Saturday, March 6, 2010

Cartoons, Jane Austen. Tolstoy and Oz


Tonight, I thought I'd start with some
Zombie TV.

Comedy Central has a new animated show coming out called "Ugly Americans" about a social worker at the 'Department of Integration' who's job is to help people and 'other beings' adjust to life in New York City. His boss is a demon who is literally "The Boss from Hell" and his roommate is... a Zombie, of course.

The mad brain-chewers over at I09 have several clips and more of the story, so I thought I'd just embed the first one showing on Comedy Central's "Ugly Americans" page. It looks amusing, if nothing else. Of course, embedding codes don't always work, so all you get is this link to the show's page.

There isn't really any explanation given for the why the city has been overrun with supernatural beings (though I may be mistaken) and it looks like the audience is just supposed to accept the premise at face value. I'll be sure to check it out and give my thoughts after I've seen a full episode, either here or on Caliban's Revenge. Oh, the show's webpage has an amusing ad to text for help for your "cerebral consumption addiction." I don't text, so I have no idea what you get when you text "UGLY" to the number.


Next, in Zombie Films:

I'm not sure that After.Life really qualifies as a Zombie Film, but it's about a girl (Christina Ricci) who apparently dies in an auto accident and the mad funeral director (Liam Neesom) who can talk to her. Is she really undead, or is the loony old guy just a perv playing mind-games with her? Drag Me to Hell's adorable Justin Long once again plays our victim's boyfriend. It seems a little more than odd to me that Neesom's first film since his wife's death would be about this, though I am sure it was in the can long before Natasha Richardson's untimely ski accident last year.



Also in Zombie Films, you can catch my review of the remake of George A. Romero's non-zombie Zombie movie The Crazies, here. I really liked it. It's not an instant classic or anything, but it is a solid, taut horror movie with a likable cast and some fun scares. Definitely worth seeing.

And in Zombie Fiction, there will soon be a prequel to Seth Grahame-Smith's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Steve Hockensmith has written Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls. It tells how the zombie plague started and how our young heroine became such a proficient zombie-killer at such a tender young age. PPZ: Dawn of the Dreadfuls is scheduled for release on March 24th and joins such re-imagined classics as Andriod Karenina; The Undead World of Oz and Emma and the Werewolves. It's a good thing that Austen, Tolstoy and Baum are all long dead. I can't imagine they'd be too pleased to see their works bastardized this way, though the books are really just all in good fun. Meanwhile, Graham-Smith's latest novel Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, has been reportedly optioned for a big-screen treatment. Now why didn't I think of doing something like that? No, I had to be all original and what. Damn!

And finally, this week's Zombie Clip of the Week:

From the fine, sick folks who gave us 'Happy Tree Friends' comes Zombie College, an animated series which follows the adventures of a freshman at Arkford College, which is apparently known for its Zombies. I, for one, love that Arkford references DC Comics' Arkham Asylum, itself a reference to H.P. Lovecraft's Arkham, MA, home of Miskatonic University. Miskatonic, of course, is the setting for 'Herbert West: Re-Animator,' Lovecraft's 1922 short story about a mad medical student who brings the dead back to life, which was made into the outrageous Zombie Film, Re-Animator in 1985 (a film I'll talk about, soon).



You can be sure I'll be posting more episodes of Zombie College in the future.

More flying, animated intestines, soon.
Prospero

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