The Crazies – If the zombies don’t kill you the soldiers will.
The Crazies – If the zombies don’t kill you the soldiers will.
Rated: R Time: 1:41
Stars: Timothy Olyphant, Radha Mitchell, Danielle Panabaker, Joe Anderson and others
Final Grade: C
Sheriff David Dutton (Olyphant) is getting ready to have a really bad day. Unknown to him, a top secret military plane carrying a really toxic biological substance has crashed into a swamp which forms the headwaters of the river from which his city gets their water supply from. The toxin has seeped into the town’s water supply and is turning the citizens into homicidal zombies. Can a plot get any less creative than this?
Our first introduction to the zombies is in the form of the town drunk during a high school baseball game as he totes his shotgun accross center field and slowly walks toward the pitchers mound. You can tell by his look that this is going to be another horror flick. He doesn’t make it and is shot somewhere in center field.
Meanwhile, the town doctor, who happens to be Dutton’s wife ( Mitchell) is perplexed by a catatonic patient in her office that seems to stare into space and is basically looking like death on two feet. But, she sends him home and orders a CAT scan. I love what passes for modern medicine in the movies nowadays.
As you would expect, only the sheriff has a clue what’s going on in the big picture. The mayor is too politically correct to address issues and by then, well the military is involved and it would appear that everyone in the city is doomed for extinction to control the spread of the illness. Realizing their deaths are imminent, mixed with major league graphical zombie death, blood and gore, the Sheriff, wife, deputy and the doctor’s assistant start their survival trek of running to escape their own most certain demise from the US Army, if not from the marauding zombies.
If you’re hoping for something like Andromeda Strain, well, you’re going to be very substantially disappointed.
Crazies is a remake of a 1973 of the same name by George Romero, director of Night of the Living Dead and other zombie flicks. It’s not as gross as Living Dead, but it’s still really gross.
What differentiates Crazies from most zombie films is that these zombies seem to still retain some of their higher thought functions and are capable of making conscious decisions, albeit homicidal ones. Frankly, I’ve never understood how it is that zombies with half their heads missing could still understand how to walk across a field, invade a house, eat the inhabitants and still be able to be shot and killed by a gun or hatchet. I guess that’s just more Hollywood license with reality.
If you like zombie flicks, then perhaps you can stomach this one. Pun intentional. But, if not, I don’t think anyone’s going to blame you for sitting it out.
I’m Don Rima, and that’s the way I saw it, From Where I Stand.
TSA hand swabs are all washed up.
TSA hand swabs are all washed up.
Just when you thought the lines at airport security were getting long enough, the great minds at the TSA have just come up with yet another sure fire way to detect the bad guys. They’re going to start swabbing your hands. They think this is a way to detect bomb residue on people that have been handling explosive material prior to boarding an airplane.
OK, now, let’s think about this. And, let’s try not to laugh too loudly.
The whole concept here is based on the presumption that the person flying is the person making the device or working with the potentially explosive substance and that he’ll be in contact with this substance prior to going through the security checkpoint.
Frankly, this not only defies logic it defies the basic tenets of sanity.
So, let’s say that we’ve got 3 terrorists working together to bring down a plane. Two of them will do all the construction and packaging of the devices and compounds. Once the final assembly is made, the 3rd guy will carefully hold open a clean container (zip loc baggie or two perhaps?) while the other bad guys gently put the stuff inside the bag. Then the guy with clean hands will seal the bag and put it in his luggage or inside his shorts. Does anyone think there’s going to be any detectable residue on the flier’s hands?? REALLY? Then you’re about as dumb as the TSA.
To give them perhaps added security, maybe they’ll wear these little plastic gloves you can buy at any hardware store. If it will keep AIDS out, it will most likely keep your fingers away from any bomb substances. Think the TSA’s new process will find this? Not bloody likely. Think that terrorists haven’t thought of these ideas? Think again.
Once again, the Justice Department and Homeland Gestapo Agency are more intent on being politically correct and mollycoddling terrorists than dealing with the problems. If some idiot wants to blow his balls off in a plane, I think we should give him the chance. Just take him a few paces out in the middle of a deserted parking lot, strap a couple M80’s around each nut and light the fuse. I think he’ll remember this for a long time.
I’m Don Rima and that’s how things look, From Where I Stand.
Watching the ads capture the gold in Vancouver.
Watching the ads capture the gold in Vancouver.
The Wall Street Journal ran an interesting little article that they hid way deep on page B8 of February 22nd’s paper. This short article did a little comparison of how much time one actually sees sports action on TV while watching the Olympics in Vancouver.
During one 3 ½ hour broadcast segment of the Olympics, there were 56 minutes 41 seconds of ads or 27% of the broadcast time. This means that during an average broadcast hour, one in 3 minutes is spend watching an advert.
Now, if that’s not a good reason to have Tivo, I don’t know what is.
I’m Don Rima and that’s how things look, From Where I Stand.
