“Operation Undead” is an excellent zombie movie, both for the action and horror, but also for its anti-war and historic comments

As we have mentioned before, the zombie genre is one that has been done to death throughout the history of modern cinema. However, a number of filmmakers who still decide to deal with the concept, manage to find new elements to add, in one of the reasons zombies keep going (pun intended). Thai Kongkiat Komesiri is definitely among those. 

The film begins in 1939, during World War II in Chumphon Province, where Mek, a new sergeant, just learns that his girlfriend is pregnant. In the meantime, his younger brother, Mok, is in the Youth Soldier unit, and as war has not yet hit the area, spends his time having fun and shenanigans with his fellow soldiers. Alas, it is at that moment that the Japanese forces approach the area, and the whole population face death and destruction. The Japanese, however, apart from taking over the province for strategic reasons, they have also decided to test a new biological weapon on the locals. The result is a superhuman horde of Thai soldiers that function like zombies, but a number of them still retain their conscience. Not to mention they have a leader. Eventually, Thai and Japanese forces declare a ceasefire to deal with the threat, and Mek receives a special covert mission to clean up the area alongside a Japanese combat unit, unaware that this might include his own brother.

The uniqueness of Kongkiat Komesiri’s approach to the zombie trope is actually multifold. Evidently, the most obvious one is the fact that the zombies still have a brain and can think and feel, while the fact that they are organized under the leadership of a ‘commander’ adds even more to the threat they present to the humans. More impressively though, is the way the filmmakers use zombies to show the dehumanizing nature of war, or even civil war one could say, as this time brother faces brother. Furthermore, the accusation towards the Japanese for the experiments using humans they undertook during the various military expeditions, is also palpable.

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“Kingdom: Return of the General” continues in the same, rather high quality of the previous movies, while intensifying the drama

The fourth installment in what has come to be one of the best and most successful anime/manga adaptations is as epic as the previous parts, in the movie that concludes the first season of the anime (there are 5 by the way). 

The last chapter of the first season is actually the most dramatic one, with the focus changing, after a point, from Shin and his crew towards Ohki, in a rather well-deserved, as much as successful approach. The drama, however, starts essentially from the beginning of the film, with the appearance of Pang Nuan, aka God of War, who attacks the group out of the blue. Shin seems to pose no threat to him at all, while Qiang Lei, who does her best to counter him, soon realizes that she is no match either. The group suffers tremendous losses, with a number of Shin’s men dying and the rest barely making it out. 

Soon, and as flashbacks reveal Ohki’s tragic past, it becomes evident that Pang Nuan actually aims at him, as a fighter who seems to stand on equal level as the field leader of the country of Zhao. While he poses a threat to Ohki as a fighter, Li Mu, Zhao’s main general, does the same to him as a strategist, with Qin’s army eventually finding themselves in a tremendous binge. 

Up until now, the good guys were going from victory to victory, with Shin and his crew growing exponentially with each success, and the same applying to the Kingdom of Qin. This time, however, all the protagonists seem to find their matches, with the consequences being dire. In that fashion, the dramatic aspect of the movie, which has taken the place of the political one, is quite intense, essentially on par with the action. Ohki’s past adds even more to this sense, while the ending of the movie is probably the most tragic in the four parts. Add to that the loss of some of Shin’s comrades that have been following him since he left his village, and you have the backbone of the drama here. 

Considering the focus is also intensely on Ohki, Takao Osawa, who reprises his role from the previous installments, gets to shine even more, in another impressive performance that has his theatricality being even more imposing. Furthermore, he is also the protagonist of the most impressive fight in the movie, with his rather prolonged one-on-one with the God of War being a wonder to watch. Even more so, since the two armies around them also continue to clash, with neither stripping anything from the impact of the other. This rather prolonged sequence is a testament to both Shinsuke Sato’s direction and the overall editing, with the succession between the two settings being truly astonishing. 

The same quality applies to the rather fast pace here, which, despite the 145 minutes of the movie, does not seem to lag at all, as it has enough story, characters and events to carry it fully. The cinematography and the SFX are also on a very high level, with the filmmakers taking full advantage of the different settings, forest, mountain, desert-like in order to present images of true epicness. 

Kento Yamazaki as Xin plays his character with an excessiveness that goes too far on occasion but actually mirrors the original. Kanna Hashimoto as He Liao Diao is quite good in the exact opposite style, with the same applying to Shun Oguri as Li Mu, who steals the show even if his role is brief. 

“Kingdom: Return of the General” continues in the same, rather high quality of the previous movies, while has enough elements, particularly regarding the permeating drama, to make it  stand out. 

Bernice Johnson Reagon, the civil rights activist and singer behind vocal groups like the Freedom Singers and Sweet Honey in the Rock, has died. She was 81.

Reagon’s daughter, the musician Toshi Reagon, announced the death in a public Facebook post.

The Georgia-born Reagon was born into a tradition of faith-driven activism. The daughter of a Baptist minister, at 16 she studied music at the Georgia HBCU Albany State, in the city where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. would be arrested in 1962, prompting national outcry. Many observers noted that the civil rights movement was intertwined with the song traditions of Black churches in the South.

“When you’re in the civil rights movement, that’s the first time you establish yourself in a relationship that’s pretty close to the same relationship that used to get the Christians thrown in the lion’s den,” Reagon told Terry Gross in an interview. “And so, for the first time, those old songs you understand in a way that nobody could ever teach you.”

Reagon co-founded the Freedom Singers, an a cappella group affiliated with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which practiced direct-action protests like the Freedom Rides and sit-ins at segregated restaurants. The Freedom Singers would document the group’s ambitions and struggles in song, like on the stirring track “They Laid Medgar Evers in His Grave.”

Bernice Johnson married Freedom Singers co-founder Cordell Reagon in 1963. They had two children, Kwan and Toshi, before divorcing in 1967. In the early ‘70s, she founded Sweet Honey in the Rock, a women’s a cappella group that would go on to receive three Grammy nominations and create a wide catalog of spiritual and issue-driven songs. The group’s membership was designed to evolve over time, and Reagon retired in 2004.

Reagon was also an institutional voice for the study of Black music traditions, serving for many years as a professor in history at American University in Washington, D.C. Through the Smithsonian, she curated a 1970 festival “Black Music Through the Languages of the New World,” and in 1972, joined other scholars to build the African Diaspora program. She also founded and directed the Program in Black American Culture at the National Museum of American History.

In 1994, she oversaw the Peabody Award-winning, 26-part NPR documentary “Wade in the Water: African American Sacred Music Traditions.”

Some of her many honors in music and scholarship included a Ph.D. from Howard University, a “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation and the Charles E. Frankel Prize, Presidential Medal, from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Reagon is survived by her life partner, Adisa Douglas, children Toshi Reagon and Kwan Reagon, a grandchild, Tashawn Nicole Reagon and numerous family members.