So after a period of holidays, immense amounts of school work and a batch of flu, I'm back to writing on my blog, and as the title suggest, I'm going to expand a little in this entry. I'm not a huge series-o'holic, and my resume more and less consists of six seasons of Dexter, seven seasons of How i met Your Mother, everything Game of Thrones and most of the Friends series. My currently-watching list looks as follows: Breaking Bad (three seasons in), and up until recently that was pretty much it. However, since I've had to stay home sick for a couple of days, I've had the chance to dig into some other ones as well, and I've decided to keep on watching a few of them. This blog will serve as an introduction to those two series, not as reviews, seeing as I'm not done watching either of them.
The Walking Dead
The first series i checked out was one I've head a lot about recently; The Walking Dead. As i stated in one of my previous movie reviews, I'm not a horror buff, not at all, but i can honestly say, just from watching the first season, that I'm completely in love with this zombie-apocalyptic-survival-horror series. A zombie apocalypse is something that I believe most guys have put a great deal of thought into, including me, and it's just incredibly cool to watch some of the ideas and thoughts I've had on the matter unravel on the screen.
One of the things I hate the most about the horror genre, is that it's by far the one that produces the highest amount of soulless, cash grabbing, eye-gouge inducing stink piles at the moment. As I said in my review of the movie Se7en: if a horror movie/series truly has to win me over, it has to be clever and self aware. Luckily, The Walking Dead is just that. It knows that in order come across as being legitimate, it has to be dead serious (no pun intended), make the audience believe that it takes place in a post apocalyptic world, and most of all it has to depict how the people in that world react to the things going on around them.
Character progression is one of the biggest focuses of this series, and it does it almost flawlessly. People despair, loose hope, they panic, and the choices and sacrifices they have to make in order to stay alive takes it's heavy tole on all of them. It's incredibly entertaining, suspenseful and nerve wracking to watch, but at the same time, it's easy to keep up with what's going on. The plot is straight forward and easy to understand, without being predictable and boring. The Walking Dead is easy to watch, yet still enthralling and engaging entertainment, and honestly, who doesn't love watching zombies getting slaughtered once in a while?
House of Cards
Now, I'we only just finished watching the very first episode of this series a few hours ago, and man, did it knock me on my ass. House of Cards have some really big names attached to it, names such as David Fincher, one of my favorite directors, and oh yea, Kevin Freaking Spacey. The fact that this man, one of my all time favorite actors, plays the lead character, is the main reason I gave House of Cards a shot, and from watching the pilot, I can already tell that I'm in for a treat. Spacey plays Majority Whip (explanation here) in the party of the newly reelected president, and because he for some reason was cheated out of receiving his promised promotion after the election, he decides to go on a personal vendetta, using every dirty trick in his political toolbox to become president himself.
The thing about House of Cards I instantly fell in love with, is the way the series sometimes breaks the fourth wall. Having Francis Underwood (Spacey) look into the camera and talk directly to the audience and explain a situation or his motives behind an action gives a unique insight into the plot that I'we seldom seen before. They could have just made Francis narrate these parts of the the series, but doing this talk-to-the-camera thing gives it a cool twist that often times is incredibly funny as well as effective for what it's trying to do. An example of this way of filming can be seen in the very first part of the trailer that I'we linked below. As always, Spacey acts his role incredibly well, and I'm looking forward to seeing him tear the white house apart from the inside out.
Just as a final note, I'd like to say that i will be writing more movie reviews in the near future, I just have to get into the habit of going to school and not being a human volcano once again.
/Andrew
The Walking Dead IMDb page here
The Walking Dead trailer here
House of Cards IMDb page here
House of Cards trailer here
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