I keep seeing these previews for Jim Carrey’s new flick, The Number 23[imdb]. I love the fact that he’s going to be in this creepy movie. A bit of a change, and I have to say that I’m curious to see it. Opening day? Probably not, but sometime thereafter.

In the preview, they keep talking about the significance of the number itself, 23. Long story short, you divide the 2 by 3 and it’s .666. Quite evil, don’t you think? Then there is all these various examples of how it’s portrayed throughout history. When you add all the digits together of 9/11/2001, you get the sum of 23. The tilt of the Earth at its axis is 23 degrees. So on and so on.

What gets me is that they say Kurt Cobain[wiki] died when he was 23. No, he died when he was 27, and Tony Pierce would beat you up for saying different. If you go to the website, it does make the case for the digits to the years of his birth (1967) and death (1994) each totaling that magical, creepy digit.

Maybe I’ve been seeing or hearing this trailer wrong, but I can’t find proof to back this up anywhere. Rebecca swears she’s seen and heard this as well. Perhaps they pulled it once they realized the error. You can’t simply say that Cobain died at the age of 23 when you meant something completely different. It’s like how the Texas Chainsaw Massacre[imdb] is “based on true events”. It kind of is, but the story actually stems from a crazy guy, Ed Glein[wiki], from Wisconsin that also fueled inspiration for Psycho[imdb] and Silence of the Lambs[imdb], just to name a few.

Still, you can’t bend the facts about Cobain’s death to help sell a movie. Maybe some one else out there can back me up or disprove this. I’ve ventured through Google and YouTube to find no trace of the trailer I’m seeing on TV. By the way, if you want more funny numbers things to check out, see this Wiki about the 27 Club.

Out of all the movies we could have gone to yesterday, Accepted[imdb] was the one that wasn’t at the top of my list. I still had some interest in seeing it though. I think it’s that part in the preview with the guy in a hot dog suit screaming for some one to “ask me about my wiener” that captured my attention. And you can go ahead and insert your joke or pun here. Moving on…

When a high school burnout discovers he’s been rejected from every college he’s applied to, he creates a fake university in order to fool his overzealous parents. [imdb]

I laughed a lot at this flick. The jokes flowed for me, even though it really is one of those stereotypical movies about college where you have one group of not-so-cool kids going against the “cool kids”. Toss in something to do with the dean, and you kind of get the idea.

The humor is subtle. Well, at least until Lewis Black[imdb] shows up. To say that he makes the movie might be going a little far, but he produces some great lines. And when I say subtle, I imply that as the film not being predictable. Sure, some of it stretches the imagination, but this is a movie we’re talking about. You want real life, go watch TLC or something.

I will also add that one element that isn’t subtle is the product placement. Apple computers are everywhere, and everyone loves Mt. Dew. I will go even further and say that colleges like Princeton and Yale even fall into the product placement category here. I’m not sure how licensing rights work in movies when it comes to mentioning educational institutions, but it is blatant promotion of those schools, no matter how you argue it. They are real schools, unlike the two colleges at the center of the story in the movie.

I’ve found myself often comparing seeing movies like this with my thoughts about Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle[imdb]. It works in either two ways. One, I liked it, it was funny, I saw it once, and it won’t break my heart if I never see it again. Or two, all of what I just said, but I actually wouldn’t mind owning that on DVD. You know, those mid-DVD-section impulse buys? That’s where Accepted would land for me.

I find myself wanting to watch a lot of films in the comedy genre lately. I’m not so much into the Snakes on a Plane hype, WTC does have me curious, and horror flicks alway seem like a good idea until it comes down to actually spending money at the box office. I just like being entertained. When movies surprise me and exceed expectations, that’s even better. Accepted did that.

Last weekend, we headed down to catch the bizzarely awaited sequal to a movie that I will also lay blame to the demise of my childhood innocence, also known as those years spent in high school. It’s tough to really pinpoint that exact moment, but I’m fairly sure when the name of Kevin Smith[wiki] entered my memory banks, that had something to do with it. Not all of it. It just aided the whole process.

It wasn’t until a few months ago that I became aware that Smith was even making Clerks 2.  It makes me feel some slight shame being that one of my favorite things to do between classes during college was to cruise into the computer labs and scan the web for the latest rumors on projects coming up.  Then I took some film courses.  Suddenly movies lost their flare, but that was probably the Russian, expressionist movies from the 1920′s that I fell asleep during…  er, watched intently while taking spectacular notes in class.  Yeah…

I have to thank that time spent trying to appreciate that art.  It makes me appreciate movies like this so much more.  That’s not because you might think I have no artistic flavor in the things that I enjoy.  It’s just the simple fact that this is a funny as hell flick.  I almost go as far as to say “in it’s own way”, but if you have been paying attention to any of the previous stuff from Kevin Smith, then you know I don’t have to.

I read some reviews about the camera work, and in hindsight, I have to agree.  There is one scene where the steady-cam circles constantly during dialog, and I remember thinking how cool of a scene it was.  Give credit to smith for being subtle to break out of a mold so many people consider him to be stuck in.

The best thing to remember is to is not remember anything you’ve heard about the movie and just relax.  Enjoy it.  Movies, believe it or not, are expensively made to entertain you.  Screw what Joel Seigal or anyone else said about Clerks 2.  I just hope that there are more people willing to see this than the Waynes brothers’ flick.  Yikes.

I’ve been a Kevin Smith[wiki] fan for a long time, even though I initally thought that any movie with the title of Mallrats was not worth my time. Of course, I was just a little high school punk that discovered the great error in my ways and became wiser to the fact that it’s a good, funny movie. Many lines from that flick and the first Clerks movie have become apart of everyday vocabulary.

Today’s Page Six in the New York Post makes me even more anxious to see Clerks II.

July 19, 2006 — DON’T joke about women, donkeys and bestiality if you expect Joel Siegel to watch your movie. That’s what director Kevin Smith found out when the pun-loving “Good Morning America” film critic stormed out of a press screening of Smith’s “Clerks II,” which opens Friday – an act that’s sparked a vicious war of words between the two.

“Time to go!” roared Siegel to his fellow critics. “First movie I’ve walked out of in 30 [bleeping] years!” His tirade came 40 minutes into the long-awaited Weinstein Company sequel to Smith’s 1994 cult classic about two foul-mouthed Long Island convenience store clerks who razz customers and goof off.

In the scene that sent Siegel to the exit, the characters graphically discuss hiring a woman to perform sexual favors on a donkey. Siegel told Page Six: “It was so foul and mean and repulsive. I finally realized I could not say anything positive . . . I wasn’t ready for this kind of smut . . . I hope he doesn’t make any more movies.”

An apoplectic Smith fired back on his MySpace blog: “Getting a bad review from Siegel is like a badge of honor. This is the guy who stole his mustachioed-critic shtick from Gene Shalit years ago, and still refuses to give it back. This is a guy who seemingly prides himself on his own nyuk-nyuk wordplay. For ‘Pirates 2,’ he made us all titter with ‘Yo, Ho, Ho and a Bottle of Fun’ . . . He made us squeal with delight when he wrote, ‘Wheelie Good Time for “Cars.” ‘ I mean, Fozzy [bleeping] Bear laughs at this guy.”

And there’s more: “I don’t need Joel Siegel to [bleep] my [bleep] the way he apparently [bleeps] M. Night Shyamalan’s, gushing over his flick ['The Lady in the Water'] before he’s even seen it, but [bleep] man, man – how about a little common [bleeping] courtesy? You never, never disrupt a movie, simply because you don’t like it. Cardinal rule of moviegoing: Shut your [bleeping] mouth while the movie’s playing.

“I don’t come down to your job and slap the taste out of your mouth for coming up with a line like, ‘ “Shark Tale” Is a Halibut Good Time’ – so don’t [bleep] with my stuff while it’s still screening . . . What are you, a 12-year-old boy cutting loose with your pals at a Friday night screening of ‘Scary Movie’ 4′ while your parents are in a theater down the hall watching ‘The Devil Wears Prada’? Leave the diva-like behavior and drama-queen antics to the movie stars, not the movie reviewer, ya’ rude-ass [bleep].” [nypost]