I’m sure you’ve all been wondering, “Just where does Nathan draw the line delineating what can be considered a ‘zombie’ for purposes of the annual Month of the Living Dead?” That question has now been answered: it’s right between the 28 Days Later/28 Weeks Later movies and this one. Yes, both concepts have technically non-undead persons infected with a virus which has caused them to regress from sapience and individuality into murderous, animalistic rage… but the infected in I Am Legend (2007) can climb walls like Spider-Man. That is not in the zombie repertoire, no matter which canon you’re consulting.
#1 by Blake on September 24, 2010 - 6:27 am
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Alice Braga is something of a source of pride to people here, as she’s a Brazilian who’s finding some degree of success in Hollywood. Her aunt is a big TV soap opera star over here.
#2 by Nathan Shumate on September 24, 2010 - 7:19 am
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Braga’s radiant — very easy on the eyes. I wish her part hadn’t been that of the Non-American Who’s Therefore More Spiritual. (Usually that kind of role falls to either a Native American or an African-American — what Spike Lee calls the “Super Duper Magical Negro” — but Will Smith was both a military officer and a scientist, so I suppose he was too much of The Man to play that part as well.)
#3 by Blake on September 24, 2010 - 7:30 am
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I can imagine a movie where the Caucasian character is more spiritual than the minority character, causing it to draw criticism in some circles because it brings back memories of European colonists forcing other groups to convert to Christianity.
#4 by Nathan Shumate on September 24, 2010 - 7:34 am
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And anyway, that’s why we whites keep all those downtrodden minorities around, so we can exploit them as a spiritual resource.
#5 by Blake on September 24, 2010 - 7:52 am
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Random Observation: Salli Richardson, who I believe played Will Smith’s wife in the flashback sequences, is (and I know I’ll be sorry for saying this), as far as I’m concerned, the non-union Mexican counterpart to Jennifer Lopez (and probably Eva Mendes, too).
#6 by Nathan Shumate on September 24, 2010 - 8:37 am
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…I don’t know what that means.
#7 by Chris S. on September 24, 2010 - 9:10 am
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Maybe she’s a … race scab? Or she forgot to pay her dues to The Amalgamated International Sisterhood of Latinas.
#8 by Blake on September 24, 2010 - 10:23 am
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The whole “non-union Mexican counterpart” is a Simpsons reference. Mr. Burns wanted to make a bio-pic about himself and have Steven Spielberg direct it. When he found out that Spielberg wasn’t available, he demanded his “non-union Mexican counterpart”, who turned out to be a fellow named Señor Spielbergo.
Basically, it means “who you get when you can’t get so-and-so or when so-and-so is too expensive for the film’s budget” (i.e. A poor man’s….).
#9 by Nathan Shumate on September 24, 2010 - 10:39 am
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Ah. I get it. So Salli Richardson is Olivier Gruner to Jennifer Lopez’s Jean-Claude Van Damme.
#10 by raito on October 15, 2010 - 4:56 pm
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The canon of Billy Idol does state that the undead can climb walls.