After yesterday's rant, I decided to hit up IMDB to see what M. Night Shyamalan has coming down the shit chute, and oh my goodness, looks like he'll be writing the screenplay adaptation to "Life of Pi". I guess he got tired of thinking up his own hackneyed plot twists, and had to resort to modern fiction.

I loathe this man more than Uwe Bol, and, yes, I can confidently say that even after seeing the Dungeon Siege trailer.

Let me save you a lot of trouble by employing my "Snakes on a Plane" School of Film Titling technique. "Life of Pi", I re-dub thee

"It's Not Really a Goddamned Tiger"

If you haven't read the book, I haven't really ruined anything, if you plan on reading it for the right reasons. It's not like you needed to be told that a story about a small Indian boy who survives on a lifeboat with a starving Bengal tiger for more than 200 days at sea is going to employ the elements of an allegory. Yes, it's fiction, but we are not mentally retarded. It's a starving Bengal tiger. Children are made of meat. It is very safe for us to assume that there are some elements of fiction at work here defying a rational world, in an effort to convey the authors notions of a deeper truth. That is the basis for enjoyment. The point of reading a book, just like the point of going to the movies, shouldn't be to suffer a story in anticipation of a plot twist as the payoff.

Of course my criticism of the movie precedes its actual release. It could be great, but knowing Mr. Correspondence-School-of-Film-Dropout, I imagine the bulk of the effort put into the screenplay will be architecting the composition of events in such a fashion that they heighten the effect of a "surprise" ending. Bleh.