This Black Snake Moans...with excellence! Also, 300 (stupid-ass gay jokes)

Let's talk for a minute or twenty about how 300 is kind of stupid.

People tell me sometimes not to make fun of something like a comic book movie, because they're supposed to be stupid. That doesn't have to be true, but it definitely IS true most of the time. Like, I guess Ghost Rider is a stupid movie too, I'll never know because I sure as hell won't watch it, but it's about a guy who rides a motorcycle and his head turns into a flaming skull every now and then. Now, flaming-skulled-biker movies are predisposed to be stupid, but why does 300 have to be? We're talking about some pretty impressive shit that actually happened, albeit in a way no doubt different from how a comic book would tell it, so why does that story have to be cheapened by stupid shit like ten million gay jokes?

I'm not going all Mr. Serious Art Feelm on it, and I don't expect a comic book adaptation to be necessarily realistic. There are all kinds of great liberties you can take with comic book material and it's a mistake not to take some of them. I thought Sin City was fucking cool, but everybody involved there took the comic book thing and just ran with it like hell, and the story itself is so balls-out crazy that it ended up being all kinds of fun. 300 came from Frank Miller too, so it surprised me that it's so blah. It's supposed to be a pretty much shot-by-shot recreation of the graphic novel, and that itself is kind of a dumb-ass move on everyone's part, because you might as well put some kind of individual spin on it, but whatever. There are some cool images, although overall it doesn't even look as good as you'd expect, and it doesn't have much else going for it besides looks. The problem could be a lot of stupid dialogue and cheesy shit going on, and seriously, about ten million gay jokes.

OK, so it pounds you over the head with the fact that the Spartans are the heroes here, they are "real men," so I guess the Persians have to be "vaguely androgynous and/or fags." Is America collectively that stupid? Like, why does Xerxes have to be RuPaul? And also why does Xerxes' camp have to have all kinds of "freaky" sex acts going on inside? I came in to see a battle epic and all of a sudden I get vignettes from Hot, Deformed Lesbian Bitches? I mean, I'm not humorless about this kind of thing at all. It's just that I expect it to actually be funny, and not somebody's homophobic pottymouth acting up. For example, the trailer for Knocked Up was attached to 300, and that shit will be funny as hell, and one of the jokes is that Seth Rogen is an expectant father, and his friend says he'll help "rear the kid." Jason Segel snickers out "Watch out, he wants to REAR your kid!" and I responded by laughing my ass off. I mean, I'm not above this shit. It's all about the childishness of the joke overpowering hatefulness, like when a friend of mine told me he was in a threesome the other day and I asked what the guys' names were. Fun all around! That's totally different than Leonidas in 300 saying the Athenians were "philosophers and boy-lovers" or some similar bullshit. Sure, that's factually true, but it's not like the Spartans and every other Greek didn't get into sport-fucking their brethren from time to time. Of course, none of that matters, because the joke for 2007 America is that nothing says taking it up the ass like reading a book. Jesus. Seriously, somebody tell me, are we all that fucking stupid? And with the shot of Leonidas' wife getting it from behind? Leaving out the fact that she's hot, it was all just way too much manly gamer dork attitude for me, I guess. Maybe they thought the audience would all be guys who had only the slightest acquaintance with vaginas. Who knows.

And also, while we're talking about my favorite things, I don't want to forget the ugly American shit 300 quietly hauled up to the table too. Leaving out the fact that the Persians were all dandies, and corrupt ones at that as proven by bitches actually KISSING!!! ohmygod did you see them up in the middle of their warlike goings-on, they also represent "mysticism" whereas the Greeks are all about "reason." So…yeah, that's right…

"Gee, I'm glad those brave, noble, hard-charging, hot-wife-doggy-style-fucking Spartans never surrendered to the kinda sissy, ambiguously non-white, differently religioned Persians! HEY do you think there is a parallel between those PERSIANS and this whole Earthful of DARK PEOPLE that AMERICA HAS TO KILL?!? Glory Be we cain't surrender to them Terrorists!!! Cause if it ain't Chrish-tin, it's puuure mystic-cism!!!"

Accuse me of reading into it if you want, I guess, but I don't think I'm crazy. It's not like I even think the movie was consciously pushing an agenda. I read a review where the critic said it was too silly to be actually about anything, politically or otherwise, and I mostly think that's true. I also read that the director had to quash rumors that 300 was government funded, and that's just retarded. Most of the feeling I get off it in this respect comes from how trained people are to jump on anything that jibes with some jingoistic bullshit right now. The last thing I would want to do is feed on that shit, and if I were writing a movie I would parse it word for word about fifty times to make sure I wasn't. So, I don't know whether it was a conscious choice, but I'm pretty positive somebody's "AMURICANS DON'T DUCK-N-RUN" was acting up. It's so awful to me to hammer everyone's frayed post-9/11 nerves but I guess that's how the movie industry rolls in general. But, anyway, I went through all that mostly to say don't waste your $8.50. Black Snake Moan is good, though. Go Craig Brewer!

Stanks on a Plane

...is what that piece of shit should have been called. I saw it on opening weekend, actually, and I forgot to say just how much it sucked. Now, before anyone gets all "but it's just supposed to be a badass funny movie about snakes," yeah, no shit, I know that. But the thing is, it wasn't really badass, and it definitely wasn't funny. At all. Well, I take that back, it was funny exactly four times, and all four of those times were when Samuel L. Jackson said "fuck." That's right, HE SAID IT ONLY FOUR TIMES IN THE WHOLE BLASTED THING!

What the hell? Any right-thinking Hollywood executive should demand that a movie where Samuel L. Jackson appears alongside vicious(ly fake-looking) snakes also include profanity in at least every fifth line. Don't those executives know that a lot of his immediate appeal, at least to people who like dumbass movies, comes from his righteous delivery of any derivation of the word "fuck"? Yeah, he's a great actor, no doubt, and he's been in some great stuff. Still, if he's at that phase in his career where he feels accomplished enough and wants to fuck around in killer snake flicks from time to time, that's fine, he's still awesome. All I ask is that whatever stupid-ass movies he chooses to honor with his presence be filled with dirty words and, preferably, him beating the shit out of white people. Is that so wrong? I mean, some girl gets like a twenty-second titty snakebite, 'cause HAHAHA TITYS R AWESUM THEY RAWK, and I can't even get a pistol-whipping for the dorky surfer kid? (And, seriously, a fucking titty snakebite? Who wrote this shit, a used-car salesman with a subscription to Hustler?)

If you're like me, and a good "motherfucker" is music to your ears, then keep this around so you can listen to Sam curse any time you want:

Samuel L. Jackson soundboard