Up, close and personal

Imagen tomada del magnífico blog de Raul Salazar Un respeto a las canas. ¡No os lo perdais!

Two weeks ago, I bought 5 Xbox games (NEW) from Amazon UK. 3 of them are already here. All in all, I paid for the whole 5 (post costs included) what I would have paid for 1 game and a half in Spain. I usually buy 2 to 5 books every couple of months from Book Depository (no post costs). I usually pay half of what I would have paid here. Just an example: any Discworld novel (TP) is around 7 EUR. Just ask in your bookstore for the same. And don't get me started with hard cover books! I used to go to the movies twice a week when I was studying at the university. I watched everything I found remotely interesting then. Of course, now the ticket is around 7 EUR (more if you go IMAX), so I only go to see flicks I'm really interested into, that have lots of FX and just if I'm going with friends. I also used to buy a couple of CDs each month, and they were around 6-8 EUR in Madrid (NEW). A few years later they magically became 20-24 EUR each. Needless to say, I don't do that anymore. I do buy music at concerts or from people playing in the streets, though. And, guess what? they are still 6-8 EUR from them.

Now, on the other side, I work as an engineer, i.e. I have to use electronic equipment, PCs, etc on a daily basis. Each time I use an USB, HDD, CD, DVD, etc, I'm paying a tax to the so-called society of "creators" just to do my job. Even printers have this tax and I'm sure they are not charging paper just because they still can't. Why? Because I COULD BE using that stuff to store multimedia copyrighted content. Not because I HAVE, but because I COULD BE. I don't know if you people know about the base of our law system: presumption of innocence. Well, the SS (Sinde and SGAE) are assuming just the contrary, that everybody is guilty unless proven so. Not only they charge us for this, but they also think they are morally so above us that they feel they can insult every person using the Internet (Internauts as a whole) by calling us thieves. I've got some serious concerns about this. First, why are we thieves if we are paying in advance for anything we are (or are not) downloading? Not to mention that we have probably the most expensive Internet service in the whole world (thanks, Internet providers, speaking of thieves ...). Second, why does this tax go to spanish "creators" (most of them haven't created anything for years, just take the SGAE president, for example) if it is a proven fact that most downloaded material is american or english? And what is a spanish creator? Someone who speaks spanish? Because some very loud "creators" don't even pay taxes in Spain -like Alejandro Sanz-.
In fact, why pay for spanish movies twice, if most of the costs of producing it are taken from our taxes? A few exceptions aside, I DON'T like spanish movies, so can I just NOT pay for them to be produced? Third, why has a person with clear and proven ties to SGAE been chosen for the ministry of culture? There is a thing called incompatibility in laws that easily leads to corruption (prevaricación, para los hispano-parlantes). In fact, what do we know about culture since Sinde is head of the ministry except for SGAE and illegal downloads? Is there no culture in Spain at all except that?

My guess is that the current government owed it big to SGAE for support in the elections and gave them whatever they wanted, even a ministry to one of their members so they can do what they want. Do you know, for example, that if the tax they impose on electronical equipment and such is not over a threshold they have freedom to get the rest of the money from somewhere else? And if any of you is thinking, "ok, I don't use electronic equipment", don't forget that each time you have a drink at a coffee shop or a pub, or you listen to a tune at the dentist waiting room or whatever, you are indirectly paying, because those people have to pay the tax and they will charge YOU their costs. They charge everything, from music in funerals to charity concerts. They have gone as far as to sneak into weddings and other ceremonies to check if they were playing music.

I simply do not want to know what they may have promised to the different political factions in the country to make the Sinde law succeed (we will also pay for that, mind you). It takes a socialist government to remove a basic freedom (like writing in your web whatever you want) and not only get away with it, but also laugh at and criminalize anyone opposing you.

Guess what? I'll keep buying my stuff from other countries via the Internet and let these "creators" work for their food. Too bad the government -and specially the SGAE government- will take from my taxes anything they need to pay these guys whatever they estimate they deserve. In the movies, when a group of guys walked from one shop to the next asking money for "protection", they called it mafia. In Spain, we call it SGAE.

Since I don't have much time to write lately, I've decided to gather here some old, long lost posts that could still be of use. Of course, this one was written before the Twilight thing that seems to be the Beverly Hills, 90210 of the decade, only with (some) blood and pretty, pretty boys ...

"When there's no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth"

So vampires are out! We had our deal of vampire projects both in films (Blade, Underworld, Dracula ...) and comics (20 days of night, I am legend ...) some time ago, but zombies seems to be in now.



Zombies were traditionally soulless bodies meant to obey a sorcerer as slaves, both in chinese and voodoo folklore. However, their rol in horror mostly started in 1968 with Romero's Night of the living dead", where they served no master, but an insatiable hunger for living flesh. Zombie basics were stated here: i) they are awaken by some virus or experiment; ii) they can only be killed by destroying their brains; iii) they are driven by hunger; and iv) if you're bitten, you are a goner. Zombies are dumb and slow, and their strength lies in their number and also in the fact that they are virtually unstoppable unless beheaded. Plus maybe you knew some of them in life ...

"Dawn of the dead" and "Day of the Dead" soon followed and then, for a while, almost everyone did a gore zombie flick. Some people stuck loyally to zombies even in the 90s. For example, Peter "LotR" Jackson did Braindead in 1992 and Raimi's Ash trilogy. I personally enjoyed Tom Savini's "Night of the Living Dead" 1990 remake, with Pat Tallman as a Barbara definitely more lethal than the poor undead. However, the zombies revival would not come until the last years and it was probably another remake, "Dawn of the Dead", that brought them back. The novelty of the film: now zombies ran like hell!
Obviously, the Resident Evil games and films helped as well. RE1 was very cool -as any Paul Anderson film- and had an intelligent plot that absorbed my attention all the way to the end. RE2, however, seemed boring to me and the characters, even Alice, were flat. RE3 was not up to it, either.



I also have a thing for The Undead, but, be warned, you really need a sense of humour to watch this one!
We also had the horrible -in a bad sense- "House of the Dead" and the somewhat different, "Shaun of the Dead". But let's talk comics now.



I guess the current run started with Dark Horse "Zombie World", by Mignola and McEown. Mignola was already well into Hellboy and he wrote the first limited series of this short lived project. An evil ancient priest came back from the dead and tricked humans into blasting him to pieces, despite the efforts of the main characters, a group of paranormal investigators. Of course, his "death" brings the dead back to life and he becomes their king. These series were released prior to the new zombie fever and only lasted for 3 limited series and a few specials.


IDW released Niles and Dwyer's Remains, a very well drawn series with a somewhat simple script. Some brain decides to destroy all nuclear weapons by putting them all together in a so called "nuclear oven" and burning them in a public exhibition, only there's free access to jackasses and a red button with a bright sign "Do not touch me". Obviously, there's an accident and the resulting blast turns everyone around into zombies. The main characters, however, were locked inside a vault in Reno -don't ask- and save their lives only to find themselves surrounded by thousand of hungry zombies. Hungry evoluting zombies.



Next zombie project is a cool one: Kirkman's "The Walking Dead", a very well told soap opera with zombies. The series start like "28 days". Rick Grimes awakes alone in an empty hospital. While he has been in a coma, the world has gone to hell. Somehow, the dead are now roaming the country and eating everyone and he has to find his family in the reigning havoc. However, the series is not about killing zombies, but about relationships, social dynamics and human interaction in a extreme situation. Not that there's no zombie killing, also :)



And now, things I have not read yet ...

-Barbara's zombie chronicles: Barbara was one of the main characters of Night of the Living Dead and, being the main character in these series, she must have been taken from the remake (she did not end that well in the original film), so expect guns and attitude! The art is not my piece, but maybe the story is ok ...

-Containment: zombies in space! Apparently, something goes VERY wrong with hibernating astronauts in a ship ... Haven't seen anything on this one yet.

-Romero's Toe Tag: A classic. In a nick of time, the undead have taken control of Earth and a few survivors struggle to keep surviving... It's Romero, after all!

Plus there are more projects, included in this zombie comic list.