Return of the Weekend of the Living Dead: Part 1
Return of the Weekend of the Living Dead: Part 2
Return of the Weekend of the Living Dead: Part 3
By the end of Saturday night, we’d watched a total of nine films. Some might say that’s enough zombie films for anyone. But not for the hardcore attendees of Return of the Weekend of the Living Dead. There was still time on the final day, before people had to go home, to get the tally into double digits.
Return of the Weekend of the Living Dead: Part 1
Return of the Weekend of the Living Dead: Part 2
SATURDAY EVENING
After a gruelling first session on the Saturday afternoon of RotWotLD, we desperately needed something to revive our flagging spirits. First, booze:
Zombie cocktail in a zombie head bowl!
Delicious zombie head juice.
Second, a series of high (and not so high) quality zom-coms Continue reading
Return of the Weekend of the Living Dead: Part 1
SATURDAY DAYTIME
RotWotLD resumed on Saturday morning, and we decided to tackle Lucio Fulci’s Gates of Hell trilogy.
A couple of years ago, I hosted a zombie film marathon. Over the course of Weekend of the Living Dead, we watched the first ever zombie film, White Zombie (1932), and the entire George A Romero series (Night, Dawn, Day, Land, Diary and Survival), as well as a couple of more recent examples of the genre (Rec and 2004’s Dawn remake).
Last weekend was the sequel: Return of the Weekend of the Living Dead (or #RotWotLD, as no-one except me was calling it on Twitter). The aim of the second marathon was to move away from big studio productions and well-known classics, and move into the murky realms of low-budget gore, video nasties and forgotten cult gems. Here’s a round-up of what we watched.
Here’s some of my favourite stuff from 2014.
Here are my resolutions for 2015:
1. Read and see six Shakespeare plays.
I’m going to repeat my successful 2014 resolution and see six more. Again, the focus will be on comedies. Shakespeare’s Globe, which I love, is doing Measure for Measure and As You Like It. The Lion and Unicorn is doing The Taming of the Shrew. I’d still like to see an RSC production in Stratford, but their summer 2015 programme is no good to me. Others I’m interested in include: All’s Well That Ends Well, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Two Noble Kinsmen.
2. Repair my ZX Spectrum and complete The Lords of Midnight.
Having failed to do this in 2014, I’m having another go.
3. Crawl through the ventilation shafts of a large building.
This has been one of my life’s ambitions for many years. In 2015 I’m going to make a definite effort to achieve it.
Let’s review how I did on my 2014 New Year’s resolutions.
I announced four New Year’s resolutions for 2014 on this blog at the start of the year. Now we’ve reached the halfway point of the year, I thought I’d review how they’re going.
Today, I experienced the most inappropriate and falsely aimed attempt to Stick It To The Man that I’ve ever seen.
I was working in Manchester Central Library. At one point in the late afternoon, someone started playing Elton John’s ‘Are You Ready For Love?’ very loudly on one of the library computers. People were tutting and looking around to see who it was. I think everyone was assuming it was an unruly teenager.
A librarian shouted out to tell whoever it was to stop, but it continued. Eventually the librarian came over and tracked down the source of the music: an elderly lady, who at first appeared oblivious to the fact that the music was even coming from her computer. The librarian showed her how to turn the music down, and left.
About a minute later, ‘Are You Ready For Love?’ was playing at full volume again. The librarian returned, thinking the dotty old crone was a bit confused and had accidentally repeated her error. But this time, rather than apologising and turning it off again, the old woman kicked off, cantankerously arguing with the librarian, calling her a ‘small-minded council bureaucrat’ and insisting on her right to play Elton John as loudly as she liked (on the computer facilities provided to her by small-minded council bureaucrats).
Then, she looked around at everyone else in the room, as if expecting us all to be right behind her in her crusade against petty officialdom. We weren’t. We all wanted her to stop playing Elton John as well.
As a result of today’s Tube strike, it took me four and a quarter hours to get from Hackney to White City in Shepherd’s Bush. Admittedly, I didn’t go about it optimally. Here’s a breakdown of the journey:
Lesson learned: check the operating services ahead of time and plan properly. I could have got to White City a lot quicker if I’d gone for the orbital Overground route earlier. Making the meeting in the City was always going to be difficult and I should probably have cancelled it as soon as the strike was confirmed.