Zombieland Tagged Articles at Cinematical

A slow-roll platform release is a high-risk strategy, but Paramount has really hit on something with Paranormal Activity. The movie expanded from 30 to 160 screens this weekend, accompanied by good reviews and hype that Paramount marketers almost killed themselves building on the internet, and was greeted with a $44,000 per-screen average, amounting to a fairly eye-popping $7 million weekend. It wouldn't have worked if the movie weren't pretty good, and the momentum is sure to fade as the movie expands further, but still: kudos all around. It would have been easy to dump this little gem into a few theaters and let it die (see: The Midnight Meat Train.)

The weekend's only new wide release, Couples Retreat, capitalized on its cast and bright-colored marketing to the tune of $35 million -- a strong October bow, and par for the course for Vince Vaughn, who can open a rom-com like nobody's business. Chris Rock's documentary Good Hair opened at 186 screens and lurks down at number 14 with just over a million bucks. I must admit it's hard to come up with a good analogy to a doc about black women's hair directed by a superstar comedian, box-office-wise. Maybe Dave Chappelle's Block Party? ($6.2 million on 1200 screens, with a similar per-screen average.)

The holdovers did respectably, with the possible exception of The Invention of Lying. Ricky Gervais's subversive comedy took a 52% hit, though it will still end up beating Gervais's last stateside star vehicle, Ghost Town. Zombieland, this fall's little horror comedy that could, held up quite well in second place, approaching $50 million after two weeks. And I wonder if Disney will hold true to its promise to pull the 3-D Toy Story double feature out of theaters after this week; the movies are still doing well, dropping less than 40% and pulling in $7.7 million in their second re-release weekend.

The full top 10 after the jump.

The battle of the undead on the big screen has been under way for some time now, and after months of hearing that vampires are taking over pop culture, it seems like we shouldn't quite put our friends the zombies (no, not those ones) down for the count. Over at Newsweek, Sarah Ball put together a few reasons as to why zombies will never beat vampires in a pop-culture zeitgeist-off thanks to our long-standing love-affair with the pale tortured types. But just this weekend, audiences proved that when it comes to the walking dead, the zombies still have what it takes to bring in the crowds.

Everybody has their personal preferences (and man I love those bloodsuckers), so even though I've watched more vampire content than I care to remember (I even sat through the pilot of The Vampire Diaries), and I'll always be a dedicated 'fan of the fang', I think that sometimes those drooling bumbling walking corpses might be better suited (at least these days) to the world of horror. Here's why:

After the jump: my top 3 reasons Zombies (might) make better horror movies.

I was surprised at the number of people who proved willing to venture out to the limited-run Toy Story 3-D double feature. The attraction raked in $12.5 million on under 2,000 screens, a feat made even more impressive by the double feature aspect, which obviously reduced the number of available showtimes. Whether the success of the rerelease was due to the love for the films or the current obsession with 3-D isn't clear -- though of course the most likely answer is "some combination of the two." (Certainly a plain vanilla double feature rerelease wouldn't have put up these numbers, but would it have flopped?)

The weekend's top spot, though, went to Zombieland, the un-star-studded but well-marketed and well-reviewed horror comedy. If it does not sink in the coming weeks, it could turn into one of the fall's biggest success stories. I wonder, too, what it will do for the cachet of Jesse Eisenberg; unless you count his very minor turn in The Village, Zombieland is by far the biggest box office triumph in which he's taken part. The busy, hyperintelligent actor hasn't seemed too celebrity-minded, but his stock seems to be steadily rising.

More and the full top 10 after the jump.

Arriving early for a 7:00 p.m. screening at a local multiplex on Friday, I decided to kill some time by sampling some of the other movies that were playing. Feeling like a criminal, I snuck into Surrogates (a small ship crashing, a very young-looking Bruce Willis), The Final Destination (white racist hung by his own petard), and Gamer (John Leguizamo giving Gerard Butler a pep talk). I stayed no more than two or three minutes at each, about the length of a theatrical trailer, and didn't sit down in any of the auditoriums, which were all pretty deserted anyway. Later, near the end of my selection for the evening's entertainment (Zombieland, a lighthearted comedy-horror blast), I saw a familiar multiplex sight: a half-dozen teens sneaking into the movie. And I started thinking, Why not make theater hopping legal?

My idea: You still must buy one ticket to a movie of your choice, and that's the only movie you're guaranteed to see. But the legal language ("the license granted is for a single viewing at the designated time only") is removed, so if that movie sucks, you're free to wander into another auditorium and check out what's playing there. Or bounce in and out of theaters as you please. And if you want to see two (or three) complete movies for the price of one, you're free to do so.

Would this benefit moviegoers? Sure. This will legalize something a good number of people are already doing. Just like downloading music or movies, pirates will still exist, but a majority of folks are law-abiding citizens who prefer to live within the law. People who've paid $9.50 to see a real turkey may not feel quite so ripped-off if they get to see another movie (or part of one) for free.

By William Goss, reprinted from Fantastic Fest 9/29/09

The world as we know it has come to an end, and that's not much more of an inconvenience for Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) than he was already used to. He's a Mountain Dew-chugging loser whose introverted ways have turned him into an ideal loner for the post-apocalyptic realm -- as paranoid, vigilante and neurotic as they come, beholden only to his own strict set of rules (cardio good, bathrooms bad, always shoot zombies twice, etc.).

And so, while he doesn't want to become attached to the scruffy likes of Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), their chance meeting provides as good an excuse as any for Columbus to try and recover whatever's left of his family in... well, Columbus. Oh, the names? Again, no one wants to get too attached once the infection hits the fan. That's just how one tends to roll as a resident of Zombieland.

While we'll pretty much make up any reason to watch a zombie any time day or night, much less one written and directed by the de facto creator of the genre, George Romero, the release of Zombieland gave our appetite for undead entertainment some legitimacy this week. And while Zack Snyder's 2004 reimagining of Dawn of the Dead might be the more obvious candidate for a "Shelf Life" column given Snyder's status as an emerging auteur himself, not to mention the fact it's the best American zombie movie in the last decade, we elected to go back to Romero's 1979 original and see if its classic status is still deserved.

The Facts: Also known as Zombi, George Romero's follow-up to the 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead was released May 24, 1979 after premiering in Italy almost a year before. With an estimated budget of $650,000, Romero's film grossed $55 million to date worldwide (equal to $181 million in 2009 dollars), and is widely acknowledged as the best zombie movie of all time – even if its predecessor likely remains the most influential.

On Friday night, I headed over to the Paramount Theatre in Austin for the Fantastic Fest premiere of the horror/comedy (mostly comedy) film Zombieland. I arrived on the scene to wonder if I wasn't in a zombieland myself -- the area around the front of the theater was swarmed with the undead. A trailer was set up near the theater where anyone could get made up to look like a zombie, and lots of people volunteered. I saw a zombie bridal couple, a zombie nun and fittingly for this movie, a zombie clown. Some of the more professionally made-up zombies even lurched onto the red carpet briefly.
Before the zombies could be shooed away entirely, Zombieland co-star Woody Harrelson showed up. You can see his reaction to his red carpet-mates in the above photo. The zombies headed elsewhere and Harrelson was joined by other stars from the film, Jesse Eisenberg and Emma Stone, as well as director Ruben Fleischer. The 1200-seat theater was packed with a lively audience, who applauded nearly every reference to Texas and seemed to enjoy the film very much.

Check out our Zombieland photo gallery from the evening for more photos of the red-carpet celebrities as well as the undead.

The world as we know it has come to an end, and that's not much more of an inconvenience for Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) than he was already used to. He's a Mountain Dew-chugging loser whose introverted ways have turned him into an ideal loner for the post-apocalyptic realm -- as paranoid, vigilante and neurotic as they come, beholden only to his own strict set of rules (cardio good, bathrooms bad, always shoot zombies twice, etc.).

And so, while he doesn't want to become attached to the scruffy likes of Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), their chance meeting provides as good an excuse as any for Columbus to try and recover whatever's left of his family in... well, Columbus. Oh, the names? Again, no one wants to get too attached once the infection hits the fan. That's just how one tends to roll as a resident of Zombieland.

And before I make things out to sound so serious, director Ruben Fleischer and writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick make their tone perfectly evident from the start. A groom is tackled by his zombie bride; a mother is chased down by her undead honor student daughters. So on, so forth, and so long, status quo. For the survivors, though, there's a little fun to be had here and there. Any man, woman or child can nab themselves the title of Zombie Kill of the Week. A store-smashing spree can help let off a little steam. And who's to stop a young girl (Abigail Breslin) and her older sis (Emma Stone) from heading off to California in order to make the most of a deserted theme park?

Read the rest over at Horror Squad

I may be a jaded and cynical movie 'professional', but that doesn't mean I don't like to get in touch with my innocent side every once in awhile -- which is why, after all this time, I still get excited about the fall movie season. Now, traditionally, the fall season is the time to release those serious Oscar-type films (or awards contenders), but this year there's more to offer than just drama, and this year's slate has a little something for everyone.

This season is littered with kids movies, sci-fi and horror, and a little touch of comedy -- basically you're looking at a line-up that's all over the map. But, everyone has their own tastes, and what makes me froth at the bit may leave you cold, and inevitably some films just naturally find their way the top of your must-see list. So today, I've laid out some of my most anticipated fall flicks, and I hope you'll do the same.

September:
Well, we're already a week into the start of the season, and we've gotten Mike Judges' Extract and the action no-brainer Gamer from Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, but there are still some pretty tasty selections coming in the following weeks. So let's get started, shall we?



9 (09/09/09)
Shane Acker's tale of a post-apocalyptic world packed with 'stitchpunks' and killer machines may have had the bonus of getting a bit of a boost from the reputations of its producers (Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov), but there is still plenty of reasons to recommend the animated sci-fi tale. Judging by the buzz surrounding this flick, it could turn out to be one of the big sleeper hits of the season, but there's still the small matter of whether or not Acker's flick will be more than style over substance.

After the jump: the rest of what September has to offer, and my top picks for October and November...