World War Z

World War Z is the zombie’s genre first real attempt at a big budget action blockbuster.   World War Z’s giant budget has given it the ability to do what few zombie movie can, bringing the zombie apocalypse to a worldwide scale.  For the most part World War Z works, it balances its action packed thrills, with intense and suspenseful moments that are paced well throughout the film.  This all however maybe comes at the expense of the film’s heart.

For a movie that was apparently riddled with issues during production and almost didn’t even get made, even having a Vanity Fair article written about the film’s production missteps, however among a disastrous film production a comparable zombie movie emerges.  World War Z follows former U.N. investigator Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) as he searches the globe for a cure to stop the zombie apocalypse.  This worldwide search for a vaccine lends itself to some impressive and widely varied action set pieces.

One of the big questions when you have a zombie movie is, what kind of zombies are we dealing with? Is it your typical run of the mill slow walking zombies, or the hyper rabies zombies?  World War Z’s zombies most closely resemble the hyper rabies zombies, with the turn time after bite being incredibly fast, faster than any other zombie movie I’ve seen.  The fast moving disease lends itself to the movie’s scale and intensity and make for some interesting moments in the film.  For the most part all the zombie stuff is believable with a few small potholes popping up here and there but never really distract the viewer and the movie is still able to maintain it’s suspension of disbelief.

The writing in World War Z is good enough to get by, but ultimately where the movie has its biggest issue is its inability to make Gerry’s relationship with his family anything more than generic.  This wouldn’t be so much of an issue if the movie didn’t take so much time emphasizing family and bringing up the fact that Gerry has a family whenever it can.  There’s nothing that stands out about his relationship with his family, leaving that whole storyline rather uninteresting.  Causing the movie to lose some of its heart and personality along the way.  I would be remiss if I forgot to mention the painfully bad inner monologue by Pitt’s character at the end of the movie.

The thing that stands out about World War Z is its use of suspense, which makes for some intense and thrilling sequences.  World War Z not only features the traditional run n’ gun/shoot ‘em up zombie scenes but also intricate and well presented stealth scenes that make for suspenseful moments.   World War Z should also be commended for being able to break new ground for the zombie genre.   Able to put that obscenely large 200+ million dollar budget to some use, by not just plugging and chugging the typical zombie movie set pieces into the film.  Instead it takes the zombie action set pieces to places that the low budget zombie movies are never able to go.

After World War Z’s opening weekend they have already announced a sequel, which follows Pitt’s plan of hoping to turn the movie into a trilogy.  As a big fan of the zombie genre (I’m the person who watches all those zombie short films on youtube) I was genuinely surprised by World War Z and look forward to see what direction Pitt guides this trilogy as both a producer and an actor.  World War Z is impressive, smart and sure to entertaining enough to overcome it’s lack of heart to create one of the biggest zombie movies to date.

Rating: 72/100

The new season of Arrested Development and what it means for the future of Television.

(This review contains minor spoilers, a few specifics but mostly talks about the overall concepts of the new season.)

If you are like me you may have spent a good chunk of your memorial weekend binge watching the new season of Arrested Development.  I must admit when I first delved into my binge I was skeptical of the new season.  The Fourth season follows a new format with each episode revolving around one character (Micheal’s Arrested Development, Lindsey’s Arrested Development etc.); this presumably was to accommodate all of the actor’s busy schedules.  Through the first few episodes the new format left me uneasy about the new season, but as the season went on the old jokes that I loved (her?) and the shows familiar cast of characters put me at ease. This isn’t the same Arrested Development that we all remember, but after seven years off the air, a completely new storytelling format and being brought back through online streaming instead of traditional TV it would have been impossible for it to stay the same.  This time around Arrested Development is different but is still good and a worthwhile reboot of the show.

The new season’s grandest accomplishment isn’t it’s comedy, but it’s mode of storytelling as you see events from the perspectives of multiple characters, similar to Van Sant’s Elephant without all of the annoyingly long following shots.  However this does make for some confusion as to the chronology of some events and I found myself losing my bearings in a few episodes.   This leads to interesting use of suspense and surprise that adds another dimension to the comedy of the show. The comedy doesn’t quite measure up to the first few seasons, though I probably missed 100 hidden jokes throughout the season.   The show is still funny and full of laughs especially for loyal viewers of the show as some running gags from previous seasons continue into the new season; it’s just near impossible for the show to measure up to its previous three seasons.  

The new season also suffers from making this show’s dysfunctional family even more dysfunctional.  Even the characters of Michael and his son (George Michael) have become as dysfunctional as the rest of their family and have now assumed new roles as pathological liars.  At times it becomes almost annoying how incapable the members of the Bluth family are, the show in some ways has lost a little bit of it’s heart.  This mostly likely stems from the fact that due to the actor’s complex schedules we rarely get a scene where we get to see the entire Bluth family together, or more than two Bluths together in the same room for that matter.

Fans of Arrested Development will be happy to hear that the show still lays on a heavy social commentary behind all it’s comedic genius.  Heavy on the religious commentary as always, on episode in which Gob makes a joke that he thought a painting of certain famous prophet was a real person.  This along with the new season poking fun at the entertainment industry much like its predecessors helps us appreciate the sheer complexity and detail of the show. 

The entire season seems to building up to a final event or something of the sort.  However the end to the anticipation doesn’t really seem to payoff.  The season doesn’t end with a great sense of closure, which is ok since it’s clear that this most likely won’t be the last we see of the Bluths.  Netflix unfortunately has already made it clear that they won’t be bringing Arrested Development for a fifth

season. I’m confident however that if the fans and creators of the show could make a fourth season happen, making the much talked about possible Arrested Development movie shouldn’t be a problem.

So What Does This All Mean For Television?

This new season of Arrested Development is another step towards Netflix push to create original programming.  But Netflix isn’t the only subscription based online streaming company that has begun create original programming Hulu and Amazon have been doing the same as well.  Hulu (from what I can tell from Ads) has been creating many British online show and Amazon recently released the Pilot for Zombieland the series.  This all adds up to being a bad sign of things to come for traditional television programming.

The Internet’s power to provide and produce quality content online is continuing to grow, something that could lead to the death Cable, broadcast and satellite TV.  As Internet becomes more readily available to people across the country, websites that provide online streaming will become serious competition for Television.  There are majorities of people, mostly young that already watch television shows on their laptop instead of their TV’s.  A move for TV networks to release their content online along with their regular programming is a very important to help stay relevant in the digital age.  This move also make’s financial sense, Arrested Development was illegally downloaded 100,000 times, pennies compared to 1 million illegal Downloads of HBO’s Game of Thrones that occurred when the third season first premiered.  Netflix is incredibly more affordable and allows access to a larger range of content, than a costly premium cable package plan that contains HBO.

It is very possible that a few decades from now that TV in the traditional sense could be dead and instead families across America could have what functions as a giant computer monitor as the centerpiece in their living room.  A study found that eighty three percent of people under the age of 25 watch at least some of their Television show online, with a quarter of respondent saying they watch ALL their TV online.  TV is moving from cable and satellite as its medium to the Internet, for better or worse.