Over the past few days, I’ve had my own little Zombie Apocalypse!
Reviews:
I Am Legend: Ah well, 2/3rds of a good movie is better than nothing. Smith is great, the CG is crap, they tacked on a Hollywood Ending, and missed the entire bloody point of the title.
Resident Evil: Extinction: Mad Max meets Dawn of the Dead, with eye-candy aplenty (Milla Jovovich, Oded Fehr, Ali Larter). Not enough actual zombies (although some nice shots of a huge horde in the desert), but plenty of action scenes. Not a good film by any means, but fun in a brain-dead kinda way.
Best of all, though was World War Z:
A novel written in documentary style, as the “after-action report” from people all over the world, ten years after the end of the so-called “plague years.” The book is organized chronologically, from the initial outbreak (and cover-up) in China, to the flood of refugees spreading the virus world-wide, and the reactions of various nations as they realize what is happening.
The book details the initial panic, the apocalypse (including a limited nuclear exchange between two countries who lose their shit), and the eventual re-grouping and reclamation. Perhaps even more intriguing are the glimpses of the post-war world, where Tibet is the world’s most populous nation, the Russians have reverted to a “Holy Empire”, China has had a civil war, and Cuba is the world’s leading economy.
Brilliant stuff. Brooks manages to convey familiar, panicked realism to something inherently unbelievable. There are sequences that are positively chilling, and others that are just plain COOL. I can’t recommend this one enough. It’s in paperback now. Run out and get it.
WWZ is incredible. I’ve heard some samples of the audiobook at the WWZ web-page and they sound incredible too. I’m very tempted to pick that up as well.
That sounds great. I’ll add it to my wish list… I wonder if my Dad would like it….
I picked up both–though, in my case, I heard the audiobook first, then decided I wanted the dead tree version to see what the audiobook missed.
And yes, it rocks. It’s really cool to realize that this came on the heels of his previous zombie book, The Zombie Survival Guide–and that he’s the son of director Mel Brooks.
JD
I had no idea that he was the son of Brooks and Bancroft. That’s keen.
I read WWZ on the flight to Origins last year; excellent. Definitely the best zombie fiction I’ve ever read.
Hey, this makes me think of the other zombie link I saw today: Jeff Tidball reviews Last Night on Earth, a zombie horror flick board game.
You know, I thought the new “I Am Legend” movie was good… for a remake of “The Omega Man”; its not the book. :) “Resident Evil: Extinction” was OK; better than RE:Apocalypse. And I have been recommending “World War Z” to people since I discovered it back in late ’06. Supposedly, the movie is supposed to be out sometime this year…
I’d heard that WWZ was damned cool . . .