The Urban Pantheist

Our last winter season Zookeeper movie night was a very special occasion, because we watched Zoombies (2016), a zombie movie set in a zoo, made by the studio culpable for Sharknado. Because this movie was set within a zoo, we the assembled animal care professionals devoted our exacting scrutiny to it.

First, Eden Wildlife Zoo—built as a "rehabilitation retreat for endangered animals”—appears to cover several square miles of gorgeously landscaped grounds. Pretty impressive for a place that hasn’t yet opened to the public, and with a keeper staff of four full timers and seven interns. No expense is spared, from incorporating GPS enabled microchips into all the mammals, to giving the security team a full complement of firearms, to putting the Eden logo on every piece of property in the zoo. To be fair, the realism of Zoombies easily beats out Kevin James’ Zookeeper.

The unfortunate event of a disease outbreak in the palatial zoo hospital (which in size and technology looks like a for-profit research lab) sets the movie in motion. The unknown pathogen can infect all mammals and birds except for two species that will be left unnamed in this review. Since animal care professionals are known to rush blindly into danger, it isn’t much of a spoiler to say that the full time keeper staff is doomed. That leaves our more naive and idealistic interns to cope with zombie lions and such.


I just know the hospital keeper is going to have to clean up this mess

It would be unfair deprive you of the joy of watching the staff dwindle one by one, so let’s concentrate on the zookeepers, since we know they are all toast. Each one provides a very bad example on welcoming interns to the job. Primate keeper Daxton barks at AJ " I’m guessing you’re the kid they stuck me with?” before thrusting a poop shovel into the student’s hands. Aviary keeper Chelsea begs the zoo director, “Are you firing me and replacing me with this kid?” And after relieving himself behind a tree, zookeeper Gus is skeptical of his eager intern: "You don’t look like the kind of girl who that wants to get dirty.” Not cool, Gus, I’m setting up a meeting with HR.


Oh yeah, then there's keeper Monte--he doesn't last long either

We can learn from Eden’s staff in other ways. Daxton ignores the flimsy wire fence protecting him from the cross river gorilla (the last in the world we are told—I guess things have gone poorly for the 300 that were still living in Africa), and instead hops right in with the great ape. Chelsea is so at home in her aviary, that she wears open-toed shoes while she works. You may get the feeling something bad might happen to her, but the chances are you won’t guess exactly what it is.

The gore effects in Zoombies are pretty fun, if you are into that sort of thing. The CGI animals on the other hand—well, there’s a reason that this movie studio brags that it’s never lost money on a release, they keep their computer animation budget pretty close to the bone. See the weightless elephants! Marvel at the police teams taken from clips from other movies and stock footage! Enjoy the hurried script, and yeoman’s work by unknown actors! Sure it’s all on the cheap, but once you see what the giraffes do to one intern, you’ll be glad you watched it.


Birkenstocks, Chelsea? Really?

January: Carlisle


May: Angel Pecan
( more )

Saturday afternoon movie in bed. "Looper."



I enjoyed the movie, but like many sci-fi action movies, it doesn't hold up to post-viewing scrutiny. That's fine--action movies only need to hold up to the imperfect scrutiny that you apply to them while they are happening. Of course crazy things are going to happen in an action movie, but if the movie is gripping enough you won't care.

So after "Looper," you might suddenly say--wait, there's a powerful criminal organization that has time travel technology and they only use it to dispose of bodies? Probably some of you are smart enough to think that while the movie is on, but I'm not.

Another issue that I have with Sci-fi movies is the number of things that require my suspension of disbelief. If there are more than one of these things, then I need for them to relate to one another in a logical organic way. So for example, in "Looper," we're told right away that time travel exists. Fine. But then we're told a little later that telekinesis exists--but it's only a parlor trick. So the only conclusion you can draw is that telekinesis will figure strongly in the third act.

So then the movie is requiring me to believe in both time travel and telekinesis independently--but nothing else paranormal. It's not like X-files or Heroes or Misfits or even The Avengers where there's a ton of paranormal things happening and it's the new normal. It would be another thing if one or the other thing led to the other--like time travel technology was made possible by the telekinesis mutation, or the telekinesis mutation was a result of the time travel technology.

But that's a minor quibble. As action movies go, it respects the viewer's intelligence, as time travel movies go (a major subgenre in my taste, as it turns out) it's less impenetrable than many. The silly make-up to turn Joseph Gordon-Levitt into Bruce Willis didn't distract me too much, and I liked all the actors' performances. The main character(s) moves from sympathetic to villainous and back without changing who he is really, just the desperation of his circumstances.

Anyway, if I haven't ruined it yet, check it out.

Shorter review: Better than Batman, not as good as The Avengers.

Thanks, everyone, for the congratulations and well-wishes. I'm making my 2011 blog project directly related to the house and the land it is on, so be prepared to be well sick of that half acre in a few months.

But I want to tell you about a field guide I picked up the other day. Actually, I picked it up in the summer and put it right back down. "Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast," sounds pretty perfect for me. But I was adamant about not getting new books, as I'm trying to whittle things down, not build them up. I already have a few decent weed and wildflower guides, and the great Sibley tree guide.

So I was back in that store a month later (the Audubon shop, attached to Drumlin Farm, where I was teaching a mushroom class) and it was still there. I picked it up again and opened it at random. It opened to pp.152-153, New England hawkweed Hieracium sabaudum. Instantly I recognized it as a very common plant that I've had a lot of trouble identifying, as seen here.


I took this picture in September of 2006, when I was in the thick of the 365 project, and desperate to identify this ubiquitous plant. The experts on my friends list agreed it was probably Canada hawkweed H. canadense. That didn't feel right to me, and I didn't end up using it in the project.

The first paragraph in the listing in the field guide reads "Even experts have trouble distinguishing this highly variable European species, H. lachenalii, and a native North American species H. canadense. Seeing this problem solved so elegantly (reading the rest of the description of H. sabaudum, especially the habitat requirements, made it plain that it was the species I was trying to identify) on the first page I opened to, clinched my decision to buy the book.

I honestly haven't had much chance to use it since I bought it, as most of our wild plants are on the wane, with only some tansy and some asters persisting. But I have flipped through it and have found it quite readable and straightforward. I've tested it a few times by looking for specific plants and I haven't stumped it yet. Some of the plants I've looked for have been included as a sidebar to another species (Pennsylvania smartweed appears on the page that describes pale smartweed--another common weed that has flummoxed me for years).

The Preface explains that the book was inspired by a trip the author made to Spectacle Island (a Boston Harbor island consisting of a capped landfill that is now a park, where we had an urban nature walk back in July 2006) so I knew he was local. The book covers Detroit eastward, south to Washington D.C. Still I was stunned to see this photograph:


This is literally across from my front door, as in: if I am standing on my front step looking straight ahead, that's what I see. You see the reddish stone stuff in the upper right of the photo? That's the arched footbridge over the Muddy that I've taken 5000 photos of, especially during the Muddy River project. Kind of freaky. Also embarrassing, as I have eaten berries from that bush, but was unsure of the species (Rubus can be a tricky genus). I have flipped through the book to see if there are any other places I recognize, but so far I haven't.


Alexis took this picture standing among the swamp dewberries, looking back at our front door.

So I guess what I'm saying is, any field guide to urban plants of the northeast that uses a picture of berry bushes from in front of my house is okay with me.



Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast, A Field Guide. Peter Del Tredici. Cornell University Press 2010. The price on the cover is 29.95, but it seems to be pretty reliably about 20 bucks online. Well worth it.

So, on Netflix, when I sign in they tell me that because of my interest in The Howling IV, perhaps I'd like other movies made in the UK. Well, sure I do, not that I knew or cared where a hopefully horrible werewolf movie sequel was made, but whatever. One of the movies made in the UK that they recommend is 'Revolver.' I see Andre 3000's face on the cover and click the link to see what it's about. I vaguely remember when it came out--it's another in what seems like a long list of Guy Richie/Jason Statham English Gangster movies. All I remember about the commercials was that you could see Ray Liotta's excruciating overacting even in a 30 second clip.

Now, I love to review bad movies, this you know. But I really love to read reviews of bad movies, and if I read a really good review of a bad movie, it means that I can't review it. Why? Because how can I contribute when Roger Ebert says, A frothing mad film that thrashes against its very sprocket holes in an attempt to bash its brains out against the projector. It seems designed to punish the audience for buying tickets. Or when the reviewer from the SF Chronicle pinpoints the thing that I would hate most about the movie: The plot isn't intellectually challenging as much as it is confusing, and yet the big twist is completely telegraphed. Ritchie has created a movie that is patronizingly obvious one minute and impenetrable the next. Fortunately there is no shortage of bad movies to say funny things about. There's always 'In The Name of the King...'

...brief notes on new snacks...

Why, while I'm trying to diet, did Alexis discover strawberry flavored malted milk balls?

And then there's the 'sports' version of flav-or-ice, with electolytes. Just what everyone wants, a salty popsicle. I only ate 3 of them.

For those of you who wished that Fahrenheit 451 looked A LOT like The Matrix, or perhaps you just wanted to watch Christian Bale suck on his cheeks for an hour and a half, I've got the movie for you. I actually enjoyed Equilibrium, even with it's ludicrous gun-fu and implausible plot. I am amazed that there is a major fan site devoted to it (maybe they just love Bale's shaved chest) complete with diagrams of the weaponry and discussions of the rebellious underground. I guarantee you that these fans thought more about these details than the filmmakers did.

Read my review at Blood Blade and Thruster!

On this day in 365 Urban Species: Golden-crowned kinglet.