"Snakes on the Brain", the video - It's from the Snakes on a Plane soundtrack and full of chicks and snakes. I gotta make sure every one of my readers watches that video - now for the review...
Just because my new review of Lady in the Water is more topical (you can still catch it before it fades from the theaters), that is not excuse to skip my review of the completely irrelevant Project: Metalbeast from 1995. After all, much has been written about Lady, there is even a book about its troubled production that hit the shelves before the film's opening weekend. Project: Metalbeast, there is hardly anything about that movie out there, so read this blog and learn.
As for Lady, I've heard about crowds mocking it openly in the theater, people walking out during the first 15 minutes, I've heard it all, but I think it's a case of copycat hate. The movie is not that bad. It's not super-bad. In context I was certainly ready to hate it, especially after reading M. Night Shyamalan's boasts about how he is a bankable success. I don't like big Hollywood egos and I don't like the self-serving bits of this film. Shyamalan casting himself as a prophet, that was a bad call. The evil critic, that's a little to obvious of a dig at Shyamalan's enemies. Still the movie is not too bad for a fantasy movie, most of witch are pretty cornball. The NeverEnding Story, Flight of the Navigator, Legend, those are all pretty neat in some ways and full of good visuals, but the stories are nothing magical to anyone other than a kid. Lady in the Water has its share of bad writing, but it's got some sympathetic characters and a pretty good setting - the movie never leaves the apartment complex and that's great. Unfortunately Lady opens with a lame legend illustrated by crude cave-painting style animation. Add to that the media's negative bias towards this film and you will have an audience not open to accepting some of the good stuff that comes later.
And there is more bad with the good, I admit it. The wolf-like villain is made up of spiny blades of grass, like quills, shades of the "creatures" in The Village. Towards the end of Lady a trio of grass gorillas shows up, they too are porcupine-like. I'm am not sure why Shyamalan is hung up on quill-like attributes. Here I draw parallels to Project: Metalbeast as it's werewolf also sports a tuft of metallic quills at the back of the neck - and for no better of a reason than do the grass animals in Lady. I'm not saying the Shyamalan was influenced was by Metalbeast, but I'm not saying that he wasn't. One can find inspiration anywhere, and it's all the more impressive if found in something ignored or dismissed by anyone else - Project: Metalbeast - or Lady in the Water - or even in the Cookbook, the book Shyamalan's character in Lady is writing. It's prophesied that it will save future generations, put an end to hypocrisy, and bring peace to the Middle East.... aww what I'm I saying, this shit is lame. Like how my imaginative tales of the bunny world just annoy my fiancé Shylamalan's bed time stories makes the audience puke. Let's just stick to slashers and films about death cults, the dream is dead.
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