All the malls are closed

Let me just point out one thing before diving into this fresh slab of cartilage. This observation is based on the zombie film as horror. So it should be judged as such. Therein lies the dilemma. Dawn for some odd reason, tops both Night & Day as the scariest of the bunch in online polls. & while I would agree that out of all three, Night is the scariest, that still leaves the under appreciated Day of the Dead. I'm just going to pretend the last three Romero zombie movies don't exist. They shouldn't anyway.

There's a previous blog entry I made about Alien 3 which suffers from the same lashings that this film does. People expected it to follow in the tradition of Aliens. The same way Dawn had cast a cloud over all fututre zombie films that were released in its wake.

A blogger once said "Sometimes I don't want a comedy. I want a zombie movie." Don't get me wrong. I love Dawn. It's been ingrained into my psyche like a tick burrowed underneath the skin. Though to this day I am wondering why the hell that one biker had to have his blood pressure taken while zombies were surrounding him. But I'll save that for my "common sense gone to shit" rant.

Dawn has always been considered the most epic of the two in terms of scope. But scaling the zombie outbreak down and adding in an ingenious premise allows this grimy bag o' ghoulish glee to exceed Dawn in story. Not to mention the fact that it is the bleakest film the director has worked on.

The cooky (but disorientingly logical) doctor's old "400,000 to 1" quote gives the film a deeper apocalyptic tone moreso than previous. There's not gonna be any bikers breaking into the compound any time soon. For all we know, these could be the last remaining survivors. They don't do a good job of holding our sympathy. Rhodes becomes as villianous as the zombies by the end & the duo of Steel/Rickles doesn't help things along any further either. The moral compass is not only off center, it's thrown in the river along with a heaping dose of sanity. Which is exactly the way it should be.

To any doubters, I point to the opening scene that establishes the tone. Money flying about the desolate streets. That one newspaper being blown up against a trash can- The Dead Walk! Fuckin' A they do. & one of them greets us with its tongue permanently hanging out. Savini does some of his finest work here. The zombies look like, well, zombies! Filthy, mucky & rotting. Speaking of zombies, let's just pull the cat out of the bag: Howard Sherman as Bub. Out of all the countless actors who have performed as zombies in movies, no one quites nails it down as good as this guy did.

To dot the i's & cross the t's on this matter, previous Dead installments didn't have someone's vocal chords being stretched to the point of heightening their scream. Nor did they have someone laughing his ass off only to have it turn to gasping while a zombie was ripping the skin off his face with his bare hands. Vicious, bleak & horrific.

a Heavenly light

February 24, 2011 at 4:53 EST marked the last of the Discovery space shuttle launches and the first of the last three shuttle launches. It was the STS-133. Watching the launch live on NASA's site immediately brought to mind one of my favorite films: The Right Stuff.

The 80's, according to Mike Nelson of MST3K, consisted of two things: doing alot of coke and voting for Ronald Regan. But before people got busy powdering their noses, Jimmy Carter was in office. At that point in American history, the confidence of the American people was low. The U.S. had just dealt with recession, inflation, unemployment (which should sound familiar living in this era), & the Iran hostage crisis. In the reaction to these depressing events, The Right Stuff sent out an uplifting message of jubilation. It showed that Americans experienced similar dissatisfactions and anxieties in the late 50's & early 60's.

Americans started to look at their country as second rate. The Russians were putting monkeys into space while we had rockets exploding on launch pads. Slowly but surely, America started to pull out of its decline and into a nation of technical superiority. Thus, the Mercury program was created. It's goal: to put a man in orbit around earth.

Few movies do as good a job on referring to the topic of heroism and courage. Mercury 7's astronauts embody just that. They set out to do a mission many of us wouldn't even think of attempting. Mercury 7 acted as a crucial turning point in American history. Paving the way for the small steps for man and giant leaps for mankind.

The first section of the film is devoted to the story of Chuck Yeagar. One of the greatest of all test pilots. Yeager pushed the envelope further than any test pilot had up to that time. With this added element, the film becomes more than just a docudrama about the Mercury 7 but about human progress in manned flight. In the wake of Yeager's triumph, the age of the lone explorer seemingly had ended and the age of the team of explorers had begun. A transitional point that smoothed into the space program and has led to the teams of astronauts being sent into space presently. Ebert puts its better than I ever could in his review: "Seen now in the shadow of the Challenger and Columbia disasters, "The Right Stuff" is a grim reminder of the cost of sending humans into space. It is also the story of two kinds of courage, both rare, and of the way the "race for space" was transformed from a secret military program into a public relations triumph."



The film has the rare ability to be so much: an adventure, social/political commentary, comedy, docudrama & above all else a historical epic. It has a little something for everybody. Philip Kaufman was able to perfect that mixture by showing the truth through a satirical lens so subtle that it works without the device of manipulation. While several other Hollywood attempts at this cannot even get off the launch pad, this one takes to the skies in full force. For those brave souls that chose to enter the program , it took courage & determination. Those 7 astronauts had it. So did Yeager.

A heavenly light indeed.