Well, it’s time for a less me-centric post.

I’ve been watching a reasonable number of movies lately and while I haven’t managed to watch Snakes on a Plane yet, I thought it was worth writing something about the movies I have been seeing.

First up we have the best up the bunch. March of the Penguins, which Beth and I watched Saturday morning while it was rather drab and rainy outside. A fabulous movie I wish I had gotten the chance to see in an IMAX theatre since that would have been a truly fabulous experience. I’m astonished by just how cold and brutal the climate is in Antarctica. The cinematography is quite something and although I had some minor quibbles with how bright it seemed to be during some of the scenes which they were saying took place in June, I was altogether very impressed with the movie. And baby penguins are very very cute

Another snowy movie that I finally got around to watching is The Shining, which was just very disturbing. It was very good, but in many ways all too believable. The idea of someone going crazy from being isolated up in the Rockies all winter long seemed very plausible… and few people do that sort of creepy psychotic persona like Jack Nicholson.

I also finally got around to watching Batman Begins, which absolutely rocked. Christian Bale is really excellent in it and I’m very excited to see how the sequel works out. I felt that Christopher Nolan did an outstanding job of it, better even than Tim Burton, although they are stylistically extremely different. This one is rather more realistic, in some sense. And the supporting cast is also quite fantastic.

On the less-good front, we have Æon Flux, which was extremely entertaining in its badness. It did spoil it somewhat by trying to make some sort of statement about the human condition, I think, which rather messed things up. Silly movies with hot girls kicking ass should really stick to their schtick, I feel. Like Underworld, for instance. However, there can be little doubt that Æon Flux is a work of art compared to Ultraviolet. Now Tess had warned me that while Æon Flux was so bad it was good, Ultraviolet managed to transcend that barrier again and be so bad it was bad. And I didn’t really believe that it was true. Because I thought to myself, well “How bad can I be?”. Alas, I should have trusted Tess. Because I just finished watching it, and wow. It really sucked. I’m not sure if I can quite put my finger on why it was so bad, or maybe it’s that I don’t really want to put sufficient thought into it to be able to ascertain the source of its badness. I mean, there are the obvious things like bad dialogue, poor acting, etc. But this managed to go beyond those things, somehow. Because I had expected that. The fight scenes were just sort of corny, I guess. I don’t want to say unrealistic, because that’s a weird thing to complain about, but… it was all just so horribly contrived, I guess. Anyway, I didn’t pay to watch it and I still feel kind of robbed. It’s that bad.

On a more positive note, The Venture Brothers is an inspired show that should really be watched by more people.

Okay, so I admit that I was very skeptical when I first heard about this movie. However, after reading about it on wikipedia, in particular upon reading Josh Friedman’s blog entry about the title of the movie and all the entertaining things relating to that. That entry is particularly important since it also gave rise to the phrase which was then ultimately brought into the movie as a Samuel L Jackson Line, ‘muthafuckin’ snakes on a muthafuckin’ plane‘.

It’s such a simple concept. And yet so very, completely and utterly… stupid. What more can you ask for? I plan on seeing it as soon as possible, obviously, although I may have to go see Superman Returns first, since that is actually likely to be a good movie and whatnot. However, I can’t help but wonder if the Superman movie will feature snakes… on a plane. And if not, how it can possibly compete with this other cinematic masterpiece.

One of my favorite things about the whole story is that the producers were thinking of changing the title of the movie to something less silly-sounding. Samuel L Jackson was apparently not amused, since the main reason he decided to do the movie was precisely because of the title. Quoting from the Wikipedia article:

At one point, the film’s working title was altered to Pacific Air Flight 121. In August 2005, a perturbed Samuel L. Jackson told an interviewer, “We’re totally changing that back. That’s the only reason I took the job: I read the motherfucking title.”In another interview in early 2006, Jackson claimed that once he learned about the movie title being changed he said: “What are you doing here? It’s not Gone with the Wind. It’s not On the Waterfront. It’s Snakes on a Plane!”

And really, the man has a point. I think the movie will be entertaining if nothing else.