Sunday, March 20, 2011

TV series “The walking dead”



So I watched the 6 episodes that are season one of TV series “the walking Dead” that came out last year. A TV series about Zombies sure sounded like something good.


The series start OK, an interesting subject, an a good first try to show zombies on TV.

First chapter feels a LOT like the movie “28 days later” we get to see the main carácter fight a zombie, then there is the flashbacks to where he was shot and sent to hospital, and he later wakes up to see that its emití, dead people are everywhere, and soon see the zombies walking round. First Survivor found him, to realize what happened , to find that his familia maybe scaped, to hear that in Atlanta at CDC maybe there is help. To go to a city and run into a pack of zombies and barely scape. A good first chapter.


At a second we find that there are more survivors on the forest, among the familia of our main carácter Rick, while in the city he is saved by another group of survivors, but the rescue draws zombies to the building they were hiding, so they have to plan a scape while they solve the conflicto among them. They manage to scape, and surprise they belong to the other survivor group at the forest. The city part was good, the camp part felt like pointless at times, specially the part of rick’s wife being the lover of his best friend, a too obvious attempt to put another conflict dressed as a love triangle.


But still so far the series started good.

Chapter 3 is the time to meet all the other characters, the survivors at camp, but here it fails, the love-conflict just dissapears in two sentences, the other characters are shown withouth background, no reason to say "Oh that one deserves to survive", Chapter ends with Rick and 3 people going back to the city to rescue someone they left behind.


Chapter 4, action is divided by two, the city part where we see the group giong back to rescue Merle, Rick leading, Darryl who is Merle's brother, Glenn who knows how to move at the city, and T-Dog who was the one who left Merle behind. They will find that Merle has scaped the zombies, they will give us bit f internal conflict, they will meet another group of survivors, and almost got to fight to them because both groups want a bag of guns (how they solve the ownership of the guns seems a little bit absurd but is still beleivable) those 4 characters will have a development. At the same time some other things happen at the camp, but it is just boring and ridiculous (their biggest conflict was some guy digging holes), by the end, the camp is attacked by zombies, and the group of 4 manages to return from the city just in time to save the others.

Fifth chapter, the camp is no longer safe, so its time to move, some will travel with Rick to the CDC at Atlanta, other will take their own path, they reach the CDC, before night arrives, a chapter that is so long and so boring. It ends with Rick shouting at the CDC doors in a last scream of hope.

Those middle 3 chapters is where the series starts to go down, the camp stories feel either too overwritten, or too light, or just stupid, Almost all characters feel like they are just there for no reason.

The sixth and las chapter we get to see the CDC open, they find one scietist, they get the explaining of what, why, how, of the zombies. But CDC is not the help they hoped, its actually about to dissapear when energy runs out. It tries to bring back the love triangle, to just make it go away the next second, as if to remind the audience that the conflict is stil there making it pointless. The only point of interest is when the science guy decide to close the room for all to die. The group manages to convince him to let them try for survival, to try to scape the CDC and hope they can go outside and find a scape route from the zombies. It even gives them a limited time, but reality is that trick to makes us thrill is unnecesary, for as long as we see, we don't care who survives and who doesn't, we just want rick to scape so that along with his hopes of surviving, there is hope that the series goes back to a good story on a second season after this rebound last chapter.

One can hope that on the second season we get to see more zombie action, but more than that, the series need to find another group of survivors, that gives us the human factor, that group internal conflict that makes you say "I want them to survive".

A series that started great, got a bad middle point, and started to grow back on the end. Maybe next season will make it back to being an interesting one.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Let me in




Let me in


Over the weekend saw the "let me in" movie, the amerikan remake of a swedish movie. I haven't seen the original one so I cant compare, but somehow thats good, since I can see the movie by itsef.

The movie goes about a boy called Owen that live in an apartment place and is bullyied by his schoolmates. Two new people come to live at the apartments and soon one night Owen meets the new girl Abby. As time goes Abby and Owen become friends. Problem is Abby is a vampire.
During those days, Abby's "father" is seen around town murdering people to get blood, and an Inspector trying to solve the murders.
Both side of the story come to a meeting point where both Owen and Abby must take a decision on what to do, and what about eachother.

The movie is good, it was an interesting new point of view of the vampire myth, and a nice way of puting the contrast beetwen the evil aura that a vampire supposedly has, and the cuteness of children.
80% of the movie is Abby and Owen, and both kid actors give a good performance in playing them.
Other good thing about the movie is the settings and images, those really make you feel the tension, loneliness and isolation.
A great scene also at the burning at the hospital.

A good movie to see.

Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Book “The supidest angel”




Judging by the book cover, whenever I saw this book at stores, I always tought it was a childrens book, a good feelings book, or a religíous book. I bought it after Redding another book by Chritopher Moore and discovering its another book by this author found in Spanish.

In the spanish edition the book at the first page has a warning tellina that “If you bought this book for a grandma OR a kid, be warned that it has swearing, canibalismo, sex acts, and manny other bad things.”

Just the warning makes you want to read the book.

The book begins with a kid seeing how Santa Claus is murdered, excet is not Santa, just a guy disguised. At the same Time an angel is sent to earth to fullfill a wish. The wish of “Resurrect Santa to save Xmas” rounds like a good one,so after all many movies have a similar line as the basic plot idea. Problem here is that by raising from the dead the guy disguised as Santa Claus, the angel actuáis brings him as a Zombie.

Zombie plague at Xmas, that is a good idea for a book, but in this case it became an amazing book since Cristpher Moore humorous writing style is so great, that makes you laugh every page.