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For Dawn of the Lead’s Valentine’s Day special I was thinking of writing an article called “How to get your significant other interested in wargaming”. The only thing that came to mind was “By lying”, so I decided to change the subject a bit. So…
How to get your significant other interested in zombies?
This is probably a problem a lot of zombie fans run into every now and again. For some curious reason, many people – girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands, wives et al – are not in love with zombie culture. They might even not want to pick a zombie movie for Saturday night’s feature. You might hear such comments as
Familiar? It is for me. So, here’s a bunch of tips on how to trick guide your loved one into enjoying the one thing you hold dear.
Clothing
In all honesty, zombies aren’t really cool or hip. Except if you make them into cool and hip clothing. Such as these examples (click on the pics to enlarge or the names to buy):
Games
Games are a good way to bring a sceptic into the fold. If it works with kids, it should work with spouses. Now, Dead Rising, Resident Evil and Left 4 Dead might not be the most suitable. They’re all pretty deep in the whole zombie apocalypse scenario. Let’s try something a bit different:
Plants vs. Zombies is summed up brilliantly by the developers:
A mob of fun-loving zombies is about to invade your home, and your only defense is an arsenal of 49 zombie-zapping plants. Use peashooters, wall-nuts, cherry bombs and more to mulchify 26 types of zombies before they can reach your front door.
An excellent blend of cartoony zombies and addictive gameplay will bring your significant other just a bit closer to the world of the undead.
Infectonator! is a simple Flash game. The idea? Cause devastating chain reactions by launching a zombie infection into populated areas. Destroy civilization in 60 seconds. Highly addictive, with a notable “one more try” factor.
Zombies!!! (what’s with the exclamation marks here?) is a light beer & pretzels kind of game, where survivors try to get out of an infested city by reaching a helicopter. Only one can survive, and it quickly devolves into backstabbing and tripping one another. Great fun, in other words.
Movies
The two categories above are a good way to start, but when you really want to reel someone in – which you do – then movies are the way to go. Now, instead of just telling what movies to choose, I’m going to suggest different tactics to use.
And the common and very functional, mentioned at the start of this post:
I also cannot stress once piece of information enough: Unlike in cuisine, keep away from Italian. While there are some classics, the Italians pumped out amazing amounts of zombie schlock in the 70s and 80s, that can be best described as gorenography. Blood, entrails and softcore nudity were the operative words here.
Whether you’re already in a relationship or looking to get someone hooked on zombies (and thus admire you for your knowledge), this should get you started. In true Valentine’s Day spirit here’s a thematic poem to send you off:
Roses are red
Violets are blue
If I’m ever a zombie
I’ll make you one, too
This isn’t quite zombies, but I figured it might be of interest for a few reasons:
With that out of the way, here’s the trailer for the remake of Romero’s often forgotten 1973 (this is between Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead) movie The Crazies. I must admit that I never finished watching the original (see 3, above), which frankly suprised me (see 1 and 2, above). Let’s see if this can bring me to like the original as well.
And for comparison purposes, here’s the trailer for the original. There just seems to be an itty bitty anti-government sentiment there, don’t you think? It appears that Romero wasn’t a big fan of the Vietnam War, ongoing at the time.
To tie in with the coming movie remake, a motion comic book is coming out through iTunes. Looks pretty nice, too!
The scheduled release date for the remake is February 26, 2010 and February 23 for the motion comic.
I’m actually growing quite fond of my little blog, and to make it just a bit nicer, I registered the domain dawnofthelead.com with WordPress.
No need to worry, there’s no need to upgrade your bookmarks or blog links, as dawnofthelead.wordpress.com will still take you to the blog as well. The simple dot-com address just looks nicer. And allows me to receive feedback with an @dawnofthelead.com address, which is just way too cool.
I’ve once again been trawling the internets for coming zombie flicks. Two sites have been most useful, namely Zombie Info and The Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse. Definitely check them out! What I’ve collected here is but a teeny tiny fraction of the news they put out.
Let’s start out with E’Gad, Zombies! which is an upcoming 20 minute period zombie comedy, that the crew is hoping to turn it into a full feature in the future. I sincerely hope that this happens, as this looks most delightful. Historical zombies is a theme sadly neglected. Except for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which I couldn’t finish due to the clumsily tacked on, poorly written zombie content. See the film’s official homepage for more details.
Another unexplored niche is zombies in Africa. The game Resident Evil 5 immediately comes to mind, and I’m happy to see a film following the same lines. British film The Dead features a pilot that apparently crashlands somewhere in rural Africa, and ends up in the middle of a zombie crisis. Looks nice, and was shot on location in Burkina Faso, I believe. You can read an interview with the Co-Director here and visit the movie’s official home page here.
Back in the 70s, Italy was THE zombie movie country. They churned out tons of cheap zombie flicks, many of which were simply soft porn with gore. Of course there’s Lucio Fulci with his zombie classics and all, but most of it is pretty unremarkable. After forty years or so, the Italians once more get on the European zombie bandwagon with the Spanish, French, Serbians, Brits and Norwegians with the movie Eaters. Don’t be put off by the mention of Uwe Boll, he’s producing and not directing. I like the visuals, though the look CGI heavy. The trailer suggests some rather clichéd scenes and very very visceral gore, so the Italians are staying true to their roots. Two trailers follow.
First the Norwegians with Dead Snow, now the Danish with the upcoming short Opstandelsen. And the Finnish with jack all. Makes me want to cry.
And since it seems we’re getting very very international in this post, how about the indie Blind Death from Chile? As I mentioned before with Rec, somehow the fact that characters are speaking some other language than English makes it seem more real. I don’t know whether native English speakers have this feeling or not, though. Blind Death doesn’t look half bad!
For this last one no trailer exists yet, as production begins in Spring 2010. Anyway, these four words should rock anyone’s world:
Nazi zombies in 3D.
That’s right. What I’m talking about is a British movie named the 4th Reich, that tells the story with a classic theme: nazi super soldier experiments gone wrong. Really, you can’t go wrong with nazi zombies. I don’t know why, but you just can’t.
See the 4th Reich homepage for more details.
Phew. That’s a lot of upcoming zombie goodness right there.
Zombies have occasionally been seen in movies in CGI. There’s Resident Evil: Degeneration:
Which was unfortunately very aptly named. Steer well clear, it’s one of the worst features I’ve ever seen. The zombie action is fine, but the trailer is a good example of the awful acting, dreary dialogue and clichéd, predictable zombie flick events. “He’s dead. Oh wait, he’s not! Oh, he bit me in the leg!” Man, that’s fresh and original.
There are the zombie-like infected in I Am Legend that were frankly a bit disappointing:
CGI Zombies - you're doing it wrong
And in the future, there just might be A.D.
This here is a wonderful, wonderful teaser trailer for a future – or rather potential, provided they can get funding – full-length CGI zombie movie. You can read an interview with the crew here. I really hope they get the cash to crank this baby out, as it looks delicious. Like Pixar teaming up with Tim Burton to do Night of the Living Dead. Don’t take my word for it, enjoy the trailer!
Note: At the moment these miniatures are not available to buy. I still wanted to review them for the simple fact that there is some brilliant stuff here, and some – hopefully most – of these will be picked up by one manufacturer or another.
The competition held by the Frothers Unite! UK web community, which was open to professionals and amateurs alike had Zombie Apocalypse as the theme. Needless to say, I couldn’t have been happier with the choice. While my own humble entry didn’t make the podium, I was more than happy to not only buy the winning sets but also pimp them. Actually receiving the miniatures turned out to be a bit more difficult than ordering them, with the sets finally arriving some two months after the ordering date. For all that juicy drama and gossip, feel free to browse through this thread.
Waiting for minis for two months instead of the usual week or two didn’t really get on my nerves that much. FU-UK is primarily a hobby community instead of a “true” miniature manufacturer, and I honestly have too many zombies on the painting backlog as it is. Even with that long long wait, I’m happy to say the models were worth it. There are lots of minis to review, so I’ll get on with it. This is the first part of the review, and includes the winning set as well as a few extras.
First up is the Winners set:
Model #1 – Intensive Care is a continuation of the popular theme of hospital zombies. These seem to have popped up all over the place, with companies such as Recreational Conflict and Studio Miniatures producing their own sets. However, I don’t think I’ve seen this good a take on the subject yet. The miniature is of a bald zombie in a hospital gown, leaning on his IV stand. The IV line is still attached to his arm, while a rat sits on top of the stand, adding to the feeling of corruption. The zombie is very zombie-ish, with a very emaciated – almost skeletal – appearance, an exposed spine, a missing cheek and strange pustules on his shoulder and buttock along with injuries all over his legs and arms. I almost forgot to mention, that he carries the severed head of a doctor in his left hand. By the poor doctor’s eye socket, no less. To make some room for the zombie’s fingers, the doctor’s eyeball is hanging on his cheek. Wonderfully gross! The model comes on a separate scenic base depicting a hospital floor with a rat crawling out from the floor drain. I unfortunately had to ditch the base to keep the basing consistent with my other zombies. The model is sculpted by Filin.
Model #2 – Zombie Girl is creepy, like children (and circus folk) in general. Child zombies are luckily making their way into miniature lines in growing numbers, which is a fine thing since their small stature helps to create a more varied zombie horde. This girl has pretty pigtails and a somewhat tattered dress. These combine with a seriously vicious look on her face to make a miniature reminiscent of Vivian, the horrible zombie girl from 2004’s Dawn of the Dead. The zombie sports very light injuries to her arms, legs and face. The model comes with a small oval slotted base, and is sculpted by Sylvain Quirion, who reigned in this year’s competition.
Model #3 – Male Zombiehunter with Axe is…well, a man with an axe, who I assume from the name hunts zombies. This model is one of those that manage to deliver a lot with very little. It’s very plain, with the man standing in a fairly neutral pose, wearing an open shirt with the sleeves rolled up, trousers and shoes and carrying an axe. There’s no extra clutter. No generic belt pouches, canteens, bags, bedrolls, anything. Just a regular guy with an axe, looking very very determined to survive a zombie apocalypse. In this case, less is more. The sculpt is wonderfully crisp and characterful and deservedly won the category for survivor miniatures. Like the zombie girl, the zombiehunter is sculpted by Sylvain Quirion and is similarly based.
Click for a larger view
And the extras:
Model #4 – Colonel Marbles with Chainsaw is the favourite fat little fellow of the Frothers community. In his tweed jacket, waistcoat (complete with pocket watch) and deerstalker hat and wearing a monocle, he’s the perfect picture of an English gentleman. This makes an excellent contrast with the large chainsaw he’s starting up. Some zombies are really going to be sorry that they wandered on to the good Colonel’s estates. I absolutely love this miniature, it’s probably one of my alltime favourites. The model is really characterful and brought to life by the fine sculpting. Even the herringbone pattern on his tweed jacket has been sculpted. Colonel Marbles comes on a small integral base and is sculpted by Kev White of Hasslefree Miniatures. This model wasn’t originally a part of the ordered deal, but I believe it was added to compensate for the long wait. Since this model has been – and still is – available pretty exclusively, this is a very nice way of saying “sorry”.
Model #5 – Zombie Marbles is an unfortunate debunking of the myth of a chainsaw being the ultimate zombie killing weapon. The poor Colonel is staggering around with his entrails pouring out from his considerable belly, and his left arm has disturbingly been twisted around. There are rips and tears in his clothing and mild injuries to his face – which I assume is still keeping a rigor mortis stiff upper lip despite all this living dead tomfoolery. A wonderful, wonderful miniature. I also like the fact that while this miniature is by a different sculptor (Mr. Quirion, again) than the living version, it is easily recognizable and as such a skillful zombification of a model. This model is based just like models #2 & #3, above. The zombified Colonel was a special miniature offered to people who ordered both sculpting competition sets.
Click for a larger view
This concludes part one of the FU-UK 2009 sculpting competition review. In part two we take a look at the runners up, and let me tell you, there’s some really good stuff up ahead. Stay tuned, dear readers!
Oh, one more thing. I’ve been thinking about my practice of splashing black ink on the models to bring out depth and detail. It sometimes tends to obscure some detail, however. From now on, do you want to see the reviewed models in clear metal, inked, or inked, but more carefully?
Remember Zone of the Dead, the Serbian zombie movie starring Ken Foree of original Dawn of the Dead fame, that I mentioned way back in may?
I for one am happy to hear that it’s finally getting its DVD-release outside Serbia, under the title Apocalypse of the Dead. The release date is set at March 1st this year. Pre-ordering can be done at Play.com, for example.
And for those of you not bothering to click on the link above, here’s the trailer again:
I’m sure everyone’s aware of the tragic earthquake and its consequences in Haiti. If you’ve not yet helped out – and in all honesty, you should – DriveThruRPG.com is giving you an outstanding opportunity to not only help, but also be rewarded for it with more than a warm feeling inside.
Gamers Help Haiti is a program in which you can buy massive bundles of gaming stuff for a huge discount. All the profit goes direct to Doctors Without Borders. I went for the $20 deal, in which you get downloads – eBooks etc – worth a total of $1481. Yes, you read that right.
Of special interest to me and maybe to Dawn of the Lead’s readers are for example:
And there’s loads more. Basically whatever you’re into, you should find something useful here.
Read the full info @ Gamers Help Haiti, and give some money to a good cause.
I’m not really one for New Year’s resolutions. However, I’m all for planning ahead and getting stressed out. So what’s in store for 2010? Let’s see:
Hope to see you guys – and a whole lot of new ones too – during 2010. Happy new year, and thanks for reading Dawn of the Lead!
With this I’m off to Sharm el Sheikh in Egypt for two weeks of sunbathing and diving, so no new updates until after January 16th.
Dawn of the Lead 
