Yeah, okay — so May 19th is just Roanoke’s annual Drive-All-Over-the-Road Day.
Way to make your own holiday, there, Roanoke.
(The headline above is an MST3K reference.)
A tiny review of “Dead Rush” (2016)
“Dead Rush” (2016) isn’t quite as bad as other reviewers have made it out to be; it’s a passably entertaining zombie feature that I’d rate a 6 out of 10. It occasionally rises above its central gimmick to create a few moments of suspense and emotion. (The gimmick here is that the entire film is shot from the point-of-view of one man in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.)
That point-of-view device does wear a little thin by the end of this feature-length film … and I’m a found-footage horror movie fan who usually doesn’t mind that sort of thing. This movie might have been better overall if the viewer weren’t required to follow those “shaky-cam”-type visuals for quite so long; my understanding is that it was adapted from a well received short film.
If there was one thing that bothered me the most, though, it wasn’t the POV. There is a recurring shot in “Dead Rush” that I liked a hell of a lot, involving the main character’s memory of a loved one. It’s made even better when it is rather creatively used as a framing device at the film’s end. A little reflection, though, made me remember that this shot seems to crib a little too much from a similar effective recurring shot in 2011’s “The Grey.”
What the hell … if you need a zombie horror fix, you could do worse than “Dead Rush.”
“The Lady of the House,” William Henry Margetson
Date unknown. The artist died in 1940.
No yeye elektronnyye pis’ma!!!
(It’s how you say “But her e-mails!” in Russian.)
Seriously, Comrades.
A recommendation: The Blue Mountain Review
I’ve had the pleasure of getting acquainted recently with The Blue Mountain Review. The poetry there is simply superb. I suggest that it makes excellent summer reading — I know I’ll be bringing it along on the annual “River Trip” with the Mary Washington College kids.
Click here and peruse the newly published Issue 7: The Blue Mountain Review, Issue 7.
For more information about the journal, you can find its Facebook page right here: The Blue Mountain Review.
A “Naiad,” John William Waterhouse, 1894
Oil on canvas. Its alternate title is “Hylas with a Nymph.”
“Echo and Narcissus,” John William Waterhouse, 1903
Oil on canvas.
An excerpt from W. H. Auden’s “Hunting Season”
Down in the startled valley
Two lovers break apart:
He hears the roaring oven
Of a witch’s heart;
Behind his murmur of her name
She sees a marksman taking aim.
(1952)
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 