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[Victoria Film Festival 2017] Beware the Girl With All The Gifts & What That Brings …

Plays Feb 10, 9pm
Cineplex Silvercity Tillicum
Victoria, BC

Please check local film festival listings for a screening near you.

* Spoiler Alert

In the movie The Girl With All The Gifts (GWatG), Professor Helen Justineau (Gemma Arterton) and Doctor Caroline Caldwell (Glenn Close) represents opposite sides of a belief in how to deal with a fungal outbreak turning humanity into mindless creatures. They are the walking dead and they are not the traditional kind of zombie Voodoo practitioners would expect. When they are born as children, they seem normal, but as they age, their behaviour and cognitive ability changes. These two academics have to interact with them in order to find a solution to save the world.

Instead, they are at odds with one another. It’s a battle of philosophies between the educator taking on one approach and the doctor who simply wants to cut them up. This film is a nail-biting look which looks at the inevitable. The big question is whether or not these children are indeed children.

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Dark Horse Comics, Ed’s Picks of Oct and Nov 2016

By Ed Sum (The Vintage Tempest)

Autumn is here, and Winter is near. Just what can a kid like me do? Read comics of course! When my interest with Pokémon GO has waned, and I have thoughts about what can be played, well here’s my list of Dark Horse Comics picks for the cold nights ahead. I say it is time to pull out my colouring pencils!

Adult colouring books is a phenomenon, and when Dark Horse is one of the leaders of the pack, I can also try out the water-soluble leads I have on trying to mimic the style found in some Asian prints.

On top of my list is the Avatar: The Last Airbender trade paperback. There are 45 pages to paint up, and the art is done by Jed Henry. This book is out now.

Either now available or soon will be are my bi-monthly picks:

Chimichanga:
Sorrow of the
World’s Worse Face #1
October 12

Wrinkle’s Traveling Circus’ most adorable bearded girl and her savory-named beast are back, and there is a new act in store! Come one, come all to the Sorrow of the World’s Worst Face! But beware: those who look behind the curtain are in for an awful treat, and it’s not just his face we’re talkin’ about!

Featuring art by Stephanie Buscema!

“Chimichanga is full of that youthful vigor that makes The Goon such a delight.” —Broken Frontier

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Exorcising Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies lacks bite, and it needed to pay attention to Jane Austen’s world more instead of a coming zombie apocalypse.

The gimmick of marrying Victorian age attitudes with pop culture is nothing new. Neither is trying to sell Shakespearean stylized takes on Star Wars, but woe be thy author who tries to find innovation in this weird mash-up. The movie version of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies does not add upon what Seth Grahame-Smith wrote in his twist of Jane Austen’s classic. A few minor changes exist to make the on-screen version palatable, including tossing every single variation of a zombie (from a baby to a butcher) into the presentation, but they feel minuscule when compared to the concept that’s being presented at large.

Burr Steers provided the screenplay adaptation of an action-comedy adventure where Elizabeth Bennet (Lily James) refuses to marry. Like the book, to improve their station in life, both she or her sisters should marry well-to-do men. Liz quite simply does not like the idea. Jane (Bella Heathcote), Kitty (Suki Waterhouse), Lydia (Ellie Bamber) and Mary (Millie Brady) are more receptive than her, and when the world is in the onslaught of being taken over by zombies, to court an easy life in this new world is neigh tough.

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A Historical Analysis & Review into The Empire of Corpses

The_Empire_of_Corpses

By Ed Sum (The Vintage Tempest)

*Screened at the 2016 Victoria Film Festival
*Spoiler Alert

The idea of having zombies shambling about in a steampunk world as slaves is a great concept to play with in the Japanese animated movie The Empire of Corpses. When technology made advanced leaps thanks to the success of Charles Babbage (the grandfather of computing) building the analytical engine, Victor Frankenstein reanimating a mix of dead body parts (he’s a real figure in this fictional world) and Duncan MacDougall discovering the deceased loses “21 grams” of mass (their soul) upon death, science fiction author Satoshi Itō (伊藤聡) aka Project Itoh crafted a dystopian Victorian world-embracing death instead of fearing it.

In our historical understanding of this past, the preoccupation with the dead was because mortality rates were high; many loved ones passed before their time or in wars from afar. Séances were common because many people from around the British Commonwealth wanted to communicate with the deceased for many a reason. To talk to them again offered closure. These details might have been addressed on a deeper level in the novel but in the animated film, a fair bit of this age’s spiritualist practices are not as deeply explored. What’s exhumed is surface level.

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[Chiyoda, Tokyo] Pretty Undead Maids All in a Row

What’s interesting is that the Undead Maids become more grotesque with each passing day as the virus progresses, eventually decaying.

Translation: "Warning! There is a zombie outbreak in this building!" — Translation: “Warning! There is a zombie outbreak in this building!”

Halloween isn’t widely celebrated in Japan but there is at least one place in Japan you can go to get your ghoul on, Schatzkiste, a Akihabara culture café is holding their fourth annual Maid of the Dead in Chiyoda, Tokyo.

Schatzkiste is part of a franchise of maid cafés. And at the Akihabara location you’ll be treated to some fun in the form of zombie maids who’ll serve you some frighteningly fun food. Some of the tasty treats that will be featured are Nameless Horror Omurice, Smashed Brain Cheese Cake and Eyeball Juice.

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