fun

Ermahgerd Mershed Perderders (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies review)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

Mashups can be fun, if you take the right mix of levity and appreciation for each facet, then you can make it work in your favour. Whether it is a song, a movie, a comic book, a video game, it doesn’t matter, as long you know your source material and come at it with fun, research, and actual passion, it’ll get through.

But when you dial it in, just for the property rights, then your mashup will suck. Period.

 

 

 

Pride & Prejudice & Zombies (2014)

Cast: Lily James, Sam Riley, Jack Huston, Bella Heathcote, Lena Headey, Charles Dance, Sally Phillips, Matt Smith
Director: Burr Steers
released on blu-ray May 31, 2016
***** 5/10

P&P&Z

IMDB: 5.8
Rotten Tomatoes: 42%, Audience Score 47%
The Guardian: **/*****

Burr Steers is an American screenwriter, director, and sometimes actor. He has been involved in a few Tarantino movies as an actor, and has directed film like Igby Goes Down, 17 Again, and Charlie St. Cloud. Which is why I find it interesting that he decided to direct Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, henceforth known as PPZ in the rest of my review.

And I just might have an addiction to silly movie premises. I bought Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Wolfcop, and now PPZ mostly because I liked the idea of a good mashup, but the reality is that often these horror movie crossovers don’t pull the trigger, and leave you with powder in hand, so-to-speak.

Which is where PPZ ultimately ends up, and in the final third of the movie too.

Now, I have to decide if it is even worthwhile to explain the premise of the movie to you, given that it’s a mashup of an established and well known book with some zombie thrills.

So I’ve decided to sum it up rather easily for you, zombies are injected throughout the story in small portions, but it is not until Elizabeth spends some private time with Wickham, and before the reveal that he used Darcy’s family money and tried to squander it via eloping with Darcy’s sister that we see the story twist. But this is because this is a parody of Pride and Prejudice, and Wickham is also secretly a zombie himself, wanting to have treaty with the humans and set up a high position for himself and his fellow zombies who live off of animal parts.

Inevitably the movie ends up with Wickham on the side of bad, capturing Lydia, and Darcy coming in to the save the day. Then Elizabeth confesses her love for Darcy and there is a double wedding. Neat and tidy, and in line with the original.

The truth is that the story feels muddy, and the mythology is interesting but also confused and in some ways forced upon us. There will be gaps without zombies, and then the zombies come back in but with tremendous effort on the part of the characters to justify the zombies place in their world.

Pros: Despite or because of the premise, the movie is full of cheese and fun, poking at the action genre and gender roles, both within the source material and in action films. And if you’re a horror fan it’ll make the original material less boring for you.

Cons: It never feels like it’s confident in what it is trying to sell us. The movie starts off interestingly enough, but the action grows stale and the twist is not alluring enough.

Runtime: 1 hour 47 minutes

Points of Interest: Natalie Portman was originally cast as Elizabeth Bennet but dropped out due to scheduling conflicts. All of the Bennet sisters did their own stunts for the movie.

The opening sequence promises us that the Georgian period we know so well is in fact one of nightmares. With the rich learning Eastern disciplines in combat so that they might fight off the zombie terror. But the problem is that we never get to see them sweat or earn their abilities, and so the combat immediately feels contrived. That and the already mentioned mythology make it a fun popcorn movie, but not much else.

PPZ is not the worst mashup I have ever come across, but it’s not the best either. It middles about and hopes to get away with it, on the premise that teenagers and fans of the ridiculous will take it in. You have to decide yourself it this movie was made out of pride or prejudice, but I’m pretty confident that it wasn’t made for zombies. But that’s just a theory.

Tim!

Here For A Good Time, Not A Long Time (Pomodoro Technique)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

Wednesday is very easily becoming my favourite day of the week, dear readers! I get to share with you resources to better yourselves, ways work on your skill set, inspiring figures to keep you motivated, and all the while provide you with a framework to build your art around so that you are creating work that you care about.

No easy task, for sure. But damn if it isn’t a fun challenge for me!

Today’s post is no different as I have another great element of the skills to invest in series that I want to spend some more time on.

Get it, because we are going to focus a bit more on Time Management. That’s right, time management, the area of life that we all feel a lack of control over. I may have been inspired by Daylight Savings Time or it may have been conveniently timed, but time is precious, and there are a number of people that would tell you “time is money,” which is the equivalent of saying, use up your time and get value out of life.

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I would argue the opposite way on this topic. Time is precious, money comes and goes, so don’t trade your time for money. Instead learn to work with time and be conscious of it, so that you can respect it properly. Time wont wait for you – much like common sense, everyone has a different perception of the concept, and reality is far different than what we usually think.

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So what does that mean for us, timotheories? How do we become better at respecting time and understanding the value of it?

Well, I am glad you asked friends, because this week’s post is all about one of my favourite time management tools. It’s incredibly easy to pick up, improves your results quickly, and is a decent amount of fun. Which is hard to believe, I know.

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I read about it on Reddit of all places a few years ago. Shocker, I know. It’s called the Pomodoro technique, and according to their official website more than 2 million people have already read and benefited from its teachings.

It really is an interesting process and I would be doing the process a disservice by detailing it myself, so I’ve decided to use Wikipedia’s break down for you, exactly as how it works.

 

There are six stages in the technique:

  1. Decide on the task to be done.

2. Set the pomodoro timer to n minutes (traditionally n=25)

3. Work on the task until the timer rings. If a distraction pops into your head, write it down, but immediately get back on task.

4. After the timer rings, put a checkmark on a piece of paper.

5. If you have fewer than four checkmarks, take a short break (3-5 minutes), then go to step 1.

6. Else (i.e. after four pomodoros) take a longer break (15-30 minutes), reset your checkmark count to zero, then go to step 1.

But that’s not the only important part of the technique – the elements of planning and tracking are key to making it work too.

You have to put your tasks for the day into a “to-do” list and estimate time needed for each task. As you complete your pomodoros, you add checkmarks, icons, or whatever visual symbol you like to each task. This is to identify how long the task truly takes as well as provide yourself with positive feelings about your commitment to working in this way. If you complete a task inside of a pomodoro, you spend the remaining time overlearning the task, to help aid in automation of the task and further reinforcement of the technique.

The breaks also help to maintain focus during the periods of work and keep your mind and body active throughout the work period, avoiding burnout and managing distractions better.

I think the coolest aspect of the Pomodoro technique though is that you are learning to work with time, rather than finding it as an adversary. And if you are stuck for ideas of how to spend your short breaks, you can do some simple desk exercises, organizational chores, short self-administered hand or neck massages, or getting a light snack in.

But what do you think?

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Please leave some comments, subscribe to the blog if you haven’t yet, and if you want to get social, please like my Facebook page, follow my Instagram, and follow my Twitter too! See you tomorrow with something timely my friends.

Tim!