philmguy

The "Snakes on a Plane" hysteria only grows as Aug. 18 draws nearer. Now this site lets you send friends - or yourself - a "personal" message from Samuel L. Jackson, goading you into seeing the movie, which hopefully will be as cheesy as this idea.

I'm surprised that the media hasn't named it the MELtdown by now. Mel Gibson's double whammy of getting arrested for driving under the influence and spewing hatred to the cops who brought him in could be a career-breaker. His fans were able to look the other way two years ago when he refused to contradict his father's Holocaust denials - chalking it up to harmless father-son loyalty. But this time he's gone too far.

Electronic Arts and ESPN announced that a preview video of "Madden NFL 07" will be available on Pay-Per-View. At 8 p.m. EST Aug. 4, you can plop down $19.95 to take in game footage, making-of background material and interviews with football players who talk about their in-game ratings. This is one of the greediest maneuvers I've heard of. As if it wasn't bad enough to gouge games for $50 every year for a barely modified version of the previous season's game, now they're trying to get them to pay an extra $20 for something that could easily be included as an extra feature on the game itself.

Just as Samuel Jackson has had it with these motha-effing snakes, I've had it with these damn Fandango commercials that play before every single screening. The ads might not be such a big deal for people who see a film a week, but I have to suffer through them four or five times a week, sometimes more. After a few years of this, the commercial - which is only changed every other year or so - starts to penetrate your brain and lobotomize you "A Clockwork Orange" style.

There's an all-out blog comment war going on over at Hollywood Elsewhere, involving Kevin Smith, producer Don Murphy (the guy whom Quentin Tarantino once "bitch-slapped" in public) and blogger David Poland. The stuff is absolutely must-reading for any movie fan.

The more I think about it, the more I have to respect Smith for coming out and saying what's on his mind.

What is it they say? Two is a coincidence but three's a trend? In that case we need one more filmmaker to strike out at a movie critic this week for the Newsweek pieces to start rolling. M. Night Shyamalan, bitter over the way "The Village" was thrashed by critics in '04, wrote a stoogelike movie critic figure into his new film, "Lady in the Water," and now Kevin Smith is up in arms over Joel Siegel's walkout of "Clerks II."

I'm not entirely sure one has lived until they check out this Snakes on a Plane music video. This thing typifies the insanity that has surrounded the mass "SOAP" hysteria. I think all the jacked expectations, and possibly a case of the director and cast trying too hard to be campy, could make for a big disappointment when this thing finally lifts off next month.

I'm biased here, given that I've been a tremendous Rocky fan my entire life, but I'm thinking this trailer for "Rocky Balboa" is good enough even to convince the non-believers, especially those who mistakenly hate "Rocky V."

If the new Rocky is anything like this trailer, it's going to be my favorite film of the year.

It certainly looks as if they can judging from this Sony ad for the new white PSP, which is posted in Holland. For those of you too lazy to click open the link, it shows a white woman holding up a black woman by her jaw, giving a new definition to the phrase "white power."

Quite the interesting ad strategy. Maybe Sony's next campaigns in the U.S. will feature a gimongous Minuteman-themed PSP looming over the Mexican border, crushing immigrants as they try to sneak past. In the deep South, maybe Sony will make a billboard of two hooded, Confederate-stars & bars PSPs interlinked as a burning cross.

I hatedhated the first "Pirates of the Caribbean" so much that I got angry at everyone else who liked it. This made me bitter at pretty much the rest of the world, and I've lived the past three years ostracized from the alternate dimension of pirate enthusiasts. Going into the sequel, subtitled "Dead Man's Chest" felt like walking the plank. After being severely disappointed by the "Clerks" and "Superman" sequels, how could this Disney nonsense possibly be decent?