christ, listening to "Alcoholic" while watching Men in Black is entertaining.

This is "Alcoholic."  It's by a band called Cash Crop and it's on the Sorority Row soundtrack and yes, I find it amusing.  Doubly so because I fucking hate jagerbombs and my drinking pal always makes me take one.  I'm not an alcoholic, by the way.  But the Lincoln bar scene is actually kind of fun in a pathetic sort of way.  I mean, it's pretty much exactly like the song.  Or the bar scene in the beginning of Star Trek, except, you know, filthy and in brick buildings.  I cannot WAIT for Halloween.

The scene in Men in Black is the one in the morgue (i.e., "she's got that whole queen of the dead thing going on" [let's just say this movie was a formative experience for me] and the little dying alien man).  Oh yeah, also, I love Men in Black too much.  

Bonus: Halloween userpics!

zombieland: not as good as shaun of the dead

I mean, arguably they're doing different things.  Shaun of the Dead is - comparatively - a realistic account of what would happen to most people if a zombie plague suddenly swept through their little world.  You scream, you throw anything, Zombieland is like all those people who have totally bought into the zombie fad because zomg, it would just be so much fun to run around killing monsters especially when everyone else in the world is dead and then we can take their stuff.  All the characters are expert survivalists - I guess because they did survive "this long" - who have loads of guns and vehicles (Hummer, Cadillac, unnamed SUVs...) and literally just kill everything.  Oh yes, there is the whole "emotional triumph" bullshit that feels like the ABC Family version of 28 Days Later: "without other people, we may as well be zombies" (?!!!) and I mean, the dorky guy-protagonist totally gets the hot girl (who always wears make-up) in the end so yayz zombie-killing time!  But there's nothing to relate to here.  It's hero worship.  And this sort of zombie-apocalypse fantasy - speaking from the perspective of someone who was into zombies and apocalypses way before pop culture's current obsession with them - has absolutely nothing to do with zombies or apocalypses.  I mean, this could be Transformers.  You know?  It's like... Transformers does Neon Genesis Evangelion. 

[There's this part in Zombieland, where the survivors are happily smashing things in a little store - and this is "enjoying the little things" - where I thought, "Ah, here it is.  The American zombie-humor movie.  What matters is destruction."]

And look, I am not allergic to destruction in movies (hello, I only started watching Battlestar Galactica because it promised destruction).  But this was just a little too I-can't-wait-for-the-zombie-apocalypse-so-I-can-blow-shit-up(-and-I-actually-have-no-clue-how-to-blow-anything-up-or-survive-any-kind-of-apocalypse), and it really doesn't move beyond that.  Hot Fuzz - which strikes my sense of humor perfectly - is full of destruction, but at the same time moves way beyond that, partly because it knows what the fuck it's doing ("Well, I won't argue that it was a no-holds-barred adrenaline-fueled thrill ride, but there's no way you could perpetrate that amount of carnage and mayhem and not accumulate a considerable amount of paperwork").  It's conscious of the tropes it's using and actually ends up achieving emotional resonance.  Same with Tropic Thunder, actually, so I know this isn't something all American movies fail at.  Shaun of the Dead also achieves emotional resonance.  But that, see, actually deals with certain givens of apocalypses: losing friends and family, losing all that is familiar and comfortable, losing safety, losing sanity, losing contact.  And it does this while remaining funny and entertaining!  Yes, people, it's possible!  In fact, consciousness of the tropes you're using actually makes the movie funnier!  Full disclosure: I didn't find Zombieland funny.  

Woody Harrelson was the best part of the movie.  Which isn't saying much except that, like Ron Perlman, Harrelson makes any horrible movie tolerable.  In this one, he was the only character/actor (God knows) willing to be flawed and not just TOTALLY ZOMG AWESOME/COOL, which of course means he's the comic relief.  Oh well.  With movies like this, collect all the comic reliefs, put them in a new movie, and then you'll have a good movie.  Every single character in Shaun of the Dead would be comic relief in Zombieland.  That's how straight this movie plays its tropes. 

And yes, I have taken those "would you survive a zombie apocalypse" facebook quizzes.  I got 90% likely to survive.  Take from that what you will.