“Warm Bodies”: Love with an emo zombie

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 19:28:00 +0000

“Warm Bodies” sounds a lot better in theory than it turns out to be in practice. Of course, that’s true of about 90 percent of Hollywood movies, and let’s pause for a second to reflect that the original concept here involves a retelling of “Romeo and Juliet,” with zombies. So to say that the movie is not quite as good as its mind-blowingly moronic premise is not praise. At any rate, “Warm Bodies” is more a mild-mannered, emo-flavored romcom than a zombie movie. It has some tepid action scenes, a few swatches of genuine humor and a general spirit of cheerfulness, especially considering it depicts a future in which civilization has been destroyed. That’s more than enough to make it a hit in the dreary depths of February, and early reviews suggest that we’ve all agreed to overlook the fact that it’s essentially lazy and stupid hackwork that makes the “Twilight” movies look like a collaboration between David Lynch and Robert Bresson.

Kansas militia prepares for zombies

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 21:11:00 +0000

"We are not crazy. We are not paranoid. We believe in preparedness in any situation,” reads the website of the Kansas Anti Zombie Militia -- a group that is deadly (wink, wink) serious about the possibility of having to fend off humans-turned-zombies.

As the Kansas City Star reported, the group has 1,500 Facebook "likes" but a core cadre of true believers. They are zombie fighters of a very modern brand, not fearing the corpses-come-alive zombies of old but preparing for the possibility, a la "28 Days Later," of humans displaying zombie-like behavior because of an epidemic of sorts. As the Star noted:

Last month, the Discovery Channel featured the Kansas militia in a documentary that concluded that such a Zombie Apocalypse — or Zompoc — was possible. The program featured scientists who speculated some evolving virus is bound to jump to humans on our overcrowded planet.

Of course, scientists have been warning about pandemics such as bird flu that don’t produce zombies, but zombies are the hot monsters right now.

Salon.com > zombie apocalypse

“Warm Bodies”: Love with an emo zombie

Kansas militia prepares for zombies