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(CNN) -- If you grew up in the 1980s there's nothing guaranteed to make you feel older than a trip to the movies. "Conan the Barbarian", "The Thing" and "Footloose"... What's next? "Top Gun"?

But if there have to be remakes, then let them all be as much fun as Craig Brewer's "Footloose."

Brewer's previous movies, "Hustle & Flow" and "Black Snake Moan," were southern exploitation pictures with a smooth retro gloss, their sleazy trappings disguising a heart of pure vanilla. But both showed a real feel for music: hip-hop and 12-bar blues respectively. That's a good starting point when it comes to "Footloose," a fairly trite rock-n-roll rebellion story that's redeemed by its faith in dance.

The 1984 original was the first screenplay by songwriter Dean Pitchford, and Brewer sticks close enough to the template that Pitchford shares a screenplay credit with him here. Both versions get bogged down in silly speechifying, but in almost every respect Brewer's high fidelity cover version improves on the previous movie. It's sharper, punchier, better written and mostly better acted too. If anything the city-country cultural divide cuts deeper today than it did in the Reagan era, but Brewer shifts the action a few degrees south and navigates a more even-handed course between them. His small town, Bomont, Tennessee, is quite sympathetically drawn. And if the city by-laws prohibiting loud music, drink and public dancing make the local elders come off like the Taliban, Dennis Quaid's Reverend Moore is not the shrill evangelical caricature John Lithgow played, but a concerned parent and pastor who assumes responsibility for protecting his flock in the wake of a personal tragedy.

(CNN) -- Should zombies rise up someday soon and take over the world because of an unidentified plague or virus that's caused the collapse of modern society as we know it, how would you react?

Such is the fundamental question of AMC's widely successful show "The Walking Dead," which returns this Sunday for its second season.

Based on Robert Kirkman's comic book, the series is one of the more odd yet complex dramas on television today. At its core, it's about survival and the psychological stress that spending every waking moment together has on a small group. But that could be said about all human beings in that surviving the world is something we do on a daily basis; the trick with "The Walking Dead" is that a pack of ravenous zombies could be lurking around the corner, ready to make you into dinner.

Viewers are consistently presented with questions of morality, instinct and terror, where plots are less about discovery -- there's no race for the cure -- and more about the struggle to exist.

CNN checked in with "The Walking Dead" showrunner/executive producer Glen Mazzara to see what's in store for season two, how the show finds its storytelling voice and just how they get that authentic zombie feel.

CNN: On average, how much are you thinking about zombies each day?

Mazzara: All of them. I wake up thinking about zombies. How do I keep them scary? What's new, what's different, what's fun that we can do with zombies?

CNN: How did this show become so popular on just a six-episode first season? What's the appeal?

Mazzara: It's visceral. There's an immediacy for anyone watching it, where they think, "what would I do?"

People buy into the idea that a plague could wipe out things. We've seen that, and it's in the zeitgeist now. It's playing on the everyman level where it's about the survivors and not about what happened to the collapse of government or infrastructure. You get in the car, and it runs out of gas, and then what? Meanwhile, you're being chased by zombies.

CNN: Remember the swine flu? That was a legit panic.

Mazzara: Yeah. It's like when you're watching a horror movie and the people move into a haunted house. And you're wondering, why didn't think just move out? Everything our survivors are doing, hopefully, strikes people as realistic. They're making decisions that ordinary people would make. And none of those decisions have very good consequences.

CNN: There's also weird psychological dynamics between the characters where they have to get along while also ensuring that they survive, they want to survive, and everyone around them survives too, because as far as they know, they're it.

Okavango Delta, Northern Botswana (CNN) -- The hot African sun is turning cool and big and a deep soft orange, and the impala are getting mighty jumpy. They ought to be. A half-kilometer across the grassy bush, we're watching a pack of eight African wild dogs, downwind and sniffing a scent, planning their evening hunt.

We have a plan, too. We're going to follow them.

Not far away, a large herd of zebra also knows this is the most dangerous time. They've pastured all day in a broad, open field, nibbling vegetation. As long as these prey remain in an open area, they are safe, because they can see the predators coming. They can outrun all but the cheetah, and in a large group, the likelihood of any particular individual being caught is lessened.

A herd of wildebeest is mingling with the zebra and following them through the tall grass. "The zebra and the wildebeest, they are friends," our guide, 46-year old, bush-born Botswanan Kgotla "Balepi" Mokwami of Kwara Camp, tells me.

"The zebra have short necks, but the wildebeest, they have long necks. So the zebras' heads are high and they can see above the grass and they tramp it down low enough so the wildebeest, whose heads are low, can see too."

If you go: Visiting the Okavango Delta

It's like the baboons and the impala, Mokwami explains. Earlier, we watched impala graze near a family of baboons, with one baboon sitting on a stump, keeping watch for lion, cheetah and leopard. If the baboon detects danger, the impala will know, too. But now the night approaches, and the darkness will neutralize the prey's advantage. They must head for the shrubs and trees to hide. But they know that is where the predators sit in wait. This just might be their time to die.

Washington (CNN) -- Air traffic controllers may be taking more risks in handling airliners under a 2-year-old rule allowing them to report errors without fear of punishment, congressional investigators say in a report highlighting a spike in incidents.

Controllers and the FAA, however, say the rule has actually improved safety.

The report by the Government Accountability Office -- which notes a 53 percent increase in controller errors within five miles of airports and a 166 percent jump in errors handling approaching flights up to 40 miles out -- comes at a time of remarkable commercial aviation safety in the United States. The nation has not seen a fatal airliner crash since 2009, the same year the rule went into effect.

The increase in errors "began a notable climb in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2009, peaked in the second quarter of fiscal year 2010, and remained at rates higher than the historical average through the second quarter of 2011," the GAO said in its report.

The FAA says the jump coincides with the non-punitive reporting rule, which took effect in July 2009. That system encourages air traffic controllers to voluntarily report errors so that dangerous patterns can be identified and the system can be made safer, the agency said.

The system, which protects controllers who report efforts from legal or disciplinary action, has "produced a wealth of information to help the FAA identify potential risks in the system and make corrections," FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said.

"More information will help us find problems and take action before an accident happens," she said.

But the GAO said FAA officials who are not identified in the report told investigators that the system also may reduce personal accountability and "may make some air traffic controllers less risk averse in certain situations." That may have led to more errors, according to the GAO, which also said some FAA officials told them the rule also limits the ability of managers to take action against employees who make a mistake.

The GAO also said 65% of the errors reported through the non-punitive system, some of which may have involved violations of the standards separating aircraft in flight, were not fed into a separate FAA reporting system for operational errors. That may have reduced the number of errors directly reported to FAA supervisors, the GAO said.

Rep. Thomas E. Petri, the Aviation Subcommittee chairman and one of six Congress members who requested the GAO study, said the spike in errors raises significant concerns.

1. Jordyn Wieber will be NBC's "it" girl in 2012. Wieber, 16, exceeded considerable hype in her first year as a senior gymnast. She capped a 2011 all-around trifecta by edging Russian cofavorite Viktoria Komova, also 16, for the world championship, one of her three medals won this past week in Tokyo. Wieber had put everyone on notice in March, defeating 2010 world champion Aliya Mustafina at the American Cup, and in August, winning the U.S. title by the largest margin since the sport scrapped the perfect 10 in 2006.

Turnover among elite female gymnasts is staggering -- the top U.S. all-around finisher at the Olympics or worlds has been different each of the last eight years -- but Wieber has staying power. She's young enough to still be on the rise, and her primary domestic competition is either coming off major injury or too young to compete in London. Wieber also has the personality that lends itself to NBC's prime-time audience, beginning with her adoration of a certain teen singer with a similar sounding last name. Nastia Liukin, Shawn Johnson and Alicia Sacramone are all bidding for Olympic returns, but Wieber will be the primary gymnastics attraction next summer.

2. The U.S. women are the best in the world, which is ominous. The Americans captured the team title for the third straight time at a world championships the year before an Olympics. That didn't work out so well in 2003 and 2007, as they were bumped to silver at the 2004 and 2008 Olympics. But they should be bigger favorites this time around given their utter dominance in Tokyo. The U.S. led after every rotation despite choosing three gymnasts from a pool of five while every other country had a pool of six (Sacramone tore her Achilles in training, and alternate Anna Li was out with an abdominal injury). Only one member of the U.S. quintet had been to a world championship before -- Aly Raisman. Now they're all proven big-meet performers.

Then consider who could be swapped into the lineup next year: Liukin, Johnson, Sacramone, 2005 world champion Chellsie Memmel, 2009 world champion Bridget Sloan and two-time world all-around medalist Rebecca Bross. In 2012, every country will be limited to five gymnasts (down from seven in the 1990s and six in the 2000s), making the competition for spots on the U.S. team every bit as tough as the Olympics themselves. The U.S.' biggest flaw going into the world championships was a lack of depth on uneven bars, which just happens to be a strength for Liukin, Memmel, Sloan and Bross. At this point, Russia looks like the only nation with any hope of keeping the U.S. women from their first Olympic team gold since Atlanta's Magnificent Seven.

3. Kohei Uchimura may become the greatest of all time, but he's not there yet. The Japanese superstar won four medals and steamrolled to his third straight men's all-around title, winning by a whopping 3.1 points, the same margin separating second place and 13th place. No other man or woman has won three straight world titles, and here's the kicker: Uchimura is just 22 years old. The other recent dominant men's gymnasts -- Alexei Nemov, Yang Wei -- didn't hit their Olympic peak until their mid-20s. So he will probably be even better in London.

Uchimura's routines aren't the most difficult, but nobody can match his precision. His closest pursuers don't compete with him -- they are in awe of him. The way he smiles after each breathlessly stuck routine, he, too, may be a little astonished. But to call him the perfect gymnast, or to anoint him as the greatest in history, is premature. By his stratospheric standards, Uchimura at times looked human in Tokyo. He fell on his most pressure-packed routine, high bar in the team finals, which almost allowed the U.S. to overtake Japan for silver. Uchimura then ran out of gas in event finals, spinning off the pommel horse and having a major form break on rings, missing the medals in both.

EUGENE, Ore. -- For two seasons now, quarterback Darron Thomas and tailback LaMichael James have been the keys to Chip Kelly's sports-car offense, teaming up to win 17 of Oregon's last 19 contests. However, for most of the second half of the No. 9 Ducks' Saturday night game against No. 18 Arizona State, neither Batman nor Robin graced the playing field.

Oregon lost James to a dislocated elbow in last week's game against Cal, in which he posted his third-straight 200-yard rushing performance. Thomas went down with a leg injury in the third quarter Saturday after competing 13-of-17 passes for 187 yards and two touchdowns. The Ducks, now without two players who'd accounted for 74 percent of their total offense on the season, fell behind 24-21 shortly after Thomas exited.

Big whoop.

The Ducks (5-1, 3-0 Pac-12) won going away, 41-27, putting up their usual 536 yards in the process. They scored 17 unanswered points after Thomas jogged to the locker room, the offense quickly adjusting with a new quarterback, redshirt freshman Bryan Bennett, and its defense seeming to grow stronger as the game went on.

"They understand that people getting banged up is part of the game," said Kelly. "We don't talk about injuries, we talk about opportunities for someone else."

Kelly has been doing this for five years now, dating to his days as Oregon's offensive coordinator. The star running back's not available? Oregon goes to the air more, gaining 187 of its 245 yards through the air in the first half. The quarterback goes down? Enter Bennett, a fleet-footed redshirt freshman who ran the triple jump in high school. Executing the read-option like a veteran, Bennett broke off 36- and 18-yard runs on his second full drive of the half.

"He's kind of fast, isn't he?" joked Duck offensive lineman Carson York. "We're really lucky to have a really good backup."

Bennett did this once before. As a sophomore at Crespi High School in Encinco, Calif., he took over as starter after current UCLA quarterback Kevin Prince went down with a knee injury in the first game of the season. Oregon didn't ask him to do too much (he attempted just five passes), but he managed the game well. Offensive coordinator Mark Helfrich said he made the right read "nearly 100 percent of the time" on those zone-run plays.

"I've been put in this position before," said Bennett. "It taught me that all you can do is stay poised."

Oregon even briefly lost James' backup, Kenjon Barner, for a brief stretch of the third quarter. No worries. The Ducks have explosive true freshman De'Anthony Thomas, who ran for a 16-yard touchdown and a 29-yard gain. And Barner came back in plenty of time to wear down the Devils (5-2, 3-1) in the second half, finishing with 171 yards on 31 carries.

LAS VEGAS -- It was supposed to be a day of potential glory and fortune for Dan Wheldon as he had a chance to split a $5 million bonus with a fan if he could win Sunday's IndyCar World Championships at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Instead, it became one of the darkest days in the history of the sport as the two-time Indianapolis 500 winner was killed in a horrific crash on Lap 11.

Wheldon, who won the Indy 500 in 2005 and 2011, was driving one of 15 cars involved in a fiery massive crash between Turns 1 and 2. His car went airborne and flew high into the fence before landing upside down on the edge of the wall. Wheldon's helmet hit the wall, causing an "unsurvivable head injury," said IndyCar CEO Randy Bernard, who announced Wheldon's death, at 33, just after 6 p.m. ET.

The impact was so severe the roll hoop broke off the top of his car. Wheldon was unconscious when safety workers arrived at the scene of his crash. A yellow tarp was quickly placed over his car to block the others from seeing the damage inside his cockpit.

The red flag was displayed by IndyCar Series officials, stopping the race. The remaining drivers later attended a meeting, where the decision was made to end the race. Approximately 10 minutes after that gathering concluded, they climbed into their cars and formed rows of three on the racetrack for a five-lap tribute to Wheldon. Crew members of every team, along with series officials, lined the edge of pit road as spectators stood politely and applauded on each of the five laps.

"Amazing Grace" and "Danny Boy" were played in a solemn tribute to the likable driver from Emberton, England, who earlier in the day had agreed to a full-time ride with team owner Michael Andretti for the 2012 season, to replace the departing Danica Patrick. Wheldon is survived by his wife, Susie, and two sons, Sebastian, 7, and Oliver, 7 months. They were at the race along with other family members.

As Dario Franchitti pulled into the pit area, his wife, actress Ashley Judd, awaited the driver on pit road. She pulled a floppy sun hat over her eyes to hide some of the tears. When Franchitti climbed out of the car, they hugged. Then Franchitti hugged his father, George, as both men broke down in tears. He then turned back to Judd and they shared a tearful embrace. Franchitti called Wheldon one of his best friends.

The race had been scheduled to be followed by the 2011 Championships Celebration, an awards banquet, on Monday night at Las Vegas' Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, but IndyCar officials announced late Sunday that the event had been canceled.

A public memorial for Wheldon will be held at a later date.

In a cruel twist of irony, the accident was grimly reminiscent of a championship battle Franchitti was involved in back in 1999. On that day, his best friend, Greg Moore, was killed in virtually the same type of impact in a single-car crash on Lap 10 in the final race of the season. Moore's father, Ric, was at Sunday's race, his first time attending an IndyCar race since his son was killed 12 years ago.

Franchitti finished second in that's year's championship and won this year's over Will Power, but had no reason to celebrate.

"One minute you're joking around during driver intros and then the next moment Dan's gone," Franchitti said. "I told [Dan's 2-year-old son] Sebastien Thursday night at the parade, that I've known his dad since he was your size. Dan was 6 years old when I met him. We lost -- I lost -- everyone in the IZOD IndyCar Series considered Dan a friend. He was just one of those special, special people. I'm trying to hold it together."

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Google is killing off Buzz, the company's 18-month-old first try at creating a social network.

Buzz will be shut down "in a few weeks," Google said in a blog post Friday, as the company redirects its social focus toward its new Google+ network. The move is part of a broader effort at Google to cull its product portfolio and shut down low-profile offerings. "More wood behind fewer arrows" was the way Google put it in the July blog post announcing its first wave of product eliminations.

Google added a few more projects to the scrap heap on Friday, including Code Search, a tool for finding open-source code on the Web, and Jaiku, a Twitter-like microblogging service that Google acquired in 2007.

Eliminating Buzz will help Google close the book on one of its most explosive missteps. When Buzz launched in February 2010, Gmail users were furious to discover that the network's default settings automatically set members to follow their most e-mailed contacts -- and then posted those contacts publicly after a user "buzzed" about something.

One woman wrote a profanity-laden, much-circulated blog post about how Buzz revealed some of her Internet activity to her abusive ex-boyfriend and his friends.

Within two days of Buzz's launch, Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) made changes to the defaults that largely satisfied the concerns of users and organizations dedicated to information privacy.

But the damage was already done: Critics wondered openly about Google's dedication to user privacy. The debacle lead to a class-action lawsuit and a settlement deal with the Federal Trade Commission, which now requires Google to undergo annual privacy audits.

Users won't be able to post on Buzz after the shutdown, but they will be able to view their existing content on their Google Profile and download it using an export tool called Google Takeout.

(CNN) -- Director and actor Orson Welles once said, "If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story."

Of course, the story of Occupy Wall Street and the movement it's sparking across the nation is just beginning to be written. But those watching it unfold, especially those of us who are sympathetic to the movement, are eager to know how it might end.

Will politicians start paying more attention to people instead of profits? Will the "99%" persuade the "1%" to be more compassionate? Will the protests spawn a new generation of engaged citizens, the "flower power" for the 21st century? If the occupations aren't forcibly ended by authorities, how will they stay visible in our easily distracted society? And how will the protesters stay warm and dry?

Sally Kohn

When I asked Occupy Wall Street organizer Jesse Myerson about the possible endgame of the movement, he replied, "That's a dumb question. The movement isn't yet 3 weeks old." Fair point. As a culture, we have a short attention span; we're too inclined to see everything as a sitcom and want to fast-forward to the end. Myerson was being a bit evasive. And this makes sense. Critics of Occupy Wall Street may demand to know the agenda -- the ending -- of the movement, but perhaps its ongoing victory is that its story is even being told.

Americans had become shockingly complacent in the face of outrageous inequality and injustice, seeming to defend the special rights of yacht-owning "job creators" while swallowing the notion that millions of our fellow citizens can be both working and poor. One poster at Occupy Wall Street read, "The light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off." That we're now having a public debate about inequality and the ugly road to nowhere on which many hardworking Americans are traveling suggests that, whatever Occupy's ultimate agenda, the process of movement building -- the fact of its existence -- may be its essential point.

Social movements spring up not to achieve narrow policy goals but to shift the broader public debate, mobilizing public will toward change. Polls show this movement's message against corporate greed not only has wider support than either political party in Washington but wider support than the tea party. "Occupy" protests are springing up in unlikely places, from Idaho to Indiana, and drawing unlikely protesters like soccer moms, small-business owners and, yes, tea party members. That you're even reading this column is evidence the protests are making a mark.

Even if the 99% movement -- as it's coming to be known in some quarters -- fizzles in the coming months, historically it may be the spark that lights another flame that ultimately leads to change. Just as interest on a bank account multiplies and compounds over time, so does outrage and resistance.

(CNN) -- It seems fitting that Herman Cain has surged into the top tier of the GOP candidates just as "Celebrity Apprentice" announces its new cast for the upcoming season.

I suspect a year from now the two will be one.

After all, reality TV is at its best when there's a villain we can't take our eyes off of, and over the past two weeks, can you think of anyone who one has benefited more from playing the bad guy than Cain? Back in August he received less than 10% of the Iowa straw poll vote. At the beginning of September, he was still near the bottom in the polls. Now he's a front-runner.

How'd he do it?

By imitating Omarosa -- the villain from the first season of "The Apprentice," who has since made a career out of being bad on reality TV. You see there are three things the media absolutely loves: white women (preferably in jail or missing), a sex scandal (preferably with photos or text messages) and inflammatory comments (preferably involving black people, so we can quote Jesse Jackson).

The latter's particularly effective in raising a person's profile because like with reality TV, the more controversial things you say, the more screen time you get, the more popular you become.

This is why I believe Herman Cain stopped running for president on September 28.

That was the day he went on CNN's "The Situation Room" and told Wolf Blitzer he believed the reason blacks don't vote for Republicans is because they're "brainwashed." Days later he went on ABC's "This Week" with Christiane Amanpour and repeated himself. Sunday he went back to CNN and told Candy Crowley that he didn't "believe there is racism in this country today that holds anybody back in a big way," and by Monday he was in the zone, telling Fox's Sean Hannity that he "left the Democrat plantation a long time ago."

The more inflammatory his statements were, the more television time he received, and the more his numbers climbed. He's not campaigning for president; he's auditioning to be the next pop culture bad boy, and he's using the media to do it.

Now, some pundits say Cain catapulted from curious long shot to unlikely front-runner because of the growing popularity of his 9-9-9 tax plan, which calls for a 9% national sales tax, a 9% personal income tax rate and a 9% corporate tax rate. I say he's been touting that plan of his for months, but he didn't move the needle until he started tossing the poor and the black community under the bus two weeks ago.

Since the change in strategy, everyone from Cornel West to Harry Belafonte to yes, Jesse Jackson (told you we love him) has taken time to condemn Cain, which now enables him to frame himself as a victim of internalized racism. That tack will certainly keep this routine of his going for at least another week.