In conjunction with New Video, we’re giving away a five (5) copies of THE GUILD: SEASONS 1 & 2 on DVD.
Contest ends at 11:59pm EST on Wednesday, October, 7th.
CLOSED! THANKS FOR ENTERING!
Official Rules
No member of Quick Stop Entertainment or their immediate families may enter.
No Purchase necessary to win.
Must be 18 years of age or older to enter.
One entry per day, per person.
All submitted entries must be received by 11:59pm EST on October, 7th.
The winner must allow 4-6 weeks after notification of win to receive the product.
First, a word on how Zombieland isn’t Shaun of the Dead 2: Jay of the Dead (where did I get Jay? It rhymes with DAY… never mind.) All the atrocious grammar, inept spelling, and questionable motives of “talk backers” on the net would make one think that the issue of plagiarism would be no big deal. How wrong one can be. In the dim, darkened world of the internet-age all movies that are sequels, prequels, remakes, reboots, sequel-remakes, remake-reboots, and rebooted-sequel-half-prequels are given a pass on their content. Generation “TROLL” screams out to Hollywood’s ears “Give me content I’ve already seen, only NEWER and with more CGI!” Yet, when a film tries to exist only on the merits of a script alone, that is when the content is harshly criticized. Apparently you can’t have two separate movies about the same subject anymore, not without bucket loads of hate spewed forth. These complaints seem to have mutated in the 90’s and snowballed into a mammoth sphere of ignorance.
Director Ruben Fleischer’s Zombieland might be the first time fast-moving-non-zombies have actually been properly utilized. The nitpicking loser inside me wants to complain, but the forgiving, Left-4-Dead addicted, softy inside me has to admit something. At no point was I bothered by the fact that the “zombies” where still-living-infected-humans, in a film called ZOMBIEland. This is because of how much of the film’s comedy is derived from the speed at which these zombies move. Right at the start of the flick we are told that due to speed, “the fatties die first.” As a fatty myself, I have to admit that this hilarious (and sadly true) assertion alone is enough to forgive all further use of non-Romero-certified-undead-slow-motion-zombies. Plus the name Zombieland is coined by Jesse Eisenberg’s character… making it the character’s mistake instead of the script’s. Also, it is time all of us who actually care about the Fast vs. Slow zombie debate admit that if fast-still-living zombies became a reality, we would call them “zombies” without hesitation. That doesn’t mean we love George Romero any less.
A hilarious slow-motion credit sequence is all we are treated to as for the initial onslaught of the infected uprising. Zombieland drops us into the already post-apocalyptic world of desolation. Narrated by Jesse Eisenberg, we are introduced to this world through his “rules” for survival, which makes a great running gag throughout the entire film. The movie doesn’t try to be a satirical horror flick bogged down in the meaning of life with heavy syrup. There is no sub-textual message about how “we are them, and they are us.” Zombieland is a simple action-comedy, but great in its simplicity and it stays true to what it is.
Opening credits and flashbacks aside, there are only five non-zombified humans seen throughout the movie, all of them with the simple goal of finding something that reminds them of a pre-zombie life. The girls, Wichita and Little Rock, Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin, are looking to visit an amusement park one last time. Woody Harrelson’s zombie-hunter, Tallahassee, simply wants to eat a Twinkie, and Jesse Eisenberg’s Columbus wants to find his “family.” Even the characters in the movie try to avoid sentimentality by calling each other by the names of the places they are from. This is not to say that there aren’t serious moments in the flick, but no more then your average action movie circa 1985. When dealing with death and survival you have to add in some semblance of emotion, here those moments are welcomed, short, sweet, and do give depth to these four survivors. At no point does the film feel cold or devoid of relatable themes, which serves the comedy, and separates it from empty action fare like Transformers 2 (I know, I know, let it go already… )
Woody Harrelson gives one of his best comedic performances since Kingpin. He is a classical machismo “badass” but he never stops giving us that sense that he’s basically just being Woody Harrelson, himself, which is arguably even funnier. He of course becomes the big-brother figure of Jesse Eisenberg, who is nothing more then a weak, scared, little wussy. Tallahassee is older, cooler, a hero archetype and externalizes all of his anger, so basically they are the Odd Couple in a zombie flick. In fact this might be the biggest flaw of the whole film, its mediocre character premise. We’ve seen these characters before and it’s pretty obvious where everyone is going and why. Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese’s script side steps most chances to make the movie’s themes and characters unique, not to mention all the technical aspects of the zombies them selves. However, all the sidestepping leaves more room for the comedy and the action, which in the end sells the movie as a cohesive entertaining whole. The characters have depth, we’ve just seen these depths so many times before, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The run time even felt short. It’s a movie review cliché but the flick doesn’t “overstay its welcome” one bit. If I’m going down the road of review clichés then I might as well mention that the flick is “just plain fun,” nothing messy. There is passion behind the need to provide light, hilarious, balls-out action-horror entertainment, you got to love that. It’s a rarity in theaters these days. Add to that a pretty good soundtrack (Metallica, Mozart, Van Halen, and Willie Nelson) and a rather cool teaser poster (the one without photoshopped actors.)
If it must be done, I’ll do it. Is Zombieland as good as or anything like, Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead? No. Not really. Zombies and comedy is where it ends. Perhaps one could say that Shaun makes fun of the slow-moving-Romero-approved zombies in much the same way as Zombieland does the fast-movers. However, Shaun is a romantic comedy with zombies (a Rom-Com-Zom), with a much tighter, better script and a smaller scope. Shaun even has a “we are them, and they are us” message, plus a dump truck full of homage weaved throughout, with fantastic editing and direction to boot. Zombieland is a straight up action comedy, a great one, but that’s about it… unless there is something I’m not seeing. So there Mr. Internet, I hope that satiates your craving to compare mildly similar films. Thanks for reading.
Those who march to the beat a different drummer never met Power, air drummer savant.
DAVE BOYLE: Hi Chris. How are you?
CS: And to that point”¦James Lee [HEROES] is a household name in nerd circles for those who know. Did you really luck out in that sense that if you hadn’t made it when you did that James wouldn’t have been available? But maybe in the summer they get time off I would assume.
BOYLE: Hey, thanks.
BOYLE: In BIG DREAMS LITTLE TOKYO I was pretty stylish with the camera but for this time around I decided to trust the actors a little bit more and take a back seat with the style aspect of it. I did a storyboard of the movie. I blocked the actors, rehearsed the scene and my cinematographer decided where to put the camera from there. I really enjoyed working that way. It was a different way of working than Big Dreams. It was a big lesson and every movie has it’s own working style that works best to accomplish the goal that you are trying to reach.
Just yesterday (well, last year), it seemed that RiffTrax was just a web concern, with nary a physical DVD release to their name. Now, the DVD releases are coming fast and furious, the latest being another two volumes of short subjects featuring riffsters (and MST3K alum) Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, & Bill Corbett – 
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My sister loves 
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Oh no! Just when you thought it was safe to hang out at the Quick Stop…
