The most zombies ever: World War Z

well it's probably my taste! long passages of a dude explaining how the reconstituted US army learned to supply and fight more like a civil war conscript rifle force was way more interesting than, idk, the japanese guy who turned himself into a ninja in the woods

As we were leaving the theater, my one friend lamented the lack of "character development," which I thought was a strange criticism to make about an action movie about zombies. Thinking back on it, though, I kinda get what he means: no one here does anything especially noble or especially awful and there is no reason to feel anything one way or another for any of the characters involved. They could be anyone, which I suppose makes a point of its own, but that's not a point that I think the film was ever trying to make, and it certainly doesn't make for very compelling drama either.

your friend otm

yeah that's a good take.

it's a shame this is so inert because I think you could really argue that it does something interesting with the genre. if zombie narratives are often on some level about immunity--about securing safe places against contamination by "others", building walls, boarding up doors, etc--then this movie seems to suggest that approach is flawed and that "weakness" is what really defeats the zombie. which is to say turning away from a destructive search for greater purity or homogeneity. not sure the movie can really support that these but it's a thought it raises.

I'm trying to read the book now for a book club. 100 pages or so in, I can't get into it at all. (Haven't seen the movie.) Telling a story as an oral history from multiple eyewitnesses' perspectives is an interesting idea but I just don't see much reason to care about anyone or anything in this story when everyone's there so briefly. The political stuff is most interesting to me but not enough time has been spent on it imo. The popularity of this book honestly surprises me because it doesn't seem very immediate or gripping (and it would have never occurred to me to make a movie of this!).

oh dude. dude.

just...look, just keep reading. if you still don't like it by the end fine, but don't quit 100 pages in.

I thought the book was pretty good, save a blind samurai zombie killer or two.

You might be asking: was that a spoiler? Could that really have been a spoiler? Well, I'm not telling.

like the individual stories are good as nutshells in and of themselves - snapshots, I guess -- and then as you get more and more stories you get a much bigger picture of the global impact, political ramifications, military ramifications, as well as how it affects individuals on a personal level.

i love the hell out of it imo

Loved this book so much, and also love the super-nerdy books it owes a heavy debt to: 'The Third World War: August 1985' and 'Red Storm Rising'.

The audiobook was a lot more engaging than the print. Perhaps the best cast ever assembled for an audiobook.

spencer don't forget "warday"

Huh, did you see this?

On May 14, 2013, the unabridged audiobook was released by Random House Audio as World War Z: The Complete Edition (Movie Tie-in Edition): An Oral History of the Zombie War. It contains the entirety of the original, abridged audiobook, as well as new recordings of each missing segment. A separate, additional audiobook containing only the new recordings not found in the original audiobook was released simultaneously as World War Z: The Lost Files: A Companion to the Abridged Edition.

That means they reissued the audio book with even more speaking parts.

Yeah audiobook is 10x more enjoyable than the book.

the movie was p good

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0a3fg-fUWdw/T3On8vGgmVI/AAAAAAAAA4A/PJg-1gRMH5Y/s200/bunk-the-wire.gif

Did the first seven(!) hours of the unabridged audiobook a couple weeks ago en route to summer vacation, looking forward to the remaining five on the way back next week. Pretty well done, forgot how much I like the scope and mundane/"well of course that would happen" things I never pondered about global cataclysm.

Far be it from me to smh at anyone this summer. I loved White House Down.

i agree w/s1ocki. nothing special but it was a competently executed "breezy romp" (which i guess you shouldn't say about an apocalyptic zombie movie but still...)

it was a pretty swift movie, almost too swift. brad pitt seemed to show up in israel so he could get a quick tour, point out that the wall was breached, and then escape. best part was the philly/newark shit.

my friend's from newark and he said the theater was goin nuts at that stuff

part of the original score sounds a lot like this fwiw, cfcf shd sue and get that zombie money

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-eA1yILxYM&list=PL33CAB39CCC8FB7BE&index=2

this was on tv at the gym the other day and i can't remember this actor's name (in the middle) or what i associate him with, and it's killing me inside. please help.

http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/images/reviews/274/full/1379394091_1.jpg

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0401264/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t25

i guess he looked familiar to me too

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0401264/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t25

this film was a pos but notable - to me - because the opening scene, set in Philadelphia, was filmed in George Square, Glasgow

that was literally the only thing i enjoyed in this movie

apparently i posted itt about glasgow already but i have no recollection of it ;_;

spencer don't forget "warday"

― the late great, Thursday, August 1, 2013 6:13 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

YES!

I watched this the other week in a slump of exhaustion & boredom that left me unable to find anything more worthwhile and it was wholly unremarkable except for the aforementioned Glasgow connection.

ohhhh of course, he's the annoying guy in Treme who is now in Orphan Black etc, THANK YOU.

the only thing i liked about this movie was setting up the young scientist who is going to solve everything, then having him slip and accidentally shoot himself to death within 30 seconds of getting on the ground.

"ohhhh of course, he's the annoying guy in Treme"

for a second there I thought you were talking about Steve Zahn

i was going to write 'most annoying guy in Treme' until i remembered Zahn (but his character got less annoying as it went on, and at any rate is far less annoying than the real-life inspiration).

I didn't mind him in Treme after the first season.

so uh i guess david fincher is directing the sequel to this hunk of shit

wtf

guy makes some weird choices

a sequel to a largely-unloved zombie movie seems particularly weird even by his standards tho

1st book was awesome?

almost none of it showed up on screen!

kinda unfilmable. unless it was a talking head documentary about a zombie apocalypse

Voiceover: Peter Fincher never made the sequel, allegedly because of the Chinese government's ban on film with zombies, which uh seems like it would have come up at some point with the first film.

Also from the wikipedia page, along with the normal troubles of a film which involves Damon Lindelhof:

Filming in Budapest commenced on the evening of October 10, 2011. That morning, the Hungarian Counter Terrorism Centre raided the warehouse where guns had been delivered for use as filming props.

The 85 assault rifles, sniper rifles, and handguns had been flown into Budapest overnight on a private aircraft, but the film's producers had failed to clear the delivery with Hungarian authorities, and while the import documentation indicated that the weapons had been disabled, all were found to be fully functional.

On February 10, 2012, the charges were dropped after investigators were unable to identify exactly which "organization or person" had "ownership rights"; therefore they could not "establish which party was criminally liable".

Watched this again bc my kid wanted to see it. I still think it's alright but the story is just an excuse for brad pitt to visit somewhere immediately before shit goes haywire. He's less a character and more a witness to catastrophe. And how the Israel aspect is introduced is amazingly bad, I mean talk about dropping in a loaded implication into the middle of a movie that doesn't even have the ability to smartly handle a zombie apocalypse plot, let alone pivot away from that bit of nonsense.

iirc one of the few apocalypse movies where people ride bikes?