Category: Movies

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]

We used our free passes that we scored from the V For Vendetta debacle to go check out Mission: Impossible III[imdb] a few weeks ago. And yes, I know that I’ve been really bad about posting about things that seem to have happened ages ago, but at least we’re getting caught up, are we not? And actually, I think we saw this before Da Vinci Code[imdb], but oh well.

I’m not sure if it’s just something I’m noticing more and more, but I have never had the feeling that I was watching a big, Hollywood, blockbuster, big budget, star studded, major motion picture movie as I did with this flick. I won’t say that it was a complete waste of time, but that really sums up the majority of the experience. On the other hand, this is a movie with a storyline involving super-secret spy agents, so it’s to be expected.

That being said, this was a really great, free movie. Being the red blooded male that I am, I do enjoy a good action flick from time to time. More so, I like Phillip Seymour Hoffman[imdb] the more and more I see him. He’s got the ticket to ride ever since he got that oscar, but I have yet to be let down by him. I liked him being the bad guy a lot. Movies like this are better seen on the big screen with kick ass sound, but we probably wouldn’t have seen it in the theatre if it wasn’t for the passes.

Even with all the bad press, and good press for that matter, Tom Cruise[imdb] is getting lately, I thought it was a pretty solid role that he played. These days, it seems that anytime Hollywood wants to put out a nice action flick of blockbuster proportions, Ving Rhames[imdb] makes the cast.

That’s what I felt like while watching this flick last Friday night. And I don’t want to get into too much of a movie review mode about it. I enjoyed the experience, but I left that theatre feeling really dissapointed. It didn’t help that I just read the book. I mean literally, I just finished reading the book that same day.

What didn’t I like about it? That’s hard to say without giving too much of the story away. I think a lot of people understand the premise of the book, but the story that is built around it is the only thing the media hasn’t given away. Regardless, they did change some things, as Hollywood always does. They sliced some elements up, took some out completely, and then made the characters fit the movie rather than the ones that you got from the book.

I’ll have to watch it again to understand, for myself, how it was as an actual movie. Paying so much attention to the storyline, I didn’t really take in the film as it was presented. However, I recently heard that the makers of 24[fox] tried to get the rights from Dan Brown to do a season based on his book. That got me thinking that either a television mini-series or even the 24 idea would have succeeded in bringing the book to life better rather than a simple, box office smash.

Opie, you let me down.