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Human Rights, Zombie Equal SignWe have a simple rule here at MoreBrains: “If it wouldn’t matter when you’re huddled together in the corner of a tool shed gripping a bloody crowbar and hoping that the newly risen dead don’t hear you then it’s probably not worth getting too excited over.”  In that situation it just doesn’t matter if the guy holding the chainsaw is married to the guy frantically constructing Molotov cocktails.  You’d have bigger problems then and we have bigger problems now.

If you can find love in this crazy, mixed-up world before you’re disemboweled and torn to pieces by formerly-living neighbors then we say follow your bliss: marry whom you like.  Remember that matching Katanas make excellent wedding gifts!

Visit the Human Rights Campaign for more information or contact your representative to make your opinion heard.

 Artisan Cake Company Zombie Cake by Elizabeth Marek.

A friend of ours (thanks, Tera!) brought this to our attention.  It’s from last year but it was new to us and just to good not to share.

This is cake by Elizabeth Marek of the Artisan Cake Company (there are plenty more pictures at the link).  Elizabeth says of her creation:

The “cake” is for display so it’s actually made from Rice Krispy Treats (RKT). The skin is modeling chocolate and the eye and shirt is fondant. I made the eye by painting it with food coloring.  The brain is made from a jell-o mold I got from the Halloween Store. It worked really well and turned out perfectly. I was nervous because I have never made a Jell-o brain before but it was super easy and tasted AMAZING let me tell you!

All we can say is DO WANT!

Crafty Zombie CookiesAs we approach Boiled Eggs and Brain Eaters 2013 we’ll be presenting some fun (and delicious) ways to celebrate.  First up is a simple, cheap activity that’s fun for any kids you might have lying around.  In our case we dug up a couple of 10-year old girls to assist.

Materials for this include:

  • Some cookies to bake.  Any kind will do.  We just used pre-made, store bought sugar cookie dough.
  • Some green icing.  Get quite a bit as this will be your backdrop.
  • A bunch of cake decorating gel.  The kind you use to write “Happy Birthday” on cakes.  Only in this case you’ll be drawing blood, brains, bile and rotten teeth.
  • Assorted candies for decoration.  We used Spree here; but M&M’s are good too.  Wonka Nerds give a nice texture and crumbled Reese’s Cups make a fine faux grave dirt.  Buy extra: there will likely be some consumption during the build process.
  • Some space and some patience – this will get messy!

First bake your cookies.  If you like (we didn’t) you can mix some green food coloring into the dough for that extra bit of ghoulie.  Let them cool.  Ice them with the green icing and let that dry.  Lay the cookies and materials out on sheets of wax paper.

Now let the shorties loose!  Encourage them to be creative but remember the theme: no bunnies or smiley faces.  These are shambling, brain-hungry animated corpses!  Candy can make for a nice exposed eye-socket.  Blood should be drippy and plentiful (and tasty).  The odd premature bite can also be useful to expose brain-filled cranium.  Give them as long as they like – there’s no rush.  Once they get done (or bored) set the cookies aside to dry for a bit; they should be nice and ready by the time you’re done cleaning up.

Then eat them.  Before they eat you.

Archie McPhee, Brain Gelatin Mold You may be surprised to know that there are actually quite a few brain-molds available.  After using this one for more than ten years I can promise you: this is the best of the bunch.  Most of the other available options are simply downright flimsy.  They’ll tear, crumble and last maybe one or two times.  This one is solid, heavy plastic and will survive packing, moving and storage in the back of the cupboard.

Although “gelatin” is on the box this is more than strong enough to support whatever else you may want to toss at it.  Dough, chocolate, modeling clay, fudge – whatever.  It works well for ice and, if you’re so minded, sand castles.

It would be nice if they made a right-hemisphere as well – this is only available in a left (or “sinister”) model.  That’s a request, not a complaint however.  I also wish that I could find an “overhead” version that’s as well-constructed – half a brain is all you need most of the time, but sometimes only the whole thing really satisfies.

The Accoutrements Gelatin Brain Mold is available at Archie McPhee and Amazon.com.  Highly recommended.

TorJohnson_Plan9Inspector Clay worked his stubby fingers to the bone to protect, um – wherever the hell he worked – until the day that he died tragically off-camera in a horribly lit cardboard graveyard.  Then an effeminate alien shot long distance electrodes into his pineal and pituitary glands and raised him as the lovable zombie tool of destruction that we’ve come to know and love.

Plan 9 from Outer Space” wasn’t the first Zombie movie and it certainly wasn’t one of the best but it did bring us a clumsy, shambling, incoherent Tor Johnson as Inspector Clay.  Later he put in some white contacts and became a zombie.

As the Inspector’s good friend John Harper reminds us: “One thing’s sure. Inspector Clay is dead, murdered, and somebody’s responsible.”

Shirt.woot.com: If I'm Running, Zombie are Chasing Me!As we were all taught in Zombieland rule number one is all about the running.  The running and the screaming.  Screaming and running and more running.

For those of us that fall into the “poor fat bastard” category shirt.woot.com offers this to remind others that if you see us moving faster than a waddle you should probably get your shit together.  Fast.

Consider us your fat, lazy canaries and the world your zombie-infested coal mine.

Walking Dead Vol 1The Walking Dead is a great show – one of the best currently on television – and most people know that it was originally a comic but few people actually jump mediums and start reading the comics.  Brian Huntington, over at thewalkingdead.com, has written an excellent introduction for those interested in giving the books a try but not wanting to spoil the show: “Jumping from the Show into the Comics“.

He covers which volumes are “safe” to read because the show has already passed that point in the narrative.  It’s an excellent introduction, straight from the source, but I’d like to give some of my thoughts on the matter as well as I think he may have inadvertently given the wrong impression.

The simple truth is that the comics and show really don’t share as much as he intimates.  The comic, now well over 100 issues and 10 years in, has created a rich menu of iconic imagery and events that the show picks liberally from but doesn’t mimic.  Lifted plot points are presented in a different order, affect different characters and often have drastically different outcomes.  The story remains grossly similar and is familiar to comic readers but is often radically different in execution.

To illustrate this consider that many of the characters fundamental to the show: Daryl, Merle and T-dog don’t exist in the comic at all.  Others exist only in the comic or had greatly expanded (or reduced) roles there.  Many of the iconic scenes shared by the two featured different cast members or circumstances.  Herschel, for example, never lost his leg in the comic (although somebody else did).  Finally there are major differences with character longevity between the two.  Many characters that we’ve lost on the show are still struggling in the comic and vice versa.

Some of this is purely practical.  When you kill off a character in a comic book you simply draw a new character.  On a television show you must consider actors, casting and contracts.  Should you want to make your main character an amputee you just don’t draw as much.  On television there’s complex planning and effects that must go into such a decision.  On paper a herd of thousands of zombies is nothing more than a literary motivation, on film it’s a massive undertaking with dozens if not hundreds of extras.

In other respects it feels like many of the decisions were made specifically to keep the story fresh for existing fans.  The show has made every effort to drag the comic fans out of their comfort zones.  Major events will begin to play out, or be staged, exactly as they were in the comics but then take shocking turns away from the original path and other events, some hugely significant, are completely new to the show.  At the risk of a spoiler I will simply say that nobody was as shocked to see Sophia come out of that barn as long term fans of the comics.  It was a gut-punch, pure and simple.

The television production has done everything it can to retain the flavor – the “values”, if you will – of the comic while making it a completely new experience.  Having read the comics simply doesn’t spoil the show because the show is so very different.  The only real insight that you’ll gain from enjoying both is the unsettling realization that nobody is safe.  Nobody at all.  It may also make you insufferable as you constantly explain to your family and friends how different things were in the book and how they really should start reading it.

IMDB-ParanormanParanorman” on IMDB

Fantasy –  2012 – 92 Minutes

I went into this thinking “here’s another throw-away family film”.  Why wouldn’t I?  All of the trailers played up the shtick and the silliness.  All of the posters played up the zombies and the crazy cast of supporting characters.  I thought, “here’s a silly kids movie that I don’t have to pay much attention to while digesting a nice big Christmas meal.”

It did start off in that direction.  The first third of the movie introduces the characters with a healthy serving of one-liners (some even mildly risqué) and site-gags.  There’s nothing here for kids to complain about.  As the movie progresses, it gains both significant momentum and a surprising gravitas that completely enthralled me.  The raw emotional impact of the final act was both surprising as hell and incredibly effective.

Norman’s town is readying a celebration of their only claim to fame: the execution of a witch 300 years earlier who, so the story goes, cursed the town.  The story of the witch’s curse has, in modern times led to the adoption of a cartoonish town mascot and several other witch-themed tourist attractions.  Even in a town where a centuries-old curse is a point of pride Norman is, to be charitable, odd.  He can, so he says, speak with the dead.  For this he’s bullied, ridiculed and ostracized.  His family can’t relate to him and he has no friends.

Unknown to Norman, special people in his family not only can speak to the dead but have been the only thing keeping the witch’s spirit quiet by way of an annual ritual.  When the death of Norman’s eccentric uncle interrupts the ritual the curse is released and Norman and his band of unlikely companions must deal with the raising of the dead, the unleashed mob-mentality of the town and ramifications of his gift.

It’s difficult to describe the last act without spoiling the reveal, but it’s both a complete surprise and completely reasonable.  The film slowly but deftly leaves the childlike gags behind and matures into an impressively charged horror movie.  The last 20-30 minutes are as emotionally draining as anything you could care to name while remaining completely accessible to its young audience.  It reminded me positively of the depth and respect for the audience that the best young adult franchises, like “Doctor Who”, have.

It makes me so very happy when a movie rises above my preconceived notions of it and ends up revealing something more meaningful.  “Paranorman” is an excellent family film that hides within it a deep and thought provoking horror film.  It intelligently examines the cost of bullying, being different and fear of the unknown in a framework of compassionate empathy.  Its a surprising film and definitely not to be missed.

IMDB, The Corpse Bride“The Corpse Bride” on IMDB

Fantasy –  2005 – 77 Minutes

[This review was originally published at our sister-site, DepressedPress.com on November 11, 2012.]

This one just kind of slipped through the cracks on me.  I tend to watch all of Tim Burton’s [IMDB] movies even tho’, let’s face it, they are getting more than a little samey.  But this is an older one and, as it turns out, one of the better ones.

The plot is pure Burton.  It has been arranged for Victor to marry Victoria.  Nervous at marrying a woman that’s he doesn’t know Victor takes a walk into the woods to practice his vows.  Rising to the occasion he delivers such a moving rendition that he awakens the soul (and corpse) of a bride murdered before her wedding who assumes that they are now married.  This, as you might guess, leads to some awkwardness with his actual fiancée.

The movie is stop-motion animated and a spiritual (no pun intended) successor to the classic “The Nightmare Before Christmas” [IMDB].  There’s something wonderfully concrete and solid about stop-motion.  When done well, as it is here, nothing can beat it.  The film is lush with detail and personality that CGI or traditional cel animation simply can’t match.  The performances are well-matched and moving and the film is populated with a background cast of highly entertaining bit players.

On the negative side The story is a little sparse.  The character motivations are scattered and generally unbelievable.  Sadly the female characters, who you might expect to be much stronger, are rather weak and completely driven by a rather fickle Victor.  Still, at less than 80 minutes (with credits) it’s not hard to forgive a lack of depth.  Oh, the ending is almost patronizingly contrived as well.

If you’re a fan of Burton then you’ve probably already seen this anyway and have made up your own mind.  But if you let it slip through the cracks like I did, give it a shot.  It’s a little vapid, yes, but it’s a perfect example of Burton’s particular brand of dark, gothic humor.