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

It was incredibly speciesist to portray horses as being so easily spooked by zombies. I'll bet none of the writers are even horses, let alone horse riders.

Are we on for a zombie horse next ep d'y think?

no doubt it won't be a stallion

and how does mere "infection" allow the continued mobility of something as annihilated as bike girl?

this criticism is bullshit though. THATS WHAT HAPPENS IN ZOMBIE MOVIES.

― candid gamera (s1ocki), Tuesday, November 2, 2010 8:40 AM (58 minutes ago) Bookmark

think you're missing contenderizer's point here, he's not criticizing the show for lack of scientific veracity when it comes to zombie infection, he's criticizing it for being so slow and disengaging that he started questioning stupid stuff. which I understand, because I had the exact same reaction. I was like, why aren't there a fuckton of zombie dogs, pigs, and horses running around?

Same reason we don't get feline leukemia.

actually, has there been a zombie animal movie?

(Resident Evil doesn't count; that had zombie humans as well)

Does the crazy deer head in "Evil Dead 2" count?

Oh I dunno, never saw that

Oh Dan

Pet Semetary, sort of.

There are reanimated animal, er, parts in "Return of the Living Dead." Zombie dogs in "Resident Evil?" The game, at least.

x-post The Romero rules more or less state the virus (or whatever) affects the dead or newly dead, so that means thousands of people who die every day - 250,000? - plus recently buried. So figure the initial outbreak contends with some 500,000 zombies, which is a big enough vector to spread around the world pretty quickly via zombie bite. Now, if the question is, how do the zombie multiply if they eat their victims, then that's a sort of good question. But in all these movies and shows and books and stuff, we're never given a zombie count. It's just always "a lot," and certainly more than there are people. But then you do the math and think, jeez, how many zombies does it take to take out 6 billion people (give or take a few)? So the total zombie count has to be massive.

x-xpost Just because "Shaun of the Dead" is funny does not make it a deconstruction. Gags and in-jokes aside, It's more of a loving homage, since regardless it hones pretty close to "the rules." It's not like vampires showing up in broad daylight and saying "oh, those are silly myths" The zombies eat people, get killed via the brain, shamble, bite, transfer the virus, etc. Nothing wrong with that, but like the mentioned earlier, the characters are not aware of Romero's world in their particular world. It's fun, funny stuff, but it still shows the zombie survivor learning curve in effect.

"Hot Fuzz," FWIW, it's possibly more of a deconstruction, since it ironically sets OTT Michael Bay antics (the characters even watch "Bad Boys 2") in a mundane small town.

OK, back on topic: zombies. They eat people.

thought dans post read "zombie anal movie".

noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

But in all these movies and shows and books and stuff, we're never given a zombie count.

The only thing I've seen that's close is in Day Of The Dead, when the doctor estimates the then-current zombie-to-human ratio at 400:1.

thought dans post read "zombie anal movie".

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/59/Ottoor.jpg

noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I knew there had to be at least one.

it paints homosexuals in a bad light.

as zombies.

well if you want hetero

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/deadgirl-dvd.jpg

i think that was my first wife amirite!!111

New DTV flick Horno has venereal zombieism, spread through sodomy, plaguing a (het) porn shoot. It's absolutely terrible.

http://mmomfg.com/wp-content/gallery/rdrundead_09292010/undeadnightmare4.jpg

^^^want to play, haven't gotten yet

Nothing wrong with that, but like the mentioned earlier, the characters are not aware of Romero's world in their particular world. It's fun, funny stuff, but it still shows the zombie survivor learning curve in effect.

dont see why the characters need to have seen romero movies for the movie to be a genre deconstruction?

like why is that a dealbreaker?

to deconstruct a genre, you have to get in under the hood and, you know, deconstruct it. take it apart. show how it works in ways that aren't immediately self evident. i'd say that history of violence deconstructs stories of violent heroism because it questions them, examines them, plays games with the means by which they generate their emotional effects. shawn really is just a straight-up zombie movie with jokes. it doesn't have anything to say about zombie movies, doesn't show or tell us anything about them we didn't know going in. the basic formula isn't deconstructed, it's merely referenced (constantly).

except for the scene where they sneak through town and get into the pub by pretending they are also zombies

i dunno man, i would say the central conceit - that the humans are more zombie-like than the zombies - is a pretty shrewd "take-apart"

wasn't that already done in whichever Romero movie was set in the mall?

mall of the dead

lol

I looked it up, it was Dawn

i mean, it's not as explicit as like, scream, but they are playing with pretty much every zombie movie convention, they're just not actually saying "this is the part where in the movie they'd do this"

romero's movies frequently make the point that humans are much like zombies to begin with, but i wouldn't call night of the living dead and dawn of the dead deconstructions because of this. it's a form of social criticism that seems appropriate to the setting.

im not sure we agree on what is a "deconstruction." plz to name me other examples.

i get where you're coming from s1ocki, but i'm hesitant to call a jokey half-parody a deconstruction, especially when it doesn't say anything about the basic nature and function of the genre it supposedly deconstructs. i think of SotD as a satire, and like most satire, it observes the formal conventions of a genre while also gently tweaking them. deconstruction, as i understand it, seeks to tease out the deep meanings and contradictions hidden beneath a text's surface.

now that i've said that, though, i suppose you could argue that all satire IS deconstruction, at least of a sort. why not? satire seeks to make the machinery of genre evident.

aiport was a radical deconstruction of disaster movies

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/nightofthelivingderrida.jpg

I don't think you can call anything that's meta or self-referential deconstructed, especially when it comes to comedy, which has been breaking the 4th wall since forever

i don't know that there is much real deconstruction in popular film. scream exposes the machinery of slasher films in a way that's similar to SotD (more direct, less jokey), but again, doesn't have much to say about the genre. i guess you could say that revisionist westerns often deconstruct the genre in one way or another: unforgiven, dead man, etc. also think of 70s detective dramas like the conversation and night moves, which suggest that paranoia and a delusional desire to control chaos are the engines of the genre.

stretch to call the conversation a "detective drama", but bear with me

yeah well deconstruction is a critical approach and trying to find evidence of a critical approach in a work of art is a good way to drive yrself mad

"if you want to criticize a film make a film" - jean-luc picard

what is the point of this exercise

staying fit and trim until the next episode of the walking dead airs

any film that tries to expose the internal conflicts of genre or of film itself could said to be involved in deconstruction

my favorite example is two-lane blacktop, a racing film where the participants end up drifting away, physically and psychologically

I haven't heard so much talk of deconstruction since Project Runway.

or since top chef

Zombie Voltaggios

The zombie movie version of Funny Games would have a five minute shot of zombies graphically eating someone slowly, after 45 minutes of slow shambling and long shots of flies taking off and landing on flesh.