Man with a Plan

So I finally watched 28 Weeks Later the other night.

Here’s how it went (it doesn’t matter if you’ve seen the film or not, because there’s not really anything to spoil): a few medium-big names and a bunch of enormous-gigantic wads of cash teamed together to tell a heart… uh, something-ing… story about a lot of different things that happened in a couple different places. People and zombies did rude stuff to each other… and then… well, and then stuff went on and things died, and then everything got crazy for a minute and then… uh… and other things transpired, and then eventually it was over, and stuff.

Sorry, I almost fell asleep a couple of times, but that’s pretty much the gist of it.

The thing that intrigued me most about the movie, though, is something that still has me thinking. Douschey Don, played by master of the craft Robert Carlyle (you can tell he interviewed a whole mess of zombies whilst wriggling himself into character like it was a Vietnamese skinsuit), had a weird looking daughter I could have sworn I’d seen in other stuff. Well, I hadn’t, or at least I wouldn’t have remembered her from anything, but I remain to this very second stunned by the actress’ name:

Imogen Poots.

Actors, as a frolicking, drunken whole, have long been known to engage in a great many strange activities that boggle the mind and elevate the eyebrow to varying heights. They’re addicted to cocaine, Rogaine, plastic surgery, bootie burglary, matrimony, acrimony, ecstasy, hypocrisy… and lots of other vaguely accurate pairs of rhyming things. Plus meatloaf sandwiches. But my point, as you can good and well see, is that most of them just up and change their names at some point.

Some change them because were given silly names at birth. Others–and this is a good 60% of them–were originally called Sean Connery or Richard Burton or Dmitri Mendeleev, and had to make a change to avoid a ten character roman numeral suffix on IMDB. The rest were just looking for a little extra coolness to go with their bland headshots.

But Imogen Poots bucked the trend, choosing instead to rely on her strange elfin looks to get her on-set. Bravo to her, I reckon, because she appears to be in a bunch of stuff I either haven’t or don’t care to see, plus a few I don’t remember her from. And there certainly can’t be too many Poots in Hollywood… well, that are named that, anyway… so she’s certainly a unique actress in that regard. I fail to be impressed, though, because at the end of the day her name is still Poots and, being the 12-year-old that I really am, I can’t stop thinking about how much worse life might have been for her if her parents had chucked up her first name as well:

• Angel Poots
• Dolly Poots
• Eden Poots
• Fanny Poots
• Hazel Poots
• Heidi Poots
• Jocelynn Poots
• Lotta Poots
• Minnie Poots
• Mora Poots
• Misty Poots
• Patty Poots
• Sawyer Poots
• Shasta Poots
• Stormy Poots

And my favorite:

• Tarynn Poots

Whatever her reason, she’s still a Poots… at least for the time being. Maybe some day she’ll marry Christopher Walken and change her name to Imogen Poots-Walken.

Now that would be impressive.