Kicking Asp: Snakes On A Plane

Every once in a while, a movie comes along that is so bad, it’s good.

Witness “Snakes On A Plane.”

If you’ve been living in the jungle for the past several months, you may not have heard of this film, which has the distinction of enjoying more “buzz” (largely generated by savvy Internet marketing hype) than any film since “The Blair Witch Project.”

And, of course, “Snakes” features Samuel Jackson, one of Hollywood’s most charismatic actors, who has publicly expressed no qualms whatsoever about starring in what is essentially a glorified B horror film, a quirky combination of 1970s “plane disaster” films (Remember “Airport”?) and more recent “terror in the skies” flicks like “Red Eye.”

Refreshing, too, is a multiracial cast of relative unknowns in which the heroes aren’t all white guys. Witness the Asian kick boxer who kicks snake butt, for example.

The arc of “Snakes’s” plot is elemental.

Get unsuspecting red eye passengers and angry pythons, asps, and cobras together and let the fur fly.

The first twenty minutes are mere window dressing, involving a witness to a murder and the assassins who load his return flight home with the rambunctious reptiles to make sure he never makes it.

To make it even more exciting, our bad guys dose up the snakes with speed and secure them inside bunch of flower boxes in a timed-release pressure chamber, ensuring that, by the time we’re ready for some action, the snakes are, too.

Jackson’s character says it best, though.

“That’s good news. Snakes on crack.”

What’s also fun is trying to guess which of our passengers – the young and horny couple, the returning Hawai’ian honeymooners, the bantering stewardesses, the kickboxing expert, and the Rockwellian brotherly duo - will survive this madness.

The film even provides an ongoing “snake cam” aesthetic – given us a snake’s eye view of each of our passengers before they come under sinuous attack.

In the end, the film is Jackson’s to own, and own it he does.

The thrilling conclusion I leave for you to discover.

But after a disappointing summer season of relatively forgettable action films, “Snakes” is a welcome diversion.

XXXXXX

Historian, media educator, musician, and secessionist Rob Williams lives in Vermont’s Mad River Valley.
Read more at www.robwilliamsmedia.com.

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Talladega Frights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

Anyone who has ever seen “Elf,” Saturday Night Live, or even “Anchorman: The Story of Ron Burgundy” knows that comedian Will Ferrell has certain comic gifts – among them, the ability to push the envelope of the absurd in a reasonably convincing manner, and a penchant for taking American culture’s obsession with the odd or ridiculous, and turning it into the ridiculously sublime, or at least, glimpses of the sublime.

Ferrell’s newest celluloid vehicle takes aim at NASCAR/track racing culture, an already much-loved (and much-stereotyped) hobby for millions of Americans.

Is this film good? If you like Ferrell’s satirical style, which shifts from provocative to nasty and back again with ease, you may like this one. The movie is loud, in-your-face obnoxious, and the jokes flow fast and furiously (to reference another Hollywood driving film), though most are, at best, semi-funny, while others are just downright dull.

The story skids over the starting line from the very beginning. After we meet young Ricky Bobby (that’s supposed to be funny – as a filmic father, RB names his two sons “Walker” and “Texas Ranger” – not “Dr Quinn” and “Medicine Woman”, which would have been his two daughters’ names) he immediately hijacks his Mom’s V8 station wagon from an early age (thus demonstrating his obsession with speed).

In rapid succession, he grows up, becomes a celebrated NASCAR racer, gets married, and has children.

All in the first 10 minutes.

At times, the film feels like little more than a vehicle for product placement (real and imagined) which abounds – Taco Bell, Old Spice, Target, KFC, Domino’s, FOX, Power-Aid, NASCAR itself (of course) and, my favorite: “Maypax – the official tampon of Nascar.”

And, somewhat humorously, Ricky’s team is sponsored by Wonder bread, which gives you some idea (if you didn’[t get it after reading the above list) of the social demographic Ferrell and his film are most interested in skewering – the working class conservative white bread crowd.

Also ubiquitous, as in many Ferrell films, are many easily forgettable one-liners.

Here are but three for your consideration:

“Dad, you made that grace your bitch!” - after a particularly edgy “family around the table saying grace” scene.

“If you ain’t first, you’re last,” explains RB’s father to his son before getting thrown out of his grade school classroom.

“You can’t smoke in this here!” the indignant grade school teacher challenges Ricky Bobby’s father (whom a young RB hasn’t seen in years). “Don’t worry, ma’am – I’m a volunteer fireman,” he replies.

And, my favorite – “America is all about speed. Hot, nasty, bad ass speed.”

Did Eleanor Roosevelt really say this in 1936, as the film indicates?

Probably not, but it doesn’t really matter.

Nor, much, does the plot, which get just a bit more complicated when Ricky Bobby’s nemesis, a nattily-dressed French Formula One driver (gay, of course, to complete the “clichéd stereotype” loop) named Jean Girard arrives to challenge Ricky Bobby’s supremacy at the track.

“We invented democracy, existentialism, and the ménage a trois,” notes Jean just before breaking Ricky Bobby’s arm in a barroom confrontation.

And of course, Girard is sponsored by…Perrier.

While some film comedians and screenwriters (most notably Christopher Guest) are able to satirically skewer various American sub-cultures in a provocative but affectionate way (think Guest’s “Best In Show” or “Waiting for Guffman”), Ferrell’s stuff is often just downright in-your-face obnoxious.

And this makes “Talladega Nights” more frightful than delightful.

XXXXXX

Historian, media educator, musician, and peaceable secessionist Rob Williams lives in Vermont’s Mad River Valley. Read more at www.robwilliamsmedia.com.

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Anais Mitchell: Music For A Post-9/11 World

Visit www.anaismitchell.com for more information.

We’ve all heard, ad nauseum, that well–worn phrase about the September 11, 2001 tragedy having “changed everything.” It wasn’t until I heard the music of Anais Mitchell, though, that I began to understand the significance of this seemingly banal observation. A 25 year old Vermont native and former waitress, Mitchell is the first songwriter I’ve heard who is able to weave together the most private and personal moments – deeply human - with the most public images of our post-9/11 global landscape. And she does it with an ease and sophistication that bely her relative youth.

Not bad for someone who didn’t pick up the guitar until the age of eighteen. After graduating from college two years ago, Mitchell decided to pursue a musical career, recording her first CD - “Hymns for the Exiled” - in 2004. Her jaw-droppingly powerful tunes collectively sound like an extended meditation on a 21st century fortress America, where nothing and no one can be trusted. But Mitchell uses songwriting to scale those walls, crafting revealing stories sung with her vulnerable soprano voice, accompanied by little more than simple guitar riffs and finger-picking licks. With her music, Anais Mitchell has done something remarkable and new, capturing essential truths about our post-9/11 world in some of the most beautiful and honest music I’ve heard in a long time.

I recently interviewed Mitchell for SEVEN DAYS newspaper: about performing, her music, and her new CD.

Q. When and why did you first pick up a guitar?

A. I took violin as a kid for seven years. It turned into one of those beautifully-intentioned long-standing guilt-trips between me and the ones paying for the lessons. When I finally picked up guitar at age fourteen or fifteen, it was going to be on my terms. I studied with a very laid-back double-jointed jazz guitar player who rented the empty house on our family farm. The zeal for guitar, I think, came from having been introduced to Ani DiFranco and wanting to play her early songs.

Q. Your music blends the intimately personal and the “big picture” political in such unique ways. Can you talk a bit about how you marry the two in your writing?

A. A lot of my songs start out as love songs. I used to tell my man, “Hey, I’m writing a song about you!” and he’d say “Sure, sure” because inevitably by the time the song was finished it would be about a mining disaster or something. I think this is why the songs end up sounding emotional as well as journalistic. Also, I found early on that the language we use to talk about politics is often hopelessly un-poetic. It’s hard to make unwieldy Latin words like “emancipation” resonate in a song (unless you are Bob Marley, in which case you can say anything you goddamn want), so the poet who tackles politics is forced to find a more visceral vocabulary, and this often brings in the imagery that is more “intimately personal” as you said.

Q. Take your song “1984,” for example. You channel George Orwell’s Big Brother when you sing: “Down at headquarters there’s a big database/With black and white photos of the side of your beautiful face/And library records of all your test scores/And an invitation to party like its 1984…

Sinister stuff. Where’d that one come from?

A. Ha! That is one of those rare tunes that literally took five minutes to write, and no editing. A gift from the ether! So I’m kind of unqualified to talk about it. What you hear is what you get, really. I was actually embarrassed by its simplicity at first, and I had no idea people would latch onto it the way they did. Buzzflash.com promoted the record for a little while based on that song, and Michael Chorney and I actually got to play it on Air America. Sing Out! even printed it in their magazine.

Q. What about “Cosmic American,” which is a real sexy song in some ways, but sounds like this wonderful metaphor comparing a relationship to a misdirected electronic miscommunication, of sorts.

I’m a live wire I’m a short wave radio/Do you copy/I’m a flash of light from the tower to the runway/If I leave you I’m gonna do it/Semi-automatically…

What’s going on there?

A. Well I think you’ve got it. “I’m a live wire, I’m a short wave radio” came from the ether. I was living in Cairo. I’d play that line in the bathroom of my apartment. Bathrooms are important creative spaces for me because of the starkness and the instant reverb. When I was writing it I had this great sense of the relentless hand of fate with regards to my own recklessness. “If I leave you, I’m gonna do it semiautomatically– do you blame me?” I meant that it couldn’t be helped.

Q. And you have a new CD coming out soon. No title yet. What can you say about it?

A. Well, I’m very excited about it! I recorded it in Bristol, Vermont, with Michael Chorney producing, which is how I made “Hymns,” but this time around we recorded over the course of many months and had the benefit of time and space. I also was a real pain in the ass about my vocal takes this time around, sometimes recording more takes of a song than I’d like to admit. But I wanted the deliveries to be magical, bursting with intimacy. Also, there are horns on this one! The songs themselves are a motley crew, but there are several love stories and unrequited love stories in there.

Q. This song “Fonder Heart” is a beautiful new song. What’s the story there?

A. Unrequited infatuation. Creative sublimation. And a phrase from Lawrence Durrell’s Justine something to the effect of, “we who have loved much and traveled much, we understand the complexities of tenderness and that the line between friend and lover is very fine.”

Q. And who is this Uncle Louie in your new tune “Out Of Pawn”?

A. I’ll never tell. But it’s (mostly) a true story. The neighborhood bar was called “Saturn Bar,” and it’s still there, in the 9th ward. That night Uncle Louie also said, “All culture ended in 1995!” Funny, here was a case of me wanting desperately to write a “political” song about what happened (and didn’t happen) in New Orleans, and the words just wouldn’t come. It felt more compelling as a love story.

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