I saw Fido last night, a Canadian zombie film from 2006. Mankind has survived a zombie apocalypse through the inventions of ZomCom, the most important of which are huge fences that surround communities and the zombie control collar. The zombie control collar turns the zombies into semi-intelligent, docile servants that deliver milk, act as butlers, and yard workers.

The story is set in the 1950s, and the color palette of the film matches accordingly. Everything is bright, from the cars to the homes, to the clothing. The short history of the Zombie War views just like a “duck and cover” nuclear safety movie. Everyone is over-smiling and gee-whizzing through life, while bossing the undead about like second-class citizens and living inside a fenced-in utopia.

Zombie movies are part survivalist fiction and part social commentary. Fido definitely leans more towards the social commentary aspect of the film, but there is a decent fight scene near the end.

If you haven’t seen it yet, give Fido a view. It is available from Netflix in case Blockbuster doesn’t stock it.

Thanks to JonBob for posting about this on the Ars Technica forums: there is a new Iron Man movie trailer in HD available (QuickTime required). Robert Downy, Jr. plays Tony Stark, the weapons dealer/inventor turned superhero turned alcoholic turned superhero again.

Out of all the Marvel heroes I liked — Captain America, Wolverine, etc — I liked Iron Man the most. I felt that Stark was the most human out of all the superheroes, aside possibly from Spider-Man. Stark grappled with the responsibility of his power, and followed a self-destructive spiral down so far he turned his suit over to a good friend. He always seemed the most human of the Marvel A-listers, and certainly had one of the more believable origins.

I hope the Iron Man movie turns out well. I think RDJ is going to be a great Tony Stark; he shares a lot of real-life parallels with the character. I tried to not let the Black Sabbath music in the trailer turn me off; I hope this movie is more serious and less chuckles. Joking around in the helicopter is cute, busting out “Iron Man” during an action sequence is groan-worthy. There are other comic book heroes that could benefit from the tongue-in-cheek treatment — Iron Man is not one of them.

We’ll see in May of 2008.

Duke and I saw the Transformers movie yesterday. I am not going to go into the actual movie here, as some of you may not have seen it yet and I want to avoid spoiling it. I’ll just note that The Patented DrFaulken Movie Prediction System™ was correct again.

On to the trailer summary.
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Big thanks to Razak for posting this in the Ars Technica Lounge. D-War (Dragon Wars) is a new film directed by Hyung Rae Shim of Korea. The plot seems simple, as all dragon movies should be: every 500 years a dragon is reborn and given a second chance at life. This time, a big bad dragon gets reborn, and it’s chaos in the streets of Los Angeles. Most importantly, there’s a lot of people shooting at dragons, and lots of dragons belching fireballs at humans.

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There are no spoilers in this review, just my opinion of the movie and the verdict using The Patented DrFaulken Movie Prediction System™
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If you haven’t seen this already, or have never heard of the Most Extreme Elimination Challenge, the first season is now out on DVD. In case MXC is new to you: two Americans provide Mystery Science Theater-style fake voice overs to footage from late 80s Japanese game show Takeshi’s Castle. The commentary is often crude and raunchy, with fictious (and often lewd) names given to the contestants. MXC aired on SpikeTV in what I only assume is a mixed order. Hopefully all six seasons will be released on DVD so that I can watch all of them.
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When I saw Snakes on a Plane I was excited about the trailer for Jason Statham’s latest film Crank. The premise is that Statham’s character Chev is poisoned, and the only way he can stay alive is to keep his body jacked full of adrenaline. I expected a high-flying, unbelievable but good enough for a smirk action assault like Transporter 2 or Snatch. Instead Lady Jaye and I rolled our eyes so much we got dizzy.
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Lady Jaye and I had a chance to finish The Night Watch: Nochnoy Dozor yesterday. I was pumped to see it after reading and hearing about how good this vampire-ish movie was. We started watching it over a week ago, but in typical Netflix fashion the disc was defective. The movie jumped forward ten minutes at a critical plot point. We wish it had jumped us all the way to the end.
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VAfarmboy from Ars was kind enough to run up the flag regarding Nightmare Before Christmas in 3D. The 3D version of Tim Burton’s neoclassic is coming out on October 20th in select theaters. From the Fandango.com synopsis:

The dazzling new make-over of the musical-fantasy was led by the film’s original filmmaking team of Academy Award®-nominated writer/producer Tim Burton and director Henry Selick as well as the talented technical wizards at Industrial Light & Magic in collaboration with In-Three, Inc.

Edit: thanks to another Arsian, you can find the closest theaters showing NBC-3D by going to the Disney site and typing in your zip. The closest one to me is in Northern Virginia. Bummer!

Well, that line is already taken, but the official Transformers Web site is running a contest wherein Transformers fans can submit a line to be spoken by Optimus Prime in the forthcoming movie. The voiceover work for Optimus will be done by Peter Cullen, the well-toned man who played Optimus in the cartoon series. The top ten entries will get voiceovers, with the best being used in the movie.

Sample fan submissions fade in and out at the top of the site; some are very cute “Megatron, when I’m done with you there won’t be enough left to even make a handgun!” some are jacknuts mouthing off, “Has anyone ever told you you look like David Hasselhoff?” and some are nods to the animated movie that proceeded the upcoming live action one: “you’ve got the touch … you’ve got the power.”

Thanks to Lady Jaye for the submission!