Posted By John Sears on February 14, 2011

I know I’ve joked about just how many Plants vs. Zombies products are out there today, but this is seriously starting to get ridiculous:

Well according to Kotaku Australia (who hasn’t changed to the HORRIBLE new look that Gawker sites run on) there is a Plants vs Zombies board game coming out soon! An officially licensed one at that!

Apparently a company called Screenlife has teamed up with PopCap to release the official board game of Plants vs Zombies.

…

I was given a quick look at how the game will play, with card flips and dice rolls determining which zombies need to be placed on the board next and which plant tiles you can place against them. Players will be able to mess with their opponents’ lawns, making this more of a competitive game than the PvZ so many of us have played on iPhone, iPad, computers and wherever else.

iPhone, iPad, computers, consoles and now even your kitchen table will all be platforms for spreading the hateful Anti-Zombie bigotry of PopCap and its chief scribe of despair, Stephen Notley.

Where will it all end? Perhaps Plants vs. Zombie chips can be placed directly into the brain?

Mel Brooks had no idea Spaceballs would cross from being parody into actual entertainment strategy in a couple of decades.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Anti-Zombie Products, Videogames

Posted By John Sears on February 14, 2011

Now, technically, that isn’t a happy Valentine’s Day from the *whole* campaign – the art director stalwartly boycotts this particular holiday. So consider these well-wishes to be on behalf of the Movement, I suppose.

In service to The Cause.

In the spirit of using love to further Zombie Rights, let me show you this lovely graphic that Boing Boing is floating today:

As they describe it:

From the Boing Boing Flickr Pool, Iain Burke’s Zombie Love: a romantic decal that celebrates the love that transcends the grave.

This is precisely the attitude we’re looking for. Zombies are people too, they just happen to have, as they put it, transcended the grave. There’s nothing wrong, or shameful, about Zombie-Living Love, and we’re glad that Boing Boing is willing to state so publicly, despite co-editor Cory Doctorow‘s well-documented Anti-Zombie bigotry.

Amazingly enough, Mr. Doctorow posted this update; perhaps he’s finally seen the light and forsworn his Living Supremacist views? The ZRC certainly hopes so.

(thanks to ZRC contributor Michelle Hartz for tipping us off to this, pardon the expression, heartwarming story)

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Journamalism, Zombie Art

Posted By John Sears on February 14, 2011

I heard about this campaign on Facebook, and at first, while I thought it was indeed an awesome idea to build a statue to RoboCop in Detroit, I didn’t know if it had anything to do with The Zombie Rights Campaign.

And then it hit me: RoboCop died, and came back as a cyborg sworn to uphold justice and protect the citizens of Detroit. He’s probably not, technically, a Zombie, but he most certainly IS Differently Animated.

This is an opportunity to get a statue made commemorating a Differently Animated figure from the media!

Just look at how RoboCop is perceived by the general public. From RoboCop’s wikipedia page:

RoboCop is a 1987 American science fiction-action film directed by Paul Verhoeven. Set in a crime-ridden Detroit, Michigan in the near future, RoboCop centers on a police officer who is brutally murdered and subsequently re-created as a super-human cyborg known as “RoboCop”. The film features Peter Weller, Dan O’Herlihy, Kurtwood Smith, Nancy Allen, Miguel Ferrer, and Ronny Cox.

In addition to being an action film, RoboCop includes larger themes regarding the media, resurrection, gentrification, corruption, and human nature. It received positive reviews and cited as one of the best films of 1987; spawning merchandise, two sequels, a television series, two animated TV series, and a television mini-series, video games and two comic book adaptations.

…

RoboCop is guided by three prime directives written into his programming: serve the public trust, protect the innocent and uphold the law.

Isn’t that precisely the sort of image of the Differently Animated we want to project? Don’t we want the public to know that, just because someone’s come back from the dead, they don’t have to be a target of fear and scorn? That the Differently Animated have something positive to contribute to society?

This isn’t the first time that a Differently Animated police officer has helped to improve the public image of the Post-Mortem Achiever set, of course. Reg Shoe (who really needs his own wikipedia page but has a pretty good one at this Discworld Wiki) has served in the police forces of Ankh-Morpork for some time now in the Discworld novels. But RoboCop is a distinctly American personality, and easily as worthy of a statue as some boxer.

I mean, what did Rocky ever really do for anyone? Did he serve the public or uphold the law? As far as I can tell he beat up a Russian and Mr. T, and that’s about it. Is that really comparable to a life of public service in law enforcement? I think not.

So yes, please support both the public arts and the Differently Animated in Detroit and kick in a few bucks if you can to the Detroit Needs RoboCop campaign on Kickstarter. We’re pledging 35 dollars to this worthy goal here at the ZRC; the fundraiser is open for another 40 days so there’s plenty of time to dig through your couch cushions a bit if need be.

Do it for RoboCop. He’d do it for you.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Movies, Social Justice, Zombies Doing Good

Posted By John Sears on February 13, 2011

We’ve repeatedly called for more Zombie Friendly music here at the ZRC, and have made an effort to get to know the work of Zombie Friendly groups like Rainbow Destroyer and Dr. Cancer and the SKAmbies. This means we’re always on the look out for more Zombie related songs.

Unfortunately, as often as not, we find Anti-Zombie music instead, like ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ by Kirby Krackle or ‘Z-Day: The Zombie Musical’.

That was sadly the case today when we stumbled upon “Zombie Love Song” by ‘Your Favorite Martian’, a cartoon-band entity that is apparently the product of an internet personality, Ray William Johnson.

All starts out well enough, in the song and the video. A Zombie plaintively writes a love letter to his intended beloved online, chatting with her on Facebook (or something very much like it), trying to convince her to look past the whole ectothermia thing (or is it poikilothermia?)

Then midway through the song it suddenly becomes clear: our alleged Zombie character singing the song? He wants, of course, to eat her brains.

Big surprise.

Some of the lyrics are particularly offensive:

So give me a chance girl,
You know I’ll be worth it,
Yeah I’m a Zombie baby — ain’t nobody perfect!

I’ll chase you through the yard and
all through the house into the dark
oh – I – want to steal your heart
And eat your brains.

The ZRC is saddened most of all by the lost opportunity presented here. It’s a catchy tune and a well-animated video, and with a more positive outlook, one featuring a relationship based on mutual respect and less on devouring grey matter, this song and video could have made a positive difference for The Cause. The video also raises the spectre of Living-Undead relationships (what I’ve recently seen called ‘mixed mortality’ which is cute but too hung up on death for the ZRC’s taste). Why is it so terrifying that Zombies might want to have romantic relationships with Living people?

And why is it that it’s almost always a *male* Zombie and a female Living person? Is this a revival of old stereotypes about some nebulous ‘They’ that wants ‘our women’?

This song could have helped fight negative stereotyping like that, but instead it’s yet another wasted opportunity and more Anti-Zombie prejudice marketed with catchy pop music.

For those reasons the ZRC has given the song and video our second-lowest rating, marking it forever in shame as being officially Anti-Zombie.

To enable you watch for yourself, and be suitably offended, I have embedded it below.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Music, Youtube Mischief

Posted By John Sears on February 13, 2011

It all started with a google alert in my inbox that mentioned this one page on Gizmodo describing an allegedly ‘Zombie’ SNES:

Run. Run! Run for your life, but don’t step over giant green pipe on your way out, or the zombie Super Nintendo will catch you to suck your blood and soul. The damn thing even glows in the dark:

The picture is of a paint splattered, banged up, modified console with, amongst other things, a plastic eyeball grafted on, and it has LEDs inside to glow in the dark… apparently. No actual information on the *intent* of the design is available, however. Why is it labeled a ‘Zombie’ by Gizmodo?

Because the author finds it scary, I guess.

So I wanted to track down where it *actually* came from, and saw this at the end of the post:

[Game Over Project via Technabob via Kotaku]

So this post comes to Gizmodo via Technabob from Kotaku who are summarizing something else? Could geek sites, particularly ones in the Gawker orbit/collective/hive mind, be any *more* incestuous with their updates?

I went to Kotaku, and they say this about the console mod:

While most case mods are designed to improve the appearance of a games console – or at least tailor it to suit the whims of a more fickle owner – we don’t see many that will make small children cry.

But, man, if I was four years old and saw this thing, it’d disturb me. And that’s just during the day. At night, it glows green and bellows smoke like a the very gates of hell.

But then at the end Kotaku says they got it from Technabob, not the other way around:

!GAME OVER PROJECT! [Retrotaku, via technabob]

So I went to Technabob. They posited the case was inspired by demonic possession, and indeed, from the far larger picture they include, it seems more demonic and less Zombie-related.

I debated what to do, but ultimately decided in the interests of journalism that I needed to reproduce that picture here:

Ultimately I have to ask, however: Why be so threatened by this console modification, whether it is supposedly a Zombie console or a Demonic one? It still plays games, and runs on electricity, and needs human interaction to be meaningful. If you wanted to anthropomorphize, to the extent that it did before, it still wants your love and affection.

Can’t we all be friends with our ancient, Zombie/Demon consoles?

Perhaps an even more important question is why Gizmodo felt that, on the basis of clearly inconclusive evidence, it had to run with the ‘Zombie’ connection and then demagogue against said console, largely for being a Zombie?

Is it poor journalistic practices, bigotry, or fear? Some combination of the three?

The ZRC would like to know, but in the meantime, is pondering getting an SNES of our own and ‘Zombifying’ it. A cheerful green coat of paint, perhaps some LEDs, it could be a great hobby project. And of course, our mod would be Zombie Positive.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Journamalism, Mainstream Media, Videogames

Posted By John Sears on February 12, 2011

Anchor Bay has long been no friend to the Zombie Community, releasing a slew of Anti-Zombie films onto DVD, including ‘classics’ like ‘Day of the Dead’ and ‘Evil Dead’, and modern atrocities like The Walking Dead (which they’ll be putting out on disc soon).

Therefore it wasn’t a huge shock to hear that they’d picked up another Anti-Zombie film for wider release:

We have mentioned Howard J. Ford’s African zombie movie The Dead a few times now and while it has been making its rounds on the film festival circuit for some time now I’ve been waiting for its release as I’m sure some of you have been as well.

According to STYD Anchor Bay/Starz has picked up The Dead for U.S. distribution with a DVD release expected some time this year.

…

Synopsis: “In the very near future, most of the world has succumbed to the virus of the living dead. After crashing off the coast of Africa, Lt. Brian Murphy battles for survival across the terrible terrain of Africa in search of a way to get back to his beloved family in the USA. Saved by local military man Daniel Dembele, who is also searching for his son, both men join forces, all the while battling against the ever-present threat of the living dead.”

The premise is somewhat reminiscent of Monster Island, which also featured an American narrator working with survivors from Africa against the ‘living dead’. Here, however, the action is set in Africa, not back in the States, as Lt. Murphy tries, I guess, to get back home.. while leaving a trail of massacres and corpses in his wake.

Which could be taken as a subtly political message about the influence of US foreign policy in Africa, but is more likely just to provide scares to the audience.

I know I’ve been watching and reading far too much about Anti-Zombie movies lately when I found myself at least relieved by a novel setting for this particular movie; no farmhouses, no suburbs, no houses that scream ‘Joe offered to let us use his place for an afternoon’. The filmmakers seem to have poured a lot of love and work into making the movie, which makes it all the more tragic that this divisive and unpleasant looking film is the result.

What is it about making Zombie bashing movies that leads so many aspiring filmmakers to put so much heart and soul into spreading the message of hate, anyway? Oh, if only I could find a simple answer to that question.

In the meantime, ‘The Dead’ will apparently be coming to DVD this year, and you can see the trailer for this blood-soaked Anti-Zombie road trip movie below.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Movies

Posted By John Sears on February 12, 2011

Apparently filmmaking reached Iowa at some point between the Manifest Destiny era and the present, because an independent Anti-Zombie film entitled ‘Collapse’ has been produced in the state that more than any other gets to pick our Presidential candidates:

The theatrical trailer for “Collapse,” an independent zombie film made primarily in West Branch has been posted online.

The 96-second trailer features plenty of blood, guts and West Branch locales. Sharp-eyed viewers will recognize the Jack & Jill grocery store, Main Street storefronts and a brief cameo by the Funcrest Bait & Tackle shop.

It was good of the filmmakers to cram in every major commercial establishment in West Branch (population: approximately 2,300) during their trailer; did the local Chamber of Commerce kick in some money during shooting?

If you watch the trailer (direct hyperlinks having not reached the Press-Citizen in Iowa) which I can’t embed below (YouTube apparently hasn’t reached Iowa yet either) you’ll see a fairly slick indie take on the ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ scenario we deride so often here at the ZRC. I say fairly because a lot of the logical flaws manifest in the genre since Night of the Living Dead are in evidence here too, whether as homage or as derivative; the crudely boarded up farmhouse around which all the local Undead gather for some reason looms large.

As mentioned above, West Branch has a population of 2,300 people, more or less. If a crowd of, say, 100 recently revived Differently Animated citizens of the town arrive at one farmhouse, you’re talking about 4-5% of the entire population having picked a random direction and just happened to end up in one spot, out of the many thousands of acres of farms in the area. ‘Zombies’ in a Romero style Zompocalypse seem to have senses to rival Wolverine, or some form of precognition. Food for thought.

Of course that’s only if you assume they’re some kind of robotic, unfeeling life-form, as Zombie Apocalypse movies tend to do. If you know the Differently Animated are thinking and feeling beings, then you could assume they had come to your boarded-up farmhouse for some intelligent purpose, but that would get in the way of gunning them down for sport and audience amusement.

Maybe they just came over for some coffee? A slice of pie? A chat? Nobody ever thinks to find out if that is the case before the mayhem starts, do they?

And why is it that nobody ever knows how to board up a window in an Anti-Zombie movie, anyway? Hammers and nails aren’t that hard to use, folks. You shouldn’t need a master carpenter to slap up a half dozen boards, roughly parallel to the window frame, without leaving large and conveniently arm-shaped gaps that someone can reach inside through.

In this trailer we see the cycle of violence, so familiar to the ZRC, begin again, and the audience is right back in a world were law enforcement is helpless, the farmhouse is the last refuge, and children are inevitably bitten and turned into Zombies, at which point their parents either no longer love them or get eaten by them, perhaps both.

Only, it’s Iowa, so when it happens here it’s surrounded by cornfields.*

In summary, I think it’s safe to say the ZRC condemns this film for its Anti-Zombie cruelty. First for the all too commonplace shooting and violence against the Differently Animated on screen, yes. But second, just for making them lurch around Iowa. That was meanspirited, people. They’re not politicians or journalists; what did they do to deserve that gruesome fate?

*Note, from the trailer, it looks like the movie takes place in the fall, so the corn is already harvested. Sorry, corn-fans, who I assume overlap with Iowa tourists pretty heavily.

Note also: The ZRC does not actually hate Iowa to the extent depicted in this review. It’s humor. In reality we feel mostly pity and sorrow for our neighbors to the Southwest, and Wisconsin is probably even willing to send them aid in the form of cheese.

Category: Zombie Media | 3 Comments »
Tags: Movies

Posted By John Sears on February 12, 2011

First of all, though the game is called “Pro Zombie Soccer: Apocalypse Edition”, it is obviously anything but Zombie Positive. I wish the publisher wouldn’t stoop to using such a misleading title, which will surely confuse consumers and possibly lead to the mistaken purchase of the title by a Zombie Enlightened individual looking for something less hostile to the Differently Animated. Less hostile than this:

In Pro Zombie Soccer: Apocalypse Edition, you take on the role of Jax, a washed-up soccer player, now homeless, who is caught in the middle of a zombie outbreak. After being bitten by his zombified, soccer-playing hero, Jax is seemingly infected not only with the zombie virus, but also the ability to take out scores of the undead with nothing but a soccer ball. As he feels the infection spread, Jax decides to take out as many zombies as he can and get to the bottom of the infection before he himself turns into one of the walking dead.

Players take control of Jax, though he remains stationary on the left-hand side of the screen. To knock out the hordes of zombies that approach from the right, hold down the shoot button, aim, and release. The longer you hold down the shoot button the more powerful the shot, which is key as there are some zombies who cannot be taken down with a normal shot. In addition, there are many different zombie types, such as underground zombies who periodically pop their heads out of the ground, armored zombies who have to be taken out with a bank shot, and disco zombies who can only be taken out with what is called a “nut shot”. That one’s self-explanatory.

After a while these iPod/iPad Zombie assaulting games really start to run together in their descriptions. You basically hold down a button and aim a shot at the right side of the screen, and.. that’s it.

Here’s a radical thought, developers: why not have the player stand on the *right* side of the screen and aim *left*. Ooooh, innovative!

To be more serious, however, yet again we have here a ‘time killer’ game that features casual Anti-Zombie violence as a way to spend a few down minutes here and there, to wedge even more callous Anti-Zombiism into the hours of the waking day than before. No time to sit down and plunk road cones on Zombie heads, ala Dead Rising, or to fight a mysterious and extremely convoluted corporate conspiracy that involves Zombies (somehow), ala Resident Evil? Only have five minutes to play until your stop on the bus? ‘No problem’, say these developers, ‘try our inexpensive hate game to plug up the tiny gaps in your hectic daily life so that you don’t have to ponder the meaning of existence anymore!’

Tragic. Eventually our population will be so well trained by these digital death merchants that they’ll instinctively desire, and then *need* to hurt virtual Zombies just to relax at all, and then where will we be?

In fact, are we there already?

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Videogames

Posted By John Sears on February 11, 2011

By now you, our socially-conscious ZRC Blog readers, have no doubt heard the news: President Mubarak of Egypt has stepped down from power:

In a brief announcement on Egyptian state television at 6:00 p.m. Cairo time, Vice President Omar Suleiman said that President Hosni Mubarak has relinquished power and asked the Egyptian Armed Forces Council to assume responsibility for leadership of the country.

…

Egyptian opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei, reacting to the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak, says: “This is the greatest day of my life. The country has been liberated.”

It is, without a doubt, a good day for Egypt. A despot has fled and a caretaker military government is in place, and hopefully there will be no further violence against the cultural heritage of Egyptian Mummies.

However, as with many advances in civil rights, caution is called for. Little is known about how the two men now in charge of Egypt will work toward democracy (indeed, if they actually will do so). Even less is known as to their relationship with the Mummy community; I can’t find anything on that, for some odd reason (a journalistic oversight I’m sure).

For now though I’m sure the entire Zombie Rights Movement will join us in wishing Egypt, and especially its native Mummies, the best of luck as they work toward a brighter future for their country.

(Once again, desktops of a variety of sizes are available here.)

Category: Zombie Media, ZRC News | No Comments »
Tags: Journamalism, Mummy Pride, Social Justice

Posted By John Sears on February 11, 2011

Apparently we’re at a point in our civilization where running an illicit drug lab is seen as socially acceptable, but being a Zombie is not:

Synopsis
Small town suburban burn-outs are starting a business in the only industry they know, drugs. Set out to produce and sell a drug that gives a perfect high, Vinny and Sebastian recruit the help of Sebastian’s jealous girlfriend and her rich best friend. The four of them take on the drug world fighting mobsters, frat-boys and even an occasional zombie.

Let me get this straight, because I haven’t actually had any drugs today besides caffeine and yet I’m having trouble believing my senses. This is a movie where the protagonists are running a drug lab, warring with the mob and administering, probably selling, untested and clearly unsafe psychotropic drugs… and in this same film, the ZOMBIES are the villains?

What’s next, a meth lab syndicate heroically saves an elementary school from ‘Zombies’ and the citizenry are so grateful they let the kids all take a free sample from the toothless, gun-toting hillbillies?

(Once again I open my mouth and let out an idea that might well be adopted by some unscrupulous Anti-Zombie filmmaker… sigh)

For more information you can see the website for this travesty of a movie, creatively entitled ‘Zombie Drugs’ here.

I’m embedding the… strange.. trailer below as well.

“Initial Side Effects” from Zombie Drugs (Promo Clip) from Zombie Drugs on Vimeo.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Movies