From the Adventures of Peter and Peter
While Peter Guber and Peter Bart go on summer vacation AMC is airing greatest moments of
Sunday Morning Shootout. This morning's "Icons" episode included interviews with Peter Jackson, Peter Bogdanovich, Sydney Pollack and Francis Ford Coppola.
We here at SDoF are ever so grateful that even after FFC spent a good 20 minutes berating the Hollywood system for everything that is wrong with American film-making and called the studio set "a bunch of accountants" the editors still included Guber's effusive "You're my HERO!" send off as they closed down the segment. To which FFC demurely responded: "thanks."
See also: Sofia mini
ad.
there are no Snakes on a Plane puns left to make
Okay, like many of you (or least, everyone in SF) I went to a late night screening of
Snakes on a Plane this week (in case you've been wondering "why does anyone care about these damn snakes or how they got on that plane?!" Neva Chonin
is here to help).
In the ensuing coverage I was a little surprised no one addressed a very gross scene towards the end when a black passenger is called upon to fly the plane after both pilots have been killed or incapacitated. He radios down to the flight control tower for landing instructions interjected with a lot "we's about to fly this plane, dawg" jargon that seems to be assigned to any black character who's suddenly had some monumental responsibility thrust upon them. Which was pretty jarring since all the absurdity of the story and its characters are otherwise played straight. I was reminded of the, uhm,
awful Soul Plane.
The NY Observer's Choire Sicha has a much more
positive view of the racial make up of SoaP's body count (she also perfectly sums up the joy many of us share about critics being forced to watch movies with the hoi polloi when studios abstain from industry screenings).
I enjoyed
Snakes on a Plane a lot, it was a ton of fun and it would probably hold up seeing it again without a crowd of drunk people. But it's obvious that when
Ronny Yu (
Bride with White Hair) left due to "creative differences" with Samuel L. Jackson attached that new director
David Ellis (
Final Destination 2) ceded a lot of creative control to his bona fide movie star. If only because the director's imdb profile lists professional surfing as one of his past professions and the surfer character in SoaP is one of the least convincing aspects of the story (yes, moreso than the underlying concept of the film).
Snakes on a Plane is already tired, time for some teensploitation
Having recently revisited the wonderful suburban expose
Fear (starring Oscar winning Reese Witherspoon) I'm fairly certain
The Quiet the story of a deaf orphan overhearing her newly adopted sister's plans to murder her molesting father (starring Elisha Cuthbert of
24 and Camilla Belle of
the Ballad of Jack and Rose) will be my new summer favorite.
