rollins, zombies, aliens

Friday night Carina and I joined Elfboy and his wife, Duffy and Amie, and Marty to see Henry Rollins at the Newport Music Hall. This was the fourth Rollins show for Elfboy, Marty and I, and the second show for the spouses (and I don’t know how many times Amie and Duff have seen him). As always, a great show, full of wit and humor, compassion, and positive energy. I’m consistently surprised by Rollins’ positivism. I was humbled by his account of his experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq doing USO performances for the troops there. Rollins made it very clear that he was opposed to the war, and to much of the administration’s actions, but he never let that cloud his impression of the service people he met. He called every single one of them a hero, doing the best job they could do in an unpleasant situation. He never let his opinion of their boss(es) cloud his opnion of the people he met. I respect and admire that kind of maturity.

Saturday night we watched 28 Days Later. A decent movie in a long procession of famous zombie movies. It was neat that the zombies here were fast-moving hunters that had a blood infection, and not really animated corpses. The ending chain of events was a little too convenient for my tastes, and it all executed a little too well for the hero. A bike courier outsmarting the wizened military personnel? pshaw

Why doesn’t anyone make a zombie movie where the main characters have seen a few zombie movies, and as such can make at least a few intelligent decisions? I mean, the heros never established a night watch order to ensure that everyone could get some sleep and ensure the safety of the party? Why didn’t anyone burn corpses of the infected to help minimize further infections? Why didn’t anyone build a reasonable barricade that took some ingenuity to navigate, since the infected consistently used the “charge wildly forward” tactic? Only the taxi driver wore any kind of body armor (although only while standing in the stairwell in his apartment building, appearently!), even though they all knew that a single bite would be the end for them. The movie Dog Soldiers is the only one I can recall that had some of this. The army guys used their training, and operated as a team, and it made for a great movie.

Today (Sunday) Carina and I are going to watch What Planet are you From?, starring Garry Shandling, Annette Bening, John Goodman, Greg Kinnear and Ben Kingsley. I don’t have any expectations of it being a particularly good movie, but the cast features some favorites of mine, so it should at least be entertaining! update The movie was quite entertaining, and Carina and I laughed through most of it. There was a very real chance that it would be a flop – either taking itself too seriously, or being too mushy, or being too over-the-top – but the writing and execution were superb. If you like Garry Shandling’s sense of humor, you should definitely check this one out!