John Sears | January 17, 2011
Oh brother. You know the ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ meme is getting out of hand when the survivalist black-helicopter crowd is latching on to it: The walking dead. A global crisis. The remnants of America. Around the globe, the dead are rising to devour the living. Hospitals are overrun, and martial law has been declared. The streets [...]
John Sears | January 17, 2011
Cuba’s formerly state-subsidized film industry has long been known for art films and high brow entertainment, but in recent years as the economy fell on harder times, the state has cut back on its support, and the industry has crumbled. In response, at least one enterprising and very mercenary young Cuban filmmaker has an idea [...]
John Sears | January 17, 2011
Call of Duty: Black Ops, already having made countless millions (ok, I’m sure they actually counted them) off of slaughtering virtual Zombies, is about to release its first expansion pack, and yes, there will be more Anti-Zom carnage to foist off upon the general public: Treyarch and Activision have today revealed details around the first [...]
John Sears | January 17, 2011
Sad to say but it’s true; no one, no matter how well-intentioned and educated they are about The Cause, can completely ignore the negative effects of the Anti-Zombie media our culture is drowning in. As a result, I had a miserable night’s sleep last night, punctuated by a bad dream in which, yes, I was [...]
John Sears | January 16, 2011
I know, I know, I’ve talked a lot about these faux historical analyses of Zombie media popularity over time a lot lately. First with i09, then with Flowtv, now with Wired, right? Believe it or not, Wired’s is one of the weakest, since they don’t show, or even explain, their work in any meaningful way. [...]
John Sears | January 16, 2011
Just a quick note to say that we will definitely be at the 4th Annual Chicago Zombie March. I’m still debating a couple of conventions to go to and hope to put our final con schedule for much of 2011 up soon, but this is a no-brainer. Millennium Park is a neat place, and there’s [...]
John Sears | January 16, 2011
The superlative Michelle Hartz has suggested that the ZRC might want to set up a chapter within popular gaming platform World of Warcraft, given that one of the main player factions is already Undead. Intriguing idea, though my worry is that it would be so time-consuming that our real-world advocacy would necessarily suffer, unless I [...]
John Sears | January 16, 2011
It just wouldn’t be a week monitoring the pop-culture/journalism feeds without another piece that combines ivory tower cloud-talking with dubious historical analysis to frame a piece expressing befuddlement with, and general distaste for, the presence and popularity of the Differently Animated in media: What are we to make of AMC’s The Walking Dead? The question [...]
John Sears | January 15, 2011
This is an oldie but a fascinating case study in how an attempt at Zombie Friendliness can go off the rails and become… well, something very different. It’s also necessarily pretty heavy on spoilers, so if you wish to avoid that, just skip to the last paragraph for our rating. Some background: “My Zombie Lover” [...]
John Sears | January 14, 2011
We’ve been looking for Zombie Friendly music for some time, and when we find it the ZRC always does our best to promote this relatively rare commodity. Naturally when we heard about a ‘Zombie Musical’ up for free viewing, we jumped at the chance to watch. Unfortunately this so-called ‘Zombie Musical’ is another four minutes [...]