Picture the scenario, you are cruising high above America, travelling the friendly skies, ensconsed in the world of packaged peanuts and subtly odd tasting soft drinks. You are enoying the inflight movie with your big yellow free headphones when you hear it. At first you think maybe it’s coming from the headphones, so you unjack them and plug them back in, but you still hear it, a barely audible hiss. Many of you may have guessed what’s really going on here, that’s right, there are snakes on the plane.

I first found out about the up-and -coming 2006 release of David R. Ellis’s Snakes On a Plane through the ever-useful Internet Movie Database (IMDB for the suave). The film(starring Samuel L. Jackson) follows a plane full of (judging by the credit list) mostly black passengers after an assasin releases a crateful snakes on their trans-pacific flight. Seemingly a cross between 70’s blaxploitation films and Airplane! the mystique of Snakes on a Plane comes from the seriousness with which it seems to be carrying itself. Very few pictures have been released of the film (IMDB doesnt even have an image for it) leading many people to speculate on the nature of the film. Since the first whispers of Snakes on a Plane it has accumulated somewhat of a cult following on the internet and spawn the semi famous Microsoft Paint composition of Samuel L. Jackson remarking simply “We got motherfucking snakes on the plane!”

Look for Snakes on a Plane at a theatre near you in 2006

The IMDB link http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0417148/maindetails

Snakes on a Plane Teeshirts can be found here

http://damnation-inc.com/order.php?item=1

Will you go out w/ me? [yes] or [no] -Stippy

Aaron: In the spirit of Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, I compiled a list of top 10 reasons why I will not go out with you

10) I like long walks and sci-fi movies, your 6 foot tall and east coast bred.

9) You come from parents wanton

8) When I tried to talk about Billy Holiday, you said you liked his music a lot

7) Let’s face it, you use an aimbot, and sometimes you speed hack

6) We were talking last week about the new horror movie Hostel, and when I mentioned that it takes a turn for the bloody you said “oh, so I guess it became a pretty hostile environment”……..WHO LIKES PUNS?! NOBODY, THAT’S WHO

5) You got all uppity when I lit your car on fire trying to emulate the mythbusters

4) You got all uppity when I lit your house on fire trying to emulate the mythbusters

3) You got all uppity that one time I was trying to emulate the myth busters and the cat got in the way and now he’s frozen in carbonite.

2) you do not seem to share my passion for the myth busters

1) When I googled this question, the first response I got was the Franz Ferdinand site. I don’t like Franz Ferdinand, so no, I will not go out with you.

Google Search of “Will You Go Out With Me”

Josh: You know what? Yes. I will go out with you. I was at first reluctant; in fact, I wanted to construct a third option, “maybe,” which I would then check. And then not return your phone calls. But after some careful thinking about the subject, I’ve decided that I will go out with you. So, where do you want to go? There’s this great Chinese place down the street, I hear it’s marvelous. We could have some moo goo gai pan or some shit. I dunno, it’s Chinese, I don’t understand it. Maybe we could see a movie. I hear that Brokeback Mountain’s good, and boy do I love a good western!

You know, maybe I’m taking this a bit too far too soon, but do you kiss on the first date? I do. I kiss before the first date. I’m trying to kiss you now, in fact, but this computer monitor is making things difficult.

Do you want to get married? I’ve always wanted to get married. In a big cathedral with lots of stained glass windows and big wooden doors and pews that smell like Pine Sol. We could get married and then have lots of little beautiful babies, all named Jack (Jackie for the girls). We’ll buy a farm somewhere in the country, raise goats, you know, fun stuff like that. And we’ll grow old together, until our favorite activity is rocking back and forth in our rocking chairs out on the patio, telling the newspaper boy to stop wearing his damn jeans so damn low.

And then we’ll die, and we’ll go to heaven, where we’ll find our long lost pets, Tabby and Metheuselah, and we’ll be safe and happy and live with each other forever!

Pick you up at 7ish?

Cheers, ♥Josh

Email your moral quandries, questions, conundrums or angsty 8th grade love notes (Postal Service lyrics not welcome) to:

Emailthedirector@gmail.com

-Find that one brand of mouthwash you’ve always dreamed about, not too strong, not too mild, just right.

-Finally save up enough money to buy your loved one back from that pawn shop.

-Get Tivo. I mean come on, YOU CAN REWIND IN THE MIDDLE OF A SCRUBS EPISODE!

-Actually listen to that one Band/Artist that you haven’t heard. You know what I mean. That one band that everyone else listens to and you’re gonna get around to it someday, for Chris it was Wilco, for me it’s Wolf Parade.

-Finally get that rash checked out

-Hit that note that Sufjan hits in John Wayne Gacy where he goes ‘Oh my Goooeeehhhhaaaaeeeaaaaddddddddddd ‘ oh man, how the ladies will love you then.

-Finally crack the code on LastFM.com and erase those 50 times you played My Humps when you were drunk that time.

-Get a boxed set of something, anything really, they’re all over I tells you, Lost, Family Guy, Scrubs, you name it.

-Bust a myth of your own.

-Finally be able to program your VCR without spilling piping hot gravy all over yourself.

and much much more!

Oh, where to begin, where to begin?…ah, with what came before.

Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban was a brilliant film, it was brilliantly acted, expertly directed, the production design was some of the best yet seen in the industry and the overall story was fluid and well adapted. The same cannot be said for The Goblet of Fire.

That being said, allow me to make one thing clear, as a filmmaker, I believe that sequels( or Quadquels) have a RESPONSIBILITY to at the very least live up to the quality of their predecessors. Allow me to also make clear that I did indeed read the fourth Harry Potter book (and for all it’s worth I’ve read all the other ones) and this review will be for those who have read the book and seen the movies.

Well, on to the review. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire follows the young magic casters as they start a new year at Hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry in a time threatened by the return of the evil lord Voldemort and his followers. The movie opens with a well adapted sequence showing that, in fact, Voldemort has returned from the netherworld (or from the dead, or from a state of non being, or from a brief Hiatus in the Seychelles, we dont really know where he went). It’s all downhill from there folks. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad movie, it’s worth every penny of the 10 dollars, the problem is that when following a great movie, a sequel cant settle for “not bad” it has a responsibility to excel or at least match the one that came before it. These of course are no easy shoes to fill.

To be fair, the issues in this movie (which we will get to shortly) are partly because of simple circumstance. There is an enormous amount of time pressure ( the actors are in risk of noticably outgrowing their roles) and the troubles that accompany shooting with almost all child actors are hard to surmount….but not impossible. There is also the classic Hollywood belieft hat movies made longer than 2 hours will bore people, the movie runs roughly 3 or so hours and could have stood another 30-40 minutes of content. The entirety of the Quidditch World Cup and the events that follow are compacted into about a 15 minute sequence (the match itself is never shown) and even after squeezing the scene to such a short length they manage to overdramatize the events and thus ruin their signifigance (the books say that no one was hurt, while in the movie we are shown the razing of the entire wizard encampment). Things dont improve once the students arrive at Hogwarts. The Ron-Harry-Hermione arguement dynamic is covered in a brief 30 seconds all told and fails to leave you with the empathy the books inspired. The director leaves no intervening time between the arrival of the students and the start of the Tournament as we are given a somewhat ad hoc introduction to the event(complete with choreographed dance introductions to the 2 competing schools). Halfway through watching the film I was finally able to pin down exactly what didnt feel right, it’s not a Hogwarts movie. The previous movies all had at least 2-3 class sequences (the third movie had a series of memorable classrom sequences some of which served no purpose other than furthering the ambiance of the school) whereas Goblet only has one which is dominated by Mad Eye Moody, their newest Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Moody is well cast and acted and is essentially a flawless adaptation if not for the fact that his glass eye had somehow become a strap-on glass eye, ruining his powerful image and turning into somewhat of a comic relief character.

As a filmmaker you begin to realize ‘genius of the screen’ in many different forms, Tony Scott is a master of color depth, Fernando Meirelles captures light like he himself was born a photon, and Orsen Welles made shadows an art. Directors are generally divided into their various camps which for the most part stay seperated. Filmmakers who show a mastery of light often couldnt write their way out of a paper bag and vice versa, and that’s simply the way it goes.

Enter Wes Anderson.

The Life Aquatic is not a brilliant film because it falls into many of those catagories, it is a brilliant film because it falls into none of them. This phenomenon cannot be properly conveyed with mere words and so I leave it to you, the viewer, to discover the beauty of this movie yourself.

That being said, a ’standard boilerplate’ review is in order.

The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou 9/10 Directed by: Wes Anderson Written by: Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbauch

Starring Bill Murray Owen Wilson Seu Jorge Willem Dafoe

The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou may be one of the oddest films you ever see. Full of quirky humor and flawed characters the movie is definitely not for everyone but I am convinced that the kind of people who are attracted to a site like the confabulators will be the kind of people who enjoy this movie. The film opens with another film, the tragic 1st half of a documentary by has-been nature show director Steve Zissou. Through it the central conflict of the entire movie is explained, I could try to emulate it here but I believe it was best said by Steve Zissou himself

“I’m going to go on an overnight drunk, and in 10 days I’m going to set out to find the shark that ate my friend and destroy it. “

Even early in the film we are exposed to the unique visual style of the movie as we tour a full size of cross section of their ship, the Belafonte. The crew is introduced in the dry humored drone that Bill Murray has perfected. It consists of Klaus Daimler(Willem Dafoe), a middle aged german man who looks up to Steve as a father, Pele(Seu Jorge) a brazilian who does nothing more than play Portuguese David Bowie covers the entire movie, and the late (eaten) Esteban, Steve’s closest friend. The unique visual style of the film is showcased within every shot. Animals are often technicolored or done in claymation and include such creatures as Crayon Sea Ponies and Flourescent Snapper.

As the crew sets out to film part 2 of the documentary (finding and destroying the Jaguar Shark) they are joined by two more characters. Ned Plimpton, a kentucky airways pilot who may or may not be Steve’s son, and Jane Winslett-Richardson a reporter supposedly doing a cover story on the voyage.

Let me stop here to add this. As a testament to the complexity and depth of this film’s humor I am finding it to be the hardest review I have ever written, I am continually proposing and rejecting ideas to myself on exactly how to convey the spirit of the humor in this movie. I give up, I will settle on only one statement and hope that you will be entirely trusting.

It is a funny movie.

Now, onwards! The film follows the crew as they set out in search of Jaguar shark,breaking into an ‘colleauge’s offshore research facility’ to borrow some equipment before setting out to sea. A relationship quickly develops between Jane, Ned, and Steve that proves both hilarious, touching, and akward at the same time. The dynamics of life aboard the Belafonte are the basis for most of the film’s humor. For example, Each of the crew members, for no apperant reason, carries a Glock pistol, while the entire team of Interns shares one. The crew experiences hardship, mutiny, jealousy, and the kidnap of their bond company stooge, which sidetracks the movie for an entire 30 minutes before returning to the task at hand: the destruction of the Jaguar Shark. I wont spoil the ending or even say whether or not the shark even exists, all I will say is that I am a man who has never shed a tear over a movie, and yet could feel the wetness of my eyes when watching the final 20 minutes of the Life Aquatic. Go out, rent it, grab a few friends and delight in the nuanced humor and sadness of it all.

And in case you were wondering, yes, I do wish I could breathe underwater.

Here I hope to break the ground that has been softened by only one or two small articles with my first webcomic spotlight, Natasha Allegri’s Normal Life. Normal Life is not your standard webcomic, it mixes the best of Something Positive’s ‘this is life and it doesnt always have to have a punchline’ with the indie cred and lovable characters Questionable Content.

Written somewhat like a blog (hosted on her Livejournal, no less), the comic details pretty much a normal day for the writer, whether it is funny, mundane, sad or otherwise. The quality of the comic varies between stick figures and pure artistic beauty (see above Decemberists comic pictures) and does so roughly with the interest factor of the particular comic. Small touches, like Kitty Sean (the author occasional draws her boyfriend Sean with distinct feline features ranging from whiskers to cat ears), bring a sense of creativity to an already hilarious comic. If you are looking for a simple, down to earth comic that wont string you out with a long, involved storyline then Normal Life is the comic for you.

Visit Normal Life and comment, tell her the confabulators sent you.

Note: Yes, it is posted on a Livejournal. Yes, you are too cool for Livejournal. And yes, you did once have a Livejournal of your own, just read the damn comic.

David Sedaris is the author of Barrel Fever, Me Talk Pretty One Day and most recently of Dress your family in Corduroy and Denim, a heartwarming and hilarious collection of short stories about his life, his boyfriend Hugh, and his dysfunctional family. I could spend hours waxing on about the hilarity of this man, but I believe he does it best. The following is a short excerpt from a radio broadcast he did about smoking.

“The trouble with aggressive non smokers is that they feel they are doing you a favor by not allowing you to smoke. They seem to think that one day you’ll thank them for those 15 seconds added to your life. What they don’t understand is that those are just 15 more minutes I can spend hating their guts and plotting revenge.”

Where David Sedaris separates himself from the great comedic writers of our day is his ability to perfectly capture the bittersweet humor of family. He writes about his brother Paul, best known for lines such as “Certain motherfuckers think they can kill the rooster, you mightn’t fuck him up a bit, but bitch, nobody kills the motherfucking rooster” and “Motherfucker, I ain’t seen pussy in so long I’d throw stones at it!” becoming a father and the change David sees in him. Each of these stories is a stunning vignette peppered with both humor and, sometimes, unbearable sadness. His ability to, even in the course of one sentence, make you both laugh and frown, is what separates him from even the wittiest of modern writers.

David has written and read hundreds of short stories and compiled 4 excellent books (as well as editing a collection of short stories written by other authors. Note: Reading David Sedaris is sort of liking watch a color movie in black and white, it lacks a certain “Je ne sais quoi”… Well, Je sais quoi, it’s his voice. Soft and slightly nasal, it is one of most distinctive voices in modern radio (Robert Segal, Ira Glass and Carl Castle being other). His tone, cadence, and inflection weave a much more immersive storytelling experience until one cant help but feel a certain intimacy with all the characters. Not to mention the pure hilarity that accompanies switching from his normal voice to his brothers speech, described by David Sedaris as being “Like listening to a foreigner and picking up only the words bitch, motherfucker, and the phrase ‘you can’t kill the rooster’.”

To hear David Sedaris I suggest you go to www.thislife.org and search for This American Life (See Radio Spotlight: This American Life) episodes which feature Mr. Sedaris (a regular contributor, there are over 36). There is a search feature on the site and as long as you have RealAudio you can stream shows right to your computer.

Enjoy!

Rejoice Proletariat, your voice can now be heard!

Don’t be mean, unjust, racist, or any variant on the theme of dickhead or we will ask you to leave.

http://www.confabulators.com/phpBB2

Enjoy!