Cloudy With a Chance of Zombies

That's a pretty good post title right there. Somebody run with it, I assume that at the very least it's a nice story seed. But that's not the point. I saw Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs before I left for Vegas, and loved the film. I've never read the book, so my expectations were set by the trailers. If I were to rank it with my summer movies it would go in the top five, but summer was so long ago! I should start a new list. Today I saw Zombieland with my brother, and we both liked it. He was disappointed that one of the best gags in the film was one he dreamed up but will now never get to use. I'm here to tell you that any movie that can independently arrive at one of Randy's favorite ideas is pretty darn smart. It was also graphic, gooey, gorey, and gross. But it's a zombie film, so I expected that from the word "go." The movie is not about how the zombies came to be, or what waits for humanity beyond the zombie apocalypse. It's about four people trying to get along. And not get eaten. If you MUST see a zombie film, Zombieland is a fine choice. But Meatballs is a much safer theater experience, even with the 3-D glasses. In completely unrelated news, the much-anticipated (hah! I kid!) Fleen interview is up. Also, PBS did a piece on webcomics in which they interviewed Randall Munroe, R. Stevens, and me. Both articles are good reads even if the ground is pretty heavily trodden already. In retrospect, however, I think I was too verbose by far. If I had to sum up my advice to anybody working in media right now, I'd only need these three words: Own Your Audience.