Christmas Anyone?

Zombie Rudolf eats elfen flesh!
Happy Holidays!

TALES FROM NETFLIX - Dance of the Dead

Ever since first hearing about DANCE OF THE DEAD on AICN last year, I've been anxiously awaiting it's release on DVD. Well, it came out last week, as part of the new Lions Gate Ghost House Underground series (which I'm assuming has replaced the annual Horrorfest releases?)...

SYNOPSIS: On the night of the big High-School Prom, the dead rise to eat the living, and the only people who can stop them are the losers who couldn't get dates to the dance.

While the movie is a lot of fun, and has some really great moments, it doesn't quite achieve full on greatness. It is however a really solid watch, and very much recommended, especially for the zombie fans.

Also, for the zombie faithful out there, while it's your standard bio-waste driven zombie virus plaguing a community style set-up slash send-up, in keeping with the zom/com formula minted by the classic original Return of the Living Dead (and popularized more recently by Shuan of the Dead), it does offer some really fun flourishes to the tried and true, especially about mid-movie, when the cast begin to engage the zombies in hand-to-hand combat! It's fucking worth a viewing for that alone!!

This is not one of the darkly serious horror spins on zombies, it's tongue bitten off in cheek, zombie frenchin', prom crashin', copious amounts of a Pat Benetar cover song soundtrack spinnin' good time! It also should be noted the production on this one is top notch. If you're into Dance of the Dead, you might also check out Night of the Living Dorks, or Dead and Breakfast (which was much more enjoyable, yet a much lower rent production)!

RECOMMENDED

IN CASE U MISSED IT: Xomix Comix

COMMISSION TIME - NYC Zombies!

I recently had the pleasure of doing a full blown multi character commission, with the request being that it had a similar vibe to my Cloverfield fan art, a group shot in an urban setting... but with zombies!

The requester didn't even want specific zombies, ie Cloverfield cast, superheroes, etc, just regular zombies. So to wrap my mind around it, I decided to use one of my actual pics from my recent NYCC trip, and the idea started to come to life, using a pic from Times Square, it would be "zombies on Broadway"!

Specifically, using this pic
The next challenge was what would inspire my zombies? Now, I've drawn some before (most notably an unused zombie variant of the issue 3 cover for Super Real special number 1), but not enough to just crank out the cool zombie action, so I needed a little direction to avoid some generic looking zombies... Then it occured to me to use whatever current pop culture stuff was rattling around my brain... and this was a few weeks back and I'd just watched the EliteXC MMA Saturday Night Fights on CBS, and brawler Kimbo Slice seemed the perfect subject!

From there, the rest of the zombies fell in place...
Zombie Downey JR, fresh off his triumphant appearance at the MTV movie awards

Zombie Lohan, also at the MTV awards, seemed a natural (and was really fun)!
But that left me wanting to do one more zombie, and fresh out of inspiration... then it hit me, myself as a zombie of course!

And so you have the final piece, with our cast of zombies making their way down Broadway... along with some adjustments to the pic...
Check it out!


Big thanks to the client for paying me to play with zombies, it was really fun!

TALES FROM NETFLIX - Diary of the Dead

Just got around to watching the new Romero zombie movie, DIARY OF THE DEAD, last night. The new first person/handheld cam reboot of George Romero's classic zombie universe. I'd heard a mixed bag of reviews on it, and well, that's pretty much what it was.

It was good, maybe better than Land in terms of story, but man, I had a hard time with some of the cast, whereas the cast on Romero's last, modern, zombie feature Land of the Dead were mostly pro/recognizable/quality actors, Diary had a cast made of unknowns, and featured just some bad acting in spots (especially the lead Eliza Dushku wannabe girl, they shoulda just got Dushku)...
Plus, a lot of the situations and situational dialogue didn't ring true... like their reactions and motivations... come on, put the camera down an help the girl getting chased by a zombie, etc
It seemed Romero was too keen on driving his point home, to a fault.
If not for that stuff getting in the way, it would've been great.
It's too bad, but like with the Star Wars prequels, not sure if it was bad acting, or just bad direction... I mean in Romero's defense, these were unknown actors, whereas George had a stable of thoroughbreds.

Also, with both Land and Diary, I felt the ever present vibe of menace was mostly mia, and that's a staple of a good zombie flick.

However, there was some really cool creative zombie stuff though... zombies trapped in swimming pools, hydrochloric acid skull melts, shock paddles to the head, etc!!
And I loved the deaf mute Amish dood! He was BAD ASS!!!

I'm a huge Romero and zombie fan, so this was a must see for me, but for those who aren't, it's a mild recommendation. If you wanna see some kick ass zombies, rent the recent Dawn of the Dead remake, or the original.

MILDLY RECOMMENDED