Like you really need to ask?

Let’s clear something up here: There’s been essentially two levels to the bizzare hype over “Snakes on A Plane.” The first level was the honest one, born when New Line Cinema learned that their perfectly over-expository title has become a go-to laugh-line for web chatting movie geeks and elected to “just go with it.” (In a way, it was no different from the way the producers of “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” were working hard to turn the “did they or didn’t they?” buzz about it’s stars into ticket sales.)

The second level is the one that’s caused all of the silliness and overkill. That would be the level wherein the mainstream entertainment press, who’s cluelessness as to the workings of “geek-based” internet buzz is matched only by their contempt-toward and hyperbolic paranoia-about it, got hold of the story. Or, rather, got hold of what they thought was the story: “Would you look at these NERDS so excited to see a dumb killer-snake movie?” The bemusement (poorly) masked a snide sneer, as if the “internet guys” falling in love with raw stupidity was a validation of everything so much of the traditional film press seems to believe about them… that the demographic they blame for foisting all those Hobbits, zombies and icky-icky-icky superhero movies on them really are just a bunch of weirdos with bad taste.

Which was, of course, missing the point. The crowd that fell hard for this story – about, for the record, a mobster who tries to kill a witness against him by releasing an army of venomous snakes onto the passenger plane the FBI is using to anonymously transport him – did so because it was assured to be a hokey, goofish B-movie. They’re crap-detector is every bit as acute (in most case much more acute) as the average professional critic or entertainment writer, the key difference being that for the archetypal film geek the watching of a wonderfully-bad movie constitutes something of a sport. To put it plainly, if the words “Mystery Science Theater 3000” carry no meaning for you, you’ll never understand what the big deal was about “SoAP.”

This kind of thing has happened plenty of times before, like whenever Uwe Boll releases a new movie, and most memorably for me being a few years back when Vincent D’Onoffrio’s insanely strange delivery of the insanely-awful line “..an ALIEN with a BOMB in it’s RIB-CAGE!!!!!!!” from the (awful) 2002 movie “Impostor” became a summer-long running joke on message board everywhere. The difference was that this time, for really the first time, the studio decided to play along and turn “look at all the people talking about this” into a marketing device. And now that (surprise!) said marketing hasn’t brought about the highest-grossing film in motion picture history, the vultures are out in force: “Y’see!? Y’see!? DOOOM is the fate of he who pays any mind to the web geeks!” Hoping against hope that this will be the one that “does it in,” and they’ll never have to sit through another major movie about a costumed vigilante or a giant gorrilla again.

Humbug and poppycock! The entertainment press, having already completely missed the point of the “Snakes” phenomenon now wants to condemn it for not being what only they ever worried it would be. Nevermind the fact that a mid-budget “how many ways can we find for a snake to kill someone” schlockfest topping the boxoffice is a pretty interesting occurance in it’s own right, the film itself remains precisely what it’s original pre-fans always hoped it would be: A knowing throwback to the high-concept larfs of days past, awash in copious gore, eye-rolling dialogue and deaths that film geek’s love being able to see coming a mile away.

I love being able to see this kind of thing on a big screen with legitimate actors and real effort instead of as a not-even-trying entry on the SciFi Channel. I love seeing the inspired-silliness of the improvised snake-fighting weapons. I love star/original-biggest-fan Samuel L. Jackson’s 100% straight-faced performance. I love that the first victims are, yes, the hypersexual drug-using young couple. I love how “doomed” the goody-good passengers already seem right off the bat. I love how determinedly the resident-asshole character begs for his own demise. I love that the “what next?” moment involves the arrival of a giant-sized Python. I love that the bad guy assures his underlings that he’s “already exhausted every other option” (what I wouldn’t give to know what was the runner-up to “put snakes on the plane.”) I love how brazenly (yet not-unsubtley) the film plays on collective fears (and collective revenge/empowerment fantasies) about post-911 air travel. And I adore the sheer preposterousness of the eventual “how to get rid of the snakes” solution. Heck, I even love that the makers knew their material enough to end with a horrible snake-themed Nu-Metal power ballad… though I most-definately despise the song itself.

Set the hype (or, rather, the hype about the hype) aside. This is everything a junky time-waster should be, as fine a guilty pleasure as going to the store and finding a candy bar you’d thought they stopped making years ago. You know right away whether or not you’re the right audience for a movie called “Snakes on A Plane,” and if there’s even a shred of a chance that you’ll enjoy it you probably will.

FINAL RATING: 7/10

Nintendo fans, our time is fast approaching. Until then…

Perusing the reviews of “World Trade Center” online, it becomes immediately apparent that comparing this film to “United 93” is somehow unavoidable. I’m not sure it’s really a useful comparison, but let’s get it done with.

What irks me about the comparisons is that they generally presume “United” (a great film) to be automatically superior to “WTC” because of the style it was made in: In other words, “U93’s” verite shaky-cam and faux-documentary editing are in and of themselves posessed of more artistic credibility than “WTC’s” heightened, more “traditionalyl” cinematic compositions. Forgive me, but I’ve never quite bought that approach should be regarded with equal or greater values to result when it comes to art, film or otherwise. (And am I really the only person who finds something fishy about the indie/arthouse crowd declaring that the artistically-superior style of filmmaking du-jour is just coincidentally the one that’s more within the reach of indie/arthouse filmmakers?) A good movie is a good movie is a good movie. A good glossy, grandly-mounted Big Studio movie is in fact better than a bad “gritty” arthouse movie, and vice-versa. “United 93” is a great film in the style it was mounted, and “World Trade Center” is a great film in the style it was mounted. Bottom line.

The film has also been criticized, both in relation to “U93” and in general, for focusing too narrowly on a single story with a happy ending amid an event that brought forth many more unhappy endings. It’s a fair critique, but one that ignores a certain basic reality of telling stories, tragic or otherwise, for a large audience. Dramas based on tragedies, real or fictional, usually connect most powerfully with the general public when there is a “ray of hope” for them to enter through and experience it. Paradoxically, in order to help people experience hopelessness you must first give them some semblance of hope.

The reason, for example, that “Schindler’s List” connected with audiences in a way that no Holocaust dramatization had before or since was that it’s creators had found a story of heroism amid an unheroic event. By focusing on one man who did the right thing, audiences allowed themselves to experience what happened as everyone else did the wrong thing… because they had a secure alternative to draw replenishment from. The horrors seen in Spielberg’s film would be all but unendurable without Schindler on hand as our ideal surrogate, the element of the film through which we reassure ourselves: “I wouldn’t be part of the problem in this. I wouldn’t be in that 99% of Germans who let this happen. I’d be the good guy. I’d be Schindler.” This may, or may not be, naivete and/or a primal psychological defense mechanism, but it’s an undeniable aspect of human nature.

For all it’s stylistic grit and verite immediacy, “United 93” was working the same basic angle: Amid the story of four planes full of people hijacked and turned into ghastly improvised weaponry, it places it’s audience amid the ONE plane where the passengers stood up, beat down the bad guys and prevented the plane from destroying anything else: “I wouldn’t have let them beat me. I wouldn’t have been helpless. I wouldn’t have let them win. I’d rush the cockpit. I’d make them pay. I’d be ‘Let’s roll!'” And so it is the same with Oliver Stone’s “World Trade Center.”

Stone’s film resembles no other film as much as “Apollo 13,” detailing as both do the stranding of brave men amid a disaster and the efforts of their friends and fellows to rescue them. Stone zeroes in on John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno (Nicholas Cage and Micheal Pena,) two Port Authority police officers who were among the first responders on 9/11 and found themselves burried by the collapsing buildings. They struggle to keep eachother alive long enough to be rescued, while outside their families await ANY semblance of news and their fellow officers try to figure out what to do and what’s actually happening.

Meanwhile, in a paralell story, a former Marine named David Karnes sees the tragedy on TV, excuses himself from work, slips on his old fatigues, drives straight to Ground Zero and just starts looking for people… because he feels God has told him to. History records that it was Karnes who located and led to the rescue of McLoughlin and Jimeno, and the film shows the same.

And yeah, that’s really it. Stone has zeroed in on the story that, to him, provides the most “then and there for the regular folks who lived it” view of 9/11. The film travels back and remains right in the first hours of the event, back when we barely knew what had occured, back before every man woman and child had heard of Osama bin Laden.

Some have criticized, with some merit, this particular approach; saying it “santizes” the event. I’d respectfully disagree. There’s no sanitation here that I can see, it’s merely an accurate recollection. This is about people living through 9/11, not looking back from 5 years later.

Simply stated, it’s a sincere and powerful film about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, worth seeing overall as an unusually sudued work from one of our most important filmmakers and worth seeing specifically because it’s never too early to start remembering. Reccomended.

FINAL RATING: 8/10

Note: This will be a somewhat lengthy and only tangentially movie-related entry that I just need to get off my chest. A review of Oliver Stone’s “World Trade Center” is forthcoming.

This I didn’t need.

I just came back from a lengthy recharging vacation (camping), during which time I voluntarily restricted myself from Internet access, cell phones and television.

So I come back to see this:
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=2273111

The gist here is that ABC News has reported that, allegedly, a YouTube cartoon spoofing Al Gore entitled “Al Gore’s Penguin Army” is in fact a professional production of a Republican-backed PR firm and NOT a 29 year-old amateur filmmaker as was initially claimed. You can see this film HERE:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZSqXUSwHRI&mode=related&search=

This is, if true, obviously a political dirty trick taking advantage of YouTube and the anonimity of the Internet in order to further an agenda. HOWEVER, when ABC News reported the story on their website (see above) they mis-identified the name of the film as “An Inconvenient Spoof,” a DIFFERENT YouTube parody made by ME:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIPcqlMTQHs

Due to ABC News’ error, my YouTube account (specifically the comments section of this particular spoof clip) has been assailed by comments from angry people who believe that I, as opposed to the creator of “Penguin Army,” have falsified my identity and my motives in creating this clip.

I wish to set the record straight: My name is Bob Chipman. I am a 25 year-old independent filmmaker from Massachusetts. I am not affiliated with the Republican party OR the Democrat party, or any political party’s public relations wing. I made “An Inconvenient Spoof” on my own, for fun, because and ONLY because I found the trailer for “An Inconvenient Truth” to be silly. I was not working for anyone, no one asked me to make it or gave me the idea. The peice is intended as a work of parody and is not meant to be taken as a political statement. I am a political independent who supports many of the same evironmentalist ideas as Mr. Gore, but thought his movie and it’s trailer laid it on a bit thick. That is all.

I have contacted ABC News to alert them of their error and it’s negative effects on me and my reputation, and have posted a reply on YouTube clarifying the situation. I am sorry for any confusion that may have been caused, but it was not of my doing: I am NOT a political hack pretending to be an online gagster, I am an online gagster 🙂

Thank you.

UPDATE:
Shortly after posting this and going through several other steps, I was contacted by ABC News and informed that they have changed the story on their website to list the correct title of the parody. I offer my public thanks to ABC for taking care of this in a timely and clean manner.

No, I didn’t dissapear. That’ll come in about a week when I’m on vacation. Meanwhile, nothing new I’ve seen really merits a strong review one way or the other. THIS, on the other hand…

So, by now you’ve heard Dubya actually managed to find a form of Government spending he WON’T sign off on. Unsurprisingly, it involves a big sopping-wet asskiss to the anti-science, anti-freedom and anti-American “religious right.”

Let’s get the basics out of the way, in the event that not everyone is versed in this business since, after all, not everyone expects a political aside on a movie blog. In simplest terms, “Stem Cells” are cells that don’t have any “identity” yet. Thus, they take on the properties and function of whatever cells they are inserted among, meaning that they can potentially be used to grow back vital tissues that do not naturally regenerate: Like brain matter lost to parkinsons or alzheimers, or dead nerves of paraplegics. You can get these stem cells from various sources, but thus far the richest supplies tend to come from ultra-early-term embryos which are BURSTING with the aforementioned “blank” cellular material. Since, logically, you have to bust-up said early-term embryos to get the material, this is naturall opposed by the self-described “Pro-Life” lobby which holds the religious belief that personhood and all the rights attendent there-to exist from the moment of conception.

Got that? Okay, so… there’s basically two ways to get Embryonic Stem Cells in the necessary quantities to perform the research to discover how much they can actually do. Way #1 is to get them from the “excess” embryos created and then frozen as byproduct of In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF, aka “test tube baby”) clinics. Despite the fact that these byproduct-embryos are innevitably destroyed anyway, this still hacks-off the anti-choice crowd. Way #2, still mostly theoretical, is generally called “thereapeutic cloning,” and would involve using cloning to manufacture hundreds of identical embryos to procure a stable line of cells. This REALLY hacks-off the anti-choice crowd, and is also in murky legal-waters given the hundreds of knee-jerk “cloning BAD!!!!” laws passed across the planet in reaction to Dolly the Sheep.

Anyhow, back before 9/11 the first “big” thing Dubya got to do as president was sign off on what would be the immediate future of this science. As he’d largely run and won as an open comrade-in-arms of the anti-choice lobby, it could be safely assumed science and medicine were NOT going to win any ground. His faux-Solomonic decision: No cloning, no more new IVF harvesting, you can ONLY work with the lines you’ve already created. Or, to put it in broader terms: “Feel free to try and finish the building, but it’s now illegal to buy or make new bricks.” In fairness, this applied ONLY to Federal (read: taxpayer) funded research, and private companies were free to do as they want (and have, for the most part.)

Skip ahead to this week, and new largely Democrat-backed legislation to expand the Federal funding for the research makes it’s way to the executive branch. This is, lets be honest, the Democrat equivalent of the Gay Marriage Ban: No one is expecting to “win” or for him to sign, the point is to get the prez and everyone else to declare a solid stance on the issue; primarily so that the Dems can make an issue of it in the November elections, hopefully forcing Republicans up for re-election to have to explain to their parkinsons, alzheimers and paralysis-afflicted constituents (and their families) why they’re party doesn’t want to help them find cures.

So, it’s a political shell-game on both sides, and anyone can see that. That being said, here’s why I’m pissed off…

Look, as a fiscal Libertarian I generally feel the Government shouldn’t be funding all that much with tax money, and does so WAY too much right now. However, since we do after all live in the real world I understand that A.) sometimes it’s unavoidable and B.) if we’re going to federally fund anything, medical research ought to be right at the top of the list. As we DO already fund medical research, basic ethics dictate that we should do so fairly and in 100% in the spirit of the laws of the United States. If we are going to make decisions as to what should and should not be funded in medical research, we MUST make them based ONLY on matters of law and practicality: Is the research LEGAL and is the research PRACTICAL. That’s all.

And that’s why, while President Bush has the full right to veto the bill, which he did; his reasons for doing so both stated and implied should NOT have been the deciding factor, and should NEVER enter in to policymaking. President Bush vetoed the bill because he has a RELIGIOUS belief that there are such things as souls, and that embryos have them, and thus “destroying” embryos to get stem cells is “murder.” The president has the right to live his life by these beliefs. He does NOT have the right to force me, you, or anyone else in America to live our lives by these beliefs. Bottom Line.

Mr. President, this is not Iran. This is not Saudi Arabia. This is not Afghanistan under the Taliban. This is not a nation of rule-by-religion. This is AMERICA. We are a modern nation. We are THE modern nation. We are a nation that helped pull the world, kicking-and-screaming, out of the Dark Ages and into Enlightment. When we make law, we make it on the basis of FACT and REASON… not FAITH. Whatever beliefs you hold or do not hold in your own life, When you take pen in hand to chart the course of the future for ALL Americans (indeed, all the world,) you owe it to them to act as a thinker… not a believer. When you took the stage this week and vetoed this bill, openly stating that you do so because of YOU’RE religious belief that embryos were sacred, surrounded by women holding actual infants in a staging that’d make TED KENNEDY shudder at it’s manipulative smugness, what you did was spit in the face of Thomas Jefferson, and flip the bird to Thomas Paine.

What kind of precedent does this set, after all? What the president has done, just like in the Terri Schaivo debacle, is to decree that the Government can ban or de-fund things for ALL citizens in order to comply with the religious doctrine of SOME citizens… so where does that end? Do we next ask the government to bust-up the Beef industry because American Hindus believe cattle are sacred? Do we limit the lumber industry because Druids wish to protect the souls of trees? Will we restrict the fashion industry from making skimpy clothing for women because Muslims dislike the public baring of female skin?

One thing is for sure: IF the Republicans actually do lose the House or Senate in November… THIS will be the reason a lot of voters give for showing them the door.

Today is a great day to be an American.

“Cleanflicks” has bitten the dust.
http://www.calendarlive.com/movies/cl-fi-clean10jul10,0,4583837.story?coll=cl-movies

A federal judge in Denver, Colorado has handed down a ruling that (duh) the Utah-based movie editors and their like have been violating the laws of the United States, and have to cease.

I don’t have to explain to you why this is a major victory for freedom. The good guys won, the bad guys lost, and The Faithful can take a walk. This round goes to the REAL Americans.

NOTE: Review will contain as few spoilers as possible, please continue to exercise caution.

Watching a big event movie that’s also a big fantasy/action sequel is always kind of an unusual experience for movie geeks, because it affords “us” the chance to see the mainstream audience “geek out” over something. When something like the first “Pirates” becomes a big deal, “everyone else” starts embracing their inner nerd, keeping track of the franchise mythology in their heads, gasping at the return of characters thought departed (in one way or another) and excitedly chatting with friends about “what’ll happen next” once the film reaches it’s “to be continued” climax. That the “pop culture phenomenon” of the series owes more to Johnny Depp’s whacked-out performance as Capt. Jack Sparrow than it does to the increasingly dense, increasingly fanciful and increasingly creature-laden “The Mummy,’ only with water” storyline is eventually not the point: Audiences are packing theaters for an action film about sea monsters, magic treasure chests and scheming British naval traders, and that only bodes well for the genre.

Wisely departing from the lengthy set-up of the previous film, “Dead Man’s Chest” presumes the likely audience fore-knowledge of the series’ style and mythos and barrells at full sail through a plot that could charitably be called convoluted and more properly described as a dense pack of double-crosses, secret agendas and multiple story-threads. Lingering plot issues from the first film are tied up, while new ones take their place to be continued in the third (final?) installment next year.

Summation of plot would be kind of self-defeating, then, because the “story” keeps going with new twists and rewirings as the film progresses; so to describe “whats going on” would give away the whole chase and with it the whole film. Suffice it to say that the new story largely concerns Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) a centuries-old cursed pirate who roams the sea in a submersible ship called The Flying Dutchman, crewed by damned souls who’ve chosen servitude to Jones over drowning at sea and have become, like Jones himself, half-man/half-fish monsters. Jones is chasing Jack Sparrow, who apparently owes him such servitude, while Jack is trying (and failing) to use a magic compass to find the fabled “Dead Man’s Chest” which he believes contains the key to holding Jones at bay. Meanwhile, back in Port Royale, Will (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth (Kiera Knightley) are shanghaied into service by a villianous trader named Beckett, who forces them at penalty of death to chase down Jack and retrieve the magic compass for his own (likely) nefarious ends which seem to have something to do with the enroaching dominance of the seas by British trade companies.

The reason this all works, in spite of itself, is among the reasons that the first film was so surprisingly “not terrible,” given the history of films based on theme park attractions: It understands, within the strictures of it’s PG13 rating, that the whole fun of making half your characters Pirates means that they DON’T have to obey any kind of moral or even logical code. Thus, double-crosses, sudden changes of heart or moments of outright uncouthness that would be un-do-able in any other film are here quite welcome: They’re PIRATES, after all.

To charitable, all of the double-twists and surprises and revelations tend to serve at the behest of creating situations where various characters can clash swords with one another, or be tossed into an impossible escape, or flee an army of monsters, or do battle with a giant squid, or whatever… but thats not the same thing as saying it’s not all interesting. On the contrary, jerked around by the invisible hand of fate in the name of a bigger, wilder ride, the series’ characters are made to undergo various degrees of situational evolution: Bloom’s Will Turner shows ample skill at the art of deception, for example, while Depp takes the perilous risk of plumbing for depth in the studiously-shallow Jack Sparrow. Even newcomer Nighy as the simply incredible Davy Jones goes an unexpected route, delivering a seething, internalized and inquisitive supervillian played with as much subtlety as can probably be managed within a character who has an octopus for head.

But it’s Knightley’s Elizabeth Swan, until now the series’ (literal, at times) moral compass, who’s got the biggest “didn’t see that coming” personality shift out of the main cast; taking a murky and ULTRA dark character turn in the third act that’s garaunteed to throw fans for a “did that just HAPPEN!?” loop just in time for “to be continued.”

Two summers ago, the big surprise of the season was that a movie based on a decades-old theme park attraction and that EVERYONE had already decided was going to “suck” turned out to be a great popcorn-muncher diversion. Now, two years later, the big surprise seems to be that that great popcorn-muncher diversion may have had the makings of a grand fantasy/adventure series.

FINAL RATING: 8/10

P.S.

Memo to Keira Knightley: If in the next few months you see one or more 12 to 16 year-old girls coming toward you on the street at great speed and looking REALLY angry with you… Run. Don’t think, just RUN.