World War Zzzzzzz

I finally got around to watching World War Z last night and it's a perfect example of a paint-by-numbers zombie film packed with post-28 Days Later cliches.

The 2006 novel by Max Brooks on which this story is based feels like an entirely different entity, with so few similarities that it wouldn't be unreasonable for many casual observers to cry plagiarism.

Written in retrospect following the conclusion of the decade-long battle against the zombie horde, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie Apocalypse was formed from a series of self-contained interviews with key characters who had taken central roles in the events of the preceding ten years.

It was well written, exciting and subtle, slowly building up the layers of the story to form a global view of the catastrophe as it took place. Using personal stories to tell a tale of global apocalypse developed strong bonds between the reader and the characters.

However much like those bitten by a zombie, nothing intelligent or all that interesting survived the conversion process.

The entire story rises from the grave as an undead slug-fest, peppered here and there with moments of what could be loosely considered exposition.

The formula is simple: after a hurried first act where we meet the Lane family, including former UN investigator, Garry, his wife and two daughters, we are thrown into the melting pot as zombies run amok amidst a traffic jam in downtown Philadelphia.

The family steals an abandoned RV, grabs some supplies from a supermarket, fights its way up a tower block and grabs a helicopter to take them to the United Nations flotilla out in the middle of the ocean. Garry is strong-armed into helping the UN find the cause of this outbreak and a potential cure, his family's place on the flotilla secure only through his assistance.

From here, the film relies on formulaic and seemingly entirely interchangeable set pieces, all of which involve Garry arriving at a location, the zombies attacking, Garry running away, Garry fighting a zombie, Garry going to the next location...repeat.

This is Garry running. This happens a lot. 

While some of the locations offered a sense of oppressive foreboding, they were by and large just reproductions of each other: contained areas with zombies in them through which Gerry at some point needs to pass.

The section on the AirBus was interesting but ultimately fatuous as it transposed Garry (plus zombie who had been hiding in the toilet...or something) from the ground to the air to - you guessed it - fight some zombies.

This melange of factory-produced zombie run-ins almost made me wish that something would come along and eat my brain.

This is a film that has little regard for anything that might siphon too much time away from scenes of Brad Pitt running away from stuff. That includes development of either plot or characters, with Pitt's wife and two daughters reduced to nothing more than mannequins, barely registering above set-dressing. The presence of these actors served to do nothing more than to tick the box for 'family in peril'.

The subplot involving their place on the UN flotilla hanging in the balance as everyone believes Gerry to be dead made almost zero impression, with their use as an emotional rock only really served to drag this film down into the realm of the entirely mundane.

"I warned you about those sunbeds, Hank. Didn't I warn you?"

Adding to this grating tedium, there was also never any sense that anything bad was going to happen to our Gerry. There was never a sense of peril. He was, after all, the nearly-invulnerable human being who survived waves of zombies, hails of bullets, nearby explosions, a plane crash and being impaled on a piece of shrapnel and then pretty much walked it off.

Good work, Gerry.

Brooks' novel didn't rely on or revel in the chaos of a zombie infestation; instead it focussed on the wider impacts, demonstrating the effects on long-standing social tropes of the devastating effect of the species being brought to the brink of annihilation. Some nations turned to barbarism, some withdrew entirely and some became theocratic.

I can see why the changes were made: the narrative structure of the book doesn't lend itself to a big screen conversion and would have needed to be made in more of a documentary style. This would have required thought on the part of the audiences, complexity on the part of the screenwriters, intelligence on the part of the director and ultimately, risk to the studios.

However much like those bitten by a zombie, nothing intelligent or all that interesting survived the conversion process. 

An original, more faithful script by J Michael Straczynski was apparently thrown out prior to the start of filming to make way for this unadulterated mess.  It was little surprise, therefore, to see that Damon Lindelof had been involved in the production, although only as a post-ampersand screenwriter.

Lindelof's portfolio reads like a resume of 'could have beens', including Lost, Star Trek Into Darkness and Prometheus, all of which were widely acknowledge as suffering from a number of issues relating primarily to plot.

Frankly, the most horrifying thing about this film was a clip of arch shitworm, Piers Morgan - complete with his pugnacious, fist magnet of a face - banging on about how the world was on the brink of collapse as part of a tired and tiresome montage of news reports played over the opening credits.

The fact that the UN's chief virologist and 'best hope of finding a cure' manages to shoot himself in the face within seconds of landing at the first destination on their world tour is a wonderful metaphor for this whole bloated, boring mess of movie.

I'm going to read the book again and try to avoid the two sequels that are apparently already in the works. 

Blazek was over the line, but there is a point to be made about LinkedIn etiquette

A two-part moral for the day: in a digital age, never put in writing anything that you don't want uploaded to the internet and get to know the etiquette of the social media platforms that you're using.

These are lessons learned in no uncertain terms by Kelly Blazek, the co-founder of the Cleveland Job Bank, an organisation set up to help job-hunters in the US city.

Last month, Blazek was contacted by twentysomething university graduate Diana Mekota, who had just relocated to the city and was seeking employment.

Having made an initial contact with the Job Bank, Mekota followed up by requesting a connection to Blazek on professional social network LinkedIn.  She received the following response:

Image via Imgur

While this is stunningly rude and overly aggressive, if you can slice your way through the rhetoric, Blazek makes a point; why should strangers expect to connect to your networks on LinkedIn?

Unlike other social network which require no real effort to build personal connections, LinkedIn is a professional platform and it takes time and effort to properly cultivate a robust, useful network of connections.

Once you have accepted on LinkedIn, they can view and contact your connections, creating the digital equivalent of photocopying your contacts book (kids, ask your parents).

Many LinkedIn users will have spent considerable time building their digital networks through real-world interactions, attending seminars, conferences and networking events and eating innumerable canapes.

Contacting strangers on LinkedIn is frowned upon, specifically because it enables them to mine your contacts without having done any legwork.  Worse still, they could sour relationships with both long-standing and freshly minted business contacts by dropping your name into their (potentially unwelcome) introduction.

If I receive a request from someone that I don't know, I send them back a short, polite request to remind me of how and when we met. Unsurprisingly, many of them fade into the online ether, never to be heard from again.

However, there is also a balance to be struck: if you completely shut yourself off from the prospect of engaging and connecting with strangers, then you might just miss that key opportunity to bring new business into your organisation, or miss the perfect job opportunity being offered by a recruiter.

As an addendum it should be noted that Blazek's pugnacious and surly response forced her to make a public apology, close her Twitter account and delete her blog posts as well as hand back her Communicator of the Year award, details of which can be found here.

Rant of the day: Welcome to a world of zero personal responsibility

The story on the front page of this morning's Metro (below) refers to an 18-year old girl who went out one night, drank 10 Jaegerbombs and then suffered a series of heart attacks that left her in a medically-induced coma for 52 hours.

While this is an unfortunate circumstance for the girl involved, Jayde "...is convinced that the caffeine in the energy drinks was to blame and is calling for controls on their sale".

She said: "I hope that people will think twice about drinking energy drinks. They could be deadly."

For the uninitiated, Jaegerbombs are made by pouring half a can of Red Bull into a tumbler, dropping in a shot glass containing a measure of powerful German aperitif Jaegermeister and then downing it as quickly as possible.

I like Jaegerbombs and have in the past gone a bit batshit crazy and had...let's call it several...in quick succession. 

However, Jayde - who by her own admission was out for about two hours - knocked back 10 Jaegerbombs. That's the equivalent of drinking FIVE CANS of Red Bull in two hours.

Considering that each can contains about the same amount of caffeine as a cup of coffee (90mg), is it any wonder that she had an adverse reaction? That's like wiring a car battery up to your heart.

The issue here, however, is not that this girl was irresponsible - people who live in glass houses and all that - but rather that this is yet another example of a culture of zero personal responsibility. 

This is a trend that started probably a decade or so ago when the litigious US culture seeped its way over here.

I'm not really sure at what point it became acceptable for us to seek out a scapegoat for every unfortunate event that takes place in our lives, but this weasley attitude is nauseating.

Jayde had three heart attacks because she went out and chose to drink 10 caffeine-powered cocktails. No one - as far as I'm aware - put a gun to her head and forced her to drink them.

Yes, energy drinks can be dangerous if taken in quantities well above the threshold of moderation of indeed common sense, but then again, so can water.

Our lives are what they are because of free will. That's what makes it unpredictable and fun. But whatever the decision that you make, man up and accept the consequences.

And sorry, guys, but the excuse 'but I was drunk' doesn't hold water.

Here endeth today's rant.

Now do some work.