Recently we saw Snakes on a Plane, starring Samuel “MoFo” Jackson. (Apparently he demands this twelve-letter swear word in his contracts. I don’t recall a single movie where he has not used it except Star Wars. Perhaps they don’t swear in the future.) Snakes on a Plane had incredible buzz before it reached the theaters. It must have been the sound of rattlers striking the audience, because this movie went down faster than the busty blonde in the airborne bathroom. (Of course, in any decent cheesy movie, everyone who has sex must be punished. Said blonde received a natural breast piercing—who says natural is better?—and her boyfriend went snake-to-snake and lost, too.)

Nonetheless I can definitely recommend seeing it—once—on cable or rental. It had decent action, plenty of caricatured characters, and even a couple of surprises. Plus lots of bit parts. Unlike your typical B movie, this one actually tried to fix the plot holes. I remember thinking, “Wait a minute—if this plane took off from Hawaii, there aren’t any poisonous snakes there!” And the movie addressed it. It even dealt with the usual movie assumption that “All wild animals are furious at Mankind for (nuclear weapons / destroying the environment / having hands / etc) and will viciously attack humans without provocation.”

Shortly after seeing SoaP, I found a wedding notice in the local newspaper. The woman was noted for various movie roles including one in SoaP. I passed the picture around at dinner to see if anyone was sure if she was the lav lady. After much uncertainty from the guys, I asked the women to check, since the newspaper photo only showed her from the neck up.

Discussions during dinner often involve—surprise!—movies. Sometimes Matt’s enormous collection of direct-to-DVD movies comes up. I once looked through several dozen of his movies and recognized about one in ten. I’ve written a little program that can generate random movie titles that are likely to be in Matt’s collection. Here is a sample of ten generated titles: