Seems to be the time of the year to watch zombie movies. The other evening we rented 28 Weeks Later, the sequel to the brilliant 28 Days Later. Although the sequel isn’t as good as the original, it was still a well-made horror flick. We particularly enjoyed the views of the empty city of London, and of course the story was well written and decently acted. There were plenty of frightening scenes and great zombie attacks.

Tonight we watched the Dawn of the Dead remake from 2004 on the Space Channel. Not a particularly great film but it had some original things as well as all the traits of a classic “B” horror film. I don’t think the acting was very good and the photography was average at best, but setting the film inside a shopping mall was brilliant. If you haven’t seen it you really should.

Any other zombie movie recommendations?

We caught the latest Will Smith movie I Am Legend last night, and it sparked a lot of conversation between Eileen and I over dinner about the merits and disappointments of the film.

If you didn’t know, this film is the third on-screen rendition of the original book I Am Legend by Richard Matheson (in reprint now, due to the film). The first time around in 1964 it was titled The Last Man on Earth and starred Vincent Price. I’ve never seen this film and wasn’t even aware of it until I read about it on IMDB. The second film The Omega Man is a bit more modern, made in 1971, and stars Charlton Heston as Robert Neville. I haven’t seen this film in years but recall watching it with my father when I was young. It wasn’t really scary when watching on television on a Saturday afternoon, but it definitely intrigued me.

When I first saw the trailer for this latest version, I was immediately struck with the similarities to The Omega Man, and I quickly discovered the history of the book and original film.

After the film we went to the Gerard Lounge at the Sutton Place Hotel across the street. This fabulous little bar has great atmosphere reminiscent of a gentleman’s club in Victorian England: dark, floor to ceiling wood paneling, and a full complement of waiters to bring drinks and food. It was the perfect setting to debate what we liked and disliked about the film.

First, the very best “character” in the film is the very lonely, very wild, very overgrown New York City. It was better than any of the human or animal actors by far. Don’t get me wrong, Will Smith did a tremendous job portraying a driven, lonely, slightly mad Robert Neville but even he couldn’t compete with the sweeping and often disturbing views of NYC.

Second, I’d say that the the film was too disjointed. There was very clearly an over-arching story of how Neville is trying to “fix” the problem of the killer virus but why he was so involved from the beginning wasn’t really explained very well. It was clear why he was so driven after the death of his family, and there were vague hints of his early involvement but there seemed to be more emphasis on his military role rather than his role as a virologist. There was also a big gap in the portrayal of the evolution of the “zombie”. There was the great scene where Neville records his behavioral analysis, but missed the opportunity to observe that the Dark Seekers were intelligent and rapidly organizing themselves into a society.

There was also no coherent story for the “head zombie” (credited as Alpha Male, played by Dash Mihok). He really could have been nothing more than a savage beast, but the film would have been improved by giving that character more depth. All the pieces were there: a love interest, motivation to find Neville’s house, ability to learn and adapt, etc.

Third, the film was too predictable. The unfortunate death of Sam was telegraphed very early. The death of Neville’s family was obvious two minutes into the flashbacks of their attempts to exit the city. The attack on the house was entirely expected. The “happy ending” was not surprising nor interesting at all.

Which brings me to my last point: I don’t think the “happy ending” was appropriate. I don’t know how the book ends (I should probably get a copy and read it) but I found it very disappointing. Same for the ending of another post-apocalyptic film Children of Men from 2006. Too happy, and too unbelievable.

This doesn’t mean we didn’t enjoy the film. The photography was great and the “world” of Robert Neville was very well done. Will Smith really captured the sense of loneliness and desperation. The long views of NYC were fantastic. Its just that the film could have been so much better than it really was.

Yesterday afternoon, for absolutely no apparent reason, my stock WRT54G wireless router stopped communicating with the outside world. I could reach various computers internally and even reach the configuration for the WRT54G but otherwise couldn’t surf.

I downloaded a firmware update and that didn’t help either. I downgraded the firmware to something quite old and like magic it worked again for all the computers in the house except for my Dell laptop (seemed like it could no longer authenticate). Sigh. The diagnostics built into the Linksys firmware to troubleshoot this sort of problem is pretty much non-existent.

I was ready to run out and buy a new router today but figured first I’d give some of the alternative open source firmware a go to see if they might have some better diagnostics. Before long I discovered DD-WRT and proceeded to download and install their “standard” edition.

Happy-happy-joy-joy. After installation all the computers in the house could access the internet. This firmware actually resolved my original problem, which likely was either a faulty firmware issue from Linksys or some compatibility problem with Shaw’s network, I never did figure out which. Another benefit was having access to the transmission power control. I was able to increase the power slightly to get better reception on the far side of my house.

The user interface is very well done (equal or better than the original Linksys I’d say) and the whole thing is open source. How cool is that? I’d highly recommend it even if you don’t have problems with the stock WRT54G firmware. Plus they support a wide range of consumer routers.

A news story at Slashdot recently grabbed more of my attention than usual:

Datacenter Robbed for the Fourth Time in Two Years

Thieves broke into the facility and stole computer equipment, and certainly not for the purposes of selling the hardware on the street like stolen car radios or DVD players. Likely the thieves were much more interested to gain access to the hard disks in the resident systems. All the network security products in the world can’t stop them once they have physical access. Identity theft and credit card fraud won’t be far behind this crime.

This story is straight out of a cyberpunk novel in the genre as defined by William Gibson’s Neuromancer or Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash. Those books and many more like them had a profound effect on my outlook on life. It seems the dark future predicted by that genre is coming true sooner than anyone expected.

Here is another example of the cyberpunk fiction:

Human Organs For Sale

This is somewhat gruesome but not surprising. Easily predicted by anyone familiar with the genre. Ebay might be squeamish but how long before this stuff appears on craigslist?

Here is something else in the same theme: The Science of Growing Body Parts

Another major theme in cyberpunk stories is virtual reality. Now there is a real-world example of that phenomenon for Scott Adams, author of the Dilbert comic strips, various books, and other useless crap:

It’s Like Reality, Without the Screaming

The source of that is Second Life, a virtual reality social network. Sure its primitive technology by comparison to the rich stories written by the great authors of the genre, but everything has a “version 1.0”.

Another strong theme in the cyberpunk genre is the role that corporations play vs. government. We like to believe our utopian democratic society will protect us from evil corporations and oppressive governments.

Certainly untrue. Think about Haliburton, a corporation that has free reign to set its own price for services in Iraq. It acts without any real oversight. A corporation like Blackwater can sustain a private war at the financial expense of taxpayers without so much as a social hiccup.

Consider that the U.S. government believes secret, illegal spying on citizens is justified and the blatant withholding of human rights of un-convicted prisoners is an acceptable way of conducting international politics. And certainly that particular government isn’t the only one to act this way.

The trend is clear, and the outcome will be fascinating. I can’t wait to see it all unfold!

We watched two very good movies recently, so I thought I’d share my thoughts.

In the Shadow of the Moon is a documentary by Ron Howard about the NASA moon landings. It contains a number of interviews with nine of the living astronauts who landed on the Moon in the 1969-1972. The video footage was worth seeing, much of it I hadn’t seen before. But the stories are all very familiar if you have seen Apollo 13 and From the Earth to the Moon.

Disappointingly, Neil Armstrong did not participate. I worry that we might never hear his story in his own words, which would be a real tragedy. This film did contain a line (by Alan Bean, if I recall correctly) saying that it is very hard to be Neil Armstrong simply because he can never live up to the expectations.

The other film we saw was Elizabeth: The Golden Age, the sequel to the 1998 film Elizabeth. Eileen is a fan of this period of English history and was eager to see it. This film is visually stunning and quite dramatic although the storyline doesn’t really come together very tightly. The script also took a few small liberties with the historical facts, which was also disappointing. However the visuals are worth overlooking these small foibles.

Seen any great (or bad) movies recently?