Wash your mouth out with SoaP
Tomorrow, at 10pm, months and months of anticipation will come to a boil and either sizzle or burn out with the release of Snakes on a Plane. I ordered my tickets early (www.movietickets.com for Woodlands 20, 10 PM, BE THERE) because I wanted nothing in the world to stop me from witnessing the culmination of a true internet phenomenon. The Boston Globe has a terriffic article on the goods and bads of the film's buzz, with a quote from the snakesonablog.com creater summing it up best: ``I'm sure you'll see other movies with silly titles. The very smart thing New Line did, though, was to do nothing. No posters, no trailers. They recognized people were attracted to it on their own. And people, online especially, are very aware of what's organic and what's false, and if it's false they shy away."
I have a stinking feeling that this movie is going to suck. I'm prepared for it to suck. I'm prepared for the worst. Yet I don't mean bad in a You Got Served! or Gigli way (both films I've seen in theaters!), but in a kind of suck that has plagued the last seven or so Adam Sandler comedies--I'll always be a Billy Madison fanatic--or, at worst, dogshit like The Man with the Screaming Brain or Land of the Dead. I don't want it to happen, but I'm prepared for it. Consider this: when has anything with the hype surrounding it, such as that of Snakes on a Plane, unequivocally satisfied you? Kill Bill: Volume 1 may be the only time I've walked out of a theater thinking I got just what I had wanted and more but the dissapointment of Kill Bill: Volume 2 shattered all of that. Damn you, Quentin Tarantino and your shitty dialogue! This isn't to say anything about unexpected suprises like Eternal Sunshine... or One Hour Photo, but rather to suggest that a hype so large almost never fails to meet us below our expectations.
What worries me most about the potential for Snakes on a Plane are the principal players:
-Samuel L. Jackson, who hasn't had a good movie since Pulp Fiction.
-Director David R. Ellis, who's "gems" include Cellular and Final Destination 2.
-Screenwriter Sebastian Gutierrez, responsibly for Gothika.
The line between "so bad it's good" and "dog turds" is as thin as the subjective standards for which internet geeks find things funny. Something genuinely funny, like Brian Posehn's Metal By Numbers Video might receive backlash due to the high standards that come along with being Brian Posehn (although if not this, what has Brian Posehn been funnier in?). On the other hand, something unexpected and unintentional, like the "It's Still Real to Me, Dammit" guy, is funny because it brings no expectations with it. Were he to show up at other wrestling events and cry each time, recording each tear that flows from his face and pastes those images on his blog, the inherent "funiness" of the subsequent clips would be lost. One of the most depressing realities in which I've faced in my life is that people tend to think I am more funny when I don't try at all than when I do. A certain Mr. Hutchinson once told me that he thought I was playing badly at frisbee "on purpose"--a time in which everyone was laughing--and that may answer why I don't like to play anymore. A similar situation occured during a 5th grade game of kickball when I caught the ball and the team applauded because they somehow thought I had caught it without paying attention (apparently I was so bad the ball must have fallen into my hands serendipitously).
The world will find out tomorrow night what kind of "funny" and "bad" Snakes on a Plane will be. I can only hope that having had an official wallpaper for the movie on my desktop for two months will have been worth it.
Alex
I have a stinking feeling that this movie is going to suck. I'm prepared for it to suck. I'm prepared for the worst. Yet I don't mean bad in a You Got Served! or Gigli way (both films I've seen in theaters!), but in a kind of suck that has plagued the last seven or so Adam Sandler comedies--I'll always be a Billy Madison fanatic--or, at worst, dogshit like The Man with the Screaming Brain or Land of the Dead. I don't want it to happen, but I'm prepared for it. Consider this: when has anything with the hype surrounding it, such as that of Snakes on a Plane, unequivocally satisfied you? Kill Bill: Volume 1 may be the only time I've walked out of a theater thinking I got just what I had wanted and more but the dissapointment of Kill Bill: Volume 2 shattered all of that. Damn you, Quentin Tarantino and your shitty dialogue! This isn't to say anything about unexpected suprises like Eternal Sunshine... or One Hour Photo, but rather to suggest that a hype so large almost never fails to meet us below our expectations.
What worries me most about the potential for Snakes on a Plane are the principal players:
-Samuel L. Jackson, who hasn't had a good movie since Pulp Fiction.
-Director David R. Ellis, who's "gems" include Cellular and Final Destination 2.
-Screenwriter Sebastian Gutierrez, responsibly for Gothika.
The line between "so bad it's good" and "dog turds" is as thin as the subjective standards for which internet geeks find things funny. Something genuinely funny, like Brian Posehn's Metal By Numbers Video might receive backlash due to the high standards that come along with being Brian Posehn (although if not this, what has Brian Posehn been funnier in?). On the other hand, something unexpected and unintentional, like the "It's Still Real to Me, Dammit" guy, is funny because it brings no expectations with it. Were he to show up at other wrestling events and cry each time, recording each tear that flows from his face and pastes those images on his blog, the inherent "funiness" of the subsequent clips would be lost. One of the most depressing realities in which I've faced in my life is that people tend to think I am more funny when I don't try at all than when I do. A certain Mr. Hutchinson once told me that he thought I was playing badly at frisbee "on purpose"--a time in which everyone was laughing--and that may answer why I don't like to play anymore. A similar situation occured during a 5th grade game of kickball when I caught the ball and the team applauded because they somehow thought I had caught it without paying attention (apparently I was so bad the ball must have fallen into my hands serendipitously).
The world will find out tomorrow night what kind of "funny" and "bad" Snakes on a Plane will be. I can only hope that having had an official wallpaper for the movie on my desktop for two months will have been worth it.
Alex