Zombies

Besides being a clever tie-in to the title of this blog, zombies represent a very real threat and must be addressed before they are allowed to become the dominant species on this planet.

There have been many manuscripts written on general guidelines in combating the zombie threat. This series will be about the defensibility of specific cities. I will start with cities that I know, and move on from there to a variety of cities around the world. I will start off with my hometown of Lake Oswego, OR.

DEFENSIBILITY: This area has a number of factors to take into consideration. Surrounding landscape, scale of urban development and geographic location are just a few things to take into consideration when planning a proper defense against the walking dead. Lake Oswego's most obvious feature is its man made lake. Normally, a body of water is a good defensive landmark to have, but only when it borders the populated area. This lake is not only in the center of the city, but the land around it goes up, effectively forming a bowl from which a hungry army of zombies will easily be able to pick their prey. Another unfavorable aspect of the lake is that it is connected to the Willamette river, whose banks are quite heavily populated. The likelihood of freshly risen ghouls pouring into the river's waters are more than likely. On a positive note, the lake is somewhat protected by dams and high rock faces at the entrance. In terms of the kinds of structures built in Lake Oswego, prospects are not so good. As a fairly high income city, most buildings were built for comfort and show, not necessarily with security in mind.

RESOURCES: Unfortunately, Lake Oswego will not receive a high ranking in this area, either. The town was built up around its once fertile iron deposits. This, however, is the towns only natural resource. The lake is not only man made, but it doesn't have any major inlets, only an outlet into the aforementioned Willamette river. Thus, its capabilities of providing fresh water are quite low. Of course, the town is in the Pacific Northwest, so rainfall is abundant for a good portion of the year.

OFFENSIVE CAPABILITIES: Lake Oswego has a relatively conservative population and, again, is located in the Pacific Northwest, so gun ownership will be high. The cover provided by the forested landscape lend well to a guerilla style war that could be waged against invading zombies.

LIKELIHOOD OF SURVIVAL: Being a town of only 36,000, many personal relationships will have already been established prior to any fortifications and evacuations that might occur. This bodes well for the inevitable crowds of people that will find themselves together, either in boarded up houses or on the run. Also, the town is about 90% demographically homogeneous. If history has taught us one thing, it's that a person will get along better with someone who is more similar to them then less similar. Overall, Lake Oswego should not be a place to set up for any sort of long term survival. However, the high gun ownership and the potential for a cooperative attack effort could prove effective against a smaller invading horde.

NEXT INSTALLMENT: Los Angeles, CA

Until next time, stay safe, and remember, everything happens for a reason.

Movies.suck

Well, folks, this is the end of an era. Actually, it's the end of several eras. I'll start with Stan Winston.


STAN WINSTON (1946-2008)
Yes, Stan Winston was extremely well known and recognized for basically breathing life into classics such as the Terminator movies, Jurassic Park, Alien, Predator, Edward Scissorhands and Batman Returns. I'm going to talk about some of his lesser-known fare (most of which I would not have known about until now without wikipedia). His first major work was for a TV movie called "Gargoyles", which I found out from YouTube has a scene dubbed one of the worst in movie history. "Worst Sexual Intervention Involving a Gargoyle". Yeah. But the thing won an Emmy, so I guess it must have been, like, the least shitty movie in a list of shitty 70's TV movies. And it had good makeup effects.

Surprisingly, he hasn't done any work for Star Wars except for one thing; the Star Wars Holiday Special. Now, if you are any sort of fan of Star Wars, I'm sure you've heard of this infamous wretch, but there's nothing like seeing it first-hand, which I have. The only possible way I can describe it is thusly: a drug-addled trip to Kashyyyk, the Wookiee home planet, which looks less like the lush jungle planet we saw in Episode III and more like Hunter S. Thompson's living room. But, again, aside from the bizarre looking baby Wookiee, Winston did his job fairly well.

The last one I'm going to mention is Pumpkinhead. This was Winston's directorial debut, and from what I can tell, it was not half bad. It doesn't look half good, but it did win him the Best First Time Director at the Paris Film Festival and it spawned 3 sequels, titled "Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings", "Pumpkinhead: Ashes to Ashes", and "Pumpkinhead: Blood Feud". I'd like to think the climax of the last one involved a deadly game of Family Feud.

There's a lot more I could say about Stan Winston. Like I said, the man was a pioneer in the field of practical special effects and practically a legend in his own right. Yeah, he made some questionable career choices, but you've got to break a few eggs before you can make an omelet.

The next era that has come to an end is that of Movies.com.

MOVIES.COM
While not quite as ground-breaking or innovative as Stan Winston, this was still my go-to website for most movie news. However, it was recently bought out by Fandango and has essentially become Fandango.com. I'm not kidding, it's a carbon copy save for a little movie news bar on the side that I haven't seen updated since the website relaunched. Seriously, why not just make one fucking website? If I wanted to buy movie tickets, I would go to Fandango or, more likely, movietickets.com. When I want watered-down, yet mostly informative, news about the goings-on of Hollywood, I go to movies.com. But not anymore. Now, I have to rely on Ain't It Cool News. Admittedly, it's got a lot of good stuff and the reporters are very thorough, but there's a lot of bullshit you've got to wade through to get to the meat and bones.

Well, that's about all I've got for this post. Hopefully, I'll do one tonight, as well.

Until next time, stay safe and remember, everything happens for a reason.

An Introduction

Hello to anyone (and at this point "anyone" heretofore probably means "no one") who is reading this blog. I have to get going soon, so this will have to be brief. My name is Lorenzo Nardini. I am a film student in the greater Los Angeles area and, as such, I tend to drown myself in media. Not just movies, but video games, television, books, magazines, and the occasional sales brochure (roughly from most drown-y to least drown-y). So, since that's about all I think about, that's what I'm going to write about here. I know there are probably about 15,238,164 blogs already posting about this type of thing, but I don't really care. My guess is few people will end up reading this anyways. And if this blog does, by some miracle, become a worldwide phenomenon, then I'll just have to step up my game.

Well, so far, this is feeling a lot like Live Journal. For some reason, though, it has an air of maturity that Live Journal doesn't. I don't know. We'll just have to see how this all turns out. Expect my first real post to be in the next day or two (if not before tomorrow).

Well, my phone is ringing, so I have to get going. Until next time, stay safe. And remember, everything happens for a reason.

This has been Lorenzo, reporting from "Zo"llywood.