The cheese factory has turned out another wheel of cinematic cheese.

Let’s go through the checklist:

• The UN as bad guys? Check!
• Trendy EOTW event? Check!
• Turn them all in, Mr and Mrs America? Check!
• Evil foreign conspirators? Check!
• Surveillance state commentray? Check!
• Dramatic use of the term “New World Order”? Check!
• Vilified big businesses and corporations? Check!

Roll em!

Almost seems like Alex Jones should get writing credit, doesn’t it? Interesting to note that the best thing I can find in the cast list as far as a notable actor is….Dina Meyer. Best known, probably, for the incredibad “Starship Troopers” and it’s coed shower scene.

But…yeah…I’ll roll my eyes during the whole thing but watch it anyway. I like EOTW genre films and we haven’t had a collapse movie in a couple years since that last EMP movie.

Reminder about Mountain House group buy possibility.

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With the possible exception of “Dirty” Harry Callahan’s .44 Magnum, Tony Montana’s “Little Friend” might be the most famous firearm in movie history.

As you might expect, it wasnt a real M203 for federal reasons. But..since it shot shotgun shells, there may have been other issues since that barrel looks less than 18″.

Nonetheless…interesting article to read for those of us who have seen the movies mentioned.

While an M203 might be nice, I think I’d rather have a Milkor.

The first seaon of ‘Fear The Walking Dead’, the spinoff series of ‘The Walking Dead’, came to a close the other week. I finally got around to watching the last several episodes.

The series is entertaining from the zombie-genre standpoint, but the characters are tremendously weak. There is literally no character about whom I care whether they live or die. The only interesting characters, for me, are the newly-introduced ‘Mr. Strand’, and the stereotypical immigrant-who-turns-out-to-have-shady-military-past, Salazar (played by the always entertaining Ruben Blades.)

However, I’m watching this series for it’s portrayal of the slow-to-fast descent into Detroit  Thunderdome. I’m fascinated at the progressive failures of infrastructure and critical systems, and how the characters react to those situations. So far, the only character I’m feeling any sympathy for is the schoolkid at the beginning of the show who kinda knew which way the wind was blowing. (I am, though, appreciating the unflappability of the Hawkins-like Mr. Strand.)

The most noteworthy thing about the final episode of the season was the decision undertaken by the family to leave the confines of the relatively secure neighborhood they were in. It was the classic bug-out scenario.

One character asks where they are going to go. The answer? “West”. That’s a direction, not a destination. But it does illustrate the classic survivalist dilemma – stay or go. But, if you’re going to go, you need to have an actual destination. Just leaving the dangers zone is always a great idea for the short term, but nothing good comes from wandering around in a crisis without a stable place to park yourself.

You would think that out of a group of a half dozen people, someone would have had a hunting cabin, relatives house, or other distant location to fall back to. As it stands, it appears they had nothing better than to drive blindly to the location suggested to them by the enigmatic and clearly self-serving Mr Strand.

But, the lesson in there is that if you’re really going to take this sort of thing seriously, you need to have another location in mind to relocate to. “Shelter in place” or “bug in” sounds great but it would be really, really nice to have a plan B.

It looks like the guys at TWD are finally throwing in some tactics and strategy into the plans of our intrepid group of survivors. Two-way radios, backup plans, mobile scouts, etc, etc. Nice to see that someone finally gets the idea that you can’t just run around the apocalypse and meet things head-on without plans.

Things that still annoy me about The Walking Dead:

• There are no consequences to horrible personal hygiene
• Wheres all the gasoline coming from?
• No .gov of any kind exists? Anywhere? At all?
• The ‘rogue military’ scenario hasn’t really been fully explored, although the ‘rogue cop’ one was (at the hospital).
• Guns go ‘click’ multiple times when empty
• The way Rick holds his Python makes it clear this guy knows nothing about guns

Still, I’m very much enjoying the zombie genre. I still maintain that the fella with a suppressed 10/22 and a few bricks of ammo would go down in history as humanity’s greatest defender.

Went and saw this movie over the weekend. I’m not really a Matt Damon fan, but I am a fan of Ridley Scott’s work, so I ifgured I’d go see it.

The premise, which is pretty obvious from the trailers so there is no spoilage here, is that an astronaut on a manned Mars mission is presumed dead after an accident and his crew leave him behind. He then has to survive on Mars until a rescue mission can be launched…which is well over a year away.

Really, it’s a survival movie of pretty high caliber. Sure the movie gives plenty of technobabble, special effects, and alien landscape…but the real heart of the movie is the attitude of one man, in a hopeless situation, not giving up, and thinking his way through a series of problems. As Damon’s character says in his video log after listing the huge hopeless tasks in front of him, “I’m gonna have to science the shit out of this.”

As Rand said, mans mind is his primary tool of survival and this movie greatly supports that statement. The main character has to McGyver all sorts of systems, come up with ideas for communication, making water, growing food, etc, etc, and do it all while not giving in to the crushing loneliness, hopelessness, and despair. And..they did a pretty good job portraying that.

So..no gun play, no zombies, no cannibalism….but still, I would categorize this movie as a first-rate survival film. If you get the chance, I recommend seeing it.

The wife wound up signing back up for Netflix after a long hiatus. (We find Amazon pretty much had everything we wanted so we wound up with them for most of our video entertainment needs.) One thing Netflix had that ‘Zon didnt was ‘Jericho’ available for free.

It’s been almost ten years since the program came out. I rewatched the first few episodes last night and it holds up really quite well. Lennie James, most recently of “The Walking Dead” fame plays, wait for it, a post-apocalyptic hardcore survivor-type. Poor guy..he just can’t catch a break.

A lot of people took issue with the character driven nature of the show. Too much relationship stuff and not enough gun battles with looters. That’s unfirtunate because the real end-of-the-world is going to be all about relationships…people you trust, people you distrust, people you care or, people you fear, etc, etc. Next time you’re in line at the grocery store, imagine having to make it through the zombie apocalypse with the three people in line in front of you….suddenly relationships will  be pretty important.

Anyway, the show holds up quite well although there are a few anachronistic touches. (When was the last time you saw an answering machine that used tape cassettes?) As we all know, the second season was abbreviated and very different than the first…not necessarily better or worse, just different.

Watching it still makes you wargame events in your head, play “what if…”, and still makes me wanna head to the basement and admire all my stuff. In that regard, it’s still a timely show.

I cannot help but think how different it would have been had it been done on cable, like The Walking Dead, rather than network television. Certainly more profanity, graphic violence, and those such would be present and probably add a greater dimension of realism.

As of late, the post-apocalyptic genre has drifted solidly into the zombie themes and I can sort of see why. With post 9/11 ‘sensitivities’, a zombie apocalypse lets you explore the post-apoc world but in a manner that clearly keeps it in the realm of ‘it cant happen here’. The majority of the violence is directed against fantasy creatures that don’t exist, in a world that can’t exist, suffering through a crisis that cant exist. By keeping it obviously a ‘fantasy/fictional’ scenario, no one gets their psyche bent out of shape.

Personally, I’d rather see a few more ‘realistic’ apocalyptic movies or shows. Supposedly the EMP-fest “One Second After” is being made into a movie. While the book borrowed heavily from “Lucifers Hammer”, I’d still go see it. Also, before I forget, “Lights Out” is apparently getting the same treatment. Here’s a ‘concept’ trailer featuring some of the folks who played extras in The Walking Dead. In the meantime, it’s fun to sit back and re-watch ‘Jericho’ and try to imagine that Lennie James’ character is basically the same unfortunate guy who  later shows up in The Walking Dead.

I came across this while scouring the internet for new header artwork. It’s kind of amusing and sad at the same time. Snoopy looks like he’s seen things, man.

Last blockhead standing, I guess.

On the other hand, a more…violent…and adult version can be found as ‘Weapon Brown‘. (And if you’re not really a ‘Peanuts’ kinda guy..don’t worry..there’s a weaponized version of other comic favorites).