Makin’ Piranhas Look Like Guppies

…And zombies lookin’ like Cabbage Patch Dolls. What could I possibly be talking about?

The motherfucking “gyo”, created by popular horror mangaka Junji Ito–spawned from the sea, created by man itself, biological weapons gone horribly wrong. I’m not joking when I say these machines make zombies seem harmless.

Image via jfilmpowwow.blogspot.com

If you are familiar with Junji Ito’s work, most notably “Uzumaki” and “Tomie”, you know he’s a brilliant artist and storyteller–I’m going to throw in a cliche here and say his stories are that “train wreck you can’t look away from”. So I’m never going to be able to look at snails the same way ever again, thanks to Uzumaki, but I did finish the entire story, and finished “Tomie” in one sitting. The Ring’s Sadako stands no chance against the evil Tomie–the live-action movies do not do the manga justice, as Junji’s beautiful drawings send chills down my bones, as I shudder with the thought of what kind of drugs he was on to come up with some of these twisted and gruesome images. A recurring theme in Junji’s stories, despite the horrific images and mutilated beings, is love, not so much the Nicholas Sparks-type, however.

Tomie, the scariest motherfucking girl in fiction. Image via flying-teapot.blogspot.com

While “Uzumaki” and “Tomie ” saw live-action reinterpretations, “Gyo” will be produced by anime studio ufotable; the rumors at the moment from animenewsnetwork are that it will not be a full series, rather a 30-60 minute anime. I’m interested to see how this turns out, as a key pull into the story for me was the relationship between the male lead Tadashi and his girlfriend Kaori… not sure how 60 minutes is adequate for the audience to invest in our protagonist. I’ll admit though I am not too excited to see these vile creatures animated. My imagination is enough.

A Course in Zombiology, For Reals.

Even though I grew up watching anime and reading manga, you’d be surprised by the amount of Asian kids in my hometown that didn’t really participate in either activity, so I always feel giddy with excitement when someone else knows what I’m rambling about. I guess that’s also one of the reasons this blog was started, to find other people with similar interests and share the geeky love…

Corniness and nostalgia aside, I finally finished watching High School of the Dead 2 weeks ago (yeah, I know, I’m late. My sister finished it the week it came out, shocking…) and the surprising part of that is not so much that I thoroughly enjoyed it, but because I watched it with a bunch of other girlfriends who don’t really watch anime.

High School of the Dead--Because busty schoolgirls and zombies are a winning formula. Image via http://shannaro.files.wordpress.com

Somewhere along episode 6 a few of us started debating how we’d survive a zombie apocalypse–weapons, getaway vehicle, provisions, places. We even named one of our girlfriends’ apartment’s “ZSDF HQ” (Zombie Self-Defense Force) on Foursquare. Call us losers or people with too much time on our hands but we got a little too excited and I ended up making this banner during a lull in my work day. (Yes we actually updated all our Facebook statuses that day as well) You can see that we really put a lot of thought into these weapons–though we probably wouldn’t actually be able to get a hold of an AR-15 with a chainsaw or even a crossbow during the panic…We could, however, legitimately take our girlfriend’s Prius as our default vehicle since we wouldn’t have to worry about refilling up our gas. (Bet you didn’t think of that one, eh?)

Of course we weren’t the only ones to obsess and contemplate the zombie apocalypse. This Thursday, January 20, at Meltdown Comics in LA, Nerds in Babeland will be presenting their first-ever Comic-Book-of-the-Month club, this time centering on the Walking Dead (which I actually just started reading last week). The event starts  at 7PM and all attendees receive an awesome 20% off all your purchases at Meltdown during the event. You can join other fans in discussing the television series, graphic novels or consider whether a shotgun would be more beneficial to your survival during the zombie shitshow or if it would stir up too much noise and would therefore lead to your demise.

And more details from the Nerds in Babeland site:

“Jenna Busch (Moviefone Minute, Huffington Post, Cineboobs) will be leading a discussion on the hit AMC program show based on the series, followed by a discussion lead by Stephanie Wooten from Nerds in Babeland on the best-selling comic book series.  In between the discussions we will even provide a zombie make-up tutorial by Jackie Bagwell, an owner & organizer of Ashtoberfest (a week-long festival dedicated to all-things zombie).”

A zombie make-up tutorial? If I didn’t already look like one, I’d be there.

And if you can’t attend in person, you can log on to nerdsinbabeland.com/chat at 7PM PST and join in the discussion through your computer screen.

There is an entry fee of $6 but you’ll be entered into a raffle to win a copy of a Walking Dead graphic novel (but more importantly, geek out about zombies in a group setting)

Meltdown Comics is located at 7522 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, 90046. Tel: 323-851-7223. But I mean seriously, if you don’t already know where it is, you’ve been deprived.

A ray of hope in light of Skynet’s inevitable rise

Anyone else worried about the upcoming robot apocalypse? I think I have news that might help ease your fears a little. Robots will soon be able to  feel!

Well, kinda. They’ll potentially have artificial skin which allows them to touch and feel that way.  (UC Berkeley Press Release).

 

Bet I know who's squeezing more tightly.

 

So, in the future, not only does it mean that they’re more likely to be able to appreciate things like the soft fur of fluffy kittens (Gratuitous Kitten Pictures), but I’m sure that it means they could also feel eventually feel pain.

I am soft and squishy and robots are metal and very hard to bring down. In the event that Skynet overtly takes over (with the amount of satellite and other surveillance already in place and the pervasiveness of technology in our society, you know it’s probably already conscious and surreptitiously manipulating us even as you read this), I want to take comfort in the knowledge that setting this thing on fire while whacking at it ineffectually with a baseball bat is still going to have some minimal effect.

 

My weapon(s) of choice for the zombie apocalypse too

 

Next step = emotion chips a la Bladerunner, right? Or A.I. Or Bicentennial Man. Or any of the million other robot movies where we deal with our fears about being eradicated by superior beings that we’d created by giving them emotions and foibles and eventually defeating them (with lotsa explosions)….

Sh*t I’m Excited for This Week… 10/24/10

I don’t like scary things, and yet I’m excited about AMC’s The Walking Dead. Why? I have NO idea. I think I’m just a masochist.

Based on a comic book (which I haven’t really read much of because zombies are too scary for me, but have heard good things about from entirely too many sources), this show looks awesome. It seems like it’ll be a supremely well-done zombie movie except it’ll be extended to TV show length. I think it will be brilliant because there’s so much you can do with the zombie apocalypse scenario, and movies just aren’t long enough to fully explore the concept.

I guess I’m just a sucker for post-apocalyptic scenarios in general: the desperation, the new and unstable socio-political systems, the drama of being the last survivors…the zombies, too.

AMC’s production values are always excellent, so that alone would make the show worth it. Plus, the happy song that accompanies the trailer makes me feel like it won’t give me nightmares…and maybe I’ll even be able to go into dark rooms on my own…maybe.

And it stars Andrew Lincoln, of Love Actually fame. The following picture should explain why I’m already rooting for his new role.

Ninety minute season premiere is on October 31^st, 2010 (nice timing, AMC) and, if I can watch it with the ability to pause if it gets too scary, I’ll be watching… with all the lights on.

It took me two years to watch this movie…

So, I watched Cloverfield this weekend (yeah, I know I’m several years behind the movie-watching curve, shut up. Real life (read: TV) got in the way) and I only sorta liked it.

In case you haven’t seen it (and are even further behind than I am in sci-fi movie watching), consider this your warning that slight spoilers follow.

The movie as a whole reminded me of The War of the Worlds (the H.G. Wells book, not the Tom Cruise movie.) I’d read it over the summer because I’m trying to better educate myself about the (sci-fi) classics, and found it disappointing. While I understand its importance as a foundational work of the genre and that it was the first time that a lot of those ideas had been expressed, it felt like just an outsider point of view/narration of events without anything other than its novelty to draw the reader in.  I didn’t care about the characters, and there wasn’t a plot arc with a proper climax and resolution that evoked the satisfied feeling that those things normally do. It was just someone telling you what he saw, but not telling it particularly engagingly.

The book was almost this exciting.

(Impressive Collection of The War of the World book covers, most of which are deceptively action-y and exciting.)

Cloverfield seemed like The War of the Worlds all over again. It wasn’t scary enough (and this come from me, Empress of Wimps: I get scared just watching trailers for horror movies) to be exciting, and it wasn’t dramatic enough to be watched just for the characters. The movie never really made you care about the characters: I didn’t really care if they made it across the city to save the girl he loved, wasn’t all that thrilled when they did, and, although I felt a twinge of sadness when they all died, it wasn’t nearly the emotional reaction the movie was hoping for, I’m sure.

The novelty of the idea of a handheld camera documentation of a random monster attack on NYC was clever and interesting. The execution of the camerawork, the special effects, the authenticity of the setting etc, were well done. The acting wasn’t bad, but wasn’t particularly great either; they seemed believable as real people who were caught on film, which I guess should be counted as a success because they played their characters well.

I think Marlena's facial expression here sums up my opinion of the movie

But, overall, it’s not a movie I’d watch again, or even have as a part of my movie library. It was a well executed and clever idea; not a waste of my 2 hours, but not the first sci-fi movie I’d tell someone to watch.