Zombieland

The commentary track with the director, writers, and leads Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson is an entertaining listen. It is anchored by Fleischer, who is enthusiastic but honest about the film, while there are some nice facts dotted into the mix - want to know where they got the abandoned cars from? Find out here… The group dynamic of the track is a lot easier to absorb than some commentaries, too, with Harrelson's southern drawl very soothing to the ears, though the very wry Eisenberg occasionally makes word soup with his incredibly fast speech patterns; so fast, in fact, that I thought it may be a technical error with the disc, until I considered that none of the other participants sounded ‘off’. Still, good stuff all the same.

The two featurettes, In Search Of Zombieland and Zombieland Is Your Land, form a solid half hour of making of material. The former features the writers, actors, and directors selling the film, in addition to providing insight into the production, specifically the make-up process. The latter featurette is more interestingly focused on the production design and is a good watch for anyone who wants to know about this area of filmmaking. One tip I recommend for watching these is to match the generic rock songs to a real life counterpart, as both featurettes are presented with constant background music, MTV-style.

A really nice addition to the extras is visual-effects progression clips, which illustrate how CGI was augmented with the real life footage. The promo trailers are a bit unique too, as they feature Harrelson and Eisenberg in character, answering fan questions about the film. The seven deleted scenes are pretty unremarkable and wisely excised from the film. And lastly, for those who are interested, this is the first release I have seen with a ‘Thank You’ for buying this DVD message, and to which I respond: ‘You’re welcome’, as this is an all round concise but decent package.