The Zombie Journal is finally ready
For over a month now I have been slaving away on an idea I have had for quite some time. It’s probably the largest personal site I’ve ever built and it’s my first real foray in the world of Drupal. Let me tell you, Drupal isn’t an easy undertaking, but it’s very powerful. If you don’t know much about Drupal you might want to check out Dries Buytaert’s blog and see who’s using it… in short, a lot of big names.
But this is about The Zombie Journal
This post isn’t about Drupal, this is about The Zombie Journal, my newest site. Consider it still rough around the edges. I have a lot of ideas which I have not yet implemented, but for now I am hoping to see The Zombie Journal grow into a social network for Zombie fans of all sorts. If you sign up for an account you can post your own zombies stories of your fictional encounters with these diabolical creatures we call “the undead”. You can also share zombie resources, rank and vote on content and participate in the forums. If you are even mildly interested in zombies I urge you to sign up today, and follow The Zombie Journal on twitter.
Zombieland, quite possibly the best movie of the year
So be prepared for a pretty biased review of Zombieland. I am a huge fan of the Zombie genre as anyone who knows me will tell you. I also own the soon to be “Zombie awesomeness” domain name thezombiejournal.com. That said I still recognize the fact that a lot of Zombie movies are pretty crappy, in fact, a lot of them are just downright awful. I had a feeling from the start that Zombieland would be different. I mean first it’s got Zombies (always good for a zombie movie), and second it’s got Woody Harrelson, what could possibly go wrong? I still had a tiny fear that it might still suck though, and I wanted this movie to be good, I wanted it to be the next Shawn of the Dead or even better, and I’m happy to say that it completely blew my expectations away.
The Zombie Survival Guide
The Zombie Survival Guide is the first zombie book by author and screenwriter Max Brooks. A lot of zombie fiction is either done poorly or in a silly way. That is the key difference between the way Max Brooks does zombies; you never feel like you are dealing with silly fictional monsters, with Max Brooks zombies are a serious issue and a matter not to be taken lightly. I recently finished reading the The Zombie Survival Guide and have to say that it is another fantastic Max Brooks novel. His second book titled World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War was also fantastic. I really hope he writes more in the future.
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
I finally finished reading World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks. I haven’t had as much time to read lately, but I sat down earlier this morning and decided to finish it.
The book title may sound silly, and if you have read The Zombie Survival Guide by Brooks you may even be expecting some humour, but you will find very little in this book. This is a much more serious and tragic novel about a writer who is chronicling a factual book about the Zombie outbreak 10 years after it has occurred. This writer also put together the official UN reports and felt that he needed to write a more human account of the tale.
Without giving too much away, the entire book is made up of short chapters sometimes only a few pages long chronicling the lives of individuals and their experiences throughout the Zombie War. The book is fantastic, and there are plans to turn it into a motion picture. Every story is well thought out and most of them are very believable and convincing.
If you have ever watched a Zombie movie or even read Zombie books, usually they are fairly hokey or they deal with one small isolated situation like a mall or even a city. World War Z covers the entire spectrum of the planet and many different scenarios. The book delves right into the politics and how badly many governments screwed up, but it also covers many other situations. Ever wondered what would happen to the oceans during a worldwide Zombie outbreak, or the mad rush to flee cities? What about the internet addicted shut in who follows the entire outbreak from the illusional safety of his room in Tokyo right up until the Zombies knock on his door? What about someone who is blind with no one to help them during the chaos. The book covers many personal stories like these.
This is every Zombie fans must read book and most have probably already read it by now, but because it’s so different from the run of the mill Zombie genre, I think many non-Zombie fans will really enjoy this book too. I guess it’s classified as horror, but it’s really not that scary and actually far more emotionally tragic.
Diary of the Dead
Being the huge Zombie Geek that I am, I had to post this late news. I knew George A. Romero was working on Diary of the Dead, but I didn’t really follow it or realize how far along it was, it’s scheduled for release this month on the 15th.
He has an official MySpace site up where you can get details on the film. Diary of the Dead was independently produced, but it will be released by Dimension Films. He’s also running a video contest where people can submit their own Zombie shorts which could be included in the final DVD release of the movie. I’ve checked a few out and some are pretty cool. He will be judging them himself, and said that he’s really hard to scare.
The movie was already played at the Toronto Film Festival, how do I miss these things. Anyway, check out the site. I’ll probably go and see this when it comes out and post my thoughts.
I’ll also be posting a review of the book I am currently reading World War Z, a fantastic book by Max Brooks, writer of the Zombe Survial Guide.
28 Weeks later
I saw 28 Weeks Later yesterday. I am a huge fan of the first one, 28 Days Later, but I am always skeptical of sequels, because they rarely come close to the quality of the first film. I happy to say that 28 Weeks Later blew me away. I personally thought it was as good as the first one, if not better. Some of the types of events that are described in the first film are experience in this one. The movie was completely terrifying and I was on the edge of my seat throughout the entire movie. Even though it was such a great movie I found myself wanting it to end because the sheer intensity became overwhelming. Suffice to say, if you like Zombie movies, this is one of the best. Genuinely terrifying.
