Tag Archives: Robert Kirkman

Review: The Walking Dead (EP05) – “Wildfire”

Posted on by Arleigh

[Some Spoilers Within]

We’ve now come to the penultimate episode of The Walking Dead‘s first season. If there’s been one thing about this tv adaptation — of the Robert Kirkman comic book series which it’s based on — has proven it’s that the show is willing to go off the reservation when it comes to following the source material. The show has made some interesting storytelling and character choices right from the start. Scenes which occur later in the comic book have been moved up and combined with others. New characters, both recurring and disposable ones, have been introduced to the original numbers from the book.

Some of these changes have been welcomed by old fans of the book, but there’s a vocal minority who don’t see why there’s a need for such changes and additions. To new fans whose experience with this franchise has been just through the show the changes don’t mean a thing. They’re coming into this fresh and with open eyes. For long-time fans this need to watch this show with open eyes instead of clutching at the strict canonical material that are the books it would be a hard time going. I’m one of those who have been reading the books since the beginning and for the most part I’ve accepted these changes. Even the major departure introduced to end this episode I find quite interesting and with guarded optimism that it will lead to a surprising season finale and set-up season two properly.

We begin the show the very morning after the zombie attack on the camp which ended the previous episode. The survivors are cleaning up the bodies of both the “walkers” put down and those people they lost. The scenes showing how both Carol deals with her abusive husband’s corpse and how Andrea deals with her younger sister Amy were quite powerful in their own way. In one scene, we see an abused and beaten down wife taking out her anger and relief on the source of her problems with a pickaxe. In another, we see an older sister remembering past regrets of never being there for her much younger sister despite promises to do so. The scene with Andrea goes against much of what most zombie survival aficionados would do, but it brings to light just how much the Andrea loved her sister and even if it means seeing her come to a semblance of life just one more time to say her goodbyes she would do it. Knowing what she would need to do in the end just made her tearful final goodbye that more powerful.

The third farewell doesn’t happen until 3/4’s of the way into the episode (though we do see Morales and his family go their own way. Going to miss him going for the fences with that baseball bat) and involves Jim. An injury incurred from the fight during the night leaves him and the group with a problem that gets resolved in one of the more poignant scenes in this series, so far. As Morgan Jones from the pilot episode instructed Rick the “walkers” and their bites are a death sentence. The two competing leaders of the group in Rick and Shane want to solve their Jim problem using different methods. Rick wants to take the group to the one place he thinks could still help Jim and that’s the CDC near Atlanta. While Shane, with enthusiastic support from Daryl, wants to put Jim down before he becomes a dangerous liability.

In a scene reminiscent of a similar one from Romero’s original Dawn of the Dead, Jim makes the final and ultimate decision about his life. The goodbyes made by everyone to Jim after he’s made his decision to be left behind was very heartbreaking. Jim might have been a secondary support character but the last couple episodes have fleshed out his character enough that we care what happens to this man who has lost everything and thinks his predicament will reunite him with those he has lost.

The growing schism between best friends Rick and Shane gets a few more nails added to it as we see Shane gradually losing his command of the group. The group looks to be gravitating towards Rick as their leader now and even the wildcard in Daryl seem to look to Rick for the answers. The scene between the two as they patrol the woods near the camp definitely widens the gulf between the two even if Rick looks to be unaware of what’s really going on with Shane. The sudden appearance of ever stalwart and ever watchful Dale sure thinks something is amiss.

It’s the final ten minutes of the show where we finally know why the episode was titled “WildFire”. In another departure, one that would be called huge by fans of the comic books, we see the lone surviving researcher within the CDC sending video reports on what’s being called “Wildfire” and how research on the so-called “disease” has remained useless with no answer in sight.

The whole entire sequence reminds me of the early parts of Stephen King’s own apocalyptic epic novel, The Stand, as scientists desperately try to stem the tide of the approaching apocalypse to no avail. It’s little subtle references to other apocalyptic stories and tales like this which keeps some of the changes and departures from the source material bearable and, at times, even welcome.

It’s this major departure that will send some long-time fans of the comic book apoplectic. The vocal minority will definitely get even louder as to why Darabont and the writers are messing with the timeline and the stories in the original comic book. As one of those fans I should be screaming just as loudly, but the zombie and apocalyptic genre fan in me actually like how this show has gone off the beaten path of the original source material.

If they had stayed word-for-word and panel-for-panel true to the comic book then there’s no surprises to be experience. Knowing how everything unfolds right from the start could get boring even if it is about something read and re-read with love. There’s still no guarantee that the final pay-off of this particular major detour from the comic book will end in a good way, but the possibility of not knowing how this story-arc will end this first season is both exciting and tense-inducing. It could succeed in the best way, but also fail in an epic one. Either way the path now is not set in stone and everything moving forward will be undiscovered country.

Extras

* Quote of the night: “I think tomorrow I’m gonna blow my brains out, I haven’t decided. But tonight, I’m getting drunk!” – nameless CDC researcher.

* For once Glenn doesn’t have a witty quip or remark which just highlights the somber mood of this episode.

* There’s still no news on the whereabouts of one Merle Dixon though he gets name-dropped a couple times.

* A sneaking suspicion that Merle will not appear again this season, but may in the next or later ones.

* Bear McCreary’s score and choices of music for the episode the best in the series, so far to date. Especially, the use of John Murphy’s  Adagio in D Minor from the sci-fi drama Sunshine which was recently used in Kick-Ass.

Review: The Walking Dead (EP04) – “Vatos”

Posted on by Arleigh

[Some Spoilers Within]

We’re now into the first episode of the second half of this initial season. The Walking Dead has been a definitive hit for cable network AMC who has been hyping up the show every week for months. The pilot episode has been hailed as one of the best premiere shows and it helped that showrunner Frank Darabont wrote and directed it. Then we had the follow-up episode which have been hit-or-miss for some people with the second one being a miss for some who began to question whether Robert Kirkman’s comic book series will have the legs to last several seasons and beyond. The third episode allayed some of those fears, but still some people were still doubting whether the show can truly balance the intense drama and character interaction with the zombie mayhem and gore.

Now we’re on the fourth episode and when people heard that creator Robert Kirkman would be writing the episode more doubts started to creep in. I say this because as critically-acclaimed and popular the comic book series is there’s a vocal segment of the fans who think the book succeeds despite Kirkman’s writing which tend to be heavy on the exposition. They see him not knowing the concept of “less is more”. As a long-time fan I can see what these fans mean, but I also think he’s quite good in creating the scenarios his characters must navigate through.

With this fourth episode titled “Vatos” we get Robert Kirkman writing not as a comic book writer but as someone who knows its a new medium and must write accordingly. In what I consider the best episode since the Darabont written and directed pilot, Robert Kirkman has shown just why millions of fans have flocked to read the comic book and why millions more have fallen in love with it’s tv adaptation.

The episode begins with a beautifully shot prologue of Amy and Andrea sitting in a boat fishing in the quarry lake and reminiscing about their father. It’s a nice tender moment which takes on a sad note as they finally voice every survivor’s fear. Are their parents alive? Maybe where they lived wasn’t hit hard. It’s survivor’s guilt to the nth degree as we and these characters know that the odds of any of the camp’s loved ones in far off places being alive are miniscule to none.

We also see a disturbing portent of what may yet come to pass as Jim, the mechanic from the past episode, seem to be losing his edge. It falls to Dale to notice Jim’s erratic behavior and then down to Shane to take care of things before Jim finally goes over the deep end and hurts not just himself but everyone else. I liked how Jim’s little revelation about what happened to his family arrived quite naturally and the effect it had on Lori and the others. Lori, Carol and Andrea may still have a semblance of a family, but Jim is the prime example of someone who has lost everything and may not have anything left to live for.

Now, we ended the third episode with Rick and his little band of Merle rescuers finding their quarry missing and not just from the roof but the hand he was cuffed with. We see the aftermath of Merle’s improbable, but quite the badass, escape from the roof. While we don’t see Michael Rooker as Merle in this episode his presence looms over everything and everyone. It’s during Rick and the groups attempt to find not just where Merle went but also the bag of guns Rick dropped in the pilot episode that we finally meet the episode’s title characters.

At first, it seemed like another attempt by Kirkman and the writers to drop stereotypical characters into an already crowded plate. Latino gangbangers becoming an immediate threat to Rick and his group. They even had a smooth-talking and intelligent leader that some may see as the show’s attempt on the typical drug lord. The confrontation between the two groups don’t come off so smoothly the first, second and third time, but it takes the intervention of the kindly grandma-type to ease the tensions. Tensions which reveals that people shouldn’t judge a book by it’s covers.

I definitely think this is like Kirkman’s shot across the bow of his detractors who think he cannot write beyond wordy exposition. The dialogue in this episode was some of the strongest and I’d say just slightly above of the pilot’s. There were more characters involved with two paralleling storylines to manage. Kirkman has shown with this episode that he actually knows the concept of “less is more” and that his true calling may not be writing comic books but writing teleplays for tv. I wouldn’t mind if all the episodes of The Walking Dead were written by just Darabont and Kirkman. I truly believe that this episode won’t be last time we see a Kirkman-written episode and that’s a good thing to look forward to.

In the end, “Vatos” more than lives up to the high standard the pilot episode set. It was an episode which was able to combine not just the dramatic interaction between character and groups (and not just conflicts, but the quieter moments) but also the very zombie mayhem and carnage fans of the genre expect the show to have. The episode which begins so calm and serene ends on a horrifying and sad way. This episode has finally illustrated what the comic book was all about. A story and journey of survivors living day by day trying to retain a semblance of their old lives only to have the ever-present threat of the zombie apocalypse shatter such misguided attempts.

Extras

* KNB EFX founder Greg Nicotera makes an appearance as a zombie in the second-half of the episode.

* Merle Dixon never appearing on-screen but still ends up being the badass of the episode.

* Guillermo’s (leader of the Vatos) hounds from hell.

* “Admit it, we only came back to Atlanta for the hat” (Glenn seeming to be the one person in every episode with the witty quip and remark to lighten things a bit)

* Breakin’ Bad veteran-director Johan Renck’s masterful handling of the episode’s climactic scene in the camp.

* The show loses a regular character and one of the cardboard ones.

 

Review: The Walking Dead (EP03) – “Tell It to the Frogs”

Posted on by Arleigh

[Some Spoilers Within]

Ok, the second episode of The Walking Dead was seen by some as being too much like every past zombie films and stories that’s ever been told. It was too much about the typical zombie siege of a group of survivors inside a building with little to no way out of the predicament. Now add in the elements of infighting within the group not to mention a dangerous wild card of a character and some viewers were turned off by it. The fact that the episode was one of the goriest episodes of any show ever put on non-premium cable never got much press.

One character introduced in episode 2 which really polarized viewers was the one played by veteran genre actor Michael Rooker. The character was one Merle Dixon and he instantly appeared in the show as an uncouth, loud, abrasive redneck racist that for some the only thing missing was the song “Dixie” playing in the background. I must admit that the character of Merle Dixon was written and introduced rather awkwardly, but to say that the zombie apocalypse wouldn’t include such blatant racists individuals have way too an optimistic view of humanity.

It is how we start the third episode, titled “Tell It to the Frogs”, that has redeemed the character of Merle Dixon to some skeptics. I wouldn’t say redeemed as in they accepted the racist but that he might still have a part to play in this 6-episode first season of the show. In the second episode Merle was left behind by Rick and the group handcuffed on the roof of the very building which was now overrun by “walkers”. Fortunately for Merle, T-Dog (who had happened to drop the cuff keys down the drain in his attempt to free Merle) had chained and padlocked the door to the roof to keep Merle from becoming the next sun-burned meal for the walkers. Unfortunately for Merle the chain and padlock had some slack to it that the door could be opened with enough of a gap for a walker to stick its head through.

Merle opens the third episode talking to himself as he reminisces about punching some Army officer in the past. Right from the get-go we see Merle might have lost his mind somewhat. But as soon as his trip down racist memory lane ends he finally snaps back to reality and realizes he’s cuffed to the roof, no key to the cuffs and the zombies as working their damndest to push the chained roof door wide enough to get through. Before the scene moves to the intro credits me last see Merle trying to use his belt to pull the steel hacksaw to him while praying and condemning Jesus in equal amounts.

That was some fine acting from Michael Rooker and was one of the highlights of the episode. While it still doesn’t answer the question of how such a racist was even with the group in the building, it does confirm that Merle might not be all there mentally. The appearance of his brother Daryl halfway through the episode and showing the younger Dixon to be as racist but not as unhinged reminds me of the two characters from Of Mice and Men except these two are of the racist variety. George being the younger Dixon and the Lennie role taken on by Merle. It’ll be interesting how these two new characters to the series will unfold as the first season rushes towards its conclusion. The scene in the end with Daryl finding the aftermath of Merle’s attempts to escape his cuffs was another fine moment in an episode that was more about character interaction and drama than about violence and gore (thought there’s some of that in the episode).

While the episode begins and ends with the fate of Merle Dixon the bulk of the episode was the reunion of the Grimes family and how Rick’s miraculous arrival has changed the camp’s group dynamics with Shane Walsh (Jon Bernthal in a performance which turned his character of Shane from hated “black hat” of the show to one that was a complex character who may or may not still be a simple “black hat”) and his wife Lori.

The scene where Rick slowly makes himself seen by the camp was very touching and showed hints of the love triangle the show will be exploring between Rick, Lori and Shane. The fact that Shane’s the first to see Rick and his expression turns from curiosity about who this new survivor was to one of shocked disbelief that the man he had spoken of as being dead has come back to his life. A life he seemed to be remaking with Lori as his partner and him a surrogate father to Rick’s son Carl. The reaction by Lori to suddenly seeing her husband back in her life healthy and alive ran the spectrum of surprise, shock and guilt.

Even the complex reactions from Shane and Lori didn’t diminish the heartwarming reunion between father and son as Rick literally fell to his knees in tears to hug his son Carl. That scene definitely was a tearjerker for many and Lincoln’s performance was very believable. One could almost see the burden and tension drain away from Lincoln’s Rick. The goal he had set for himself since episode 1 was now complete and nothing else mattered at that moment.

The show did have some moments which showed Darabont and the writers still feeling their way around Kirkman’s source material. One of it being the introduction of an abusive husband for one of the book’s regular faces in Carol. In the book the husband was only  mentioned as not having survived the trip to Atlanta but no mention of him ever being abusive. Like the introduction of Merle in the previous episode, the appearance of Ed as the caveman husband was done too haphazardly. Almost like someone out of stereotype casting call, Ed bullied his way around the women in the camp until Shane had to step in and put on an epic beating that added some depth to the character of Shane but also made one wonder if the addition of Ed was just as a way to give Shane an outlet for the anger and frustration he was feeling from the return of Rick and the subsequent frosty attitude by Lori towards him.

In the end, “Tell It to the Frogs” was a much stronger return for the show after a second episode that some thought was being too stereotypical of a zombie story. I enjoyed the second episode but understand why some reacted to negatively to it after such a powerful initial pilot episode. The crew of Darabont, Kirkman and the other writers definitely have a balance to do between dramatic storytelling and zombie mayhem as the show continues through this first season and into the next. While some of the characters, both new and old, do seem too one-dimensional and more like plot devices for the main characters the show is only in its third episode and to judge the whole thing on such a small sampling is not fair to the show and the people behind it. I think the show has hit a nice balance of drama and mayhem. Time will tell if the show will live or die by balancing the two or finally landing on one side or the other.

PS: Oh yeah, anyone who happens to be fans of Bambi and her mom will have a hard time watching this episode.

Review: The Walking Dead (EP02) – “Guts”

Posted on by Arleigh

[Some Spoilers Within]

The second episode of The Walking Dead just aired and while it didn’t have the emotional impact the Frank Darabont-directed pilot episode had it still more than held its own. It was an episode that more than lived up to it’s title and for zombie fans and gorehounds this episode should assuage any thoughts that the series will be heavy on emotional themes and scenes while lacking on any sort of zombie mayhem and bloody good horror (shout out to the Bloody Good Horror Crew). With an apt title of “Guts” the follow-up episode of this series looks to move the story forward now that we’ve gotten some of the basics of this new zombie apocalyptic world and its rules out of the way in the pilot episode.

When last we left our intrepid hero, Rick Grimes, he had gotten himself into quite a pickle. Mode of transportation was now chow for the zombies he had cantered into and he was now stuck inside a tank with no idea of how to get himself out of the situation until he hears a voice over the tank’s radio. One would think that we’d see the start of the second episode starting up from this very last moment in the pilot, but instead we get a quieter, but more disturbing sequence to begin the show. It involves Rick’s wife Lori out in the woods near their make-shift camp outside Atlanta. The scene is set-up to almost be a jump scare scene and for some I’m sure the pay-off in the end probably made them jump, but instead we get another glimpse into Lori Grimes’ current situation and expands on what she has been doing since leaving their Kentucky town with her son Carl and Shane Walsh, Rick’s partner. This opening scenes really paints Lori in a bad light and I’m not sure it needed to be handled so heavily. I’ll reserve a bit of judgement on this development on Lori and Shane as characters. The pilot episode seem to have hinted to something like this maybe happening already before the zombie apocalypse dropped in their laps which would definitely diverge this series from the original comic book source. Only time will tell if the planned triangle-drama will pay off in the long-run or ruin a major character’s growth with audiences in this show’s future.

This brief interlude leads up to where we last left Rick and his mysterious friend on the other end of the tank’s radio. From the moment this scene starts the show puts the episode on high gear and never lets up. The pilot episode was all about quiet desolation and isolation for our main character. This second offering is all about adrenalin and desperation as Rick goes from one dangerous situation into another. We also get to meet his benefactor who had been helping him by way of radio. In a role that should make Steven Yeun a fan favorite at comic book and fan conventions starting now, we meet a fan favorite of the comic book.

The character of Glenn has always been one of the constants in the comic book series. He has been with Rick since the very beginning and while his character doesn’t have the emotional and/or dramatic gravitas as the others he does prove himself to be voice of reason when everyone around him seem to be on the verge of losing their minds from the constant barrage of danger not just from the zombies but from other people as well. It was good to see Glenn portrayed early on as the snarky character the original source material had him before he become just a tad domesticated as the series went along. The fact that he was the one who seem to know how to truly survive in this new world while those around him seem to be making mistakes after mistakes should make fans of his character very happy.

We meet the rest of Glenn’s group which includes original character from the comic book in Andrea with four new additions created just for the series. All these new characters almost have “red-shirt yeoman” tattoed to their foreheads with the exception of Michael Rooker’s blatant racist redneck role of Merle Dixon. Rooker takes this over-the-top character and drives it into the ground. I thought the character could’ve used just a tad bit of subtlely in how he was written, but Rooker definitely looked liked he was having fun with the character. In any other actor’s hand the character of Merle Dixon would’ve looked just foolish, but the Rook’s manic intensity in playing the role made me hope the situation the group left him in wouldn’t be the last we see of Merle. Rook needs to get some more screen time to either play his character’s racist personlaity to the very end or at least time to round him out a bit before he finally gets his just desserts.

Laurie Holden as Andrea seemed like she was still searching for her character’s main focus. We find out that her younger sister is back at the camp with Lori and Shane and that she’s very knowledgeable with firearms. Her Andrea also seem to be slightly prone to panicking (though with zombies having destroyed one’s world panicking seems like a natural thing to do). I hope Daradont and his writers (Robert Kirkman being one of them) don’t mess with Andrea too much, but just expand on the type of person she is and how it will grow in time to be the Andrea everyone who are fans of the comics see as one kick-ass lady.

Now, the aforementioned episode title and what it means. It literally means guts. One could see the word used metaphorically to describe Glenn’s character finding his inner courage to follow Rick into one crazy and dangerous plan to save everyone in the group. Or one could see it in the way everyone who saw the episode saw it. Rick, Glenn and their group hacking a zombie to pieces to use it’s guts to camouflage themselves. This sequence is in line with how the comic book handled it but was moved up in the story’s timeline. This slight adjustment tells me that Darabont and crew look to be mixing and matching some of the original source’s narrative to create something more dramatic on the tv screen. Either way the sequence was the best one in the episode. It had the gross out factor zombie and gorehounds love. It also had tension and white-knuckle terror as we wonder if their trick will fool the zombies and when nature throws a curvebal their way while their in the middle of a horde I could almost sense millions of viewers shouting at Glenn and Rick to drop their shit and run (for people in the same situation they may literally drop their shit before running).

While the second episode didn’t have the quieter and emotional moments as the pilot episode it did have the adrenalin boost some horror fans were missing from the first one. Some have called this episode a let-down from the pilot because it played off as your typical zombie siege story. From group members bickering to rehashing scenes from other zombie films to solve their problem. I can’t say I disagree with them, but I didn’t see it as being a bad thing. I understand some critics and non-zombie fans want something new and fresh to be done in the zombie genre. Again I wholeheartedly agree, but one also cannot forget that this is a zombie horror series and zombies will still be on the forefront of what makes the show tick. A zombie story with no guts and in-group bickering is not a zombie story. How they handled it in this episode show that the writers know how to take the usual zombie story tropes and do it well.

Now, if the series is just all about gore or interpersonal drama then it will lose people. The writers definitely have their work cut out for them about balancing what horror fans want and what fans of dramatic storytelling want. So far, they’ve done a good job, but with four more episodes left in this freshman season the question now is will they be able to pull it off and end the season on a high note. Official word that AMC has announced the series has been renewed for a second 13-episode season should make fans of the show happy and make the writers get somne of the burden off their shoulders. They now have some leeway in terms of time to go at their pace. I  do think even episode that skew more towards the dramatic need at least a couple exploding headshots and one gore scene just to keep the horror fans sated til the next gore-heavy episode.

Extras

This episode also had some memorable lines to remember and repeat…

Glenn: “He’s also an organ donor.” (right before Rick takes a fireaxe into one of the truely dead “walkers”)

T-Dog: “Yeah, dead puppies and kittens.” (after Rick tells a visibly sick Glenn to think of puppies and kittens to take his mind off the gore)

Rick: “We need more guts.” (realizing that he and Glenn need more zombie guts and viscera after already wearing almost a full body suit of it. Still best line of the episode.)

The Walking Dead Season One Blu-Ray

Posted on by Arleigh

It sure didn’t take long for the show’s first season to be placed on pre-order. Amazon has placed the first season’s Blu-Ray set for pre-order and the show hasn’t even aired it’s second episode. While details are scant about what sort of extras will be included in the set or when it’s even coming out I’ve already placed my pre-order and this one may just end up as part of what will soon become a growing collection of Blu-Ray titles (probably won’t reach my current total of dvd titles which at last count was around 2800-3000+).

I think this is another sign that bodes well for the show and chances of it being picked up for a second season. The first sign being the pilot episode’s great success in terms of ratings not to mention near-universal acclaim from tv critics and fans alike. I just hope that AMC doesn’t wait too long to announce the greenlighting of Season 2.

Source: Amazon.com

Review: The Walking Dead (EP01) – “Days Gone Bye”

Posted on by Arleigh

[Some Spoilers Within]

It took just a little over 7 years from the time the first issue of Robert Kirkman’s zombie apocalypse comic book series was first published to the airing of its tv adaptation’s first episode. Who could’ve thought that a tv show (even one appearing on a channel with very mature and edgy shows like Mad Men and Breaking Bad) about a zombie apocalypse would ever make it on the small-screen. When I say make it I mean with all the violence and gore intact in addition to some very smart and emotional storytelling.

Now here we are just a little after Halloween, 2010 and the premiere of Frank Darabont’s The Walking Dead has finally completed airing it’s pilot episode to all of North America (Europe will get it’s own premiere a few days later). The series is the brainchild of Darabont and producer Gale Anne Hurd with Robert Kirkman on-board as executive producer and the source of all that is “The Walking Dead”. To say that the pilot episode was a wonderful piece of filmmaking and storytelling would be an understatement.

The pilot episode begins with a prologue showing a lone sheriff’s deputy with gas can in hand walking amongst the empty and abandoned vehicles parked every which way around a long gas station. We see the detritus of this makeshift camp’s former inhabitants. Every this deputy look he sees torn down tents and ripped blankets and sleeping bags. The camera even does a gradual sweep and pan on abandoned children’s toys and dolls. Before we even start to ask what happened to the people of the camp we finally see the first dead bodies as they molder inside some of the vehicles with flies flitting on and off the rotting corpses.

A sign proclaiming to anyone that the station has “NO GAS” dashes whatever hopes the deputy has of finding any. Before leaving to search the cars themselves a noise behind stops him. He looks down to find where the footsteps he heard might be and sees a pair of small, rabbit-ear slippered feet walking slowly before the figure bends down to pick up a ragged teddy bear off of the ground. One could see on this deputy’s face a sense of relief that he’s not alone and has found another survivor. But his relief doesn’t last as the small figure of the girl turns around to show the ravaged and bloody wound on her face plus the glossed over eyes of the dead. We finally see our first zombie and it happens to be a little blond-haired girl. How he deals with this zombified little girl definitely sets the tone for what coudl be one of the best shows on tv this season and, perhaps, beyond. It’s not the norm to see a little girl (even if she is one of the walking dead) get shot in the head with blood spurting and the back of the head exploding on tv. Darabont’s The Walking Dead will not be pulling any punches and dares the audience to stay and hold on for the ride to come.

The episode flashes back after this great opening to show the sheriff’s deputy in a more mundane time. He’s Rick Grimes (played by British actor Andrew Lincoln) and we learn through a back and forth with his partner Shane Walsh (Jon Bernthal) that he’s an introspective man who seems to love his wife and son, but like most marriages when one parent is a cop the  dangerous nature of his job has strained his relationship with his wife. This quite interlude gives way to a shoot-out with some criminals at the end of a car chase and crash where Rick gets seriously wounded and landing him in the hospital. Rick seems aware of whats going, but in fact he’s been under a coma for a month or more and when he finally wakes its not to the mundane world he left behind when he was under but one irrevocably changed for the horrific.

Darabont’s cinematic touches could be seen in the sequence in the hospital where Rick explores the empty and darkened hallways and corridors looking for anyone. This entire sequence tells me that Darabont knows how to milk a scene for tension and horror. His camera doesn’t linger on any particular bloody mess but just enough to convey the realization dawning on Rick’s mind that he just stepped into a nightmare. The decision not to use any sort of music to score this section of the episode just added to tension and built up dread. The part where he finally goes into the lightless exit stairwell has to be one of the scariest sequence on tv or film this year, bar none.

The rest of the episode sees Rick learning more and more of this new world he has woken up in. It’s not a nightmare though it definitely counts for one albeit a real one. His fortuitous run-in with survivors in the father and son duo of Morgan Jones (excellently played by another British actor, Lennie James) and Duane Jones becomes the audiences way of learning the basic rules of this new world. The recently dead are not staying dead but returning to some sort of life with little intelligence but with a voracious need to feed to people (and later we find out even animals).

While the word zombies was never uttered audiences know what they are whether they’re called “walkers”, “lurkers” or “roamers”. They could only be killed by destroying the brain (either by bullet or smashing the skull with whatever’s handy). They’re also quite slow and easily avoided when spread out in small singles or two’s but deadly when in a herd-like group and all riled up and hungry. Rick takes all of this in as stoically as possible (something the character in the comic book does as well), but in the end all he wants is to find his wife and son. Which the episode doesn’t answer, but his journey to where they might be leads to one of the best cliffhangers for a pilot episode. A cliffhanger that should hook even the least fan of zombies. All I can say is poor Seabiscuit.

The performances by all the actors we get to see in the pilot episode ranges from excellent (Lennie James) to very good (Andrew Lincoln) to the jury is still out (Sarah Wayne Callies and Jon Bernthal). This episode really hinges on Lincoln’s work as Rick Grimes and he pulls it off despite what some were calling as a very bad Southern accent. I did’t notice and I’ve been around people who spoke with Southern accents and dialects that I think I could tell when one was bad or not. I think fellow blog writer Lisa Marie being from the South would have a better perspective on how good or bad Lincoln’s Southern accent was in this first episode.

It’s Lennie James as Morgan Jones who shined in this pilot episode. He did outshine Lincoln in their scenes together and he added several layers of characterization to a secondary character in the comic book series who only appeared in the first couple issues before disappearing for most of the comic’s current run until recently. It’s his work as Morgan Jones which gives me some hope that Darabont and his writers will deviate from Kirkman’s comic book timeline and bring the character back sooner rather than later. It would benefit the series in the long run (and from the ratings numbers the pilot episode received I’m guessing this show will have legs).

But what would a tv series about zombies be if I didn’t talk about the zombie make-up and gore-effects. When news first filtered in that AMC was where Kirkman’s on-going zombie opus was landing for a live-action adaptation there were some trepidation from the book’s fans and just zombie fans, in general. How can a comic book that was nihilistic to its core and very violent (and gory when it required it to be) be able to truthfully translate to tv when it wasn’t being filmed for one of the two premium cable channels like HBO or Showtime. AMC was the home of very mature series like Mad Men and Breaking Bad. While both shows explored very mature and dark themes it’s only in some episodes of the latter title that very violent scenes were shown. In something like The Walking Dead the show is about violence and how it’s now the primary rule of the land. It’s a kill or be killed world and it’s not even the zombies who would be the most violent encounters Rick and his group would run across.

It’s safe to say that AMC has been true to their word that they would have a hands-off approach to how Darabont and compant will deal with the violence and gore of the series. They seem to understand that this is a zombie story and zombie stories have inherent in their genetic make-up violence and gore. The pilot episode showcases both in plain view with some of the best zombie make-up effects work from Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger of KNB EFX fame. I’ve seen hundreds of zombie films and I will say that the make-up work this pilot episode is some of the best ever done. The so-called zombie bike girl still impresses me everytime I see it on my tv screen. As for the gore well all I can say is poor Seabiscuit.

I would say that the pilot episode of The Walking Dead was a success in more ways than one. It was a success in that for the first time in American tv history we had a genuine zombie show on tv and the kind fans have been wanting to see for years. It was also a success in that fans of Kirkman’s book who were still leery about how well it would translate to live-action should worry no more. Darabont and his writers were true to Kirkman’s vision while still able to deviate here and there from the comics to help strengthen the dialogue and the story as a whole. Critics of Kirkman’s writing style should be loving just how well the series writers have worked out some of the heavy exposition from the comics to create what really is a leaner, but better story.

Here’s to hoping that AMC sees the numbers and general positive reaction from critics and audiences alike and do the right thing by greenlighting a second season with more episodes. The six for this first season is definitely enough to whet the appetites of old and new fans but we want more. The dead have come to to tv and I don’t see them going away anytime soon.

Review: The Walking Dead Volume 12 (by Robert Kirkman)

Posted on by Arleigh

[Some Spoilers Within]

Tonight marks the premiere of Robert Kirkman’s widely-acclaimed and fan favorite zombie comic book series aptly titled The Walking Dead. The series has preeminent filmmaker Frank Darabont (Shawshank Redemption, The Mist) and genre-veteran producer Gale Anne Hurd producing the adaptation for AMC. So, it’s with the 12th volume in the collected series that I welcome the tv series.

“Life Among Them” sees Rick and his group of survivors (now less three of its original members and picking up a new one along the way in the previous volume) finally finding a semblance of a safe haven after the travails they endured at the hands of “The Hunters”. It has been a long and deadly journey for Rick and his people. The fact that the promise of a working government they had been moving towards was actually a lie from one of the new members wasn’t too much of a surprise to loyal readers of the comic. This is a group which has had its hopes dashed bloodily over and over that any good news they see as too good to be true.

This goes for the sudden arrival of a scout party from a walled-off community which promises the group safe haven with no questions asked. Rick, who has gone through such promises from a previous safe community, sees this offer with some suspicion and this brings forth another aspect of Rick’s personality which has changed from issue 1 to this volume. He has become paranoid and mistrustful of those not in his group and offers of safety and a respite from the grueling travels of the road he sees with suspicions eyes. But they accept this invitation and find out that this safe haven couldn’t be any different from Woodbury.

What they see inside the fortified walls could pass off as a slice of their former lives. A suburban-like community where people safely walk the streets at night and their kids play ball in the yards and streets without hints of danger. Leading this community is a former Congressman who had taken the stole of leadership and keep the haven running smoothly. All he asks of Rick and his people is that they contribute in some way to help continue the community’s expansion in some way. Rick returns to what he did before the fall of civilization and patrols the streets as the town’s constable. Michonne thinks it is now safe for her to put away her sword. Even Andrea has caught the eyes of more than one of the town’s many single men. Even Abraham has pitched in to become part of the work detail whose job is to go out and find building supplies to help strengthen and expand the walls.

All seems to be working as it should with everyone safe. The first sign that not all is what it seems is the mention of a name. A person who helped organized the building of the walls, but who seems to have become “HE WHO MUST NOT BE NAMED” to everyone Rick and his group meets inside the haven. The town’s leader also seems to hold secrets of his own. Rick senses the dark undercurrents permeating the town’s vibe and in a sequence right at the end of the volume we see just how damaged Rick has become since we first meet him in issue 1.

While the volume doesn’t go heavy on the zombie action it does a great job in setting up what could be another major story-arc coming in the subsequent volumes. Will Rick and his people learn the secrets the town has been keeping from them? Will Rick become what he despises the most in trying to keep his son and his group safe from the dangers of the outside and what he perceives as dangers inside as well? This volume is almost the calm before another shitstorm about to hit the group and this time will the butcher’s bill be as large as the one which was tallied in the end of the 8th volume.

Song of the Day: The Man Comes Around (by Johnny Cash)

Posted on by Arleigh

We’ve now reached the final day of what has been a week-long horror-themed “Song of the Day” feature for the site. It’s quite appropriate that this final day also lands on Halloween and I’m sure many will approve of this final choice to cap off the week.

A week which has seen Italian film composers and prog-rock bands chosen for creating and contributing some of the best and most memorable themes to horror films which will stand the march of time. We’ve seen an epic song from a Montreal band whose music has the apocalyptic sound to it. There’s also two entries from films created by a master of the horror genre in John Carpenter.

The week began with Goblin’s main title theme for George A. Romero’s original Dawn of the Dead. With Halloween night the premiere of the long-awaited and heavily-hyped tv adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead comic book series (by none other than Frank Darabont himself) I thought what better way to bookend Goblin’s theme for the Romero zombie epic than by picking Johnny Cash’s song “The Man Comes Around”. One of the last songs penned and sang by The Man In Black himself and properly used by filmmaker Zack Snyder to  be the intro music for his remake of Dawn of the Dead.

This song with its gospel-like (though not as hopeful as most) sound and it’s apocalyptic and Biblical lyrics just speaks of the apocalypse like no other song from this past week has done. It comes off almost like a prophecy come down and spoken by one of God’s main dudes. This song when paired with the scenes of the zombie apocalypse crashing down on an unsuspecting world in Snyder’s film instantly made it a favorite with all zombie fans everywhere and introduced The Man In Black to a whole new set of fans.

I would like to think that when the zombie apocalypse does arrive it would be to this song as I and those who share my belief in how to survive such an event ready ourselves for whatever may come.

The Man Comes Around

And I heard as it were the noise of thunder
One of the four beasts saying come and see and I saw
And behold a white horse

There’s a man going around taking names
And he decides who to free and who to blame
Everybody won’t be treated all the same
There’ll be a golden ladder reaching down
When the Man comes around

The hairs on your arm will stand up
At the terror in each sip and in each sup
Will you partake of that last offered cup?
Or disappear into the potter’s ground
When the Man comes around

Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers
One hundred million angels singing
Multitudes are marching to the big kettledrum
Voices calling, voices crying
Some are born and some are dying
It’s Alpha and Omega’s kingdom come

And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree
The virgins are all trimming their wicks
The whirlwind is in the thorn tree
It’s hard for thee to kick against the pricks

Till Armageddon no shalam, no shalom
Then the father hen will call his chickens home
The wise man will bow down before the throne
And at His feet they’ll cast their golden crowns
When the Man comes around

Whoever is unjust let him be unjust still
Whoever is righteous let him be righteous still
Whoever is filthy let him be filthy still
Listen to the words long written down
When the Man comes around

Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers
One hundred million angels singing
Multitudes are marching to the big kettledrum
Voices calling and voices crying
Some are born and some are dying
It’s Alpha and Omega’s kingdom come

And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree
The virgins are all trimming their wicks
The whirlwind is in the thorn tree
It’s hard for thee to kick against the pricks

In measured hundredweight and penneypound
When the Man comes around.

Close (Spoken part)
And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts
And I looked and behold, a pale horse
And his name that sat on him was Death
And Hell followed with him.

Review: The Walking Dead Volume 11 (by Robert Kirkman)

Posted on by Arleigh

[Some Spoilers Within]

There’s always been one constant in Robert Kirkman’s award-winning and fan favorite comic book series for Image Comics. The Walking Dead is not all about the zombies which dominate the background and always present an ever-looming danger to the survivors. No, the series has always been about the characters of the survivors and how they’ve had to cope with the apocalyptic setting that’s turned their world upside down. While the ever-present danger of the zombies have inflicted on Rick Grimes and his band of survivors their fair share of casualties it always falls to other human survivors to take the greatest toll on everyone.

Volume 11 of The Walking Dead has been titled “Fear the Hunters” and that is quite an apt title to the story-arc which dominates this volume. Collecting issues 61 thru 66, this volume brings the danger of other humans to the forefront. We’ve spent the last two volumes dealing with the ramifications and after-effects of the Governor’s attack on the prison and the subsequent fleeing of Rick and those who remain in his group. We’ve seen how the loss in life has finally taken enough of a toll on Rick that it’s started to manifest itself and he’s not sure how to deal with it. His son Carl has also shown that he’s had to grow up fast in this new world. While it’s definitely shown him to be a hardened survivor it has also shown how humanity and innocence has  no place in this new world. Either one grew up fast to deal with the problem or become victim to it. Carl has chosen to be the former even if it means he’s trodding down a dark path his own father has tried to shield him from.

“Fear the Hunters” will end up taking several more original members from Rick’s group. All three deaths had a sense of inevitability to them but now they died still doesn’t diminish the shock of Kirkman once again proving that no one’s truly safe. The fact that Carl becoming used to all the violence around him was directly responsible for one of the deaths remains one of the most shocking sequences in a series full of them. It definitely brings up a possibility that father and son may one day come at crossroads when something will put them at odds with each other.

The one other thing about this volume which brings the darker side of humanity to the forefront is the aforementioned “Hunters” themselves. A band of human survivors whose will to survive has taken them past the precipice of whatever human decency they had left and brought them to a place which has made them worse than the zombies around them. They harass, terrorize and inflict damage on Rick and his people to the point that Rick’s own retribution once the two groups have finally come face-to-face for the final time will probably shock some readers. Readers who may still believe that decency and humanity still has a place in a world which has none.

As I read this story-arc I came to the conclusion that if I was in Rick’s shoes I don’t know if I would’ve done what he did. To say that his actions (though only hinted at in the illustrations) went beyond the pale would be an understatement. But I did understand why he did what he did and also why those who went with him either assisted or didn’t stop it. I feel like this story-arc has finally shown how those who have disapproved of Rick’s methods to keep the group alive have finally come to their very own conclusion that he has taken it upon himself to do some evil to protect the group and that it has taken a toll on him. The rest are now willing to take their share of this if just to help relieve Rick of some of the guilt he carries with him for his past actions.

This volume has been one of the strongest one in the series and shows why Frank Darabont and Gale Anne Hurd fell in love with the series to adapt it for tv. The Walking Dead is all about the characters and has tapped into a rich source of material about how people in general deal with adversity and how some rise above it while most fail in their attempts to remain human. Rick and those with him remain on the precipice but so far has kept enough of their decency not to go over it the way the “Hunters” obviously had done so. But they remain balanced on a razor’s edge and sooner or later Rick or someone he’s close to will go over and that would make a tragic situation that readers will have to deal with whether they want it to happen or not.

Review: The Walking Dead Volume 10 (by Robert Kirkman)

Posted on by Arleigh

[Some Spoilers Within]

The Walking Dead is only a couple weeks away from premiering as an AMC tv series. It is an event that legions of the comic book series’ fans have been awaiting for years and counting. The fact that I am now reviewing the tenth volume in the series’ collected trades is testament to the title’s continuing and growing popularity with readers. The fifty-four issues which precedes the six collected in this volume has seen main protagonist Rick Grimes and the group of survivors he’s leading through the zombie apocalypse go through triumphs, heartache and the inevitable purging from their perceived safety behind prison walls. This tenth collection will continue to show how Rick and those in his group who have survived have changed and sometimes not for the better.

“What We Become” is an apt title for this tenth volume. Rick has always been the de facto leader of his group even when he’s tried to give the responsibility to someone else to handle. In this volume we see how the events which led to the group escaping the destruction of their prison haven has affected not just Rick mentally but also his son Carl and some of the surviving members of the group. Dale, who has been a staunch ally of Rick’s in their journey through the zombie wasteland, has become a bitter shell of his former self as he sees each and every opportunity for him, Andrea and the twin boys to find a stable, safe haven come to naught and he sees Rick as the one to blame.

It doesn’t help Rick and his original group that the new additions which joined them in the last volume (Sgt. Abe Ford, Rosita Espinoza and Eugene Porter) have added to some of the internal tension in the group. Rick and Abe do not get on the right foot as they travel together towards a new destination. A destination provided by Eugene who says he’s been in contact with surviving elements of the U.S. government in Washington, D.C. It’s a destination that not everyone believes in, but it’s a goal nonetheless.

It’s during a side mission conducted by Rick, Carl and Abe that we see the depths Rick will go to protect his son when they’re ambushed by bandits during a routine stop to rest. We don’t see exactly what Rick does to one of the bandits who tried to go all Catholic priest-like on Carl, but we see from the reaction shots from Carl and the sounds made that it wasn’t pretty and civilized. It’s the aftermath of this event that Rick and Abe begin to bond somewhat and finally understand why they’ve done some of the awful things they have had to do since the fall of civilization.

For a volume that was all about exploring the damage the zombie apocalypse has done to those left behind it was actually pretty action-packed, but it wasn’t done so for the sake of putting action and gore on the pages. These sequences helped move the story along. It did help keep the volume from being just all about exposition (I know something detractors will continue to point out about Kirkman’s writing).

“What We Become” also bring back a past characters readers haven’t seen since the first couple issues of the series and seeing what the passing year or so since Rick last left him was very heartwrenching. This were characters fans have been requesting Kirkman to bring back. They wanted to see how they’ve been doing in their own attempt to survive. What Kirkman has delivered probably wasn’t what many were expecting and it definitely took some steel pairs to do what he did.

The volume ends with the group up one more survivor with their journey to D.C. still many days or weeks left in it. For those who have been following the series since the beginning and still do then the next volume will bring in a new story-arc which Kirkman just calls “The Hunters”.

Until then grab your rifle and machete, bar the doors and windows, hoard the food and water and definitely destroy the stairs behind you.