for how the show was to unfold or just his style of storytelling, Frank’s first half of season 2 had lost that sense of danger that the show had built with a truncated first season. Tonight’s latest episode was a prime example of why it might have been the right call to let Darabont go and put a seasoned tv veteran on the helm.
We enter “18 Miles Out” in medias res just like episode 3 (one of the best episodes of this current season) and it’s a good sign of things to come for this episode. Before continuing I must say that anyone who still complains that the show was not showing enough zombie action need to sit down and just shut up or just stop watching a show that they’ve already decided to complain about no matter how good or bad each future episodes turn out.
With the past regime the issue with the character Randall recovering after his encounter with the spiked fence and Rick in the previous episode would’ve taken the rest of the season, but instead we’ve skipped a whole week in the show’s timeline as Rick and Shane drive 18 miles out of the farm to let the recovered kid go on his merry own way. This cold opening has Rick and Shane on the run from zombies with Randall still tied up and crawling his way towards a knife that could be his only salvation. For cold openings this one was actually pretty action-packed and full of tension that the episode will just continue to build on.
The episode switches back and forth between the adventures of Rick and Shane w/ Randall and the going’s on back on the farm with the youngest Greene daughter, Beth and her sudden crisis of of faith. Whenever scenes of the farm came on the screen in the past I’m sure there were much groaning and mumbling about how things were now about to slow down. For the first time in this season the farm without zombies was just as tense as the scenes with Rick and his group avoiding a group of zombies. The first season and some of the early parts of season 2 saw Andrea also go through the same crisis as Beth Greene goes through tonight. It’s a crisis born out of hopelessness about the situation they’re now in. Hershel has had to adjust to the revelation that what he thought about the zombies were all wrong and now his youngest must go through something same thing. Beth contemplates and even pleads with her older sister, Maggie, that there’s nothing left out in the world and just trying to persevere and move on was a wasted effort with the only guarantee was to be “gutted” by the very things they first thought were people who could be cured.
This situation back at the farm brings to a head what looks like the female version of the Rick and Shane power struggle. On one side we see Lori trying to raise Beth’s spirits and trying to bring what she calls a sense of “normalcy” in their chaotic new world. On the other side is Andrea whose has gone through what Beth is going through and doesn’t disagree with it. She sees it as an option that she was denied by Dale at the end of the last season and she won’t disagree and deny Beth the same choice. The confrontation between Lori and Andrea about this very subject matter brings to mind just how much Andrea has begun to see Shane as the leader of the group. While Lori still comes off across as somewhat of a shrew she does seem to be more in agreement with her husband’s way of thinking even in this zombie apocalypse.
This encounter between the group’s leading ladies just continues to highlight how much the show has moved to warp speed in abandoning the teasing of the first half of the season and just letting all the cards on the table in terms of each character’s motivations and agendas.
While the scenes at the farm were pretty good the highlight of the episode has to be the travails that Rick, Shane and Randall encounter 18 miles out. We see Rick finally have that “talk” with Shane about everything which has occurred while he was in a coma and since. There were several moments in this half of the episode’s story that showed not just Shane in a bad light but Rick as well as decisions have to be made to see who will survive the zombies. How things finally come to a head by episode’s end shows just how different Rick and Shane are and just how much Shane has been posturing trying to convince everyone that he’s the only one who could make the tough choices and decisions.
“18 Miles Out” goes to great lengths to make this second half of the show’s season 2 make up for the slow pacing of the first half and it succeeds. There’s still some little nitpicks and flaws here and there in terms of dialogue and how some of the characters come off, but it looks as if Mazzara and his writers have finally realized that subtlety might not be this show’s forte and, when handled accordingly, the show can succeed with being blunt. This show looks to be finally getting it’s focus down and we get one of the series’ best episodes since the pilot and I would say it’s best episode since.
Notes
Some great zombie make-up work by Nicotero and his gang over at KNB EFX for tonight’s episode. With the whole episode set in the daytime they don’t have the luxury of darkness and little light to hide imperfections in the make-up work. Every zombie chasing after Rick, Shane and Randall looked to have been given the “hero” treatment.
Some very good zombie kills tonight with the best one coming courtesy of Rick and using another zombie he’s already put down to help aim his third kill in a row.
Randall, played by Michael Zegen, comes off both as a scared kid who knows that his past associations may just be the death of him, but also as someone with a mean and sadistic streak in him as shown when he plays with the one zombie before he takes it out.
For may be the first time in this show’s short life, so far, the show doesn’t use the full cast in the episode. In the past we may have two or three cast members not making an appearance, but tonight we almost get a whole group. Not showing up tonight: Glenn, T-Dog, Carol, Daryl, Patricia, Jimmy, Dale. It made the episode feel so much more leaner.
We get some bit of fallout about Glenn freezing up because of what Maggie had told him before he went to town. I don’t know if Maggie should be going to Lori for advice but what she got was the right advice despite what people may think of Lori as a character.
While Lauren Cohan as Maggie Greene has been the more vocal and active of the Greene girls this season it was nice to see Emily Kinney get more than just a couple lines. Her predicament and how she played the role of the little girl who has lost all hope was quite good. Her message about how things were hopeless and that there really was nothing left to live for came off better than when Andrea did the same last season and earlier this season.
Tonight we get to see someone come off even worse than Lori. Andrea as the show has portrayed the character was already not a fan favorite, but her channeling of her inner-Shane in regards to Beth’s situation won’t be making her any new fans. It’s ironic considering how she lectured Shane about how his presentation about the right decisions left much to be desired. Her own presentation about her viewpoints was very Shane-like.
It’s a small step, but Sarah Wayne Callies’ performance as Lori continues to improve. We get some reasoning why she’s acted the way she has since we met her back in the pilot, but she still retains some of the shrewness that has made her hated by fans. It’ll be interesting how Mazzara and his writers balance this two sides to Lori’s character.
Rick and Shane finally have it out and it was quite the throwdown. One would think that Shane would have the upper-hand in this dust-up between the two friends, but Rick showed different. He may not be as cold and calculating as Shane likes to show he is, but Rick definitely showed he could handle himself not just against Shane but zombies who get the drop on him.
For a moment the writers almost made it so that Rick was about to pull a Shane on Shane in the end, but we see why Rick is different than his erstwhile deputy by episode’s end.
Shane has been one-upped by the very person he has been hounding as weak and pathetic all season and the look of impotence on Jon Bernthal’s face when this epiphany finally hits him was a great moment for this series.
The show has finally shown some clues as to how quickly the zombie apocalypse turned the world upside down. Two or weeks if we’re to believe what Shane told Rick in the beginning of the episode. Also, noticing how the zombie guards they put down earlier had no bites on them which goes a long way in putting The Walking Dead into Romero-style zombies.
Rick telling Shane to deal with how things between everyone in the group are as of now or leave. Telling him in the end to come back shows how much Rick still sees Shane as a friend who has lost his way and to come back to them instead of continuing the darker path he has set on since everything went to hell and especially since Otis.
Last week’s episode didn’t have a song to end the episode but tonight we have Wye Oak’s “Civilian” which went well with Shane looking at the grassy field with it’s lone zombie walking towards nowhere in particular. It was a very strong scene.
