Friday, August 11, 2006

Snakes on a Rhythmball Paddle


I cannot WAIT for "Snakes on a Plane." Oh ho, laugh if you will, but in these days of movie plagiarism, this recent offering at least appears 1) new and 2) creative. I am getting very tired of seeing the same movie advertised every decade. From the morphing of "The Cutting Edge" to "Save the Last Dance" to "Step Up," don't the movie studios realize that we aren't spending money to go to the theaters because we've already seen everything they're showing? Like, decades ago?


While I'm ranting, I might as well continue: we saw "Syriana" a couple of nights ago. OK, we saw the first 35 minutes of "Syriana." After the (spoiler) kid died in the swimming pool accident (I blame Al Queda), we turned it off. It was the sloppiest screenwriting I'd ever seen. I could just picture the script meetings:


A: I can't figure out how to tie in the Pakistani guy.
B: That's OK. Just add 10 more characters in 12 different locations. We'll dazzle the audience with our foreign settings.
A: When you say "dazzle," don't you mean "bullsh*t"?
B: You mean there's a difference?
A: But how do I get the audience to care about my characters if I introduce 40 of them in 30 minutes?
B: Kill off Matt Damon's kid. Gets 'em every time.


Frankly, if a movie is going to kill a character who is under the age of 16, there should be a warning label on the box. Because it's really messing with my movie-viewing sensiblity. When DH and I went to see "Me and You and Everyone we Know," I couldn't allow myself to lose myself in the sweetness of it because I was completely convinced that someone was going to get hit by a car. And then, at the end of the movie, nobody did get hit by a car. We watched it again on DVD the other night and I enjoyed it so much more, knowing that nobody was going to meet a tragic end.


Less than a week until "Snakes on a Plane"! To pass the time, I've been leaving Samuel L. Jackson voicemails for people. You can do it, too!


Snakes on a Plane, Unhealthy Obsession, Need to Get Out More