AMC zombie series from Frank 'Majestic' Darabont - The Walking Dead

Rick could have said all that shit he said about his wife without tarring half the human race with the same brush, I mean.

I really think it's bad writing tbh. Deputy Dude tries bro down with his bud with classic "what's the deal with women and the lights, ya know?" chat and then Rick turns the previous joviality into a serious statement by using the clunky 'women/men divide' device. I don't think it's coded misogyny or anything.

main dude is kinda boring

Yeah I actually like this a lot but I have to agree. Really needed someone with a bit more character. Can we cancel Hung so Tom Jane can take it over?

I always though the dialogue of the books was pretty corny, in a 17-year old "heavy" sort of way. Immature is the wrong word for it, but it just doesn't feel terribly adult. So maybe the disconnect ports to the show?

x-post As savvy as "Shaun of the Dead" was, it was hardly a deconstruction of the genre. It was clever and fun from an audience perspective, yeah, but the characters live in a universe where apparently zombie movies and their tropes don't exist. That's cool, though. "Shaun of the Dead" is brilliant all the same.

Just finished "Dead Set" and thought it a pretty impressive recasting of the "Day of the Dead" scenario. Pretty viciously gory, too, and perhaps the only show/film of its kind to deal with the practicalities of where/when the characters will go to the bathroom. It's got fast, mean zombies, for those who care, but I didn't mind. The (inevitable?) pessimistic ending made me consider that "World War Z" may be the only zombiepocalypse story that actually sees the crisis through.

I don't think it's coded misogyny or anything.

Wasn't arguing that there was anything coded about it.

ok then there's nothing overtly misogynist about it.

also, Nick Frost does say "Zombies" in Shaun and then is quickly shushed and told not to use the "Z" word.

It turns out I have read the comic (when the show cut to the camp, I was like "Whoa, why is this so familiar?" Duh), and stopped after the first trade because I hated the way all the female characters were written.

So here's hoping somebody gets hip to bell hooks, though I'd settle for Camille Paglia, even. I just remember the book being really reactionary. (NB it's been four or five years since I read it.)

Extremely well-done, for what it is. What it is is a comic book.

And please let's not have the Mad Men argument again. I'm perfectly able to sympathize and even empathize with characters who are not perfect.

Well done... for a comic book?

If you're trying to say that comic books generally aren't done well, I assure you there are tons of them that are way way better than The Walking Dead.

Don't get me wrong. I know there's better, and that comics are a format and not a genre, and etc. But out of what tends to be adapted to moving pictures, this is on the top shelf, imo.

Plus, I have come to expect a bit of material that offends even me from comics.

Rick could have said all that shit he said about his wife without tarring half the human race with the same brush, I mean.

UN report declares a quarter of the worlds women never, ever put out the dung fire.

I'm perfectly able to sympathize and even empathize with characters who are not perfect a bunch of wooden drips

these guys' biggest character flaw is terminal blanditude

I'm just saying, let's not go nuts focusing on the sexism. Not about this. It's mild at worst, and probably irrelevant altogether given the context.

Call me a cad, but I'm far more worried about the facts that: 1) the lead actor is not a very good actor, and 2) the violence and gore is some of the best I've ever seen, and easily the best I've ever seen on television.

Yay! Yes! this! ^^^^

agree the effects are awesome

here's a time lapse of bicycle girl getting done up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wa0tRQ2Q0Wk

x-post As savvy as "Shaun of the Dead" was, it was hardly a deconstruction of the genre. It was clever and fun from an audience perspective, yeah, but the characters live in a universe where apparently zombie movies and their tropes don't exist. That's cool, though. "Shaun of the Dead" is brilliant all the same.

i cannot even imagine how you would think this. how is that movie anything but an overt and joyful deconstruction of the genre? i mean if "shaun" doesn't qualify what does??

also i can't beleive an entire argument has evolved from that lame stand-up routine "women be like THIS and guys be like THIS" scene

Whoa, that video was coooool. Props to that chick, all that makeup & latex & sitting around for hours, crikey.
<3 Nicotero for all time.

Wasn't the comic book a little more oblique about wifey and best friend hooking up, revealing it further on, after he's in their camp?

Careful not to spoil, plz.

1) the lead actor is not a very good actor

fuck this! this guy has 20 years experience of being a terrific tv lead. problem is that its cunty ooooh crying men films frank darabont in charge. if they gave it to someone like marti noxon (of buffy/mad men fame) this would be AWESOME.

also we're only one episode in. and we've had to establish the basic outline as well as the zombie world. accent isn't great though.

instead it was a 'eh, kinda ok i guess. will download the next couple episodes but if it doesn't hook me then after that i'll forget it ever existed' pilot.

Yeah accent wasn't great.

of course i've heard such a wide variety of batshit ridiculous southern accents in my day that they don't really bother me. i remember everyone crowing about how bad Ewan MacGregor's was in Big Fish but I've met old guys that talk just like that so I'm pretty forgiving.

problem is that its cunty ooooh crying men films frank darabont in charge. if they gave it to someone like marti noxon (of buffy/mad men fame) this would be AWESOME.

You could have a point. I think he's going to be fine in the long run, and the "ooooh crying men" bits of the pilot didn't work for anyone who tried them.

this season is only 6 episodes so I don't see the harm in seeing it through.

oh ok, never knew it was british tv short, will stick with it.

Visually, I thought the pilot was very well directed. Loved the way he could generate tension just by dollying behind a tree, just a little bit too slowly.

The scene where the sheriff zombie gets shot, and the camera is locked, from the headshot through him falling out of frame. Nice.

I loved the hands trying to grab onto the fence in that scene.

Yes!

Some of the visual effects were cheesy/bad CGI - the back of zombies heads exploding, etc..

Oh come on

That's kind of the norm in tv and film these days though.

really, didn't hurt The Departed.

or Zodiac etc etc etc

It's not the idea of the explosive gore that bothered me, but the execution - the actual effects were badly done, IMO - the chunks of skull you can see and the way they move just looked fake. Reminded me of some of the crappier effects in The Mist, actually.

Really?

If it follows the plot of the comics at all then we have a lot more "ooooh crying men" bits to look forward to.

If that's what you think then cool but damn this thread feels like it's getting really challops-y really quickly.

I thought the effects and the directing were the high notes of the show, a show which I pretty much enjoyed all round. Zombies! A tv show about zombies! That's pretty freaking good! It's like Christmas up in here and you're all complaining about the quality of the wrapping paper! Agh!

You're bumming me out, guys.

Sorry.

Pro tip: Ignore these assholes! :-)

"The exploding heads looked so fake! And believe me, I've seen dozens of heads explode in my day, lemme tell you whut,"

gore was great throughout! dunno what anyone's complaining about in that regard. loved the bike girl, various shamblers & gnawed corpses, slo-mo headshots, etc. little girl zombie getting wasted in the intro knocked me for a loop. very pleased that it stuck to traditional zombie flick values in that regard. effectively suspenseful and sometimes even scary ("DON'T OPEN DEAD INSIDE"), with tight but leisurely direction/editing and decent character building.

didn't love it though. felt like a setup for a long, tiresome melodrama about characters i didn't much like (two male leads, especially) more than a proper horror flick. and i kept wanting to quibble about trivialities - a sign of at least partial disengagement. why was the blood splattered around inside the hospital still fresh red, and not dry brown? why were the hospital interiors appropriate to a modern hospital, while the exterior seemed to be an ancient and poorly maintained industrial building? and how does mere "infection" allow the continued mobility of something as annihilated as bike girl?

geek minutia aside, the gender dynamics bothered me, too. not a lot, but at least a little. okay, so it's just gross guy talk at the beginning, fine. but throughout the episode, women were badmouthed, absent, or bossed around. post-apocalyptic sci-fi often seems to revel in the "naturally ordained" real-man's world that will supposedly emerge when civilization collapses, and TWD at least flirts with that. then again, it's just a first episode. be interesting to see how things shake out.

I think your last paragraph is what I was (perhaps inarticulately) trying to get at.

I was more struck by the dynamic in the tent btwn best friend and wife than in the first scene.