What was the movie John Cusack was watching? Why, it's this...

Also here's some more information 2012 collected about the inevitable end of the world and the roots of the problem...

B Roll: The Cardboard Crazies Were Right:

So how exactly do you make a feel-good romantic comedy wrapped inside a blood-soaked future where the human race has reached a diseased dead end? In Zombieland, director Ruben Fleischer does it by combining your typical college nerd shut-in character Columbus with a world gone mad. Though you'd expect that a skinny dork would be the last person to survive a zombie infestation, in fact his antisocial skills serve him well in the apocalypse. "I treated everybody like zombies anyway," he admits in the hilarious voiceover commentary that peppers the movie, along with YouTube-style pop-up text to underscore key points. Like Columbus' "rules" for survival, including "double tap" (always shoot zombies twice) and "avoid bathrooms" (apparently they like to chomp people relaxing in public toilets).

After a World War Z-style disease apocalypse recycles every human in America into a crazed flesh-eater, Columbus goes on a cross-country trek to Ohio to find his parents. He's not sure why - he's never been close to his family - but it seems like the right thing to do. On the way he meets up with maniacal redneck Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), who has lost everything he loves and now takes a perverse joy in killing zombies in the most creative way possible. They strike up a strange but satisfying friendship, and Columbus decides to join Tallahassee on his quest to find the nation's only remaining stash of Twinkies. Because - why not? The world is over. Might as well enjoy processed food items.

Joining their little group are young woman Wichita and preteen Little Rock (everybody goes by the names of their Red State home cities). A shy, funny romance develops between Columbus, whose first semi-sexual experience ended in the lady going zombie on his ass, and Wichita, a con artist who trusts nobody and keeps trying to steal the guys' stuff. Eventually, however, they all decide to trust each other and head to Los Angeles. Little Rock has heard there's an amusement park there that's free of zombies, and the group decides to indulge her fantasy because - why not? Along the way, they bond over zombie killing and randomly smashing the shit out of horrible tourist shops filled with fake Indian souvenirs.

There are sneakily subversive moments throughout the film which seem to celebrate the demise of America - or, to be more precise, a certain kind of America. The kind of America where wooden Indians are sold in roadside stands; the kind where zombies roam Home Depot and violent videogames prepare you for real life. It's no accident that the movie begins with a tattered American flag that's fallen to the ground in the ruins of a zombie-infested city. But there's an undeniable exuberance to all this destruction. We're not mourning for a lost America, but looking forward to a crazy, liberated new one. This is a dystopia where romance blooms, not the kind where cannibals cook little kids for dinner.

Movies like Superbad and Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist showcased the sweet, romantic side of nerd boys by placing them in ordinary teen courtship situations. The genius of Zombieland is that it swaps out high school for a surreal landscape that nevertheless clearly evokes the emotions associated with growing up. To be young is to laugh at death, and therefore nothing feels more true to that sensibility than finding humor in hordes of diseased, blood-spurting monsters and the social anarchy they sew. Zombieland goes successfully where Buffy the Vampire Slayer has gone before. This is a movie that recognizes nobody reaches adulthood without watching the safe world you once knew go up in flames.

There's always a simmering undercurrent of tenderness that flows beneath the gore and rampant shootings in this flick. Columbus, Tallahassee, Wichita and Little Rock wind up creating a family of outcasts whose connections are genuinely touching. And when Columbus and Wichita finally hook up, their passion for each other is earned. It's not one of those "well we just fought monsters let's hump" deals that you get in countless horror movies. They've gotten to know each other as people, not as zombie fighters. In fact, as I suggested earlier, the zombies are just a sick-comical stand-in for the trashed, psychotic world they're inheriting from the previous generations.

Like all excellent date movies, Zombieland leaves you feeling good - not just about your prospects for getting laid tonight, but about the whole future of our species. We can survive anything, and still keep falling into bumbling, goofy love with each other. Even when zombies are trying to eat our heads.

Defendor, Peter Stebbings' directorial debut, is cut more from the same cloth of Kick-Ass, Matthew Vaughn's upcoming film about an average kid who puts on a superhero costume, than Special, about a man whose antidepressants cause him to believe he has superpowers. But Defendor has a very different tone from Kick-Ass, and is less about the gleeful joys of living out one's comic book fantasies than it is about one man using a superhero identity to right the wrongs in his life. Harrelson plays Arthur Poppington, the man who becomes Defendor in order to bring to justice Captain Industry, a drug and weapons dealer he blames for his mother's death.

The folks at Twitch watched Defendor's premiere at the Toronto Independent Film Festival last night, and reported that the film is not only smart and funny, but contains a surprising amount of depth. Check out the trailer below:

[via Twitch]

After seeing the first Rule for Surviving Zombieland, I hoped we'd be seeing more from this zombie-fighting odd couple, and it looks like my wish has been granted. In the first clip, Woody Harrelson's Tallahassee and Jesse Eisenberg's Columbus explain how a simple household item can save your family from the undead:

Here, Columbus speculates on why zombies never attack one another:

And, in an odd bit of apparent product placement, Columbus lists Bounty paper towels as an essential tool for survival:

And in the final clip, Columbus pulls out a standby, the trusty Swiss Army Knife, and tries to convince us of its endless usefulness:

Harrelson's Tallahassee and Eisenberg's Columbus share Rule #15 of their 47 rules for surviving the undead horde. This is more of a tip than a rule, but it's generally a good idea to steer clear of zombie blood. I hope we'll be seeing more of these "Rule" promos, even though this one isn't quite as funny or zany as most of what we've seen so far. Plus, if I've learned anything from playing endless rounds of Plants vs. Zombies, it's that bowling is an effective means of fending off the walking dead.

[via Trailer Addict]

Despite the unfinished look of the footage, this is the extended trailer shown during Saturday's Comic Con Zombieland panel. The first trailer hinted at the whimsy peeking through the blood and ooze of corpse-eating, fast-moving zombies, but here we get a better sense of the plot. Snatches of the relationship between Jesse Eisenberg's ultra-cautious Columbus and Woody Harrelson's gleeful, spree-killing Tallahassee come to light, and we glimpse how they're outwitted by — and eventually team up with — survivalist sisters Wichita and Little Rock, played by Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin. Plus, there are plenty of frenzied zombie kills, including Tallahassee's "Dueling Banjos" kill and Columbus's futile attempt to suffocate a zombie with a shower curtain.

[via Quiet Earth]

So, what does it take to survive an offbeat version of the zombie apocalypse? Detachment from your fellow survivors, for one thing. Emma Stone, who plays a survivor called Wichita, explains that the characters call each other by the names of the cities where they're from, so they won't develop warm fuzzy feelings for one another and hesitate to deliver the brain-bashing blow when one of them is bitten.

You've also got to be fast on your feet and use whatever is at your disposal to effect zombie slaughter. Each member of the panel share their favorite zombie-killing method:

Woody Harrelson:

Chainsaw.

Emma Stone:

There's a part in the movie where I butted a zombie in the back of the head with my shotgun, and he fell 80 feet to his death.

Jesse Eisenberg:

The end of the movie takes place in this theme park where I ran past this ride that's like this huge swing, knowing that if I pass it at a certain speed and time, the zombies that were chasing me would get hit by it, and it's awesome.

Director Ruben Fleischer:

My favorite was in the first trailer where we did the "Zombie Kill of the Week" and we dropped a piano on a zombie's head

And, in the first two clips from Zombieland, we get a foretaste of Eisenberg and Harrelson's zombie-killing prowess:

We're in Columbus' apartment, where there's a frantic knocking at his door. "Please open up," a girl's voice pleads on the other side. "It's an emergency."

Columbus, in voiceover, muses that it's a miracle. The voice belongs to his hot neighbor in apartment 406.

He opens the door and she runs in, inordinately grateful. She sits on his couch while he pours her a mug of liquid.

She takes a sip, then looks confused. "Mountain Dew."

He's sitting next to her, visibly trying to look and sound as casual as possible. He nods. "Code Red." Looking to prolong this unexpected social contact with a pretty girl, he asks her what happened.

She explains that she was coming home from the bar when a raving homeless man suddenly ran out of the darkness and attacked her. Columbus is appropriately sympathetic. "I haven't even told you the worst part," she says. "He tried to bite me." She is scared and embarrassed and Columbus assures her that what she's feeling is normal, "That's the right kind of fear." She snuggles up to him and closes her eyes. "You know," he thinks, "set aside the feverish homeless cannibal, and I was living the dream."

But Columbus is in for a nasty shock when he wakes the next morning. The girl is still there, but she's no longer the vision of unattainable hotness he passed in the hallways. Instead, she's a sore-covered, blank-eyed, mouth-foaming zombie. And, as he discovers when he runs away from her hungry bite, she's the fast kind of zombie.

Columbus races into the bathroom, but the zombie girl literally manages to get her foot in the door when he tries to close it. The door crushes her ankle with a sickening crunch. "I am so sorry," he tells her, as if she's a living girl and he's just spilled beer down her shirt. He lets go of the door and as she rushes in, he pulls down a clear plastic shower curtain and holds it over her face. It's a shame zombies don't breathe, because soon enough, she's pierced the plastic with her black, oozing tongue, looking like she's going for a grotesque kiss. Once Columbus realizes the shower curtain is a bust, he grabs he lid from the back of his toilet and uses it to smack her across the face.

She's momentarily stunned, and Columbus uses the opportunity to run back into the apartment, shutting the bathroom door behind him. But Zombie Girl has motor skills. She turns the door knob and is soon hot on his trail again, dragging her broken foot behind her. When she reaches Columbus, he hits her again, this time so hard that her neck twists to an unnatural degree. The scene freezes, and Columbus remarks, in voiceover, "That's got to hurt."

In the next scene, Columbus and Tallahassee are about to enter an undead-infested convenience store so Tallahassee can satisfy his Twinkie cravings. Before they go in, Tallahassee turns to Columbus and tells him, "It's time to nut up or shut up."

Columbus mentally notes that, "When Tallahassee goes zombie killing, he sets the standard for not to be fucked with."

Deciding music is the best way to lure the zombies out, he grabs a banjo and plays a few bars of "Dueling Banjos." Sure enough, a zombie comes straight at them, and Tallahassee breaks the banjo over his head. A second goes after Columbus, but Tallahassee grabs a baseball bat from one of the racks and casually kills the zombie with a single whack. "That was incredible," says Columbus. "I know," Tallahassee replies.

Tallahasse's muttering search for Twinkies is interrupted when they spy something more shocking than a zombie: a real live girl, about Columbus' age, asking for help. "What are the odds?" Columbus marvels to himself. "Another marriageable girl to bring home to the folks."

"Please come," she pleads. "It's an emergency." She leads them back into the store room, but before he follows, Columbus props open a side door. "Always know your exit," he advises.

In the store room, the girl and Tallahassee are facing a second, much younger girl who is sitting on a table. Tallahassee makes introductions, "Columbus, Wichita, Little Rock." Then he pulls Columbus aside and explains that Little Rock is Wichita's sister. "The younger one's been bit, but try not to freak them out."

"She's just looking for a way out," Wichita tells him, looking pointedly at the shotgun in his hands.

Columbus protests, "She's just a little girl."

"Don't talk to me like I'm a child," Little Rock snaps. "I made a promise. We already said our goodbyes."

Columbus trains the shotgun on her experimentally, but as it's clear he won't take the shot, she suggests Tallahassee do it instead. Tallahassee agrees and, though he hesitates a bit, lifts up the gun and takes aim.

"Wait!" Wichita says suddenly. "I'll do it."

Glad to be relieved of child-killing duties, Tallahassee hands over the shotgun. Wichita checks the barrel. "Do you need help?" Tallahassee asks.

"Yes," Wichita replies and she whips around, aiming the gun at Tallahassee and Columbus. She demands their weapons, their food, their car. Little Rock hops down from the table and stands beside her sister, beaming.

"What's that on your arm?" Tallahassee demands, nodding to her alleged zombie bite.

Little Rock licks her arm. It's salsa. Habanero style.

Columbus asks why they have to steal their stuff, why the four of them can't just pool their resources. "You made the mistake of trusting us," Wichita tells them. "We won't make the mistake of trusting you."

Zombieland comes out in October, and we cannot wait. [ShockTillYouDrop]

It feels a little Hitchhiker's Guide with the fanciful narrator — or Pushing Daisies — which I'm perfectly all right with. It really is about time Hollywood gave some money to decent writers to make a clever zombie movie that's more about the laughs. Anyone else think Woody just wore whatever he had lying around his house? Here's the official synopsis:

In the horror comedy Zombieland focuses on two men who have found a way to survive a world overrun by zombies. Columbus is a big wuss — but when you're afraid of being eaten by zombies, fear can keep you alive. Tallahassee is an AK-toting, zombie-slaying' bad ass whose single determination is to get the last Twinkie on earth. As they join forces with Wichita and Little Rock, who have also found unique ways to survive the zombie mayhem, they will have to determine which is worse: relying on each other or succumbing to the zombies.

Zombieland will be in theaters October 9th. Which means we'll probably have to wait to see Bill Murray's role, sigh.

The character Charlie Frost looks like a lunatic hippie, mixed with a bit of shock jock. I know I was against Woody being involved in this ridiculous picture, about the world ending according to the Mayan calendar, but I take it all back - all of it. This was the role he was born to play or he's just not acting. Seriously, take away the hair and I this exactly what I would imagine Woody Harrelson is like in real life. Wearing ponchos, driving around in a camper, talking about government conspiracy theories - and then we'd all go get high from the remnants of his now defunct "oxygen bar." I'm for Charlie Frost and his over the top, crazy-eyes viral videos, especially when he hits on caller Linda in the "Super Volcanoes" clip. They're cute and remind me a little of Independence Day.

As for the rest of 2012, well I still don't have the highest of hopes for the struggling limo driver/writer Jackson Curtis (John Cusack) who has to win back the respect of his family and keep them save from the apocalypse. Seems like a lot of juggling - but it is Cusack, so fingers crossed.

Charlie Frost's Animation

Doomsday Seed Bank:

Nanotechnology:

Super Volcanoes

The Institute for Human Continuity (IHC) Lottery

Check out Charlie's website, This Is The End.

No clue who the new partner is, but the trades say Harrelson's zombie fighting partner in crime is an unlikely match to his character. We'll have to wait for more details to surface. But the bigger news is that real Hollywood filmmakers are going to start making undead pictures. Has the world become so over saturated with zombie movies that it's now popular? Is Woody about to break this genre onto the A-lister side of the street? [The Hollywood Reporter]

In an interview with MTV, Harrelson said, “I don’t know why they thought of me, but I like the idea.” Continuing on he explains, “I play a guy who’s been talking for a long time, the whole world thinks he’s crazy." So far, this role isn't that big of a stretch for Harrelson. Anyone else remember when he built an oxygen bar?

"But he’s [the character's] been talking that there’s gonna be hell to pay for what’s been going on ecologically and everything.” 2012 comes out in 2009.

[MTV]