On Viscera and Ebullience

Ever since reading Max Brooks' outstanding novel World War Z, I have been looking forward to seeing the movie. I saw it this morning with really high hopes but I'm afraid it didn't live up to my expectations. In place of the mosaic complexity of the novel and the depth of research into global politics and military hardware was a fairly standard, computer-game like zombie shoot-em-up. Unfortunately, it pretty much failed even on this level too because, whereas the novel contained graphic descriptions of exploding heads, decapitations and flesh gorging, the movie was pretty much devoid of gore. George A. Romero's movies still remain the pinnacle of the genre. The only thing which made World War Z a decent movie was the acting, the SPFX and the music. On the plus side, I saw the trailer for Elysium; I have a feeling this could become one of my favourite movies ever.

On the way home I popped into Koshien Stadium to take a few more photographs of the high school baseball tournament. I am always impressed by the young ladies and men who sell food and drinks to the patrons. Despite the heat, 37 degrees again today, and despite carrying a huge keg of beer on their backs, they always serve their customers with the utmost ebullience and never seem to stop smiling. That's even more impressive than watching Jerusalem and New York City get destroyed by a teeming mass of millions of zombies.