Kevin Smith

Kevin Smith. Plain and simple. That's the only title I can give this post. You'll see why.

When the current poll expires tomorrow, I'm replacing it with a Kevin Smith poll, because I have a question and I'm genuinely interested in seeing it answered. Come back to see the question and vote, please do. I have no idea what the answer will be.

At Comic-Con this weekend, Tim Kring announced that Kevin Smith will be writing and directing one of the Heroes Origins episodes. My immediate thought was: Who will care? Now, that's not a statement that nobody will care but a genuine question. Who will care?

Maybe I'm being blind, but Smith seems to have suffered a serious drop-off in interest over the last few years. Emphasis on the seems. Maybe its just in my circle, or the areas of the web I frequent, but it looks to me like nobody has anywhere nearly the amount of interest in Kevin Smith that they used to. Nobody likes him as much; nobody dislikes him as much.

Is Kevin Smith now just part of the geek furniture? And is this furniture getting unfashionable as well as slightly uncomfortable?

I didn't much care for Clerks 2 at all. It struck me as somewhat forced, overly familiar if not exactly cliched, and smacking of amateurism. I was tempted to buy the DVD because, for whatever reason, I absolutely love DVD special features and Smith and Co are really pretty good with those. In fact, I still might. I'm far more interested in seeing the special features on a Smith DVD than the film itself - and I'm also not entirely sure that's a bad thing.

While Zack and Miri sounds rather uninspiring, and the much-distributed script excerpt didn't so much wash over me as wander past me, on the other side of the street in a crowd of anonymous, faceless passers by, I do have some hope for Red State. Forced to step out of his cinematic comfort zone much more than usual, Smith might actually deliver soemthing fresh (though still quite undernourished in many ways, I'd expect, and hardly perfectedly crafted in any audio-visual technical sense).

Judd Apatow is delivering more of what Smith promised in each film than Smith has managed in four of his films combined.

Chasing Amy is, for my money, Smith's best work - it has his voice, it sustains an interesting argument, it has a argely untroubled narrative flow, the cast are, on average, the best he's had. Clerks I definitely enjoyed - though I felt it suffered from a Christmas every-day disease, where you could loop it, have a mobius strip of Clerks, and no matter where you started watching, you'd find it very funny for twenty or thirty minutes then find, in fact, it was grinding you down somewhat. Score another point for Smith on DVD - Clerks in small doses is all the more viable.

And my next favourite of his films? Jersey Girl. Not a popular choice - it is somewhat underrated. But mark my words - my selection wasn't going to be any of the others. Least favourite: Dogma, which is barely a film, but an illustrated radio play and a droning, unsubtle one at that, perfunctorily illustrated and not making full use of the wonderful potential of radio at all.

Let alone the potential of film.

So, are you excited that Kevin Smith will be 'doing' Heroes? Why? And should I be?

Movie Minesweeper - The Wimbledon Ignorance Edition

- Alex Kurtzman and Robert Orci have given an interview to the NYTimes. Disappointingly, they reveal something of an obsession with Godard; interestingly, they suggest that they've come up with 'good reasons' for the many illogical elements of the Transformers mythos - not least the various problems around there not being any cars on the Autobots' home planet. I'm curious to see how they've wangled a way out of that one (if indeed they have).

- Missy Peregrym is taking over a key role in Reaper from the pilot's Nikki Reed. Which presumably means the Kevin Smith-directed pilot will never air.

- Robert DeNiro has joined the team behind Barry Primus' 20% Fiction. He'll serve as an executive producer on the drama about an acting coach - I'm a little surprised he hasn't also taken the lead role, so I assume he simply isn't the right type.

- Movie characters often have quite exotic, specific or quirky jobs. Example: in All About Steve, Sandra Bullock is to play a crossword creator, while Thomas Haden Church has just joined the cast as a CNN cameraman. So, they have a specific outlet for his camerawork, but no newspaper named for her crossword puzzles yet? The marketing synergists must be working on something, surely?

- Guest directors Joss Whedon and Harold Ramis have both contributed to the extra features on the Office season 3 DVDs.

- MTV are turning their book The Bad Girls into a film called The Lost Girls (yep, MTV publish books, make films and screen music vi... oh, they at least publish books and make films). Holly Brix has been hired to pen the script.

- Jill Scott and Anika Noni Rose have the lead roles (Precious and Grace respectively) in the film of The No 1. Ladies Detective Agency, with the UK tabloid tip Queen Latifah nowhere to be seen. According to The Hollywood Reporter, no delas are in place yet for the subsequent TV series, which is disappointing.

Movie Minesweeper - The Volumatic Spacer Device Edition

- You can watch Four Eyed Monsters online now, for free. For every viewer to register, the filmmakers receive a dollar. 'Only' 100,000 viewers will cover the film's budget.

- Brett Ratner is to direct Playboy, a Hugh Hefner biopic. Hilarious. For a long time, Oliver Stone was attached, but not any more. Even more hilarious.

- Laura Albert has lost her law suit with Antidote. To cut the long story short: Albert was the author of the books allegedly written by J T LeRoy, and she was only unveiled once LeRoy was shown not to exist. Antidote had optioned Albert's book Sarah, believing it to be a memoir, not complete and utter fiction, and once the curtain was pulled back they had no interest in the film any longer and let their option expire. They've now been awarded 116,500 dollars in this fraud suit.

- JoBlo are hosting an excerpt from Kevin Smith's Zack and Miri Make a Porno script, as published in Entertainment Weekly. [Or try going a page earlier]

- More EW scanning over at SlashFilm where they've some stills from Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited.

- Matt Dillon is joining Robin Williams, John Travolta and Kelly Preston in Walt Becker's Old Dogs.

- The latest wave of John Rambo stills are quite straight and lifeless.

Direct Download Link For Bruce Willis' Die Hard 4 Video Interview

See Kevin Smith and Bruce Willis discussing Die Hard 4. Do they explain why the supposedly immortal "Yippee Kye-Aye" line is disrupted by gunfire before it gets finished? Of course not. For some reason, pretending Bruce swears in the film is a central pillar of the marketing.

Who do they expect wants to see this film? And the thing is... I fear they're right.

Beverly Hills Cop 4

ComingSoon had Lorenza di Bonaventura over for a cuppa and a nice chat, and between bicies, he revealed plans for a fourth Beverly Hills Cop film.

The first Cop was initially intended to be a Sylvester Stallone vehicle and just days before shooting, Stallone was out and Murphy was in. The changes were many and sometimes massive - though not always entirely necessary. Downgrading the love interest to a friend to avoid interracial romance was probably not a good idea, in the grand scheme of things - I doubt it even had much of an impact on the box office which was, of course, the motivation.

If I can trust my memory, Beverly Hills Cop 2 is truly woeful, even for an 80's-spun sequel. The consensus is that 3 is the worst of all, but I certainly don't remember it that way. 3 might be utterly redundant, occasionally a little desperate and, overall, insultingly formulaic but you can level every one of those claims at 2, too. At least 3 winks at the audience a little (which is a love-it-or-hate thing, I suppose), and it does seem much more attuned to Eddie Murphy's stage personality. Indeed, 2 seemed more like a Stallone film than the first did - and I wonder if some of the supporting cast are in place to acknowledge this, somehow.

A fourth Beverly Hills Cop could be a very good idea. Things have changed enough that there's new things to say, a new world to portray, and some old attitudes that won't go away and still need attention. The script would need to be founded on some realistic ideas of where Axel Foley would be these days, and how his life would have shaken out, but the appeal of Eddie Murphy in the first place could be recaptured if Eddie plays along and allows Axel to be a realistic, three-dimensional character and not bent out of shape by fear or ego (where the character in the first film was compromised by the producers and studio - pre-empting racism on the part of the audience - the threat this time could be Murphy himself).

Between wild promises of countless curious projects, Tarantino has expressed interest in making a Beverly Hills Cop sequel, and he'd be a wonderful choice. Murphy is about to collaborate with Brett Ratner - let's hope that doesn't prove to be a preface to a Cop team-up. Michael Bay would be a bad idea too, I think, as would Tim Story - even thought they seem like possible 'fanboy' choices. Some might even suggest Kevin Smith, but that idea positively reeks of development hell and those ever decreasing Fletch Won circles of struggle, delay and, ultimately, abandonment.

Add your ideas in the comments, if you wish, but I certainly wouldn't be offended by any of the following contenders: Ron Shelton, James Foley (no relation), Joseph Ruben, Robert Townsend, John Landis (again), John Dahl. Some of these may have patchy resumes, but they've shown, somewhere along the line that they can do it, and that they've a suitable outlook for Cop. What's more - they're not wildly unlikely choices for the jump-start episode of a long stagnant franchise. More immediately, though, there's going to have to be a script...

Movie Minesweeper - The What's For Dinner? Edition

- Wade Shotter takes on Michel Gondry at his own game... and comes out ahead in several distinct ways.

- According to the LA Times, Kevin Smith's new comedy is to be called Zack and Miri Make a Porno. I Want More Candy, if you will. Or The Other Amateurs. Shooting will start in February and the film will feature nudity - "but funny nudity, not gratuitous nudity." Can you 'indulge' and laugh at the same time? I guess we'll find out late next year.

- Al Pacino might just possibly play Napoleon in a movie. But probably not.

- Spike Lee is looking to adapt James McBride's book Miracle at St. Anna. It's a story about black World War 2 soldiers, to be shot in Italy.

- DavisDVD have listed a whole slew of upcoming direct-to-DVD titles: Wrong Turn 2: Dead End, Bachelor Party 2, Garfield Gets Real, Lake Placid 2, Stargate: The Ark of Truth, Stargate: Continuum, Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak On a Plane, Bring It On: In It To Win It, Curious George 2: Monkey On The Run, Return To House On Haunted Hill, A Dennis the Menace Christmas, The Lost Boys 2, Get Smarter: Bruce and Lloyd Out Of Control and sequels for 8 Seconds, Cellular, Friday, Havoc, The Players Club and Undisputed.

I'm too hungry to go on right now. What's for dinner?

Dumping In The Name Of

The Prince Charles Cinema (still best cinema in the UK, don't you know) have named a cubicle in their gents after Kevin Smith. This was after Smith noted "I don't know, Quentin Tarantino has never turned up here and they name the bar after him, it's my second visit and they haven't even named a toilet after me".

Apparently, the bar is due for renovation soon and it has been hinted that the Tarantino association may be dropped. There's also specualtion that a ladies' loo cubicle will be named, and the cinema is looking for suggestions. Jeez. That's a tough call. If the idea is to appeal to Tarantino and Kevin Smith fans... which female director would do that? Doris Wishman? I'm betting it ends up named after an actress - and a very popular pin-up, too.

Hateful Homophobe Shirley Phelps Comments On Kevin Smith's Next Film

Kevin Smith has revealed that Red State, his upcoming horror film, has been informed by his feelings towards the Westoboro Baptist Church and their deeply uncharismatic leader, Fred Phelps. Fred's daugheter Shirley Phelps, their lead spokeswoman, hateful homophobe, and highly delusional star player in Louis Theroux's recent Most Hated Family in America documentary, has reacted to the news.

No surprises that she doesn't really know what's going on, and neither does she seem to care. She does take the opportunity to spout the same-old, same-old however.

Thankfully, the reach of the Westboro ranters is rather short. They hurt a lot of people, but not as many as they might if they really tried and weren't happy to just hurt a few. I suppose I'm thankful their little bubble of self-delusion is quite small. Some of these crackpots won't rest until they're reaching, and hurting, a whole lot more.

Jamie Kennedy Grinds His Axe

Jamie Kennedy dislikes criticism so much, he's made a documentary called Heckler all about audience members and online critics who dare admit they don't like something.

The trailer is quite upsetting. It shows a whole heap of people bitterly resisting any kind of knock back at all. What's their point? That people who aren't informed have and share opinions and that this is wrong? Admittedly, most hecklers have nothing in mind other than trying to look smart (at which they most regularly fail) and many online critics don't have the first idea what they even mean to say (much like similar numbers of offline critics) but that's not exactly the point, is it? Either you believe all criticism is subjective and there's no hope of attaining an objective point of view to relate or share - in which case everybody is entitled to their opinion; or you believe that there are objective truths we can agree on about a work of art or piece of media - in which case the wrong points of view can be discredited and the right ones defended with evidence.

For the record, I think Kennedy was very well cast in the Scream films, mildly annoying in Three Kings and shockingly weak in everything else of his I've ever seen. The Jamie Kennedy Experiment was perhaps the low point of his career, but Heckler isn't looking much better. Lumping online critics in with the fools who shout out in comedy clubs is perhaps his biggest single mistake - one of them is an opinion that needs to be sought out, the other can be described as an abrupt, rude interruption. The interruption factor makes heckling in a live environment a completely different animal to any other way of sharing your dislike of somebody or their work.

I was surprised for a second that Kevin Smith wasn't in the trailer someplace, venting against the myriad Talkbackers and bloggers who have dragged him through the dirt in every direction, but then I realised a likely reason why he wasn't. Smith is probably as depressed by Jamie Kennedy as the rest of us.

I'd like to collect opinions on Jamie Kennedy, the Heckler trailer and the premise of the film in the comments section below, no matter if you agree or disagree with me. Please leave a few words, taking his side or against it, because you just know Jamie's going to find his way here someway or another.

Louis Theroux Pre-Empts Kevin Smith's Horror Film

Last weekend, BBC2 showed a new Louis Theroux episode in which he spent time with the family of Topeka, Kansas Minister Fred Phelps. It was really quite horrifying. These people were shockingly hateful.

Now, Kevin Smith has revealed to Rotten Tomatoes UK that a Phelps-like monster is the focus of his upcoming horror film. What's more, he's given the name away: Red State.

For background on Phelps' Westboro Church, courtesy of Louis Theroux and countless pirates, check out the relevant clips on YouTube.

Thanks to AICN for the pointer.

See The Marvel Then And Now Trailer

Want to hear Kevin Smith cussing some more? Maybe while he's supposedly chairing a discussion between Joe Quesada and Stan Lee? Then Marvel Then and Now is the DVD for you and your dirty predilections - and the trailer has just gone live at the official site.

This is the latest project from The Hero Initiative, which is (apparently) some kind of privately created, not-for-profit replacement for welfare state coverage for elderly comic book creators. I read that disbursements are decided upon by Dick Giordano, Charlie Novinskie, Dennis O'Neil, George Pérez, John Romita Sr., Roy Thomas and Jim Valentino. Cinema needs a similar thing, I think - just as long as they don't ask Spielberg, Scorsese, Stone to control the purse strings.