Wednesday 31 December 2014

What's in store...

Hello !

So 2014 will soon be history and a brand new year full of fresh opportunities and things to balls up begins, huzzah !

To say this year panned out how I planned would be a hideous lie. It's worked out so much better. This is in no small part due to Dan Chant and Justin Park, without their creative spark I would never have written a book, so I raise a glass to them.

The last six months I've been slowly getting to meet people in the 'scene' and have been overwhelmed by how bloody marvellous people have been. I'm looking forward to getting to know them better next year and help promote them and their work.

2014 has been alright, I'm starting to become aware of my own mortality, and writing has helped fill a gap in my life. It's shown me that if you have a dream, do it, don't procrastinate, life is too damn short to worry about pointless stuff. Make the most of what you have but never be afraid to push yourself, you never know what you can do.

Next year is shaping up to be a busy one, I'll be writing the first books in the Class Four trilogy, and hoping to get my zombie choose your own adventure done. Plus, I've submitted a short story for The Black Room Manuscripts, put together by Mr Chant.

Always find New Year's Eve to be a bit shite, don't dwell on the past, cherish those you're with, look to the future and have a bloody good time.

See y'all on the flip side

Dunk

Friday 31 October 2014

Zombie Movie Review - Battle of the Damned

Question, how can you you make a film with Dolph Lundgren better ? Add zombies or robots ? How about both ? Sound epic ? It isn't, not in the slightest.

The setup is like Escape from New York, Dolph, aka Major Max Gatling, has to go into an infected city and rescue some office dwelling, staring out of the window bigwig's daughter, and he only has 24 HOURS !

Gasp.

Yeah, it doesn't get much better. I genuinely felt sorry for Dolph as the director obviously likes watching pensioners try and run. I was on the verge of phoning Age Concern, the poor bastard.

So, the zombies, or not, as Mouse from the Matrix tells us numerous times 'they're not zombies'.....no shit. You can just old age stab one in the chest and they die.

Still, the robots can save the film, yes ?

No. They look relatively realistic and work well, but they just don't really add anything except some competition for the array of stiff acting already on show.

There's some nice gore in places, but most of it is hidden, probably due to the budget being spent on a new hip for Dolph.

One good thing though. It's over within an hour and a half. If you're thinking of watching this, I'd suggest using the 85 minutes composing a haiku involving poor old Lundgren.

Saturday 27 September 2014

Zombie Movie Review - The Dead

Pretty much every single zombie film you'll see will be set in some town/city in America or Blighty. It was probably one of the things that piqued my interest in The Dead that it broke from this traditional setting, basing it in Africa.

The film uses the backdrop of the Africa wilds to good effect, small villages with head height crops provide idle hiding spots for the shambling dead. Yes, a modern zombie film where they DON'T RUN.

I'm a purist, the thing which makes zombies terrifying isn't them individually, its as a slow moving horde, you under-estimate them and that's where they get you.

The film itself is passable, the last flight from Africa crashes off the coast and the survivors washed ashore. One of the survivors then attempts to make his way to another airfield to get back to his family in the States.

Along the way he meets up with a chap from the local army trying to find his son who was rescued from his now butchered village by the military.

There are some proper gory feeding scenes, some nice little shocks and seriously one of the best zombies I have ever seen. The effects are well done considering the budget.

It falls short as I didn't really feel any connect with either character, pretty formulaic but if you fancy a different background, proper zombies and some decent gore, you could do a lot worse than The Dead.

Tuesday 26 August 2014

Zombie Move Review - Stalled

Had a small pile of zombie films backing up a bit, so used the bank holiday weekend to watch a couple. The first of which was Stalled, billed as the new 'Shaun of the Dead'. It was good, but not on a par with the classic (to me at least) Shaun.

The story is about a cleaner on Christmas Eve, apparently hard at work whilst an office party is going on. Forced to hide in a toilet stall (bit odd that as a British film, they used stall, when I've never called it that :-) ) when the toilet gets visitors, two scantily clad ladies, who decide that as it's Christmas it's time for some festive fun.

During this, it is revealed that one was bitten by a delivery man. Yep. You guessed it, as they go in for seconds, one gets a different kind of necking........ Zombies shuffle in and he becomes trapped, along with another (unseen) toilet encumbant, they build up a rapport as he tries different means to escape. The most bizarre plan involves shooting severed fingers at a fire alarm using a bra.

Yep. You read that last sentence correctly.

It does elicit a few chuckles along the way, and some nice little touches, but I would not put it in the same category as Shaun. Still, if you fancy watching a claustrophobic, and British zombie flick, it's definitely worth a watch.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2140429/