Posted By John Sears on January 1, 2011

I don’t know why the gore-mongers at Valve can’t just leave bad-enough alone with their fantastically successful and top-selling Anti-Zombie game series Left 4 Dead. Cleverly and deviously, they keep interest in their flagship hyper-violent co-operative experiment in Living Supremacy alive by providing updates and new gameplay modes to add to the circus of online bloodletting that the games represent.

But couldn’t they just leave the Zombie Community alone on New Years? Did they have to go out of their way to poke the Differently Animated with a stick on the holiday? GameDaily brings us this news:

While some people will be heading out to their local hangout to toast in 2011 with some good friends (and maybe some strangers who will become good friends) others will be playing one last Left 4 Dead 2 online game for 2010.

…

It’s called Flu Season and in today’s Left 4 Dead blog update Valve says its actually a combination of two commuity-created Mutation modes: “Boomer Shooter” by SR69MMJC and “Spitters!” by Karma Jockey.

The extreme dedication of Living Supremacists like Valve is why I can’t take vacations anymore. Eternal vigilance is the price of Zombie Rights advocacy!

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Videogames

Posted By John Sears on January 1, 2011

DVDTown.com has a run-down of all the titles slated for release in 2011 from various categories. It might not surprise you to learn that 2011 is going to be a very big year for movies about, and sadly often exploitative of, Zombies:

Right now, there are at least eight zombie movies slated for release sometime in 2011, and 13 Dracula/vampire movies:

Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament
Escape of the Living Dead
Few Brains More, A
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
World of the Dead: The Zombie Diaries
ZMDs: Zombies of Mass Destruction
Zombie Apocalypse: Redemption
Zombie Hamlet

…

And that’s not counting the sequels to “Zombieland” and “Twilight,” the films that are probably responsible for the resurgence. “Zombieland 2″ and “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Pt. 1″ are also scheduled for 2011 release, which brings the total to nine zombie movies and 14 Dracula/vampire movies.

Wow. All I can say is that I’m going to have to hit the gym just to counter all the time I’ll be spending next year with my butt parked in theatre seats watching movies for the ZRC. Hopefully I can see some as matinees to help protect our budget too.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Movies

Posted By John Sears on December 31, 2010

Here we have, not strictly in order, our Top 10 favorite moments from 2010′s campaign for Zombie Rights.

10) Annoying a bunch of sad, self-important nerd-fans of Mega64

It all started with a terse critique I made of a silly internet video, and turned into a feud between the ZRC and dozens of poorly socialized, often semi-literate haters of all things Zombie. I put this on the list because it helps to show the pitfalls, as well as the hidden joys, that can come from online advocacy work.

Plus it just might agitate them again, and these people are hilarious.

9) Resident Evil Afterlife Premiere Protest

So far, getting hassled by a mall security cop for our picket signage is the closest the ZRC has come to spending a night in the slammer on behalf of the cause.

So far. But when you’re working against the interests of The Man, it’s only a matter of time before you get oppressed, and we’re not backing down from our work on behalf of the Differently Animated just because of a little intimidation.

(A scene from our protest, sadly cut short by agents of conformity)

8) Debunking NPR’s Anti-Zombie Propaganda

Another in the Internet is Wacky category, a fact-check on an NPR piece/hatchet job on all of Zombiekind turns into a protracted discussion of the Differently Animated with GMU faculty and students. We clearly have a long way to go in advancing the cause of Undead Equality in the Academy, as this discussion made clear, but we’re in it for the long haul.

7) Going to Geek.kon and Seeing a Zombie Ska Band

I wasn’t at all sure this anime-centered Madison mainstay was a good venue for the ZRC at first, but we had so many great discussions there, and sold quite a bit of Zombie Friendly merch as it turns out, raising even more money for the Lurch for the Cure. Then to top all that great public interaction off, we got to see Dr. Cancer and the SKAmbies live and in concert toward the end of the convention, and even talked Zombie Rights with the band before the show. What a great weekend it turned out to be for The Cause.

(Zombies can be musicians because they’re people too)

6) Hanging out with The Horror Society

It just wouldn’t have been the same year in Zombie Advocacy without the good folks at The Horror Society. Thanks to them we got to see several independent Zombie movies for the first time, and attended a premiere or two (more on that below) as well. The ZRC has had booth space at a couple of their events and it’s always fun to chat with people and try to promote Zombie Awareness in the city of Chicago. In addition to events in-person, their website and Twitter feed have proven invaluable in gathering intelligence on up and coming Zombie media, both Friendly and Anti-Zombie alike. Obtaining the early information makes all the difference in this line of work, and we get to stay on the cutting edge of American Zombie film thanks to the Horror Society doing so much of the heavy lifting.

(Dr. Calamari outside the Portage on the night we saw Slices of Life and A Serbian Film at The Horror Society’s film festival)

5) Seeing Atomic Age TV 2: Electric Boogaloo, and being mentioned in the film

You know you’re making an impact when you become a household name. We’re not there yet, but seeing this hilarious and thoughtful satire of the Zombie Apocalypse genre, then being name-checked at the finale? Amazing and inspiring. See this movie and you’ll never think about Zombie movies the quite the same way again.

(Perhaps the all-time greatest satire of the Romero-Russo school of Anti-Zombie film)

4) Giving out the Zombie of the Year 2010 Award

We can’t forget that this is the year that saw another very worthy slate of candidates for Zombie of the Year, and we were overjoyed to award it to someone the ZRC has been discussing Zombie Rights with for years, Baron Mardi of Atomic Age Cinema and The Dark Carnival, who is, himself, a Zombie.

Congratulations, Baron Mardi. You earned it.

3) Attending the World Premiere of Slices of Life

Although the ZRC continues to find the W.O.R.M./Work Life segment from Slices of Life troublesome, The Zombie Rights Campaign is particularly proud that we got to attend the world premiere of one of the most influential horror movies of 2010. In years to come, when many of the cast and crew of this movie have gone on to make (hopefully) Zombie Friendly masterpieces, we can look back and say we played a small but pivotal role in raising awareness at this critical early stage, and have been following them from the beginning. It’s nice to be there to watch history unfold.

(A picture from the Q&A after the premiere)

2) Going to The Dark Carnival Film Festival

At the Dark Carnival the ZRC got to spread its message even further, both by sponsoring two awards and by doing what we do best: constructive, engaging dialogue. While at the DC we:

-Hung out with Baron Mardi, our 2010 Zombie of the Year winner and gave him his prestigious award

-Talked with Anthony Sumner, Deneen Melody and the Slices cast in general about Zombie Rights, striking up some friendships for The Cause in the process, even if we did apply a bit of a guilt trip over W.O.R.M. (they were very understanding)

-Protested Cabine of the Dead, exasperating Dr. Calamari just a little bit, but he came around eventually

-Saw Closure and Rise of the Living Corpse, expanding our view of independent Zombie moviemaking from around the world

-Spent an evening watching raunchy and bizarre films with ZRC pal Michelle Hartz, and many other fine memories.

All in all, it was a once in a lifetime event, but we’ll be back next year, sponsor more awards and protest anything Anti-Zombie with even more vigor, so Cabine of the Dead had better think twice about a sequel if it knows what’s coming to it.

(The lovely Buskirk-Chumley theatre is a great venue and hosts The Dark Carnival every year)

(Some of the usual gang of miscreants hosting the festival)

1) The Lurch for the Cure Auction at Famous Monsters

This was a big one for us. We reached out to a lot of the biggest names in Zombie related entertainment, both in person at Famous Monsters and online in the weeks before, and got some amazing results. In the end our FM auction raised over 300 dollars for The Lynn Sage Cancer Research Foundation, which just goes to show that Zombies aren’t just people too, they’re also good for the fight against Cancer. Along the way we got to talk and correspond with many of our counterparts on the, err, other side of this issue, including John Russo, Fred Van Lente, David Wellington, Judith O’Dea, Tom Savini and many other kind folks, who were happy to set aside our mutual enmity for a weekend to help out a good cause.

(The pride and joy of the Lurch Auction, our poster signed by a ton of the most famous (infamous) individuals in Zombie filmmaking.)

(On any other day, we’d probably be enemies with most of these people, but credit is due for being good sports and helping out a great cause)

Our heartfelt thanks go out to all our allies, collaborators and correspondents for the year 2010, without whom this amazing year working for Undead Equality and raising awareness of the Differently Animated would not have been possible. The ZRC couldn’t have done it without you, though we’d still have tried out best.

Let’s hope (and work) for an even better year in 2011!

Category: The Dark Carnival, Zombie Media, ZRC News | 3 Comments »
Tags: Horror Society, Public Appearance, Social Justice, The Dark Carnival, Zombie of the Year 2010

Posted By John Sears on December 30, 2010

2012 Zombies vs. Aliens is a new iPhone game with an intriguing premise:

In 2012, Aliens in search of new habitats wiped out the human race, having mistaken humans for just another pest on Earth. Their massive alpha particle weapons laid waste to all human life on the planet, leaving them free to sow the seeds that would make the planet livable for them.
Upon returning years later, expecting to find a new haven, they instead found that those same alpha particles had transformed the dead human flesh into undead hordes of Zombies! Now, as the Aliens return to Earth, a new power struggle to claim lordship over the planet has begun! You are the Zombie Commander charged with defeating the Aliens and saving Zombianity.
After that you can unlock the ability to become the Alien Commander and seize control over the Earth by eliminating the Zombie hordes.

Which side will you choose?

We’ve seen games before where you were allowed to play as a Zombie, or forced to do so after losing a game or round as a Living person, but almost invariably this is seen as playing the ‘wrong’ side or as a punishment. Here, however, we are presented with a game where the primary objective and strategy is to play as, and further the goals of, a Zombie civilization of some kind. This is very interesting from a Zombie Rights perspective, and I’m curious to learn more. The only thing that bugs me from the description is the ‘horde’ word; that’s a pretty sensitive term by now for the Differently Animated community.

Still, worth investigating. An in-depth review here states that the game is a sort of strategy/action hybrid centered around trench warfare; it’s bloody and gory, in a cartoony way. The Zombies here are anything but savage, disorganized brain-munchers though. They use tactics, weapons, organization; they’re a real playable videogame race, not some throwback to the infamous Romero/Russo stereotypes. Fascinating.

Here’s a gameplay video to show what I mean, where the player is using the Alien side apparently:

Boo Aliens! Go Zombies!

Hopefully an Android version will be available if not now then eventually, as that’s the phone platform we’ve decided to go with here at the ZRC, so I can try it for myself. From the video though? Very promising.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Videogames

Posted By John Sears on December 30, 2010

A new Anti-Zombie movie in or about to start production entitled ‘Blood Lodge’ is holding a benefit of sorts for the film on January 8th in New Jersey:

MULLICA TOWNSHIP – Graffiti Playhouse Productions, a South Jersey-based film company, is hosting a benefit party 7 p.m. to 2 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 8 for its new zombie horror movie.

The film, “Blood Lodge” will feature Vincent Pastore of “The Sopranos” and B-movie actress Jasmin St. Claire.

…

“A zombie attack happens in the fictional town of Ten Acres while a group of friends travel for a ski weekend,” said Orosz, who is an actor in the film. “The group unites with other guests staying at the Ten Acres Lodge and tries to stay alive by fighting the zombies.

“This is not your typical zombie movie,” he said. “‘Blood Lodge’ is like ‘Zombie Land’ meets ‘Dazed and Confused’ mixed with the 1970s grindhouse movies.”

Not your ‘typical’ zombie movie, eh? Let’s see: extremely negative depiction of a ‘horde’ of the Differently Animated attacks a remote but fortifiable structure and an assortment of colorful strangers have to either band together for survival or be eaten alive?

What about that is novel, the fact that it’s at a ski lodge?

Oh. I get it. This is a Living Supremacist and classist thing, isn’t it? Zombies aren’t *good enough* to be admitted to your fancy ski lodge. Their money, while green, isn’t accepted there. Go along home, Zombies. No skiing for you.

What a bunch of selfish, elitist aristocrats. Why can’t Zombies go skiing, precisely? Is there a reason beyond the rich Living types not wanting ‘their kind’ to share the slopes with warm-blooded and therefore deserving individuals?

I guess it’s not unprecedented. Wealthy and powerful enclaves often resist integration with any given minority group, whether it be swimming pools, water fountains, golf courses or, apparently, ski lodges. It’s always the same sad, bigoted story.

The ZRC won’t rest until this dual class and life-status discrimination comes to an end. We call on all of your winter resorts to open their doors and their hearts, not to mention their cash registers, to the Differently Animated. We must make this tired spectacle a thing of the past, indeed, make the premise of ‘Blood Lodge’ an outdated and shameful piece of American history!

Who knows? The Zombie that gets their dignity back might one day be you.

After, say, a heart attack and subsequent chemical spill. It’s been known to happen.

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

Posted By John Sears on December 30, 2010

Fangoria recently posted a fairly extensive review of a new Anti-Zombie book that, quite frankly, we hadn’t heard of here at the ZRC just yet called ‘No Flesh May Be Spared’. Said book apparently depicts a cruel world where Zombies are used as fodder for gladiatorial contests hearkening in style to the current ultimate fighting phenomena.

From the way they describe the book itself it seems to be thoroughly unpleasant and very, very Anti-Zombie:

If you no longer nurture an inner fourteen-year-old boy (or are female), your enthusiasm for NO FLESH MAY BE SPARED may be dampened, since Carnell’s effort is bolstered by the pillars of male adolescent interest: martial arts, girls, pro sports and messy undead mastication.

…

NO FLESH’s central conceit of zombie prize fighting is not exactly original (A similar sequence in Romero’s LAND OF THE DEAD leaps immediately to mind) and the story follows a mostly predictable sports/action movie formula, but the steady pacing, friendly prose and tense fight passages combine to work smashingly well. The inevitable moments of zombie carnage are satisfyingly wet, the height of which is reached in the opening chapter and features a breastfeeding mother and a baby who is very, very, hungry.

What a savage and tragic story. Poor hungry Zombaby! Honestly, we’re reduced to abusing Zombie babies in literature now? Have these authors no shame?

What’s perhaps even worse than the book itself, however, is Fangoria’s attempt to peddle it to minors and masking that attempt as some perverse and monstrous literacy campaign:

Even with its flaws, NO FLESH SHALL BE SPARED trumps pretty much every summer action movie released over the past few years in terms of providing muscular, rambunctious fun. A peek into a lesser-explored dimension of the zombie mythos is always welcome, and if you perhaps know of any real fourteen-year-old-boys that you’d like to see put down the game controller and dig into an actual book, buy them NO FLESH SHALL BE SPARED now and thank FANGORIA later.

You know, when I was fourteen I mostly read high brow science fiction. I know I wasn’t entirely typical, and it’s true that I watched pro-wrestling with my friends in a largely ironic way, but I wouldn’t have found this pandering, blood-soaked exploitative display at all appealing. I wish people wouldn’t write off the next generation quite so quickly. If you don’t debase yourself to cater to what you perceive as their primitive needs, perhaps you’d find they never had them in the first place.

Worse, here you’re trying to sell them not just on a primitive and immature, testosterone-soaked bloodbath of a book, but one that defames an entire minority population in the name of ‘entertainment’! Instead of edifying and educating, Fangoria thinks it’s acceptable to push Zombie hate on kids, so long as it gets them away from the Xbox.

Admittedly, given what sells on the Xbox these days, that might be more of a lateral move, Zombie Rights wise.

Still, while The Zombie Rights Campaign has unwillingly come to expect Anti-Zombie savagery from America’s mercenary publishers and many of its authors, we were taken aback to see this attempt to repackage the hate as part of a healthy childhood’s learning.

What’s next, I wonder? Will Sesame Street teach its even younger audiences to dislike people without pulses in between counting segments and whatever it is Elmo does?

Shame on Thom Carnell for writing this book, and even more shame on Fangoria for their slick and slimy new technique to promote Anti-Zombie fiction to America’s kids.

Category: Zombie Media | 4 Comments »
Tags: Books, Journamalism, Social Justice

Posted By John Sears on December 30, 2010

I know, I know; another day, another questionable use of the term ‘Zombie’:

A geostationary satellite that become a “zombie” earlier this year and stopped communicating with ground controllers has now finally been reset and is under control. The Galaxy 15 communications satellite had its “brains fried” by a solar flare and went rogue in early May. Although it was still functional, its navigation and communications systems would not accept commands, and the satellite drifted out of its orbit. On December 23, 2010, engineers at the company Intelsat were finally able to command the unit to reset after a battery drained. Shortly thereafter Galaxy 15 began accepting commands, and then was put into safe mode.

Not only is this another in the lazily pejorative overuses of the term ‘Zombie’, but it doesn’t even fit the stereotypes. Zombies, generally speaking, are supposed to be almost uniquely vulnerable to having their ‘brains fried’, as it were; in the Romero/Russo canon it’s the only sure way to stop them from ‘attacking’ you. Yet here, you become a Zombie by having your brain fried. I guess it’s supposed to be a reference to Voodoo-related drugging? No, wait, that’s stupid. Voodoo Zoms were supposed to be continuous hard workers, not slackers.

Why am I putting this much thought into it, anyway? We all know why they chose the term; it’s trendy, and journalists love to fit in with a trend.

Sigh.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Don't Use the Zed Word, Journamalism

Posted By John Sears on December 29, 2010

Seriously, enough is enough, people. Slapping the Differently Animated into random historical works of fiction that are well in the public domain has gone from novel to quaint to outright derivative hackery.

Now we get H.G. Wells’ ‘War of the Worlds’, but with Zombies:

It was in 2009 that Seth Grahame-Smith released “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” through Quirk Books. Within months, zombie books were thicker in stores than the Undead in “Night oif the Living Dead,” and while Quirk continued to grind out sequels and prequels, others got into the act.

Now, Gallery Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, delivers a new title for its “Blood Enriched Classics” series: “The War of the Worlds, Plus Blood, Guts and Zombies” with Eric S. Brown taking co-author credit with the dead (but spinning) H.G. Wells ($15 paperback).

‘Blood Enriched Classics’? Seriously?

Precisely how many of these books, which to my knowledge are invariably Anti-Zombie, can people POSSIBLY want to read?

It just isn’t funny anymore. Cut it out.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Books

Posted By John Sears on December 28, 2010

We’ve talked here at the ZRC about the overuse of the term ‘Zombie’ to describe things that a given individual doesn’t like. ‘Zombie’ ideas, ‘Zombie’ banks and so forth. Up until now this overly broad application of the term had always been pejorative, but today I saw this article:

Zombie Tech: These Ceiling Lights Are Delivering the Web
Posted by Michael_Byrne on Tuesday, Dec 28, 2010
…

It’s simple: instead of radio waves or cables, these ceiling lights are transmitting information via flickering binary code (basically) at a special photosensitive modem. The company’s called LVX System and it’s already installed the tech, which is on par with home DSL speed-wise, in six municipal buildings in Minnesota.The Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport is, likely, next.

…

Also, very notably, this is tech that’s back from the dead. Alexander Graham Bell had this idea in 1880 with his “photophone,” a transmission system that sent voice information via a modulated light beam. I’d say it never caught on, but the photophone is basically the precursor to fiber-optics. And what is this but regressive fiber-optics—minus the fiber and a whole lot slower (so far).

Zombie technology, eh?

Well… again, I’m not sure this is a good trend. While it promotes a more positive image, to be sure, if we open the floodgates to Zombie meaning ‘anything anyone wants’ it makes for a lot of headaches. On the other hand, as opposed to a bank that didn’t ‘die’, or an idea that didn’t die because ideas can’t, a technology can, in a sense, perish (i.e. stop being implemented) and then ‘rise’ from its proverbial grave (sometimes literal graves, if you count landfills).

It’s closer to being Zombielike, at least.

Eh. I won’t raise a stink about it as long as we have to put up with all the other six-degrees-of-separation ‘Zombie’ terminology abuses, at least.

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Posted By John Sears on December 28, 2010

I mean, just look at the title: “You Might Be A Zombie and Other Bad News”

How exactly is that ‘bad news’, Cracked.com? For the blanket assumption that being a Zombie is somehow automatically ‘bad’ news alone, I think we can most likely peg this one as Anti-Zombie.

When you read the description, though, it seems like the book as a whole only lightly touches on Zombiism, and probably in the ‘Toxoplasmosis is eating your braaaaaaaaain’ line of reasoning that we’ve seen before from pop-science journalists. See this from the Amazon.com page for the book:

Some facts are too terrifying to teach in school. Unfortunately, Cracked.com is more than happy to fill you in:

* A zombie apocalypse? It could happen. 50% of humans are infected with a parasite that can take over your brain.

If they are talking about Toxoplasmosis (which is caused by the parasite Toxoplasma gondii, an interesting creature whose primary host is cats), then the number of people infected varies a lot by country and the parasite is primarily transmitted by eating raw meat or not washing your hands. So cook your food and use soap and you’re pretty well off. Some apocalypse. In the US about 11% of adults have it, and you never even notice.

As of yet the evidence that Toxoplasmosis actually affects human behavior in serious ways isn’t all that firm, and it’s mostly very subtle things like slightly slowing reaction times or making people a bit moody. There’s some evidence linking it to schizophrenia too, and it can actually be quite dangerous to a fetus if contracted by the mother during pregnancy.

But, again, an apocalypse? According to the Discover piece in our last post about this, 80% of French people carry the parasite. Wikipedia says up to 88%. Do you see Paris in flames?

Well, OK, but any more than usual?

There’s just no ‘there’ there with this story. It’s a potentially serious parasitic disease that may contribute to quite a few deaths and possibly even some mental illness. None of which, by the way, resembles Zombies in any way. Once again for the benefit of the media: ‘Zombie’ is not a word for anything you don’t like. The very specific forms of mental control alleged in some traditional religious legends or Necromantic rituals don’t really resemble a guy who’s slightly moody and a bit slow to tap the brakes in his car.

We’re very disappointed in Cracked.com over this book.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Books, Don't Use the Zed Word, Journamalism