Rebekah Sprecher

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beckerbuns I realized after I wrote this that "Zombieland" might just rival "Shaun of the Dead". But I stand by my statement. :)

dive_philospher gota stick to your guns man! (no pun)

gkruis What about real Zombie movies? I feel like these are just rip-off, farces, or homage... you don't like any real ones?

beckerbuns I do love classic type zombie movies but the comedy ones appeal to me more. Have not seen Dead Alive. Another one I like just came to mind..
Everyone was stuck in a mall and they were picking off zombies from the roof with a shotgun. Dawn of the Dead maybe?

fnoo That's Dawn of the Dead, yes. Although Night of the Living Dead is the origin of all modern zombie movies, Dawn is pretty much the defining picture that every subsequent zombie movie, comedy or otherwise, riffs off of or responds to in one way or another.

gkruis Dead Alive (Braindead) is epic oedipal Zombie trash. It's brilliant. And yes, very gross. Ever seen "I Walked with a Zombie?" It's a creepy older Zombie film that doesn't go for the mob-Zombie rule, but actually deals with the origins of the concept of Zombies and is set in the West Indies. Check it out!

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fnoo Depends.

Gaiman has a great authorial voice. Nice economy of words, and his prose flows. He has absolutely no grasp of structure, though, and tends more toward pastiche than authentic individual expression.

Coraline feels like it was tailor made to appeal to the media fetishes of a certain demographic. And that's fine. It's just that when you strip away the surface affectations, there's not much actual story or character, and what's there is mostly borrowed.

fnoo There's plenty to defend, if one wishes to make a case. It's just, that's my problem with Gaiman in a nutshell: that he presents his affectations as if they should speak for themselves. Hey, look, he says. It's got these ingredients that you know you love. What more do you want?

alexxx187 Awesome movie. One of the best films of last year. I much preferred it to 'Up' which seemed to be the animated favorite last year.

amyuhrich Great animated film, in my opinion (though perhaps not entirely child-friendly - depends). Very entertaining and well-done for what it is. @fnoo But I can see why you think that about the film (as for Gaiman in general, I couldn't say).

fnoo American Gods has a similar thing going on. From beat to beat, the prose is beauiful. The premise is interesting. The characters have potential. And then the book meanders for hundreds of pages without actually doing anything with that material.

fnoo It's as if the fact of the premise is enough to justify the book, or that the fact of the details that he includes justifies their inclusion. It's a collection of things that are self-evidently cool, and therefore is itself cool for having collected them. It's fetishistic and vapid.

That's pretty much what I get from everything Gaiman writes.

girlfriday You're making me nostalgic, now. I'm adding this to my Netflix streaming queue. Hope your kids enjoy it!

beckerbuns Glad I could help, haha. :)

beckerbuns By the way, my 15 year old loved this movie. So I guess mission was accomplished. :)

fnoo When I was a kid, it totally went over my head that the father and the imaginary friend were the same actor.

Man, remember when Texas Instruments used to be a big thing in the computer space?

ashvin Nice! I'm waiting for it come out for Verizon... then I'm switching from my iphone.