by hutchwp

Top Moments of The Walking Dead TV Show

Before you start reading, this is obviously going to be full of spoilers. So if you aren’t right up to date with the end of Season 5 then you’re probably better off just going elsewhere. You’ve been warned.

The Walking Dead TV series has been on our screens for five years now and there have been some great moments. The show has generally been exceptional throughout bar a couple of dull moments – including the entire second season – but the length of the show has allowed the writers to really explore the zombie horror genre in a way never before attempted.

This article highlights a handful of the high points so far.

Rick Finds Out (S03E04 – “Killer Within”)

The main goal for Rick throughout the entire series is to protect his family. This is the moment Rick finds out Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies), his wife, has died in childbirth. The group had finally got to the point where they had some level of stability and it was obvious that his hope was that they could remain in the prison and he could start to raise his child in some kind of normality.

Andrew Lincoln’s acting in this scene is absolutely top drawer. The finishing touch comes at the end as he finally breaks down and falls to the floor, amongst the other zombies, representing that his reason for living has died. It was a poignant moment that reminded the viewers they weren’t just watching a zombie action series.

Zombie Merle (S03E15 – “This Sorrowful Life”)

Because it made Daryl cry, which sort of made us cry.

The Death of Hershel (S04E08 – “Too Far Gone”)

The shocking death of a beloved character in any series is always hard to take, but the nature of Hershel’s death was up there with the worst. He had been on a journey from the first time we met him and was the father figure to many of the central characters, not just his actual daughters. The upside of it was that the hatred for The Governor grew even more, making Michonne’s revenge even sweeter.

Rick’s One-Liner (S04E16 – “A”)

Rick (Andrew Lincoln) has been the focal point of the entire the series, as he has grown from small-town policeman to the authoritative sheriff-figure he has become. Along the way, he’s also provided us with some great one-liners. None were finer than the final line of Season 4 when the survivors had found themselves tricked into a corner at Terminus. As the cliffhanger approached and viewers wondered how they were going to wind it up, Rick chirped up with the line “They’re going to feel pretty stupid when they find out… they’re fucking with the wrong people.”

The only shame was that some airings of it changed the profanity to “screwing”, which doesn’t bode well for Negan. Also, this same episode featured an attempted rape of a 12-year-old boy and Rick chewing a man’s throat out. That was fine for TV, by the way.

Season Five Opener (S05E01 – “No Sanctuary”)

We thought the group would be fine after a determined rallying cry from our main man, but twenty minutes into the following season opener we were again watching from behind the cushions as four main character (Rich, Daryl, Glenn and Bob, the latter of which suddenly seemed a bit of a red coat) stared death in the face. That would be death by beheading, by the way. As the executioner made his way along the line, some brilliant acting from our four heroes galvanised the scene to breaking point, only for Carol (Melissa McBride) to save the day. What a way to welcome us back to the world for another 16 episodes.

A cheap way to get into The Walking Dead at your own pace is the Season 1-4 boxset, available on Blu-Ray for a reasonable price now. Of course, this is already out-of-date and will become even more out-of-date as more episodes are released. Another alternative is to get Amazon Prime Video, which is home to the series.

by hutchwp

The Walking Dead: Road To Survival (Scopely, 2015)

Robert Kirkman has just taken to the official The Walking Dead Twitter account to reveal a new free-to-play game available from the Apple Store and Google Play Store. Titled Road To Survival, it is a global strategy game that focuses on The Governor period of the story timeline. The visuals are a sort of full-colour beefed-up interpretation of the comic book, but looks of the same universe.

Hear Robert Kirkman talking about it here.

Have you played it yet? Is it any good?

by hutchwp

The Walking Dead: The Game – Season One (Telltale Games, 2012)

One way to further your total immersion into the Walking Dead universe is to take on the emotionally-tiring episodic video game series from Telltale Games. Be warned: do not attempt if you have a history of heart conditions.

Whilst most modern games push for bigger and better graphics, more epic explosions, larger guns and loud noises, this take on the interactive adventure genre instead induces panic by forcing the player to make incredibly tough decisions in a snapshot of time without much prior warning.

The action takes place in the events immediately after the outbreak of the apocalypse in the same Atlanta locations as the early parts of the comic and TV series. You take control of convicted murderer Lee Everett, a character we are yet to meet in any other canonical Walking Dead media, as he comes to terms with the loss of his family, whilst trying to keep himself and young girl Clementine alive.

The character Clementine is the masterstroke of the game, giving it an emotional edge seldom seen in video games. The decisions made aren’t on the level of which zombie to kill first to keep us alive, but rather how can Lee earn the trust of Clementine to make sure she sides with him and can be kept safe. In this way, whilst there are always choices to be made, there is a tendency to take the moral high-ground and sensible options to ensure the right impression is made at all times.

Decision, decisions.

Decision, decisions.

This is easier said than done. Often the prompt to make a decision flashes on the screen and a button input must be made immediately. There may be four options displayed but there is always the fifth option available too: doing nothing at all often leads to the worst outcome. Mild panic ensues each time the decision prompt appears – a great way to keep players on edge.

There are some nice touches, with several familiar characters appearing to help Lee and Clementine on their early missions. Hershel, his son Shawn and Glenn appear, though these are the only ones seen in the first game.

The game was released as an episodic series in 2012 in five parts, with the 400 Days DLC released soon after. As a result, each episode is left on a slight cliffhanger, a nice touch that makes it necessary to go back for the next part (much like the comic and television series).

Stylistically, it stands on its own away from the designs of the comics and the TV series. Yet, somehow it inhabits both worlds. This is testament to both the design team and the guidance offered by the fully realised world of the source material.

As an immersive experience, The Walking Dead: The Game – Season One is one of the most accomplished video games this genre has ever seen. If you’ve completed it, you can always check out Season Two and the upcoming Michonne DLC, due in December.

The Walking Dead: The Game – Season One is available to purchase as a Game of the Year Edition, featuring all episodes and DLC, now.

by hutchwp

The Walking Dead: The Board Game (Z-Man Games)

The first installment of The Walking Dead week looks at the most original of the Walking Dead board games out there, simply titled The Walking Dead: The Board Game.

The aim of the game is relatively straightforward. You take control of one of the main characters from the early parts of the series: Rick, Glenn, Shane, Tyreese, Andrea or Dale. You have to take your character, along with any number of followers (you start with one) and scout out three locations on the playing board from a possible four: three public locations and one private location. Each location has a list of criteria you need to meet and each character has a special ability to help your team along the way. Achieve this before anyone else on the board and you’re crowned the overall winner.

The game does its best to throw you off. Each time you try to collect resources (petrol, food or ammo) you have to pick up an encounter card. Using the abilities indicated on your party’s individual cards, you may have to try to fend off a zombie attack, trick your rival players into giving you a boost or roll the dice and see if you meet a specific criteria. The results of winning can be hugely varied. Sometimes it simply means you survive, other times you pick up a new follower (probably the most effective way to win).

Each time you move your character you leave behind a zombie token with a mystery number underneath. This is the number of zombies you must kill if you are to pass through that space in future. This doesn’t sound too bad, but if you have a key public location that is being surrounded by players, these tokens rapidly build up. Furthermore, if you are in desperate times you may choose to use one of your ammo resources and fire a machine gun into the zombie battle you are facing. This allows you to roll an extra dice but means there’s a 50% chance you will be fully surrounded by zombies. As you can guess, the more people playing the game, the faster the board fills up with zombie tokens. It makes for an interesting game.

The design of the game is beautiful and ties in perfectly with the style of the comic book. The character design might not appear familiar to those who only watch the TV series, but those who prefer the comic book will be delighted at the great job they’ve done here.

One drawback is the lack of storage inside the box. You’re going to need to buy these small plastic resealable bags. If you don’t you can add five minutes of setting-up time each time you play to overcome the fact all your counters and tokens are now jumbled up.

Another flaw is that the game rules aren’t explicitly clear, meaning the FAQ section of their website is full of answers to questions you’ve probably been asking after as little as one game. This could have been avoided by having a little more clarity in the user guide, a simple task for a relatively simple game.

Overall, this is a fantastic purchase for fans of the series, especially if you have a large group of friends who all love board games.

The Walking Dead: The Board Game is available to purchase now.

by hutchwp

The Walking Dead Week at Cinema Etc.

This week sees the start of the new spin-off/prequel/companion series to The Walking Dead. Titled Fear The Walking Dead, it gets its UK premiere on Monday 31st August on the new BT-exclusive channel AMC. At first it may seem like a bit of a cash-in on the main show’s popularity, but I’m not so sure. There have been endless tie-ins to the comic (yes, the TV series is really just a tie-in to the comic) that have been great successes. I’m dedicating this week to revealing the best places to go to get your Walking Dead fix. First up? The Walking Dead board game.

by hutchwp

Film review – Fed Up (Stephanie Soechtig, 2014)

A lazy and by-the-numbers approach to modern-day documentary making threatened to undermine the message of Fed Up, though the overall result is somewhat satisfying. 

It tells the story of the food industry of North America, focusing on the diets many believe are good for them and the root-causes of the misinformation they base their knowledge on. Several teenagers are used as central figures in the obesity epidemic to add a personal touch to what would otherwise be a rather statistical-based story.

The obesity problems weigh heavy on the scales of America.

As cross-examinations of entire industries go, there have been worse. However, it lays its message down early on and doesn’t really allow any competing points-of-view to be treated with any credibility. The result is that for the undescerning viewer their opinion may be altered quite quickly, though anyone used to this technique (Michael Moore does it very well) it immediately makes anything offered a potential falsety. That’s a shame because the message is one of the most important facing the developed world today.

A missed opportunity.

Fed Up can be watched on Netflix in the UK now.

by hutchwp

Video game review – Yoostar 2: In The Movies (Namco Bandai, 2011)

The premise of this game is fantastic. Making use of the Kinect camera controller for the Xbox 360, the disc contains 80 movie scenes from famous films (and Cheech and Chong’s Up In Smoke) for the player to act out, placing their performances over those of the original actor or actress. Sound fun? Well, yes. Kind of.

The thought of acting out scenes from films may appeal to some, but for many even considering standing in front of a room full of people and attempting to deliver an accent-perfect Derek Zoolander just isn’t a good way to spend an evening. It fills them with dread.

Another crowd-pleasing Ben Stiller film scene. Great for crowds of Ben Stiller fans.

For those willing to get involved, enthusiasm doesn’t reward much. The technology causes many issues by just being generally poor: images are low resolution, the background of the playing environment occasionally make their way into the finished scene, the sound is hard to hear when acting and the cue points are really hard to predict.

Both the film choice and the scene selection leaves a lot to be desired. It may be fine if you really like Ben Stiller. Too often there are scenes where your character is looking sideways on. This only works if you know the film off-by-heart or you happen to have a series of strategically-placed mirrors allowing you to read the script as you look away from the screen.

When it goes right it has the ability to cause hilarity. The Terminator is one of the better scenes as Arnie remains relatively still and doesn’t say much. The Casablanca clip works well too, being that it doesn’t require perfect comic timing.

It has the makings of a fantastic party game but unfortunately the flaws mean it never really hits the required heights. Still, it kept my party entertained for about an hour and at the price I paid (£1.33) that is excellent value for money.

Yoostar 2 is available now. Pay no more than £3 for it.

by hutchwp

Ten Great Films I’ve Never Seen – Update

In January I listed ten classic films I had somehow managed to avoid watching. Well, I watched most of them, but two were just too long for one sitting without really being able to commit. The last I just never felt in the mood for.

Here they are again, with the date I watched them (where appropriate).
12 Angry Men – 15/02/2015
Das Boot
City Lights – 24/02/2015
Vertigo – 29/01/2015
Battleship Potemkin – 01/02/2015
Ben Hur
Network – 31/07/2015
Sabrina – 13/07/2015
Cool Hand Luke
Singin’ In The Rain – 01/02/2015

It’s worth noting that in this time I’ve watched Kronk’s New Groove. So… that’s good.

I’ve put together a second list of ten films I’ve still accidentally avoided watching, including the three failures above.

Das Boot
Ben Hur
Cool Hand Luke
Frenzy
Barry Lyndon
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Gigi
Natural Born Killers
Cruel Story of Youth
To Kill A Mockingbird

by hutchwp

Network (Sidney Lumet, 1976)

“Get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: “I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!””

When Sidney Lumet’s scathing attack on the televisual media hit the big screen in 1976, this was one of many quotes from lead character Howard Beale (Peter Finch) that resonated with the public psyche. It was a huge critical success and would eventually prove to be Lumet’s defining moment as a director.

“I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”

The film opens spectacularly. We’re introduced to television news presenter Beale and the news that he has been sacked from his role at UBS due to his declining ratings. He has been given two weeks’ notice by his long-time friend Max Schumacher (William Holden in fine form) but his reaction is to go onto his next live broadcast and announce “I’m going to blow my brains out right on this program a week from today. So tune in next Tuesday.” This causes mixed reactions amongst those at the studio. The conservative Frank Brackett (Robert Duvall) leads a campaign to get rid of him immediately, whilst Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway) sees it as a potential ratings spinner, eventually facilitating him receiving his own evening slot in which he rants about the media, advertising, indoctrination and the state of American society. It proves an instant hit and the internal politics of the situation spiral.

The entire cast are on fine form, not just those in lead roles. One stunning sequence involves Beatrice Straight’s Louise Schumacher, wife of Holden’s Max, occupies the screen for only five minutes and two seconds but this was long enough for her to win the Academy Award for best actress. It is far shorter than any other performance that has ever won an Academy Award. It’s hard to say in isolation whether it is wholly deserving of such accolades, though it is possible that the Academy couldn’t bring themselves to award the prize to Jodie Foster, the then 13-year-old who was nominated for her controversial role as Iris “Easy” Steensma in Taxi Driver. You can watch the clip in a sub-standard quality below, if that’s your thing.

The topics covered in Network resonate louder today than they ever have. The anger felt by Beale at the state of the network he works for isn’t necessarily centred around the network itself but rather the people who consume it without question. Ironically, the people who begin to love his show begin to accept it and consume it, thus keeping them watching the television rather than switching it off altogether and avoid potential further indoctrination. We now live in a society four decades later where the way information is fed to consumers is controlled more tightly than imagined in Network, be it on television, in newspapers or online. The latter of these is crucial – one of the biggest opportunities civilisation has had to take over the way information is consumed and what that information is has been hijacked by corporations and advertising. That Lumet so closely predicted this future makes this essential but somewhat eerie viewing.

Network is available on Arrow Video Blu-ray now.

by hutchwp

Family Plot (Alfred Hitchcock, 1976)

Family Plot is the final film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, released four years before his death. Based on the book The Rainbird Pattern by Victor Canning, it is a shadow of his most celebrated works owing to a slow pace and a lack of chemistry between the lead characters.

The story concerns two couples. Fake psychic medium Blanche (Barbara Harris) and taxi-driver George (Bruce Dern) are petty criminals who find an opportunity to locate the son of an heiress called Edward Shoebridge and collect a £10,000 reward. In searching for this heir their lives become unexpectedly intertwined with professional criminals Fran (Karen Black) and jeweler Arthur (William Devane), who kidnap famous millionaires and return them in exchange for jewel-based ransoms.

Dern, Dern, Deeeeeeeern!

Dern, Dern, Deeeeeeeern!

Bruce Dern wasn’t the first choice for the lead role. Hitchcock’s preferred actor was Al Pacino, but his price was too high. Hitchcock went with Dern following his experience with him in Marnie and also in Alfred Hitchcock Presents episodes Night Caller and Lonely Place. Of the four central characters, he is perhaps the most entertaining to watch. It’s a highly believable turn as a man controlled by his girlfriend and partner in crime and his comic abilities are put to great use. It’s hard to see Pacino improving on this, as talented as he is.

Roy Thinnes was originally cast as the Arthur / Edward character and five days of shooting were completed before the first choice William Devane became available and Thinnes was dismissed. Devane’s turn is one that doesn’t really deliver. The character calls for malice and terror, which never really comes to fruition; this in turn makes Black’s performance as his partner fall short as the coldness she tries hard to rescue never really comes to the forefront of their scenes.

Barbara Harris was in the middle of a career purple patch when this was released. Family Plot came sandwiched between two other career successes: Nashville and Freaky Friday. All three earned her Golden Globe nominations, though it is hard to see why her turn as Blanche was so celebrated at the time. True, there are moments of real hilarity in there, and she is clearly having fun with Dern with the relentless innuendos Hitchcock has littered throughout the script, but often she comes across as irritating and it feels like she is over-cooking her lines. The low point in the film is a scene where the pair lose control of the car they are travelling in when the brakes are cut. It goes on far too long and her reaction to the situation is at odds with her portrayal in the rest of the film. It came as no surprise to find out that Hitchcock was unable to be involved with these scenes due to his deteriorating health and this and other such scenes were filmed by a second unit headed up by Wayne A. Farlow and Howard G. Kazanjian. They do, unfortunately, lack the usual Hitchcock touch.

Many of Hitchcock’s films feel like they inhabit the same universe, but the same can’t be said of this film. It is a genuine disappointment. Coupled with a lazy transfer by Universal – one of the worst I’ve ever seen on the Blu-Ray format – this is overall a real disappointment. Steer clear unless you’re really desperate.

Family Plot is available as part of the Alfred Hitchcock: The Masterpiece Collection Blu-Ray boxset, or as an individual release.