I don’t like to talk too much about my personal opinions of a film when I mention it here on Gibberish, especially for the first time.

All I do is say “see it” or “don’t see it,” with additional recommendations of where to see it, like the theater vs. your home.

For now, go see Avatar, in IMAX 3D if you can.

Longtime Gibberish readers may have noticed how much I like zombies. Zombie fiction is an easy way for audiences to address otherwise unwieldy topics like disaster preparedness and materialism. It is also an easy way to convey the concept that sometimes the real monsters are people, and that human nature may be to step on any number of other people to look out for yourself. While often light-hearted, the recent Zombieland film covers all of those bases and pushes all the right buttons.
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Wolverine has always been my favorite X-Man. The graphic novel by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller hit me at a particularly opportune moment in my life while I was going to high school in Utah.

I always imagined Wolverine as a psychological case study on internal conflict. Wolverine is powerful because he is a killer and wrapped up in rage. Wolverine is weak because these same attributes put him at odds with the rest of humanity. His typical foil, Sabretooth, is what happens when the natural predatory instinct is not tempered by friendship, responsibility, and love. The aforementioned Miller/Claremont graphic novel is a great example. Wolverine is in love with a Japanese woman, but her father reveals him to be an uncontrollable beast. Stuff happens, and Wolverine has to mete out some rough justice. Problem is, he can only do so by being an uncontrollable beast. Dammed if you do, dammed if you don’t. As such, it always makes me nervous when I see Wolverine depicted in the movies. The first two X-Men did a good job of depicting him as trapped between his loner nature and his desire to be part of something bigger. By the third movie it was all about action, and the next thing you know we have the X-Men: Origins movie starring my good friend Logan.
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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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