The Supercilious Snicker and the Smug Smile

We here at Two Thumbs Sideways are what you might call... elitists.* We feel bad about this. Really we do. It isn't our fault we were born with such gargantuan brains. Blame our parents. Seriously. Blame them. We do.

But every once in a while, something comes along which we do not at feel bad about Superciliously Snickering upon or Smugly Smiling upon. Here's a list of a few.

Italians: Smug Smile.

- Sorry, but Italians are the coolest immigrants. They talk the coolest, they start really cool illegal organizations, and without them we wouldn't have The Godfather. (And without The Godfather we wouldn't have American Graffiti, Star Wars, Apocalypse Now, and goodness knows how many other masterpieces.) Sure, the German rocket scientists who came over here post-WWII were pretty awesome, but they also cooperated in the deaths of millions before they came here. Not cool. And don't even get us started on the Irish. Sure, we like potatoes as much as the next guy, but the Irish landed in Boston, and Boston spawned the Red Sox. That alone is enough to taint their candidacy.

The Chronicles of Narnia Score: Supercilious Snicker.

- This was, admittedly, a bone thrown to Left Thumb to make up for Right Thumb's little joke a while ago. But all involved agree that this music is absolutely terrible. Just awful. It makes John Williams look like Mozart in comparison.

Modern "Science Fiction" novels: Supercilious Snicker.

- Asimov, Clark, Dick, etc. are so far superior to anything written today that we haven't really had new sci-fi material in thirty years. Even the good sci-fi movies of that period (Blade Runner, War of the Worlds, etc.) were based on material from past writers. The only exception that immediately comes to mind is A.I. Artificial Intelligence, and Stanley Kubrick was involved with that. Stanley makes up for just about anything. Speaking of which…

Stanley Kubrick: Smug Smile.

- This guy is unbelievable. He is better than other filmmakers. Period. Say otherwise and you reveal yourself as a cretinous simpleton.

Ingmar Bergman: Smug Smile.

- See note on Stanley Kubrick.

Battlestar Galactica: Smug Smile.

- Needs no explanation.

Agatha Christie: Supercilious Snicker.

- We know ahead of time that this will undoubtedly result in a storm of angry comments from our readers. We do hope that you are not so attached to this sentimentalist charlatan of a mystery writer that you cannot see through her cheap tricks. Christie’s novels are exactly the sort of material that Sherlock Holmes would never mentally imbibe for fear of clogging his mental pathways with unhelpful baggage. **

James Cameron’s animated films: Supercilious Snicker.

- We were unaware until recently that this titan of undeserved acclaim (Titan—get it? Get it?) was making a foray into cartoon-land. But then we saw the newly-unveiled trailer for Avatar. If Smurfs had nightmares, this is what they’d look like.

The Inheritance Cycle (formerly known as The Inheritance Trilogy): Supercilious Snicker.

- What’s the first thing you would expect a young, inexperienced, hopelessly juvenile, shamelessly derivative but wildly successful fantasy author to do? Well, naturally, write a conclusion to his three-part series that drags on so long that it must be broken up into two books, thereby ruining the faint bit of symmetry and cohesion that the sequence might have had. And oh yes, that faint bit of symmetry and cohesion only existed due to its blatant, unmistakable, thoroughly laughable retelling of the plot of Star Wars. Yes, occasionally we Thumbs just whisper “Inheritance” to each other, and then share a Colonel Tigh Chortle. ***

Battlestar Galactica: Supercilious Snicker.

- We suppose this deserves some explanation. But unlike Agatha Christie, we positively refuse to indulge the lowest passions of man by wrapping everything up nicely with a Grand Reveal—and so this will just have to wait until later.

~Two Thumbs Sideways~


* We have been called much worse.

** Emphatically not the upcoming Robert Downey Jr. abomination. He might read Agatha Christie. (He’d probably even listen to the Narnia score while reading it.)

*** Vaguely similar to the Grad Student Guffaw. Due to recent experiences, however, we Thumbs also look down upon said Guffaw.