Gangster Squad! doesn’t actually include an exclamation point in its title, but it should. It really, really should. When you open your film with a guy being gorily drawn and quartered and then savaged by wolves, you’ve earned some punctuation. And since the rest of the film is as messy as that poor sap’s goify innards why not let that silly excess spill out onto the poster?

Yes, it is a mess, but a pretty fun one that gets more enjoyable with its bouts of seriousness than its more frequent inanities. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Josh Brolin is Sergeant John O’Mara, a good cop in post-WWII Los Angeles. Sean Penn is Mickey Cohen, the bloodthirsty Jewish gangster who controls the LA underworld. Ryan Gosling is Sergeant Jerry Wooters, who flings his Wooters at every dame in sight, and Nick Nolte is a dead ringer for Mark Wahlberg in 30 or so years.

Less importantly, he’s the LAPD police chief who wants Cohen’s empire brought down and recruits O’Mara to do it. O’Mara is a war vet with experience fighting in occupied territory. He has to work undercover and basically has the authority to kill indiscriminately, which I imagine is pretty useful in situations like this.

Tom Cruise and company were all pretty quick to jump onto and set a release date for the upcoming fourth installment of the Mission Impossible franchise. The only problem was that the film had yet to sign a director. Who could possibly take the helm after sci-fi meganerd J.J. Abrams shared his vision in the last film. Well, according to THR, the studio’s number one choice is Incredibles director Brad Bird.

On the surface, Bird may seem a peculiar choice. The writer-director wrote and directed 1999’s “The Iron Giant” and 2004’s “The Incredibles” as well as 2007’s “Ratatouille” (the latter two earned Oscars for best animated picture), but he has never helmed a live-action feature.

On the other hand, nabbing Bird would be inspired. He is praised for his storytelling skills and is known for his strengths in staging thrilling and intricate action set-pieces as well as fusing the action with large dollops of heart and emotion.

Bird is just one name thrown into the hat along with others such as Edgar Wright and Zombieland director Ruben Fleischer. Brad seems the be at least Cruise’s top pick in the list.

Zombieland was one of the most entertaining films I saw in 2009 and I was eagerly awaiting its arrival on Blu-ray this week. Unlike the George Romero zombie films of the past, Zombieland is a unique blend of “The Odd Couple meets the zombie apocalypse.” Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, and Abigail Breslin have great chemistry together as the last few remaining humans in a world gone zombie.

As a die-hard fan of apocalyptic films such as The Last Man on Earth, The Omega Man and The Quiet Earth, Zombieland takes you into a world that has only recently fallen into chaos and shows how those would react when hordes of flesh eating ghoules are waiting for you around every corner.

As I scrolled through the special features on the Blu-Ray disc, I was excited to see that they had added several features that made the disc worth adding to my vast collection. The first feature is “Beyond the Graveyard” which allows the viewer to access picture in picture commentary throughout the feature to learn more about the scenes and special effects associated with them.

Zombieland opened this week and let me tell you it is, in my opinion, one of the best films of 2009. Only a day into its release Hollywood insiders were predicting the movie could go onto make $30 million in its opening weekend. If that happens it means Zombieland will have made back the $26 million and change it cost to make. While those numbers may not carry the weight of the billion dollars The Dark Knight made Zombieland’s rapid return on investment cannot be overlooked. Hollywood, take note, Zombieland should be the new standard of success.

All that said, I’m not writing a review of Zombieland by any means (Chris already wrote a great one), nor am I looking to talk about the merits of the film, of which there are many. No, I’m casting all the business stuff aside for the moment to speak about one thing: inspiration. You see, immediately after watching Zombieland I got home and was compelled to write (in this case a novel I’m working on). I had in me a burning desire to create. Therein lies the true success of Zombieland. For this writer, it spurred the creative forces that drive cinema.

How did it do this?  Simply put, the film was honest. There was no allusion to a grand design or twist ending. The characters were endearing and story practically A to B simple. Moreover, it defied stock conventions of the genre.  The girls weren’t running away screaming and guys not always the most heroic. These were characters anyone in the theater could relate to personally or through friends they probably know.  Being able to create that rapport with the audience was the secret weapon of Zombieland.  It connected with viewers (trust me on that, I saw the response from the packed theater first hand) and even if only for a few moments at a time they could see themselves in that world of zombies and loved it. Those are the moments writers, specifically, aspire to.

Part monster movie, part buddy road comedy with a dash of romance thrown in, Zombieland manages to deliver on pretty much every level. Featuring terrific performances by the entire cast, including Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin, this film is able to deliver genuine laughs, genuine scares and genuine entertainment for its entire running time. Its a solid piece of filmmaking by director Ruben Fleischer, and writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, that should definitely find an audience.

The premise of the film is, as it should be, relatively simple. The world as we know it has come to an end due to some unspecified reason and the dead are now walking the earth. In this world we first meet Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) who, being the introverted, Mountain Dew drinking, pseudo-loser he is, has managed to stay alive due to his nature and adherence to rules he’s come up with as a new citizen of Zombieland. His rules, such as “Cardio Good, Bathrooms Bad, Always shoot zombies twice, etc.” and his loner, anti-social nature have served him well and enabled him to survive.

So, its somewhat against his better judgment that he decides to team up with Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) on a road trip to find out if any of his family might still be alive in, you guessed it, Columbus. In case you’re wondering, the names characters call each other in Z-land are where they’re from and not their actual names. Better to not develop real ties with anyone seeing as how they might be eaten by zombies at any moment. This provides a bit of insight into the characters and also a bit of humor as well.