Posted By John Sears on June 2, 2011

Oh, ‘Shaun of the Dead’, also known as Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright’s gushing love letter to George Romero, has long been a thorn in the Zombie Community’s side for the way it trivializes and mocks the plight of the modern Zombie, as well as for the way it added fuel to the resurgence of Euro-Zombie filmmaking and gave rise to other ‘Zom-Coms’ like the possibly even-more offensive ‘Zombieland’.

Naturally, being a popular Living Supremacist film, it has inspired a lot of merchandising. We previously exhibited a piece of fan-made ‘Shaun’ merch from a horror con in ages past, the Winchester pint glass:

Therefore it didn’t surprise us to see yet another ‘Shaun’ shirt, but it did sadden The ZRC all the same:

Shirt: Shaun Of The Dead: The Plan

While we all know the plan works, kind of, when you read through it in the context of the film it’s absolutely absurd. Of course it’s supposed to be, that’s a large point of the movie. Still this one is perfect for every Shaun of the Dead fan out there!

Who does ‘the plan’ work for? Well, it works out ok for Shaun and his would-be-beloved Liz I suppose, but think of poor Zombie Ed who ends up chained inside a workshed hiding out from The Man who wants to put him into perpetual involuntary servitude, also known as SLAVERY. Just because he’s a Zombie.

Yeah, that’s a great outcome there Shaun. Good planning.. for a Living Supremacist bigot mayhaps. And he’s one of the most Zombie Tolerant people in the whole movie! Ghastly!

Meanwhile Zombies out here in the real world have to put up with t-shirts promoting this awful ‘plan’ to a new generation of Zombophobes who’ve been stocking up on ammo and sharp objects according to Max Brooks’ instructions. Again, ghastly.

We rate this shirt as Living Supremacist.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Anti-Zombie Products, Clothing, ZRC Reviews

Posted By John Sears on June 2, 2011

Here at the ZRC we support Zombies staying in peak Undead shape, although I believe many varieties of the Undead don’t actually need exercise to do so; Baron Mardi stays in top physical condition with a rigorous alcohol poisoning regimen, for example. Still, Zombies vary widely, and for those of you who do require exercise from time to time, there’s a shirt commemorating the Zombie workout (even though some internet wags see it as an excuse to make jokes):

Want to make sure you keep your zombies in shape? Well now someone has thought of the perfect product to do just that and it’s something a lot of fitness nuts already have at their disposal! Yes that’s right it’s simply a treadmill! Just get them positioned on the track and make sure there is something to keep them interested sitting right in front of them and you are good to go!

See, this is the sort of non-confrontational, Zombie accessible garment that The ZRC can get behind. Fitness is important for all of us, whether Living or Undead, and it’s also one of those common ground topics that we can use to bridge the divide between the Living and Undead communities. The ZRC dreams of a day when the guy on the treadmill next to you at the gym might or might not be a Zombie, and that’s just fine with everyone concerned.

What a proud, not to mention physically fit, occasion that day will be.

We rate this shirt Zombie Friendly.

You can obtain the Zombie Fitness shirt at Shirt City.

Category: Zombie Media | 2 Comments »
Tags: Clothing, Zombie Products, ZRC Reviews

Posted By John Sears on June 1, 2011

We mentioned this rumor earlier, and even talked about this confirmation on Twitter but with the interview and the server migration I forgot to put up official notice until now: Oscar winner Jeff Bridges will play a Zombie cop in an upcoming film!

The Wrap reports that Bridges will play a veteran police officer named Roy in the film, which is being helmed by RED’s Robert Schwentke. CLASH OF THE TITANS’ Matt Manfredi and Phil Hay wrote the script. Bridges will co-star with Ryan Reynolds, who plays a recently slain cop who joins the Rest In Peace Department, a police force made up of undead officers.

Yes, it seems like serious star power is coming down on both the Pro and Anti Zombie sides of the film industry of late, between this news and ‘The Curse of the Buxom Strumpet’ starring Sir Ian McKellen and Dame Judi Dench.

You know who we’re rooting for.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Movies

Posted By John Sears on June 1, 2011

Author and alleged ‘Zombie expert’ Scott Kenemore has kept busy over the last few years putting out books about Zombies. Well, kind of, anyway.

He’s most famous for ‘The Zen of Zombie: Better Living Through the Undead’, one of the first books I actually bought for the ZRC. Longtime readers may be aware that it’s never been reviewed… and there’s a reason for that.

‘Zen’ is a self-help book that is supposed to guide the reader through a course of self-improvement by modeling one’s behavior on Zombies, or rather, the stereotypes thereof. It’s not Zombie Friendly but in an odd way it tries to focus on the bright side of said stereotypes. The issue is: it’s not a satire of a self-help book; it really IS a self-help book. Too close to home for me; I tried a couple of times but couldn’t slog through.

I may have to try one last time, as Kenemore’s new book supposedly looks into the long-alleged misuse and abuse of Zombies by the Third Reich.

Unfortunately doing so from a viciously Anti-Zombie perspective:

Get the inside scoop on historical events as the Nazis:
Harness the power of Haitian Voodoo spirits to create zombies. If you learn anything from these documents, please let it be: Don’t try this at home!
Encounter the deformed, mass-murdering automatons as they turn against their masters. Did you really think you could control a zombie? Regardless of your credentials, they will eat you.
Finally determine how to kill a zombie—or rather, return it to the state of ordinary, inert corpse which won’t flaunt its decaying flesh in your face.
And much, much more!

So let me get this straight; when the Nazis experimented on using the occult to create an Undead army, it blew up in their face and the Zombies killed them, but acted like Romero-esque Zombie stereotypes in the process despite being of occult origin?

Why would this be a bad thing, by the way? If some dedicated Undead individuals ate a few Nazis in World War II, I for one think they should have gotten medals and a ticker tape parade, not to mention some antacid.

I have more than a few doubts about the veracity of the original history supposedly harnessed and unearthed to create this relatively slender tome; why has this history gone unremarked until now? Where did these documents sit for decades until being uncovered?

The description of the provenance of this information from Amazon is more than a little fishy:

Zombie expert Scott Kenemore (The Zen of Zombie) unearths a collection of top-secret lost documents from WWII (originally intercepted by the U.S. Signal Corps in 1941 and presented to Franklin Roosevelt in a confidential memorandum), describing efforts of the Nazi Sicherheitsdienst (or SD) to harness and weaponize Haitian Voodoo and zombie-creating technologies for military purposes. For the first time, here is the thrilling, humorous, and satisfyingly-gory story of an evil empire’s foolhardy attempt to harness an ancient and unspeakable monster: the zombie!

While the Nazis initially dream of creating an army of bloodthirsty, automaton super-zombies to march across Europe, they soon learn that the walking dead are not as obedient and malleable as they’ve been led to believe. In contrast, these Nazi agents quickly find that the walking dead of the Haitian backwoods are closer to brain-eating, flesh-rending dynamos that don’t respect a nicely pressed SS uniform, and instead just go for the jugular. Faced with Voodoo spells, dangerous flora and fauna, and their own naive assumptions about the dark forces with which they’re tangling, these Nazi SD agents learn the hard way that nobody bosses around a zombie.

Does anyone else get a whiff of UFO ‘secret history’ books on this one? Color me very skeptical.

At any rate, ‘Zombies vs. Nazis: A Lost History of the Walking Undead’ (or is it ‘Long History’? The cover art differs from the given title) comes out August 1st, so stay tuned.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Books

Posted By John Sears on June 1, 2011

You know, it’s hard enough to stomach cruelty directed at the Differently Animated from the usual suspects: rednecks, independent film directors, Max Brooks. But when a supposed voice for tolerance and open-mindedness defames Zombies in the very midst of a piece on how society should be less judgmental, it takes your breath away. If, you know, you have breath, which I do.

To be more Zombie Correct, it certainly gives one pause:

Dodai Stewart —If you read tabloids or ladymags, pay attention to advertising campaigns, or happen to live on planet Earth, you know that the one thing women are supposed to strive for — more than a functioning body, a healthy body, or a strong body — is a bikini body.

…

What we need to admit, accept and evangelize is that there is no such thing as a “bikini body.” It’s as absurd as if we declared that there’s a “swim trunk” body for men. You cannot get a “bikini body” at the last minute, and these idealized bodies do not wander around, zombie-like, without human emotion and intellect propelling them. There are no bikini bodies. There are only women who choose to wear swimsuits, and in doing so, they do not sanction the universe to pass judgment on their parts.

So it’s wrong to pass judgment on women (which we agree with at the ZRC) as if they were pieces of meat, but it’s ok to slander an entire demographic minority with Living Supremacist prejudice and casual verbal abuse?

It’s ok to label Zombies as ‘without human emotion and intellect’?

Some forms of cruelty and second-class citizenship are clearly worse than others over at Jezebel or this particular epithet, tossed aside so casually and maliciously, would never have seen publication.

The Zombie Rights Campaign calls on Jezebel for a speedy apology and retraction to our Undead clients and Zombies the world over, who do not deserve to be judged for lacking not a ‘bikini body’ but a heartbeat or ‘normal’ cellular respiration.

We will inform our readers of any response.

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

Posted By John Sears on May 31, 2011

Well this sounds very promising and is definitely going on the ZRC’s Amazon wishlist:

If you’re expecting the traditional zombie genre canon, you won’t find it here.

Robert Swartwood’s Dishonored Dead describes a world in which zombies roam the relatively undead inhabited planet, live in cities, have families, drive cars and human’s, those that remain, are in hiding from the Hunters. Hunters are specially trained undead units whose sole purpose is to track down the living, whom they call ‘zombies’ and eliminate them.

The central part of the plot revolves around Conrad, the son of the most famous Hunter, who lives by the Hunter’s Code in all that he does essentially making him the last zombie boy scout. One night on a hunt he hesitates and doesn’t kill a human. Seen as a sign of cowardice, he is transferred to a secret agency that works with the living to better understand them. Tossed into the mix are marital issues, office politics, living sympathizers and Conrad’s son who is fast approaching his 10th birthday, Animation Day, which is a special time for all of the dead.

A world where Zombies run the show and Living people are hunted? Where Zombies have jobs, kids, governments and ordinary Unlives and the Living minority are under siege?

Don’t get me wrong; what’s wrong for the goose is wrong for the gander, so to speak. This is a nightmarish dystopia, but in the tradition of classic dystopian fiction it may be trying to tell us truths about contemporary society that MOST people (not ZRC readers clearly) are unready to hear.

I’m totally buying this and will eventually put up a ZRC review. For now, think of it as a promising and potentially Zombie Friendly novel to be aware of, one that attempts to put the shoe on the other foot and really make people *think* about the way our society mistreats the Differently Animated… or so I hope.

Unfortunately it’s Kindle only, so it’ll have to wait until I have one myself. Sigh. Technology; always having to get the next platform, evaluate the cutting edge for the ZRC.

Category: Zombie Media | 2 Comments »
Tags: Books

Posted By John Sears on May 31, 2011

We talked previously about this bizarre sounding independent Zombie period piece before on the ZRC blog; now more information is available:

Sir Ian will play the role of the narrator in The Curse Of The Buxom Strumpet, an 18th-century zombie romp.

The film was developed from a short made last year — E’gad Zombies!

Like its predecessor, The Curse Of The Buxom Strumpet will be set in the sleepy town of Upper Trollop, which suffers a ghoulish invasion.

And other famous names already attached to the project include Dame Judi Dench, Gillian Anderson and Mark Williams.

I’m already not liking two things about this production; the term ‘ghoulish invasion’ and the star power attached to depict it.

Don’t Zombies have it bad enough when Woody Harrelson’s on their case? Did they really need Dame Judi Dench AND Sir Ian McKellen AND Gillian Anderson making them out to be unfeeling monsters?

Our work is clearly going to be cut out for us on this one.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Euro-zom, Journamalism, Movies

Posted By John Sears on May 31, 2011

There’s been a distinct trend of advertising in the last year or so that’s not Unfriendly to the Differently Animated. Case in point, a Doritos ad from a little while ago that the BuyZombie crew pointed us toward:

I don’t know how we missed that. It plays with the stereotypical ‘scary Zombie’ tropes quite well, although honestly, chasing someone for a chip no matter how tasty makes you look like a jerk (to anyone but the seller of said chips). We can therefore only give this ad a Zombie Tolerant rating, but it’s still not an awful piece of media… for advertising anyway.

After all, apparently Zombies ‘snack smart’.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Advertising, ZRC Reviews

Posted By John Sears on May 30, 2011

Since I know that some people appreciate these updates about the wildlife of the ZRC Compound, here’s another one.

As the backyard is allowed to revert to a state with more wildflowers and less grass (and I keep the dandelions under control with trimming) the rabbits in the area are spending more and more time around our property. They’re helpful in eating dandelions, which they love, and less helpful when they devour the native plants we bought at the arboretum a few weeks ago.

Grr.

At any rate, here are some pictures from today:

And some video too, including this first one of two rabbits playing. Well, kind of:

Category: ZRC News | No Comments »
Tags: Youtube Mischief, ZRC Wildlife

Posted By John Sears on May 30, 2011

Here’s a contest our readers might well be interested in:

With the news of the Centers For Disease Control And Prevention finally arming up in preparation for a zombie attack, it’s a great time for The A.V. Club’s Editor Keith Phipps to join Chicago comedians Dan Telfer and Adam Burke in a night of undead commentary on the 2007 zombie flick Rise Of The Dead. The nerdy trio will calmly discuss the matter of brain-devouring doomsday at Wilmette Theatre on June 11. After all, it’s common knowledge that nerds fare relatively well in zombie apocalypses. Lucky, then, for A.V. Club readers that we also have one pair of tickets for this show to give away. Interested parties can e-mail ochicago@theonion.com with “Rise Of The Dead” in the subject line. A winner will be drawn June 9.

Yes, the CDC, an actual governmental agency has been hitting the hysterical, shrieky panic button over the non-existent threat of the Zombie Apocalypse, as documented here on the ZRC blog. In a world gone mad such as this, the only proper response is snark, and so we have a night of mockery of the ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ being brought to the Chicago area by The Onion, fine purveyors of snark themselves.

We’ll be entering here at The ZRC, even though that’s the day of the Zombie March so we’d probably be pretty beat. If we win of course, it will be our happy but solemn duty to attend and represent The Movement.

Down with the Zombie Apocalypse and up with humor!

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Zombie Public Event