* My post on me and my friends’ Manly Movie Mamajama mini-marathons has now spawned more comments than any other post in the history of this blog. Included therein are outside suggestions (usually along incredulous “What, no [film title]?!?!” lines), a veritable highlight reel of golden MMM moments, and the beginnings of the deliberation process for the next MMM line-up.

* Speaking of the MMM, my pal Justin Aclin sheds a little more light into their evolution, and how they’ve influenced our work together on Twisted ToyFare Theater, at the ToyFare blog.

* Hey, remember every awesome thing that happened on Lost? So does this list of The Top 50 OMGWTF Lost Moments! Even though it occasionally consolidates nominally connected moments that really each deserve their own entries, it still does a phenomenal, even invigorating job of remind you why you are so into this show in the first place. I quite clearly remember being delighted/horrified/both by pretty much every moment on the list, which when you think about it is quite an achievement for the show. (Via Whitney Matheson.)

* Speaking of good television, I’m continuing to defend my skepticism about GOAT claims for The Wire over at Matthew Yglesias’s blog.

* Because you demanded it! Ron Rege Jr. converts the cover for his recent collection Against Pain into the political statement several viewers thought he was making in the first place. (Note that the flub can cut both ways, as a co-blogger at cartoonist Sammy Harkham’s Family blog recently titled an anti-Palin post “Against Pain.”)

* Speaking of Gov. Palin, it’s been a while since I posted a “the state of the beast” link: The Humane Society has endorsed the Obama/Biden ticket–their first-ever presidential endorsement–in large part as a response to Palin’s political and personal track record of animal cruelty (via Andrew Sullivan):

Gov. Sarah Palin’s (R-Alaska) retrograde policies on animal welfare and conservation have led to an all-out war on Alaska’s wolves and other creatures. Her record is so extreme that she has perhaps done more harm to animals than any other current governor in the United States.

Palin engineered a campaign of shooting predators from airplanes and helicopters, in order to artificially boost the populations of moose and caribou for trophy hunters. She offered a $150 bounty for the left foreleg of each dead wolf as an economic incentive for pilots and aerial gunners to kill more of the animals, even though Alaska voters had twice approved a ban on the practice.

* My pal Rick Marshall peels back the curtain on adjusting to MTV’s corporate culture with his gig at their comics/movie blog Splash Page. Of particular interest is the section in which he describes trying to carve out a way not to just talk about the subject matter, but say something about it too.

* Speaking of Splash Page, Brett Ratner is a damn fool. Still, I’m sure The Joker: Lethal Protector will go from his lips to God’s ears, goddammit.

* Your NERDS ARE SERIOUS BUSINESS update for the day: Jason Adams bemoans the not-very-good, failing superhero TV show Heroes‘ systematic removal of fun from the superhero idiom. THESE ARE MODERN MYTHS JASON STFU

* Speaking of NERDS ARE SERIOUS BUSINESS, the reaction to this ought to be a hoot: Samuel L. Jackson refers to Frank Miller’s upcoming adaptation of Will Eisner’s The Spirit as “Wile E. Coyote with real people.” DOUBLEPLUSUNGOODTHINKFUL

* And speaking of Jason Adams, both Jason and his pal Joe Reid damn The Midnight Meat Train with faint praise. Dammit. Between the lukewarm reaction from bloggers I trust and my Missus-mandated current Netflixing of Gossip Girl, seeing this film is slipping lower and lower on my priority list.

* Cullen Gallagher at Not Coming to a Theater Near You reviews Benjamin Christensen’s fascinating-sounding 1922 horror/documentary/meta/surrealist hybrid film Häxan.

* This Tom Spurgeon review of a World of Warcraft comic is notable for a couple of reasons. First, it’s always fun to watch Tom flay the hide off a dopey comic, especially one you can picture in your head well enough to know it probably deserves it. Second, he kicks it off with a description of his interest in WoW that maps nearly perfectly to my own:

I generally like fantasy. I even enjoy the multi-player on-line version of fantasy that you get in things like World of Warcraft. The participation of so many people with overlapping motivations and gives that game and others reminiscent of its basic model of play a uniqueness that barrels over the massive, derivative nature of those enterprises as stories. I don’t care about the in-game play, but I like to read writers like Bruce Baugh talking about it, and I greatly enjoy when something weird happens during gameplay — someone cheats, someone does something awful — that results in a YouTube video.

* Speaking of Tom, his review of Robert Kirkman’s zombie series The Walking Dead is the best thing I’ve ever read on that series.

* Michael Stipe is continuing to answer questions about R.E.M.’s lyrics at Matthew Perpetua’s Pop Songs 07-08 blog. It’s only after reading that he writes his lyrics on a computer that I realized my unconscious picture of all songwriters is that they scribble their lyrics on a notepad or torn sheet of paper or napkin or something. Why would I think that?

* Speaking of inexplicable music memes, it’s happened: Dancehall has unleashed a Benny Hill riddim. (Via Douglas Wolk.)

One of my favorite things on Earth that I do is a tradition among various current and former Wizard staffers (a lot more former than current at this point!) called the Manly Movie Mamajama. On a more or less quarterly basis, 10-20 of us will get together some night, get a ton of beer and junk food, and watch three macho-ish genre movies in a row while hooting and hollering at the screen. It’s kind of like Mystery Science Theater 3000, only with more drunken screaming of the word “YEAH!!!!” for each topless scene and exploding head.

Because I feel like it, here is a rundown of each MMM we’ve done so far–the themes and the films.

THE MANLY MOVIE MAMAJAMA

MMM1: ROADS AND/OR WARRIORS

1. Road House

2. The Warriors

3. The Road Warrior

MMM2: DYSTOPIAN FUTURES AND/OR KURT RUSSELL

4. The Running Man

5. Escape from New York

6. Big Trouble in Little China

MMM3: VERHOEVEN IN VER-GOSHEN

7. RoboCop

8. Total Recall

9. Starship Troopers

MMM4: GET WELL, FIDEL

10. Red Dawn

11. Invasion U.S.A.

12. Rambo: First Blood Part II

MMM5: SCHLOCKTOBERFEST

13. The Monster Squad

14. Hellraiser

15. The Thing

MMM6: FEMININE FILM FEST

16. Terminator 2: Judgment Day

17. Aliens

18. The Descent

MMM7: STALLONE IN THE DARK

19. Over the Top

20. Death Race 2000

21. Rocky IV

MMM8: MMMY BUDDY

22. Dead Heat

23. Point Break

24. Tango & Cash

MMM9: NIGHT OF THE LIVING NIGHTS

25. Night of the Comet

26. Night of the Creeps

27. Nightbreed

MMM10: MONSTER MOVIE MAMAJAMA

28. Tremors

29. King Kong Lives

30. Reign of Fire

MMM11: SWAYZE FROM THE HEAT, OR “THEY SAVED PATRICK SWAYZE’S PANCREAS: A VERY SPECIAL MMM”

31. Road House

32. Steel Dawn

33. Point Break

MMM12: THE MODERN MANLY MOVIE

34. Crank

35. Doomsday

36. Rambo

Should The Wire have been nominated for more than the paltry two Emmy nods it garnered during its five-season run? Of course. It was a really good show, and if it wasn’t among the top five dramas each year it ran then shit, I must be missing some pretty excellent dramas. And of course the acting was superb across the board. And Season Two! And Season Four!

But of course anytime anyone on the Internet says it was “by far the best show in the history of television” I have to jump in there and fight the wrongness.

(And that’s without even going into the notion that it’s not simply the best drama in the history of television (which, no), but the best show, inviting apples-to-oranges comparisons with everything from Meet the Press to Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Madness.)

In my wildest dreams I never thought I’d see Josh Groban do a Les Claypool impression on national television.

* Alan Moore hates Hollywood in general and the Watchmen adaptation in particular. I’m with Tom Spurgeon in that Moore should be applauded for his stance regarding his own shoddy treatment by his former publisher and the way his books have been dumbed down by the studios and filmmakers heretofore in charge of adapting them; moreover, I’d take Moore thumbing his nose at the whole Hollywood game over Mark Millar claiming to star opposite Megan Fox’s Lois Lane in the next Superman movie anyday. However, decrying Hollywood filmmaking in general–there’s no other way to put this–is ignorant and poseurish, like the people who sit around saying “oh, I don’t watch television” in this the New Golden Age of Television. There are plenty of shitty Hollywood movies, but there are plenty of shitty everything. There are plenty of shitty Alan Moore comics, in fact. But I’m not going to throw out the A Small Killing with the Violator anymore than I’m going to throw out, oh I don’t know, the Lord of the Rings with the Transformers. Alan Moore’s too smart to be as close-minded as he always comes across when he leaps from specifically commenting on his own misfortunes to a poorly thought through institutional critique. (Full disclosure: I liked Dawn of the Dead and 300 so I’m going to assume I’ll like Watchmen, too, but I’d say the same thing about Moore’s overall stance even if Joel Schumacher were in charge of the movie.)

* Grant Morrison lists his favorite Superman stories and moments. (Via Spurge.)

* One more Spurge-tastic link: Tom reviews the latest under-the-radar interesting Marvel comic, The Incredible Hercules.

* My friend Chris Ward at Joystick Division has a grand ol’ time making fun of a 1990s guide to how video games are made.

* Apparently this is the kind of thing you can find in Josh Cotter’s sketchbooks. Holy frijoles.

If someone did a Deadwood-style revisionist pirate television series, I would watch it.

* Jog reviews Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s All Star Superman #12, while Quitely talks to Newsarama about it. If you were wondering, and here be SPOILERS my first impression of the issue was that it was fine, but not the knockout blow I was hoping for and that Morrison is capable of delivering in his finales (see The Filth #12, Seven Soldiers of Victory #1, Seaguy #3). Maybe if it had ended with Superman inside the sun, I dunno. Maybe the big 2uperman symbol will click emotionally with me soon. I suppose that like Jog I was so convinced that Leo Quintum was Lex Luthor that I turned that last page expecting him to rip off his wig, and when it didn’t happen I was perplexed.

* M. Night Shyamalan and Samuel L. Jackson seem to be as open as I am to the possibility of an Unbreakable sequel, which is to say quite.

* The great Chester Brown is running for Canada’s Parliament on a Libertarian/pro-paying-for-sex platform or something. I hope he makes it happen!

* Aeron Alfrey at Monster Brains manages to read my mind and deliver a gallery of Masters of the Universe paintings.

* Finally, Yes H.P. Can!

* I wrote to Tom Spurgeon about the difference between Secret Invasion tie-ins and Final Crisis tie-ins and how that might affect their sales.

* Frank Quitely talks to CBR about All Star Superman now that the series’ 12th and final issue is on the stands.

* Your NERDS ARE SERIOUS BUSINESS update for the day comes from Chris Cummins of Topless Robot:

…The Dark Knight made people forget all about Nicholson’s hammy Joker.

Certainly the last thing we’d want is for a killer clown to be over-the-top!

* Jon Hastings talks about the difference between criticism and “giving notes.”

* Like Chris Butcher I’m often baffled as to why it’s so hard to convince comics people to do the right thing, but here’s as good a reason as any: people often do the wrong thing simply because they don’t know what the hell they’re doing! In my experience in comics, the worst conduct is usually perpetrated by people in the process of running their businesses (and sometimes the businesses of others) into the ground. That’s not a coincidence! Can we at least agree that people who are serial ruiners-of-companies–these nightmarish Bizarro Mariano Rivieras who never fail to close down their own ventures, in the process lying and robbing and sucking up as much cash for themselves and their cronies as they can and leaving others holding the bag–are to be shunned, if not on moral grounds then just from the self-interested perspective of not wanting to do business with proven losers?

* Here’s Sir Ben Kingsley pretending to be Ian MacKaye performing the song “Minor Threat.” (Via Pitchfork.) You’re going to have to turn this opportunity yes.

* Cartoonists Jeffrey Brown, John Hankiewicz, Paul Hornschemeier, and Anders Nilsen are dissolving their online parternship, The Holy Consumption.

* Here’s a comparatively rare interview with “greatest of his generation”-bait cartoonist Kevin Huizenga. (Via Heidi MacDonald.)

* Jon Favreau talks to SciFi wire about keeping the Iron Man franchise believable in the face of the Mandarin, Thor, and other perils of Marvel-based moviemaking.

* Jason Adams posts a screencap-laden tribute to Fear(s) of the Dark, the animated horror anthology film featuring Charles Burns, Blutch, Lorenzo Mattotti and more, by way of noting that the movie will start screening in NYC and on demand on October 24th.

* Nick Bertozzi has posted some preview pages from his upcoming graphic novel with Colbert Report writer Glenn Eichler, Stuffed!

* The L.A. Times posts some unused excerpts from their upcoming profile of Lost‘s perpetually erudite Michael Emerson, aka the best villain on television, Ben Linus. (Via Whitney Matheson.)

* io9 interviews A+D, the mash-up producers and DJs behind indispensable mash-up site/club night/etc. Bootie.

* Hey, look, you can get a Gary Frank Christopher Reeve Superman statue!

* Yo, I totally agree that “Cobra Commander as disgruntled used car salesman” is as zany an idea in its own way as “Cobra Commander as Himalayan mutant-man.” That was my point! I’m just saying that it’s a mugs game to try to use something that self-evidently cockamamie as evidence that the G.I. Joe comics were far more mature than the kids’-stuff cartoons, which I’ve seen people do. (Via Leigh Walton.)

* Meet the Ant from Mars: Scientists have discovered a blind, subterranean, predatory species of ant in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. It is creepy. (Via Keith Uhlich.)

Now that we’re somewhat settled into our new home, The Missus and I finally set up our “music room,” with all of our CDs neatly arranged in a series of bookshelves. This gave me an excuse to go through them and rip a bunch to mp3, which led to me seriously listening to Primus for the first time in probably half a decade.

The early ’90s were a very strange, very wonderful time, insofar as that once Nirvana opened the door for outsider culture, anything and everything was welcomed through. Rockabilly? Great, c’mon in! Industrial? Nice to make your acquaintance! John Waters movies? Happy to have you! Piercings? Yes, please! Spoken word? Where do I sign up? I lived it, I took it for granted, I miss it even now. But of all the bizarre, how the hell did this happen manifestations of freakdom’s sudden and inexplicable supremacy during that era, I think that perhaps the strangest is that this band had a platinum, Top 10 record.

In America, in the ’90s, you could sing songs astutely chronicling the demimonde of degenerate meth-addicted blue-collar Diane Arbus rejects in a cartoon character voice while slapping your lead fretless bass guitar and repeatedly jerking your leg up and down and become a huge band capable of absolutely killing an audience of thousands and thousands of people.

Fun fact: Since the closest I ever got to the Long Island hardcore scene was making fun of it, it’s not like I’ve got a plethora of scary pit stories to recount, but to the extent that I do, the scariest pit I was ever in was during “Jerry Was a Race Car Driver” at the Primus gig at Roseland. Each time he’d say “Go!”, it was like that scene in 28 Weeks Later where the infected get into the parking garage.

* I wasn’t going to say anything because I kinda get sick of chasing these rumors all around the Internet from initial leak through to DVD release, but Jason Adams posted on it, and that gives me permission to mention that maybe they’re going to make a prequel to John Carpenter’s The Thing, presumably starring those ill-fated Norwegians. There, I mentioned it.

* I want to note that yes, I realize that when I post about movie biz rumors and remakes and so on I tend to say “they’re planning” or “they’re talking about” or “they’re going to make” rather than name the interested parties. This is because I see the kinds of Hollywood people who make these plans as an undifferentiated They–for what it’s worth, in my mind They wear jeans and nice shoes and dress shirts with the collar unbuttoned and the sleeves rolled up, and they tend to have goatees. They sing along to “Opportunities” by the Pet Shop Boys and mean it.

* Speaking of Them, They have not yet told Edward Norton whether they want him to have anything to do with the Incredible Hulk sequel. He also kinda poo-poos the idea of an Avengers movie. All of this is a shame, because he’s good.

* Motions for new trials of the West Memphis Three, based on DNA evidence, have been denied. Accidentally stumbling across the HBO documentary about the case years ago, Paradise Lost, was one of my most memorable “sitting alone late at night at my folks’ house flipping through the channels” experiences ever. For those who are unfamiliar, three teenagers were convicted of the murder of three eight-year-old boys based on the “confession” of a kid with an IQ of 72 and rock-solid evidence that the three teenagers liked Aleister Crowley and heavy metal.

* Americans joins residents of Azerbaijan, Egypt, Russia, and Iran among the populations most likely to support torture. This includes nearly six in ten Southern evangelical Christians.

* Kevin Melrose spots a treat in Marvel’s December solicits: Incognito, a new superhero-noir series from the Criminal and Sleeper team, Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. Part of me hopes that this isn’t some sort of reflection on the nature of the demand for non-superhero genre titles in the Direct Market, but another part of me is just plain excited for another superhero book from the guys who did Criminal.

* Tom Spurgeon enjoyed Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds #1. With that, Geoff Johns’s critical rehabilitation is complete.

* Writer J.M DeMatteis blogs about the genesis of my favorite Spider-Man story, Kraven’s Last Hunt. It’s a pretty overbaked bit of reminiscing, but if you like the story you really oughta read it, if only to see the quirks of fate that prevented it from being a Wonder Man or Batman story. (Via Rick Marshall.)

* Would you like to know why I like He-Man? Here’s a for instance: The action figure for Mer-Man looked completely different than how he was depicted on the figure’s packaging, so in their new Masters of the Unvierse Classic series, Mattel will be releasing him with an extra head.

Meanwhile, click over to He-Man.org and scroll down to the September 11th post (no permalinks on Eternia!) and you’ll find this amazing passage in a post about whether or not the Classic series will retain the original’s action features–springing, spinning, extending, and so on:

To elaborate on the action features question, yes obviously Tri-Klops will have a spinning visor, Man-E-Faces will have a spinning head and Rio Blast would have pop out guns. (pending we can get to all of those great characters)

Where you won’t see action features is on mechanical features – ie: Snout Spout will likely not spit water, Sy-Klone will likely not have a spinning mechanism, Stinkor will likely not smell and Ram-Man would likely not have a pop out body.

But Extendar would extend, the Rock people would fold up and Scare Glow might even have glow in the dark paint if it works out.

Yes, obviously Tri-Klops will have a spinning visor. People, He-Man is so, so great. I’m not a toy collector anymore, but I have to admit that this MotUC thing, coupled with the existence in my new house of a “rumpus room” dedicated solely to my crap, has me sorely tempted. They go on sale starting this December. (All via Topless Robot.)

* Speaking of Topless Robot, Kevin J. Guhl presents The 8 Biggest Reasons the G.I. Joe Comic Kicks the Cartoon’s Ass. I was most definitely a Joe-cartoon kid rather than a Joe-comic one, so if nothing else this is a glimpse at what the comic kids found appealing about the surprisingly long-running series. (12 years! Longer than your childhood!) However, I could guess before getting any further than the headline that one of the reasons would involve making fun of Cobra-La, the crazy Himalayan race of mutant ur-humans, in whose number G.I. Joe: The Movie “revealed” that we could count none other than Cobra Commander. Sure enough, Guhl pisses all over this wonderfully nutso concept in favor of CC’s comic-book origin, which is that he was a used car salesman who got fed up with the system. I am totally not kidding. For some reason, this origin is supposed to mesh better with the notion that G.I. JOE IS SERIOUS BUSINESS. Go figure!

* This Space Ghost Coast to Coast segment (via–where else?–Topless Robot) pretty much encapsulates every thought College Sean had about the fundamental nature and awesomeness of Thom Yorke, Björk, Tricky, and Space Ghost Coast to Coast.

Rick Wright died today. Certainly the moment of his career that leaped out in my mind–and one of my favorite Pink Floyd moments of all–is this song from The Dark Side of the Moon. I’ve often thought that his piano work on this song is the most overlooked potential sample of all time. Its combination of gentleness and relentlessness, the sense that you’re quietly being pushed toward something potentially terrible or at the very least transformative, is haunting and difficult to shake. Of course it is in fact slowly propelling you toward Clare Torry’s tear-down-the-sky vocals, as chill-inducing a representation of man’s fear of mortality as rock music is likely to produce; but then it’s still there as the vocals slowly fades into a quiet, more contemplative mode, each chord reminding you that movement toward that final destination is inevitable, you can put it off for now, the moment has passed, but don’t worry, it’ll be right over here, waiting, it has all the time in the world.

If you have to be a member of one of the greatest bands ever, and you have to die, you could do a lot worse in terms of leaving behind work to be remembered by, and to remind people why your work mattered in the first place, than to have this song in your repertoire, that’s for goddamn sure.

* Grant Morrison announces a new Vertigo series called Warcop, concerning a super-soldier and his hip teenage friend in the post-9/11 world and borrowing its title from a rejected Morrison/Madonna movie idea. How about them apples.

* Frank Miller reacts, pricelessly, to the All Star Batman & Robin c-bomb scandal:

I have no idea how this awful thing happened. It’s just one of those terrible and glorious things that happen time to time in publishing.

Italics Frank’s, apparently. You can practically hear the sneer! (Via everyone)

* Jon Favreau discusses the potential presence of War Machine, the Mandarin, Matt Fraction, and IMAX 3-D technology in Iron Man 2. Wouldn’t it be great if he made another really good Iron Man movie?

* I may not know toys, but I know what I like, and I totally disagree with Topless Robot’s Rob Bricken regarding the superiority of the redesigned Masters of the Universe toys to the originals–a hot topic given plans to release a line of new, more articulated figures based on the original look of He-Man and friends. It just seems like a case of surface “coolness” interfering with the simple purity of streamlined ridiculousness, and it reminds me of when grown-up fanboys take beloved childhood comics characters and try to make them seem more grown-up and mature and grim and such. It’s He-Man–isn’t raw nostalgia the whole point?

* Noel Troll’s friend Pumpskin creeps me out.

* Dan Nadel is a cat who just don’t give a fuck and that comes through entertainingly in this interview about his new Rory Hayes collection Where Demented Wented. (Via Tim Hodler.)

* I greatly enjoy Jon Hastings posts about works we both enjoy, and his recent-vintage reviews of Jason’s You Can’t Get There From Here and the Wachowski Bros.’ Speed Racer are cases in point. Money quotes from each:

Is there something about comics as a medium that encourages so many stories about loneliness and the (often futile) search for companionship? Is it something about cartoonists that they’re drawn to tell these kinds of stories? Is there some kind of Harold Bloomian agonistic anxiety of influence working on them so that they’re driven to revise and elaborate on Krazy Kat?

and

If the guiding principle of, say, Sin City is “use CGI to bring Frank Miller’s comics to ‘life'”, the guiding principle of Speed Racer is “use CGI to bring a world of computer-generated images to life”.

* Abhay Khosla hated Secret Invasion #6 nearly as much as he loves the sound of his own voice! I dunno, he’s probably a wonderful guy, and I don’t disagree with him here or on many other things, but whoo, it’s grating, I’m not the only one, right?

* David Bordwell waxes titular.

* The haunted house ride from Coney Island’s Astroland is up for sale. It really is over.

God bless America
Land that I love
Stand beside her
And guide her
Through the night with a light from above
From the mountains
To the prairies
To the oceans
White with foam
God bless America
My home sweet home

—–
As he followed her inside Mother Abagail’s house he thought it would be better, much better, if they did break down and spread. Postpone organization as long as possible. It was organization that always seemed to cause the problems. When the cells began to clump together and grow dark. You didn’t have to give the cops guns until the cops couldn’t remember the names…the faces…

Fran lit a kerosene lamp and it made a soft yellow glow. Peter looked up at them quietly, already sleepy. He had played hard. Fran slipped him into a nightshirt.

All any of us can buy is time, Stu thought. Peter’s lifetime, his children’s lifetimes, maybe the lifetimes of my great-grandchildren. Until the year 2100, maybe, surely no longer than that. Maybe not that long. Time enough for poor old Mother Earth to recycle herself a little. A season of rest.

“What?” she asked, and he realized he had murmured it aloud.

“A season of rest,” he repeated.

“What does that mean?”

“Everything,” he said, and took her hand.

Looking down at Peter he thought: Maybe if we tell him what happened, he’ll tell his own children. Warn them. Dear children, the toys are death–they’re flashburns and radiation sickness, and black, choking plague. These toys are dangerous; the devil in men’s brains guided the hands of God when they were made. Don’t play with these toys, dear children, please, not ever. Not ever again. Please…please learn the lesson. Let this empty world be your copybook.

“Frannie,” he said, and turned her around so he could look into her eyes.

“What, Stuart?”

“Do you think…do you think people ever learn anything?”

She opened her mouth to speak, hesitated, fell silent. The kerosene lamp flickered. Her eyes seemed very blue.

“I don’t know,” she said at last. She seemed unpleased with her answer; she struggled to say something more; to illuminate her first response; and could only say it again:

I don’t know.

–Stephen King, The Stand

I finally watched George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead. I wish I hadn’t. Holy cow, was this movie bad. Thrilless horror, laughless black comedy, toothless satire, pointless sociopolitical ruminations, directionless plotting, unlikable characters that make the Cloverfield gang seem deep, laughable dialogue filled with puns (fucking PUNS!), special effects that make you wonder why they couldn’t just hire Tom Savini and his squibs, a documentary conceit that adds nothing but an extra level of cheesy phoniness to the already cheesy and phony script, freshman-year baloney about the media and the camera eye and blah blah blah that you’ve heard a billion times before in much better movies…I’m honestly at a loss to try to describe just how many things Romero got wrong in making this movie, from doing a mockumentary without improvised dialogue on down. And that ending! Just coming right out and saying what Night had the balls to simply imply. Awful, stupid, shockingly tedious, not scary at all. Don’t buy it, don’t rent it, don’t watch it, don’t sully your feelings about the other Dead movies with it. Just…don’t.

PS: Post-movie conversation that was a million times more entertaining than anything in this nothing-to-say movie:

THE MISSUS (arrives home): What did I miss?

SEAN: I watched a terrible, terrible movie.

THE MISSUS: Oh yeah? What?

SEAN: Diary of the Dead.

THE MISSUS: Diarrhea of the Dead? Why would you think that’d be any good?