XXX: I Pledge Allegiance

Matty the Mainer was commissioned to write the third installment of the XXX series: XXX: I Pledge Allegiance. He gave me a rough draft of the script, and I must say, I was disappointed.

In it, XXX is played by (he hopes) James Spader. Instead of jumping out of exploding buildings and doing extreme sports, he enjoys fine wine and smooth jazz. There are some stunts, like when Spader jumps out of an exploding sky scraper onto a waiting helicopter, from which he straps on a snowboard and disembarks over a snow covered mountain. So I guess there is some jumping out of exploding buildings and extreme sports, but just not as much.

The basic premise is that the bad guys have changed their tune: they're trying to kill American freedom with kindness. It's going to take a new kind of XXX to expose them as the frauds they are and blow the bastards up. Enter the charming Toji Watanabe (played by Spader), a man who was adopted by Japanese businessmen when he was two, and is the world's foremost conman. His job is to con the bad guys into revealing they're bad guys through his in affable charm and wit. At one point he finds out a dude is a bad guy when the dude can't tell the difference between a Merlot and a Malbec. He then shoots the guy in front of Samuel L. Jackson, who reprimands him for being so reckless.

The other issue I found with the script was the bad guy: Phillip Seymour Hoffman. He poached the exact bad guy from Mission Impossible III, except his only line is: "There's an explosive charge in you head." That's all he says the whole movie.

I was shocked when he told me the film was green lighted.

Snakes on a Plane

Mads had been gone for two weeks, and in that time I had done the one thing I promised myself I would never do again: play video games. It started innocently enough with a few games of Galaga on the arcade console I had in the apartment. Then came the Grand Theft Auto III. Days were spent entirely inside. My voice mailbox was filled. I stopped showering and only ate pizza and whatever other food stuffs could be delivered. But I was doing it: I almost had a 100% of the game finished. I was about to finish level twelve on the ambulance mission, which would get me unlimited run, when the door was knocked down. I jumped up, watching a man's silhouette walk into my living room. I could tell by the leather jacket and Kangol hat that it was Samuel L. Jackson.

"Motherfucker get your ass up!"

He threw my coffee table over. Then took my Gaystation by the cord and ripped the plug out of the socket.

"You know for a motherfucking fact that I have a new movie in theaters, why the fuck haven't you seen it?"

"I...I...I.."

"I,I,I,I? You know your fucked up?"

"I'm sorry, what's the movie called?"

"Motherfucking Snakes on a Plane. Right up your fucking alley, Stan."

"It better be fucking better than that piece of shit last movie you did with Eugene Levy."

"Hey, a motherfucker's gotta pay the bills."

I went and saw it, and he was right, it was way better than that sack of ass-crack he did with Eugene Levy. It was easily the best movie of the year, and probably the best movie to come out in the States since Lost in Translation or The Pianist. It had elements of Fellini in the sad carnival of the snakes, and one could almost see Anthony Quinn's character from La Strada in the huge python that tried to eat the British man. On the other hand, Sammy L.'s character was definitely Kurasawa: the lone samurai comes to save the village, or in this case a community of travellers, from the invading horde. Oh yeah, and it had motherfucking snakes on a plane. Sammy L. was right: it was just what the doctor ordered. I felt energized.

I'm, back, bitches.