Tag Archives: Ford

Movie, Review, Zombies

The Dead 2: India (2013)

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HEY — if this reads a bit like a draft … it’s because it is!

Similar to The Dead (2010), I give this film a Yellow Puss/nearly Green Ooze score.

Similar story elements as the first film however seems that the Ford brothers have honed their craft both with storytelling and film making

A good looking American engineer is working in an economically depressed foreign country, he must make his way out with the assumption that he can get to safety

In this movie, the action is set in the Indian states of Rajasthan and Maharashtra.

Uses local talent as part of the story line more than The Dead (2010) — which is really clever if you think about it.  This and the first piece were made by independent film makers for rather little money.  By going to these other countries and writing stories that work within the local atmosphere the can get more resources and actors, making a bigger film for less money.  When it comes to India, bear in mind that Bollywood produces some goofy stuff, they also produce skilled actors, quite a few more films annually than HolloWood, and nearly-as-good special effects for less money.

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Once again the production encountered a number of problems.  Most of the extras playing zombies were not proficient in English and required translators.  Joseph Millson also mentioned that they did not get a permit from the Indian Government to shoot the movie in India.

If National Geographic made a travel show through a foreign country ravaged by zombies, it would be this film

Movie, Review, Zombies

The Dead (2010)

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For starters, I have to say that I’m surprised that this tile wasn’t already used by some previous zombie film. Maybe it was and I’m just not aware of it, but let’s get into it, shall we?

RATING – Yellow Puss, nearly Green Ooze – The Dead is an interesting film among Z-films.

Somewhere off the coast of war-torn West Africa a plane-load of American soldiers are evacuating.  The plane crashes in an area where the night before a horde of zombies attacked villages through the area — and US military engineer, Lieutenant Brian Murphy, is the only survivor.

With no other options and limited resources,  Lieutenant Murphy starts to walk his way out of the country. Yeah, it’s The Journey, but for this film it works rather well. Amid a country of zombies there are very few humans — often called ‘survivors‘ — and our engineer finds and teams up with a regional soldier, Daniel, who is gone AWOL and looking for his son.  In time, Daniel asks Brian to locate his son.  And that’s all I’ll tell you about this as to not give any spoilers….

If National Geographic made a zombie film, it would look like this…

Here’s the thing about this film and my review — call it a confession if you will — I did not get to write my review after watching it, and I had a lot of good things to say during the viewing. Once I got around to writing I got very busy with Xmas holiday stuff and touring the state of Washington as a guest player with a Celtic-rock band — I did not have time to re-watch and better-write my review, but I will tell you this …

Remember kids, always brush your teeth.

This film has an unexpected element and rather different charactre among Z-films. It wasn’t a great film but it was a good film, and frankly it was hard not to give it a Green Ooze rating. It also gives some beautiful views of parts of Burkina Faso and Ghana. If you are a zombie film fan, The Dead is a must-watch.

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Addendum

Yes — an ADDENDUM!  Why?  Because I wrote and published this before, and somehow it survived a hard drive crash I had, but it didn’t originally get posted when I moved my website.  ANYWAY… Take a look at the Wikipedia page for this film regarding the production — it’s nearly amazing the film even got made…

The cast and crew encountered many problems.  Shooting was planned for 6 weeks — it took 12!  First there was a delay in shipping the equipment to Africa which added 3 weeks.  The lead actor, Rob Freeman, contracted malaria and almost died in the middle of filming.  Additional delays were caused by major damage to camera equipment.  Howard J. Ford — one of the directors — later published a book, titled Surviving the Dead (2012), that detailed the troubled production.

Adventures In Truckdom

To Paint Or Not To Paint, That Is The Question

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One of the needed repairs to my truck is the cab floor — it’s rusty. Something that came the neglect of the previous owner/s was the idea that gutter-rubber wasn’t really …. necessary.  The drivers-side one was missing when I got the truck, and the screwy passenger-side door didn’t close all the way.  Ultimately water came in, soaked the flooring, the flooring worked like a sponge soaking up water, and this water was held to the floor.  Now, let’s do some math… paint

Wet Flooring + Time = RUST …. not awesome :-\

Once I got this truck and started going over it, I found the wet and stinky floor and the rust. I got the flooring to be not wet and the cab of the truck to be not stinky — then I started working over the floor. I exposed all the rust and even found a few pin-holes in the process. A car-guy friend patched the holes and told me what to do to kill the rust, how to paint and further seal the cab floor. This would have been nice to work over during a summer but things haven’t worked out that way.  Why summer?  I could work outside, it’s warm and dry, and venting fumes isn’t a problem.  Right now I’m figuring out if I can work over the floor in the off season.  There are some tricks to it though…..

Space — The Final Frontier…

There is a garage I can use.  It isn’t heated but I think I can heat what I need to accomplish the job done.  I need to remove both bumpers to get my truck in … hopefully.  I will also need to remove both doors to be able to do the work.

The Space/Time Continuum

Then comes that “Time” factor again from above.  The rust-killer juice I have is 2 bottles of stuff — some stuff like Naval-jelly that removes the rust followed by a bottle that neutralizes the Naval-jelly once it’s done its work.  After that, paint.  My car-guy friend instructed to put it on with a brush so the paint would be thick — reading the can it sounds like it won’t dry correctly.  I’ve figured that I could probably spray it on and do multiple coats, which would help it to dry better and end up being thick.  I’ve been trying to check with said-car-guy to see if that should work. The funny thing is that I think this paint is technically Ford’s signature-blue colour and my truck is a Chevy.  The other time issue is if I can pull this off before looking to have my truck back on the road when I want to go out of town this coming weekend …. this on top of stuff going on with my book (available on Amazon.com), holiday baking, the holidays themselves, AKA life.  Add to the time-issue, I’m also looking to paint my rear bumper while it’s off the truck.

That said — I need to shake a leg on this stuff…  Whatever why things go, I have just a little more to do on a door-repair yet today.