Tribulation Thursday Double Feature

Fido (2006)

This was excellent! Very funny alternate 1950s set after The Zombie Wars. If you liked Lassie movies (or didn't like them at all), this is pretty cute. But then it's Billy Connolly as the "tame" zombie, Fido, so it's going to be good, right?

You know I am.

This is the story of a "weird" kid named Timmy (played by K'Sun Ray (no, seriously, that's his name)) with no friends, a dad with a zombie phobia, a mom (Carrie-Anne Moss) with social-climbing anxieties, and their new servant zombie, Fido.

But it's not just cute zombie jokes. There are some just freaking wrong things going on here; most notably, Tim Blake Nelson's relationship with his young female zombie slave, Tammy. Granted, she was kind of hot, for a nasty dead cannibal, but still. That's just not right.

And I just couldn't stop imagining Timmy's dad (played by Dylan Baker of Happiness) explaining to young Timmy why he would never fuck him, just his friends. But he still loves him.

Moving right along...


Battlefield Baseball (2003)

So I thought this would be more serious. Which I know sounds kind of dumb in itself since the film is called Battlefield Baseball, but really. I was expecting something with jokes, but with action and violence more along the lines of Versus, since it was written and directed by that film's co-writer, Yudai Yamaguchi, or at least something more like Kung Fu Hustle (but I guess that's just because that director, Stephen Chow, is responsible for Shaolin Soccer). But this is pretty much a straight on comedy, with zombie undertones and plenty of off-screen violence.

But, with that said, I still laughed a lot. It played with many of the conventions of sports films, especially the whole "Dads and Baseball" meme that apparently can make just about any man but me cry like a baby. It's based on a manga, and most of the acting and effects are exaggerated to match the comic's original presentation.

It's the story of Jubeh, a troubled kid who's sworn never to play baseball again, after his super-pitch blew a hole in his dad, killing him. Now he transfers from school to school, starting fights and creating a reputation for being a troublemaker. In fact, he's a noble baseball warrior and is recruited by his new school's principal to join the baseball team because they are about to play the evil Gedo team, who always kill all of their opponents. That's all I"m going to say about that.

All in all, if you're not looking for lots of zombie gore and violence, but just want a pretty entertaining comedy with unexplained zombie elements, this is one to check out. It was everything that the Piece of Shit That Shall Not Be Named wanted to be. Maybe the Japanese are just funnier than the Germans?

Could be.