Look at that poster! At least FOUR riot-control bulldozers — with cow-catchers! — in this crazy future world. Didn’t they think we’d invent pepper spray?

Man, the far-future world of Soylent Green in just over a decade away. That’ll be an interesting viewing experience come 2022.

Poster, by the way, from the very excellent Film on Paper site. You should definitely check that out.

I can’t beat the synopsis on MeFi:

When they were making The Karate Kid, they decided to shoot each scene’s rehearsal with budget cameras so the actors could watch themselves back afterwards. Now it’s been edited together so that it forms a version of the movie that looks like it was shot and made by eighth graders in their basement, including loads of unseen scenes.

(That green clears up after a couple of minutes.)

Part 2 is here, and it’s pretty easy to find the rest of the parts from there.

Fantastic work, and I love it. Borrows a little from this previous video, 100 Years of Title Design, but the borrows are essential.

(From Art of the Title, via Gizmodo)

Ha! Although the special effects don’t quite look as convincing as they could, I think I’m definitely ready for a bit of cheese with my rotting flesh.

Plus, how can you say no to a made-for-TV movie that stars Ving Rhames with a sledgehammer? And is that The Crabman from My Name Is Earl that I see at the start? Hope he makes it!

“Zombie Apocalypse” premieres tonight (Saturday) on the SyFy network, if you get it. I don’t — and apparently can’t — so I’m going to have to torrent it later.

Halloween is truly my favourite time of the year. Unless they start making Christmas zombie movies, that is.

Oh, and while I was watching this clip, I also noticed this list of 10 real-world places that would be awesome to hole up in during a zombie apocalypse.

A well-executed main title sequence is one of my real pleasures in watching a movie. Especially on the big screen. What a treat to see so many put together in a meta-sequence, set to that funky music (by RJD2).

It was done by Ian Albinson, the editor-in-chief of Art of the Title, for SXSW.

Full credits on Vimeo.

(via Coudal)

It’s something everyone says they’ve done, though I suspect very few actually have:  play Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” synced up to the original Wizard of Oz.  Personally, I never had the time (or inclination) to figure out exactly when to start playing the album.  And, really, I wasn’t all that interested.

Bryan Pugh has done all the work for me us, allowing us the opportunity to experience what so many people have raved about…the Dark Side of Oz.

The Dark Side of Oz from Bryan Pugh on Vimeo.

Besides, it’s a long weekend.  Surely you’ll have time to watch it, right?

That, above, is a colour-coded chart of the box office results from every week of last year. It’s one of a dozen or so such charts (in regular and logarithmic form) posted at xach.com.

Click here to see the 2010 one in huge, horizontal scrolling glory, with extra info if you hover your mouse over any colour stream. It’s cool.

Not so.  It’s fascinating, enthralling and remarkably cohesive.

Now I have to track down every last one of those films I haven’t seen and watch them.

(via BoingBoing)

It’s like the movie itself had some kind of architect.

Perhaps something like this?

Perhaps not.

(Found posted by a friend on Facebook.  It’s like I don’t even try anymore…)

If you are not watching the new AMC series, “The Walking Dead,” you are cheating yourself out of some of the best TV I’ve ever seen. And it’s only two episodes in. I’ve even embedded the AMC stream of the complete first episode, so you can get yourself hooked right now.

The show is based on a series of graphic novels that I’ve loved since I was introduced to them a few years ago by Boing Boing.

If zombies ever came to (ahem) life, the plight of survivors would be one of a long, endless slog — a struggle for survival against terrible odds each and every day. There would be no chance of victory after some sort of epic battle. That seems absolutely perfect for an ongoing television series (or graphic novel) rather than a movie.

So that got me thinking: If surviving a zombie epidemic might be better suited to a television series than a movie, what kind of zombie story might play to the strengths of a movie?

Sunday night, after I watched Episode 2 of The Walking Dead, I lay in bed and it suddenly came to me — give the survivors a chance to win. So, here follows my pitch for a great new zombie movie.

ZOMBIE CRUISE SHIP

The pitch: Night of the Living Dead meets The Poseidon Adventure meets Snakes on a Plane

A group of friends and strangers are on a Caribbean cruise. During an off-ship excursion at one of the ports of call, they enter a “tourist trap” that promises a old-style carnival freak show. One of the freaks is a grey-skinned man billed as “The Living Dead.” One of the tourist gets a little too close, and is bitten. Everyone makes zombie jokes, but no one buys it.

Back on the ship, that night, the bitten tourist falls ill. Dies. The zombie jokes take a somber turn, but the ship’s physician blames it on a stomach virus or something — cruise ships are notorious for that.

Then, the infected wakes up. A few quick bites and cue the zombie mayhem.

This shouldn’t be a horror-comedy (zombedy?), more of a straight horror/siege movie (believe it or not, there is already going to be a Spring Break Zombie Cruise in 3-D).

No need for the “Oh my, what are these strange creatures?” that slows down most zombie movies — this should be post-modern enough that characters are aware that these are zombies, know how to kill them, and yet find themselves quickly backed into a corner and outnumbered.

Cruise ships would be great for fighting zombies. There are lots of supplies (food, water, blunt weapons like fire axes and fire extinguishers, possibly even a few guns). Cruise ships would also be great for filming a zombie movie — tight and twisty-turny corridors, lots of blind corners, small rooms, flimsy doors, and multiple backdrops like restaurants, stages, swimming pools, climbing walls.

Our characters are trapped. But even on a mega cruise ship, there are only say, 5,000 people, including passengers and crew. If you’re surrounded by zombies, that’s a manageable number. It’s not billions. It’s not every other human on earth. It’s possible you could see yourself getting out of this and life getting back to normal.

Unfortunately, one of the easiest ways to get rid of zombies on a cruise ship would be to dump them in the water.

So, after the remaining few survivors finally kill the last zombie and set sail for civilization (some of them should have gotten their comeuppance, of course, others will have fallen in love or rediscovered the strength of their relationship, still others made a selfless sacrifice to save the others), we can fade to black, roll credits, and set up a sequel by showing a waterlogged zombie lurching up out of the surf on an otherwise pristine Caribbean island.

Thoughts?

As one YouTube commenter says, “I don’t know if this is an actual movie or a fake trailer and I am not sure which I want it to be.”

Jerod Gibson makes posters based on movies, posters that take one iconic image — say, a bar of soap — and then fill them with iconic quotes.

I like. Besides Fight Club, he’s also done Clerks, The Hangover, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Star Wars … and I like his take on The Goonies, below.

Hit the jump if you want to see The Simpsons and Pulp Fiction. Or see them all at his site, where he continues to post new ones regularly and where you can buy prints for $25 or $30. Worth it!

I’m looking forward to the November premiere of Monsters, a sci-fi film that looks like it will be about the characters more than it is about the special effects.

That’s the way the director talks about it, though, in this piece from Wired:

“We couldn’t make the big-budget kind of film Hollywood can, so I figured, ‘Let’s make the kind that Hollywood can’t because they haven’t got the balls to do it,’” he says. “They wouldn’t have the balls to invest this much CGI into something and make it a character piece, whereas if you’ve got loads of things exploding and big fight scenes and monsters everywhere, you’ve got a guaranteed return. We felt kind of obliged to do something different.”

With a five-guys-in-a-van ethos, the picked up weird and unusual shots where they could, flipping through the script to see what scene might fit in with the backdrop they had found.

Makes me want to make a movie! But I guess I will have settle for watching this one.

Oh, another plus — it’s R-rated. Hooray for a movie that doesn’t feel like it has to whitewash things.

Bedhead is a 1991 short by Robert Rodriguez.  There are some elements and themes here that continue on in his work on today.  Well, maybe not TODAY today, what with Machete being released today and all, but you know what I mean.

Anyways.  Bedhead:

And if you aren’t aware of Machete — shame on you.  Certainly it is bound to be the best full-length movie based on a fake movie trailer to date.  Here’s the real trailer for the real movie based on the fake trailer (probably NSFW – language and all).