Thursday fun, of "Walking Dead," Bill Buckner and more

If you're not a Baltimore Orioles fan, I should first say you're rather lucky, but also that you can be excused for thinking the celebration after last night's season-ending game was a bit much for a team that, once again, finished in last place in the American League East.

Except for it wasn't. When all you can enjoy with a team is schadenfreude, you have to take what you can get, and since the O's aren't headed to the World Series anytime soon, there is at least pleasure in knowing the Boston Red Sox won't be this year either. Especially when your team had everything to do with it.

And in honor of that, and since my father reminded me of it this morning via the New York Times, I give you a scene from easily the funniest half-hour of TV to appear this fall, the return of Bill Buckner on "Curb Your Enthusiasm." Coincidental timing? I think not, but either way, seeing him be dressed down by the extremely foul (I warned you) Susie Essman just adds to the pleasure of this glorious day. Enjoy.



If you don't get HBO, you can watch much more of Buckner's stuff on "Curb" at Youtube, and it's all really funny. And moving on, before we get to all kinds of zombie stuff, Twitch, which is very rarely wrong, has the goods on a remake that's quickly shaping up to be potentially worthwhile (and no, I'm not talking about "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," for once.)

The news that Mandate has hired Spike Lee to direct an English-language remake of the rather fantastic Korean revenge saga "Oldboy" is old news by now, but still welcome since it means the return of the often-great and never boring Mr. Lee to feature films. The perhaps even better news now is the cast that might be coming together for this.

Josh Brolin has definitely signed on to play the lead, a man who is mysteriously locked away in a hotel room for 15 years and then methodically takes his revenge after being just as mysteriously released. I could tell you more, but you really need to see this Chan Wook Park gem for yourself, which you can watch on Netflix streaming right away, if you haven't given up on them completely yet.

And in the fairly solid rumor mill, Christian Bale is apparently being sought for the role of Oh Dae-su's (in the Korean version) tormenter, and perhaps even better, Rooney Mara, aka the new "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" (ack, I just can't get away from it) is being eyed for the female lead, a waitress who helps Dae-su (again, at least in the original version.) This is quickly coming together as one remake I'm definitely in for.

And after that today, it's all about zombies, because, let's face it, they're just o much fun. And though "The Walking Dead" should really today apply to the Boston Red Sox (ha!), it's also the name of AMC's sophomore series formerly led by Frank Darabont and set to return Oct. 16.

If you watched the short but seriously entertaining season one, you saw the closest that mainstream TV has come to real horror in as long as I can remember, plus a show that almost perfectly combines genuine humanity and suspense. The former may suffer a bit with the departure of Darabont, but I'm still betting the second season will be great.

In the meantime, AMC is filling the gap with a series of short webisodes, which will all appear starting Monday. They will tell the story of Hannah, a.k.a "Bicycle Girl," the legless zombie taken down by Rick Grimes in the first episode. It will tell the backstory of her pre-zombie life and how she tried to save her family before becoming one of "The Walking Dead" herself.

Look for them beginning Monday at 2 p.m. at AMCTV.com, and in the meantime, enjoy this new promo for season two, and then stick around for something that really needs no explanation beyond its title, "Zombinladen."



Finally today, and courtesy of Iwatchstuff.com, comes a grindhouse trailer that, well, you really have to watch because no words from me will really do it justice. Enjoy, "Zombinladen," and have a perfectly pleasant Thursday. Peace out.

ZOMBINLADEN The Axis Of Evil Dead

An extended look at season two of "The Walking Dead"

I'll get to that in just a few minutes in this very short post, but first comes word that French director Laurent Cantet, who made the extremely engaging "The Class," is now filming his English-language debut, and it's based on a novel that I adore.

Shooting on "Foxfire," based on the novel by Joyce Carol Oates, is taking place in Canada. The novel is about "a group of humiliated 1950s high school girls in upstate New York who form a secret society to wage a campaign of retaliation and justice in a male-dominated culture," as the Hollywood Reporter described.

Pretty heady stuff there, but having read the book, I can confirm it's pretty fun, too, and as he did with "The Class," Cantet will be using a cast full of young, unknown performers. Definitely stay tuned for more on this as it develops.

But the main event here today is a rather epic, four minute-plus trailer for season two of AMC's "The Walking Dead," which debuts on Oct. 16. Having watched it, I can confirm that the folks who are left on the show still know how to nail the hell out of suspense, but I do fear that with Frank Darabont gone it will miss out a lot on the human factor, a big part of what made season one so compelling. Here's hoping I'm wrong. Enjoy the trailer, have a great weekend, and please, go see "The Help," because it's pretty great. Peace out.

Comic-con clips, Charlie Kaufman news and much more

There will almost certainly be more popular and more epic movie offerings this holiday season, but among the ones I'm definitely looking forward to is "A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas," and the above photo courtesy of Entertainment Weekly should tell you exactly why. And actually, we won't have to wait until Christmas for this madness, since it's due out Nov. 4. Bring it on!

And in movie news, the world is certainly a little better place when Charlie Kaufman's making movies in it, especially when he's set to direct another one. I have to admit that his first directing effort, "Synecdoche, New York," lost me a bit in the third act, but it was still a wild trip that I thoroughly enjoyed taking.

This time out, of course directing a script he also wrote, "Frank and Francis" will be about a film director (Frank) who gets into a war of words with an online blogger (Francis) who trashed his cinematic sensibilities. Sounds thankfully like an "Adaptation"-style mindbender, and it's now set to star Nicolas Cage, Jack Black and Steve Carell, though who would play which role is yet to be determined (my bet is on Cage as Frank and Black as Francis, but stay tuned.)

Kaufman is also working again with Spike Jonze (who really needs to work a bit faster) for an as-yet-untitled political satire set to begin shooting in March or so with Joaquin Phoenix starring. Here's a brief plot description for that:

A satire about how world leaders gather to figure out all the seismic events that will take place in the worlds, from oil prices to wars that will be waged.

Nothing but cool there, and a very active Charlie Kaufman is just great news all around.

And now, as promised, though there were a ton of things going on at Comic-Con this week, there's no way I could log them all (especially since I wasn't there), but here a few things that have caught my eye.

First up, even though I was pretty thoroughly burned by "Your Highness" (even by stoner comedy "standards," just a wretched movie), I still can't help but get geeked up by the trailer for "Knights of Badassdom."

So, why should this one be any different? First off, the comedy cast is pretty first-rate, including the HBO trio of Steve Zahn ("Treme"), Ryan Kwanten ("True Blood") and the Emmy-nominated-and-should-be-winning Peter Dinklage ("Game of Thrones"), plus Summer Glau of "Firefly" among many other things , Danny Pudi of "Community" and Jimmy Simpson of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia." Not exactly A-list talent, but all people I like watching, and add to that that this is a flick about live action role playing gone way wrong (as in conjuring a rather evil demon bad), and I'm convinced that this Joe Lynch movie will deliver plenty of funny whenever it comes out. Enjoy this trailer from Comic-Con.



OK, after that today, it's all about TV, starting with word from Comic-Con about what's ahead for one show that - though I still love it - probably should have ended already: "Chuck." With the firm end now in sight after this next season, however, instead of hanging each year over the heads of creators Chris Fedak and Josh Schwartz, it should at least allow the show to go out on a fun note.

As everyone who watches the show knows (BIG SPOILER HERE IF YOU SOMEHOW MISSED LAST SEASON'S FINALE), the Intersect has now moved from Morgan to Chuck (yes, really), and the gang has formed their own spying agency. Here's what Fedak had to say at Comic-Con about what else is ahead when the show returns - on Friday nights rather than Wednesdays - for its final, 13-episode arc:

Now that Chuck owns the Buy More and his own spy company, the big challenge will come in an opposing spy business and its owner may present a romantic connection for Adam Baldwin’s Casey.

Someone won’t survive Season 5 and it’s going to be a big loss!

We will see Jeffster break up and the two will wage major war against each other.

If I were still a betting man (and when I briefly was, I was never any good at it), I'd put my money on Morgan dying (not anything I know, just a hunch), and the implosion of Jeffster alone should make this go out with a big blast of fun this fall on NBC.

The show I'm probably most looking forward to this fall, however, is season two of AMC's "The Walking Dead." The first season was only six episodes, but the zombie series from Frank Darabont was as terrifying as it was just addictive. Now, it's getting 13 episodes for a second season, and returning two weeks earlier than expected, Oct. 16 rather than around Halloween. Enjoy this five-minute trailer from Comic-Con, and definitely tune in for the return of "The Walking Dead."



And finally today, I've been enjoying the return of Larry David's "Curb Your Enthusiasm" to HBO this summer. It's not his best work (for me still seasons three and four when, respectively, Larry tries to open a restaurant and then co-stars with David Schwimmer in "The Producers" on Broadway), but the show's enjoying a resurgence in popularity, and a summer with any Larry David is better than one without him. Tonight's episode will, thankfully, be very Marty Funkhauser-centric, because the character played by Bob Einstein/Super Dave Osborne has always been my favorite "Curb" creation.

Tonight, just as Funkhauser is embracing his Judaism, a popular Palestinian chicken restaurant opens next to his beloved kosher deli. Larry, of course, comes to the Palestinians' defense, and it should just be a hoot. Enjoy this short preview, and tune in for "Curb Your Enthusiasm" tonight if you get HBO. Peace out.

Ep. 73: Palestinian Chicken - Preview

Ron Howard to explore dark side of Mormon history, and more cheery stuff

I'm usually not one to get too excited for simple movie posters, but the movie fall is getting so close (at least in my sun-fried mind) that I can already envision it, and "Let the Right One In" director Tomas Alfredson's take on "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" is certainly one of the movies I'm most looking forward to for the rest of this year, so just wanted to share this. As you can see from the poster above, these will be some rather star-packed spy games when this opens hopefully wide enough to reach my little corner of the world Nov. 18.

And in the closest thing to fresh movie news in this post, Ron Howard, having lost his multi-layered production of "The Dark Tower," has now set his sights on Mormons, but not the cute, cuddly kind that won "South Park" masterminds Trey Parker and Matt Stone the top Tony.

Instead, Howard will team up with scribe Dustin Lance Black ("Milk" and Clint Eastwood's upcoming J. Edgar Hoover biopic) for a movie based on Jon Krakauer's "Under the Banner of Heaven." As many probably know, Krakauer is also the author of "Into the Wild," which Sean Penn turned into easily one of my favorite movies of the last five years or so.

"Under the Banner of Heaven" tells the story of a double murder committed by two Mormon Fundamentalist brothers, Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a revelation from God commanding them to kill their blameless victims. Beginning with this "divinely inspired" crime, Krakauer continues on for an investigation of the Mormon faith as a whole. Heady stuff that, and should it happen to drop just as we might have a Mormon running for president? Stay tuned ...

And speaking of unsavory characters (behold the power of the segue!), Kevin Costner has already made it easy to hate him through the years, but it seems he'll take this to a whole new level with Quentin Tarantino's next movie, "Django Unchained."

Having read the script for this (which is uniformly excellent), I can confirm that the character he'll play, Ace Woody, stands out as the most vile person in a cast packed with them. Woody trains the mandingos who fight for the pleasure of Candyland ranch owner Calvin Candie, to be played by Leonardo DiCaprio. Which makes the only missing piece in Tarantino's sprawling "Southern" finding an actress to play Broomhilda, and with the truly great Kerry Washington up for this, things are rounding into shape in very good, if truly odd form (by the way, I've said it here many a time before, but "Night Catches Us," a '70s period piece of sorts set in Philly and starring Washington and Anthony Mackie, is a can't-miss video rental.)

But getting back to "Django Unchained," if you can get past the racial language that permeated the script and I have to assume will make it on screen, it's as witty as anything Tarantino has written and truly epic in scope too. The movie will tell the story of a German bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz) who teams up with a freed slave, Django (Jamie Foxx, bizarre), to take out slave owners and eventually work to free Django's wife, Broomhilda, who works at Candyland. Just picture how wild all that could be, and I think you'll agree that if he somehow pulls all this off, QT should deliver quite the movie present on Christmas day of 2012.

And all I have left after that today are a couple of videos that caught my eye this morning. Having just finished the U.K. run of "Torchwood" and watched the first Starz-produced installment of "Torchwood: Miracle Day," I just have a hankering for more witty and smart sci-fi. In recent memory, very few TV shows delivered that combo better than Joss Whedon's way-too-short-lived "Firefly," so here, courtesy of Sci Fi Wire, is a clip compiling their 25 best quotes from the series. Enjoy



And what better way to wrap things up on a Wednesday morning than with zombies being bludgeoned back to death? Like the zombies themselves, this wordless promo for the second season of "The Walking Dead" is probably a bit ripe by now, having premiered during Sunday's return of AMC's "Breaking Bad," but I like it, so enjoy, and keep an eye out for the show returning in October. Peace out.

AMC's Dead walking again

That's all I really have today, but when a photo's that good, just run with it.

Of all the shows returning this fall, I think I just might be most excited for Frank Darabont's "The Walking Dead," which will offer 13 episodes this fall after just six in season one. Above is the first photo I've come across from season two, just to whet your zombie appetite, and with that I'm off until at least Tuesday to visit my family in Minnesota. Have a great weekend, and by all means, go see J.J. Abrams' "Super 8." Peace out.

When, if ever, will we get more "Mad Men"?

Not having heard any "Mad Men" news for a while, I just assumed that that was a good thing and that everyone had worked things out and the show would return for its fifth season by late summer as usual. Silly me ...

It seems that not even has production not started yet, as it usually does this time of year or very soon after, but creator Matthew Weiner is still negotiating a lucrative new contract with Lionsgate. Assuming that that will get done, and the two sides are apparently now very close, that still means production won't get going for a few weeks or so after that, meaning no "Mad Men" until at least the fall.

Nards. In the meantime, AMC will have a few potentially great things to fill the void. I'm really looking forward to the new series "The Killing," which has its two-hour premiere April 3. The show, based on a popular Danish TV show, will focus on the murder of a teenage girl in Seattle in its first season, and the widening net of possible suspects. It's been ages since I found a good police procedural, so here's hoping this is it.

And fans of "Breaking Bad" (of which I'm not one simply because even I can only watch so much television and, well, I just never got around to it) can look forward to new episodes in July or so, and then there's the return of "The Walking Dead" (of which I certainly am a big, big fan) for season two this fall. Still, no firm date yet for the return of "Mad Men"? Bring it on already!

The other thing that caught my eye this morning is that there will hopefully be another "Narnia" movie, though not the one many people may have been expecting.

I've always wondered why it's been such a difficult proposition for Walden Media and Fox to keep making these flicks. I know there's an innocence about them that's genuinely out of place in our often crass world (but that I love), but the movies consistently make money: "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" was made for $155 million and made $403 million worldwide, while No. 2, "Prince Caspian," was made for $225 million and brought in $419 million worldwide. "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" is still the most lucrative in the series, with a budget of $180 million and a worldwide take of $745 million.

Besides all that, there just good, really fun movies. "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" had the most problems of the three, but they've just gotten better, and I flat out adored "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader." And now, in a case of me burying the lead behind my own blathering on, comes word that the next movie in the series, assuming Walden gets Fox to sign, will be "The Magician's Nephew." Here's what Walden's Michael Flaherty had to say about it to The Christian Post:

"We are starting to talk to Fox and talk to the C.S. Lewis estate now about the Magician's Nephew being our next film. If we can all agree to move forward, then what we would do is find someone to write the script. So, it could still be a couple of years."

Here's hoping they work out the plans soon, because though I can't claim to remember all the details about all these books, I read them all as a kid, and loved them all. Here, for those of you like me who might need a refresher course on just what "The Magician's Nephew," an origins story for "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," is all about, is the synopsis from Amazon:

When Digory and Polly are tricked by Digory’s peculiar Uncle Andrew into becoming part of an experiment, they set off on the adventure of a lifetime. What happens to the children when they touch Uncle Andrew’s magic rings is far beyond anything even the old magician could have imagined. Hurtled into the Wood between the Worlds, the children soon find that they can enter many worlds through the mysterious pools there. In one world they encounter the evil Queen Jadis, who wreaks havoc in the streets of London when she is accidentally brought back with them. When they finally manage to pull her out of London, unintentionally taking along Uncle Andrew and a coachman with his horse, they find themselves in what will come to be known as the land of Narnia.

I wouldn't go so far as to say the world needs more "Narnia" movies, but I certainly like it when they're around, so good news there. And with that, I'm off to the job that somehow still plays my bills. Peace out.

A first look at the first cop show I'm going to watch in many years

I'm not sure why, but I just haven't found a cop TV show I've enjoyed in a very long time, essentially since the end of "The Wire."

My friend and fellow cubicle slave Randy Waters tells me "Southland" is worth catching up with, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Coming soon from AMC, however, is one I'm going to take a chance on, and not just because it comes from the network that brought us "Mad Men" and "The Walking Dead."

So, what makes "The Killing" intriguing to me? Well, first and mostly, it's because the 13-episode series will focus on one investigation, the titular event. Based on the Danish television series "Forbrydelsen" and created by "Cold Case" showrunner Veena Sud, it revolves around the murder of a young girl in Seattle and the police investigation involving many possible suspects. The show will have its two-hour premiere on Sunday, April 3, because, I guess, like HBO before it, AMC always likes to premiere new shows on Sundays.

To be clear, I'm certainly not expecting anything as compelling as "Twin Peaks" or any of TV's best cop shows, but its been a long time since we've even had a decent police serial, so here's hoping this turns out to be good. Enjoy the trailer, and then stick around for a short dose of "Jackass"-ery just perfect for a Wednesday morning.



With "Jackass 3D" on DVD this week, here's one of the DVD bonus clips just to remind you that, most likely, your day really isn't that bad. It's Jason "Wee Man" Acuna trying to jump a ravine on his very small bike, and knowing he's a very willing victim of these shenanigans, just enjoy it, and have a perfectly passable Wednesday. Peace out.

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

For Wednesday, a cache of fun clips

First off, and to segue right into the videos, a hearty huzzah to the Golden Globes for recognizing that "The Walking Dead" was easily one of the best TV dramas of 2010.

The word unique is thrown around way too loosely, and I'm probably as guilty of that as anyone, but it certainly fits here. If you watched the series, you know there's nothing like it on TV: Genuine horror as the inevitable zombie apocalypse (yes, we're certainly headed there) strikes (and in Atlanta no less, kudos), but also plenty of humanity since this comes from the mind of Frank Darabont.

Things don't bear terribly well for season two with the word that all the writers were let go and replaced by freelancers (except for Darabont, of course), but I suppose that's the way of the world. In case you missed the show and doubt just how gruesome it could get, enjoy the video below, but be warned: The title tells you exactly what you get, "every zombie killing in 'The Walking Dead'."



You know, with "Black Swan" finally opening in Macon and "The Fighter" here too - and then hopefully the Coen brothers' "True Grit" (which mi hermano and his Minneapolis-St. Paul homies have apparently already seen - jealous) opening here Wednesday, when I have the day off, this is indeed the best movie week of the entire year for me. There's also apparently a "Yogi Bear" movie opening this weekend too, but as close as you'll see me coming to that is this fantastic clip of what you'd have to call "The Assassination of Yogi Bear By the Coward Boo Boo." Again, the title really says it all, and this is plain brilliant. Enjoy.



OK, enough with the bloodshed, cartoon or otherwise. Nothing but good holiday cheer from here on out, I promise. Though I'm rarely up late enough to see his show live, I often DVR it, and I'm definitely a member of Team CoCo. And it's videos like the backstage clip below that show exactly why Conan O'Brien is so good. If you've never heard what Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward are doing as She & Him, definitely check it out. The closest thing I'd compare it to is Dusty Springfield, but they really just make dreamy sweet pop songs. Enjoy this clip of them getting in the holiday spirit with Conan.



And finally, after watching the clip below, I think Funny or Die needs to add a third option, because this clip featuring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly as, respectively, David Bowie and Bing Crosby, is - at least until the very funny ending - simply sweet. And with that, I'm off, because I had to get up at 6 a.m. and make a shrimp and grits casserole (office holiday feast day, huzzah!), so I'm already running behind. Enjoy this clip, and have a perfectly passable - if not downright festive - Wednesday. Peace out.

Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy with Will Ferrell & John C. Reilly from Will Ferrell

DVD review: "Community" season one

While watching the sometimes uneven but often very hilarious first season of NBC's Community on DVD, I had to wonder: Why don't more TV shows aiming for the funny take on college?

Teen shows often avoid it like the plague. Judd Apatow and his crew found gold - if for only one season - with Undeclared, the natural successor to Freaks and Geeks. But not until Joel McHale and his Spanish study group at Greendale Community College entered NBC's Thursday night lineup last fall has a show so successfully tapped into the contradiction that our four years or so of "higher learning" are often the silliest and most hedonistic time of people's lives.

Watching the first six or so episodes of Community, last fall and again back-to-back on DVD, I really wasn't sure NBC had a winner on its hands. One of the show's biggest assets on paper was also - at least to me - its biggest early problem: A little Joel McHale goes a long way.

His character, a former lawyer booted from his profession because he had a fraudulent college degree, has all the often-misplaced ego that he should have, but McHale just doesn't have the comic chops to make his Jeff Winger much more at all than a one-dimensional wise ass. The character would be much funnier if, like Jason Bateman's Michael Bluth on Arrested Development, he were more comically unaware of the fact that he's the king of crazy in a group that has tons of it.

It's when Community really became more of an ensemble production and tapped into all of its comedic assets - and the genuine geek bona fides of at least two of its stars - that the show really got into its groove. By the time Abed's (Danny Pudi) Dark Knight rescues McHale and a rather disastrously high Chevy Chase (dressed, naturally, as the Beastmaster) from a collapsing fort of tables and chairs at Annie's (Alison Brie) Halloween/Day of the Dead party in episode six ("Introduction to Statistics"), you knew this was like nothing else on TV right now in all the best ways.

From this turning point, Pudi's Abed and Donald Glover's Troy get a lot more screen time, and are naturally just very funny together. They also give the show its genuine geek appeal, making its frequent pop-culture spoofs hit their target much more often than they miss. It all comes together perfectly in season one when the two of them are serenading their rogue lab mouse, naturally named Fievel, to the strains of "Somewhere, Out There," as Senor Chang (the riotously funny Ken Jeong) is trying to salsa dance his way back into his ex-wife's heart to the Celtic sounds of Greene Day. This close to episode 10, "Environmental Science," is pretty much comic perfection.

And the women of Community more than hold their own in all this madness. Brie's Annie plays up her young eagerness, and finds a natural counterpart in Gillian Jacobs' prematurely jaded Britta, while Yvette Nicole Brown's Shirley turns what could have been a stock character - the overly religious black woman - into one who gives as good as she gets when the barbs really start to fly.

As the show progressed, creator Dan Harmon kept injecting it with more and more genuine political incorrectness, giving it an edge sorely missing from so much of what passes now for situational comedy. That reaches its height in the "Basic Genealogy" episode, in which Abed's darkly veiled Muslim sister gets called, in short order, a black ghost and then Phantom Menace (it's OK to admit, that's very funny), and later, in a game of Pictionary, Pierce (Chase) draws about the most offensive thing you can think of for the word "windmill." It's all so incredibly wrong that it works just right.

Community hit its real season one peak, however, with the "Modern Warfare" episode, which manages to sharply skewer just about every sci-fi/action movie cliche you can think of in the space of 22 minutes or so. From the early moment when Pudi utters the line, "Come with me if you don't want paint on your clothes," you know (or at least I did) this will be the funniest prime time moment of the 2009-10 TV season. If you've never seen this show, which has risen to the top of NBC's Thursday lineup in my book, this one episode would make the perfect introduction.

Chief among the extras in this set are the commentaries featuring cast members for every single episode, only a few of which I've had the time to get through so far. Another feature that works very well is the outtakes featured on each disc. Rather than the usual clips of characters breaking out in giggles in the middle of their lines, they spotlight the natural give and take of some truly funny people and what most makes Community a real winner: What NBC has on its hands, for as long as it wants to keep it on the air, is a genuine comedy troupe on top of its game.

And does the mojo continue into season two? So far, solidly yes. The show bagged the quickest and perhaps biggest laugh of the new season by having Glover wake up in his Spider-Man pajamas to open the season, and last week's zombie episode "Epidemiology" was as fall-down funny as the pilot for Frank Darabont's The Walking Dead was utterly terrifying (and watching them back to back, as I did on the DVR, is a real trip.) The bottom line: Community is much more fun than I ever remember college being, and well worth tuning in for every Thursday night or on DVD.

For Wednesday, a small cache of clips

Danny Boyle's "127 Hours," coming Nov. 5, is certain to be one of the more difficult films to watch this fall, but I'm betting on one of the best too.

The story of climber Aron Ralston, to be played by Freak James Franco, will certainly be a claustrophobic one once he gets trapped. If you're unfamiliar with the story, it's the true saga of mountain climber Ralston, who got trapped for the titular "127 Hours" in a Utah canyon and, well, had to go to extreme measures to get out.

What's great about this first teaser trailer is it starts with all the style and optimism of Boyle's best flicks and then just smacks you with what it's really about at the very end (and it looks great full screen.) Enjoy.



OK, it's TV from here on out today, and I probably should have started with this one, because it's just going to be an awesome epic dose of awesomeness, to exaggerate just a little.

Once you watch this clip, and if you like zombie movies (and who in the world doesn't?), however, I think you'll agree it's not exaggerating by much at all. AMC announced yesterday that Frank Darabont's "The Walking Dead," based on the comic by Robert Kirkman, will make its debut appropriately enough on Halloween and have, initially at least, a six episode run.

You know, of course, from the title alone what this is all about, and the trailer certainly doesn't disappoint. It lures you in with a slow beginning before the mayhem really begins just up the road from me in Atlanta, where the zombie apocalypse will certainly begin when it really does happen. Enjoy.



And finally today, anyone who's been here before knows I'm a rather avid fan of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, especially when they're simply out to be extremely funny. If you've ever watched HBO's "The Ricky Gervais Show" or listened to any of their podcasts, you know there's a third wheel when they're at their best, one Karl Pilkington. Though presented (and mocked and bullied) by Gervais as an idiot, Pilkington is also, in his own way, a bit of a comic genius, and now he's gotten his own series.

To be broadcast on the UK's Sky1, it's called "An Idiot Abroad," and springs from Pilkington's observation on a podcast that, if I remember this right, the Seven Wonders of the World are "a bit crap" (though he himself has never left England to actually find out.) Well, Gervais and Merchant of course jump all over that and send Pilkington around the globe, and as you'll see from the trailer below, the results are predictably silly. Enjoy the trailer, keep an eye out for this and let me know when it appears on this side of the pond, and have a perfectly passable Wednesday. Peace out.