Mob Mentality

Ah yes... The ever immortal gutmuncher known as the zombie film. Leave it to the international film community to show us how it's done. Riding the new wave of horror celluloid in France, LA HORDE (or The Horde in english) revolves around a small band of corrupt Paris cops, out for revenge against the gangsters who murders one of their own. It's not until the two factions square off in an abandoned building that the global zombie outbreak happens... Naturally, the survivors are in for a very bad night.

Directed by newcomer Yannick Dahan, this flick ups the ante in a big way, boasting the largest body count (no pun intended) ever on film and cranks the chaos factor way up, making a convincing argument that if the world were to come to an end, this is very well what it could look like! Debuting in France February 10th, American-based IFC has already picked up the film for US distribution. Judging from the early buzz, this is one outbreak I intend to get caught in!

Cool Compact Crime Noir

PLANET GRIFFIN returns to broadcast depth with new pirate material for 2010! THE BANNEN WAY, a new webisode series by Mark Gantt and Jesse Warren, is making the rounds as one of the hottest indie series never to hit broadcast television! This slick neo-crime noir stars co-creator Gantt as Neal Bannen, a casanova con-artist and thief, who's plans to escape the crime time are overshadowed by an underworld who wishes to keep him in primetime! Caught between a crimeboss uncle (played by the smooth Robert Forrester) a detective father (the legendary Michael Ironside), squeezed into robbing a jewish gangster known as The Mensch (Michael Lerner) while, at the same time, avoiding a latin loan shark, a trio of female assassin's (probably the closest we'll come to a live action Danger Girl), and a hot-to-death grifter (Las Vegas' star Vanessa Marcil) who aids Bannen for reasons we're not yet privy to...

... Needless to say, whether Bannen makes it out alive or not, we're definitely gonna have fun finding out! The overall look of the show is a standout among web series shows (shot on the new RED digital camera- see movies like Jumper or District 9 to get an idea), drawing in heavyweight sponsors like Apple, Jaguar, and Ray-Ban. Sony, who recently purchased the series concept last year, highly supports the idea of having the hottest, uber-low budgeted film since Robert Rodriguez shot El Mariachi (not to mention the steady increase in their subsidiary website, CRACKLE)!

Here at PLANET GRIFFIN, the idea of 'Compact Crime Noir' is definitely the future of non-broadcast television... It's the bulk of overly expensive commercial television that's the real crime. But what do I know?! Judge it for yourself...

From Crackle: 1: The Criminal Lifestyle

NEXT 100 : Art Ninja's Moving Silently Among You

The NEXT 100 has always been around in places you least expected, as evidenced in the early magazine promo's for the first DANGERDOOM album done by my work partner and fellow NEXT 100 alum, MYRON 'ART NINJA' MACKLIN. Check out his awesome design skills over at ART NINJA STUDIOS.COM ... In the meantime, there's always room for SPACE HO'S, Coast to Coast!

SIDEBAR And The NEXT 100

Talk about giving LATE thanks. Recently, I got a chance to listen to one of my NEXT 100 brethren, JAY POTTS from the Online Hurt Locker known as THE WORLD OF HURT, giving an interview over at SIDEBAR (Check it out here). I was blown away by his mention of yours truly and PLANET GRIFFIN among one of the
'Original Motivators' of his web comic when he first began--- which in turn drew in everyone from WARREN ELLIS, DWAYNE McDUFFIE, and even AIN'T IT COOL NEWS (People who should've been up on Jay's work SOONER). Jay even makes it a point of highlighting another NEXT 100 alum, JOHN ASTON of RACHEL RAGE fame. (Who, by the way, has another RACHEL RAGE OGN coming REAL soon!)

For those of you who haven't met Jay, you should (when he finally drops the long awaited THRILLSEEKERS OGN, you'll wish you the signing line wasn't SO LONG to get your chance), for those of you who have slept on the website, time to wake that ass up (Click the banner, check the link), and for those of you who thought PLANET GRIFFIN was blowing smoke up your ass when THE NEXT 100 started as 'The Next Generation of Future Hotness in the world of Independant Creators', the time has come for you to FINALLY realize that the Infamous RodBuddah has taken to the mountaintop to spread The NEW INDY COMIC GOSPEL!


THE WORLD OF HURT, OLDE TOWNE COMIX, ART NINJA STUDIOS, GHETTOMANGA, ILL ART STUDIOS, ARIE MUNROE, VIVID PRODUCTIONS, and, of course, PLANET GRIFFIN, are only the beginning--- tune in for THE NEXT 100 additions in 2010!

The BIG BUZZ: Don't Call It A Comeback...

The year: 2010
The badass pirate blogcast: PLANET GRIFFIN
To all my NEXT 100 brethren, I welcome you all into the Brave New World! To all my newcomers, I am your host, the Infamous RodBuddah, and tonight, we welcome back the PLANET GRIFFIN WEEKEND EDITION of THE BIG BUZZ--- and what a buzz it is!

Back in March of last year (sounds funny to think of 2009 as last year, don't it?), a CGI promo came out of Japan prompting the geek blog machine to speculate whether the possibility of a live action STARBLAZERS movie was in the works... Considering that it was posted on YouTube, a lot of people, while thinking it was the coolest version of the Space Cruiser Yamato they'd seen yet, wrote it off as another wishful thought (once you see the anime clips intercut with the CGI, you'd write it off too) ... I'll admit, when I first saw it, I lost my mind (from a geek perspective, of course), especially since I was a HUGE fan of the series back in 79' (the first mainstream exposure of anime in this country, outside of Speed Racer fo course)...


Well, imagine the surprise when it turns out that the CGI promo was actually an international teaser for the live action movie. SPACE CRUISER YAMATO makes its debut Christmas 2010! From the clip, it appears that movie will combine the original StarBlazers series (The Quest for Iscandar) with the more popular second season (The Comet Empire) --- Which is fine by me after seeing the incredible visuals. See for yourself:


The YouTube buzz has already begun, the viewer numbers have already doubled since last nights upload, which makes this come-from-nowhere film a nice surprise in the starting gate of 2010! I can take comfort in the knowledge that I'm not the only one having flashbacks of running home from the bus stop, tearing ass into the house by 4:30 just to see if the Yamato will fire the Wave Motion Gun by the end of the show. This is PLANET GRIFFIN and THE BIG BUZZ.