Here’s a quick Six-Degrees to Jane Austen: Natalie Portman played Queen Amidala in Star Wars, Episode I, in which Kiera Knightly played Sabe, who dressed as the queen. Kiera Knighly also played Elizabeth Bennet (the lead character) in the 2005 movie version of Pride and Prejudice. Not to mention, Natalie Portman totally kicks ass. Perfect casting, right?
Woke Up Dead, a new zombie web series, gives the much-neglected zombie point-of-view of what it’s like to, er, wake up dead. Drex, played by Jon Heder of Napoleon Dynamite, takes some shady headache medicine and drowns in his bathtub before reanimating. He is followed by his video-blogging best friend and his former college crush-turned-med student as he attempts to resurrect his post-college life, even after death.
The show provides an entertaining and light zombie fix with reasonably good production quality and funny characters. The first five episodes are currently out, one featuring Wayne Knight of Seinfeld. The series is being released every few days during the month of October on Crackle.com.
Woke Up Dead is part of this month’s Zombiefest on Crackle. For Zombiefest, sixteen full-length zombie classics are featured on the site, in addition to special content from Zombieland. Check it out before it’s gone!
Edit to add: Woke Up Dead also has its own companion website at WokeUpDead.tv, with links to the Twitter and Facebook pages for some of the characters … so why not check that out too?
A couple of months ago we told you about a lecture given by Dr. Steven C. Schlozman, a Harvard psychiatrist and zombie enthusiast, covering zombie neuroscience and psychology. Unfortunately no one here at Zombie Slash could attend, but thankfully someone did and took extensive notes. We suggest that you take a look. Maybe this zombie thing isn’t so far fetched.
An interesting side note is that Schlozman drafted a faux medical journal article about a zombie outbreak, called “Ataxic Neurodegenerative Satiety Deficiency Syndrome.” Let it be known that we want a copy!
Although the producers are mum on Murray’s involvement, he was seen around Atlanta when Zombieland scenes were filmed there, so we’re going to believe the buzz.
Zombieland comes out in October this year. We’re hoping it’s a genre-bender, but we’ll settle for smart and funny gore.
Entertainment journalists are running wild with the recent story that Woody Harrelson attacked a paparazzo. Harrelson’s excuse? He thought the photographer was a zombie.
He explained that he just wrapped shooting for the upcoming horror comedy Zombieland and was still in character. In the film, he plays “the most frightened person on Earth” during a zombie outbreak, according to IMDB. Hey, the zombocalypse can be traumatic — give the guy a break!
We’re psyched about the film, which is due to release this October. You can see photos of the set in the Marietta, Georgia here, here and here. More details about the actual shooting can be found here and here.
We’re hoping that Harrelson’s recent zombie attack plug (whether it was intentional or not) gets Zombieland more attention — we’re psyched to hear more about the project!
Update: According to this article, Harrelson plays a badass in Zombieland, while the “most frightened person on Earth” is played by Jesse Eisenberg. A much more likely scenario.
I’d always thought of Castlevania as a vampire game, but rumor has it (according to IMDB’s plot synopsis) that the 2011 movie based on the classic games series will be brimming with zombies.
The movie will be produced by Resident Evil director Paul W.S. Anderson, whose past experience making scary video game-based zombie films has me hoping that Castlevania will be better than Double Dragon and Doom.
If you’re into zombies for more then the guts and gore and are going to be in the Boston area next week, we recommend that you attend Science on Screen: Night of the Living Dead with psychiatrist Steven C. Schlozman. Prior to watching Romero’s cinematographic opus, Night of the Living Dead, Schlozman will “discuss the theoretical neuroscience of zombies and the psychological effects they have on others.” Fascinating stuff.
Here at Zombie Slash, we’ve already explored the psychological underpinnings of our fascination with the undead, and wonder what a Harvard professor of psychiatry has to say about it. Going one step further, Schlozman will explore people’s hypothetical state of mind when confronted with a zombie attack. What causes them to increasingly regress to a zombie-like state without being infected? The end result maybe resembling what Max Brooks calls “Quizlings”?
We hope you can attend this intriguing lecture and enjoy the movie with a new mind, no pun intended.
What will you do when the undead hit your neighborhood? Get some practice with these choose-your-own-zombie-adventures!
The Outbreak is a choose-your-own-adventure zombie film that was released last fall. The film is interactive and online, which makes for at least fifteen minutes of fantastic entertainment. Although the production is B-movie quality, the interactivity and availability give it an A in zombiliciousness. (Hint: if you don’t survive the feeding frenzy on your first attempt, click “chapter select” to go back a step.)
Check out the trailer below, or go straight to the site for zombie action.
If you’re looking for a more traditional choose-your-own-zombie-adventure, look no further than the newly released Zombie Bank Run. The story follows Samuel Nelson, a man who lost it all in the Great Depression, and might just lose his life too in the zombie apocalypse.
As you might expect, Zombie Bank Run isn’t the finest literature out there, but it definitely gets bonus points for creativity and, of course, for zombies, and provides at least a good hour of zombie fun. Get started on the adventure here!
We’re psyched that the upcoming film Dead of Night, which is based on the Dylan Dog comic books by Tiziano Sclavi, is currently being shot in New Orleans. In the film Dylan Dog, a private detective who gets drawn into a dark world of zombies and vampires, is played by Brandon Routh of Superman Returns. Kevin Munroe directs and Sam Huntington, who also starred with Routh in Superman, will play his sidekick.
Although some of the details here are sketchy compared to the book (Soldiers on roofs? And where are the portajohns?), I love its scale and action. Here’s hoping the movie looks something like this.
A couple of months ago 
