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Star Man posted:I think the point of that scene was make a jab at people who were treated like poo poo in high school, went away, became successful, and dangle that over the heads of the people who went nowhere in life. Which is ironic seeing as how Kevin Smith came from a working-class family and became successful and acts like a loving baby when people knock his work. ...Or maybe it was just a scene to show Randall being unnerved by the fact that even Pickle-Fucker of all people found a sense of direction in life, and he didn't? That after years of being the ball-buster, Randall now has to accept that he's done nothing with his life, and has been waiting on his 'ah-ha' moment, where his entire life just clicks.
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Oct 7, 2014 02:40
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I just watched Clerks and Clerks 2 again. They're both still really good movies. I hope Clerks 3 isn't loving terrible if it actually gets made.
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Oct 7, 2014 16:21
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JediTalentAgent posted:I was really uncomfortable with the entire Jason Lee scene in Clerks 2 and gave it a partial rewatch to reaffirm that opinion. It really feels almost too mean-spirited to be a part of the film and doesn't really fit the tone of anything in Clerks 1. It really, to me, takes all the characters involved and puts them in a place that just feels too far removed from the typical sarcastic jackassery and turns them into assholes. I feel this way about basically the entirety of Clerks 2. There was so much that was over the top, a little too mean spirited without being funny, and out of sync with the tone of the original movie (the star wars/LOTR debate, "porch monkey", loving "pillow pants"). Also the entire climax is based around Dante's relationship with Randall (just like the first movie), but they spend the majority of the movie separated from each other doing their own poo poo (unlike the first movie). Like Dante is in the manager's office rubbing his girlfriend's feet while Randall is messing around with a cartoonish virgin. Splitting them up might have been a good way to have them talk about each other and explore their relationship that way, but they really didn't do that. Having Dante's happiness with Rosario being occasionally broken up by Randall's shenanigans could have also worked, but they really didn't focus on that aspect until the end. They just blew up at each other in a jail cell, but if I hadn't seen Clerks I wouldn't have even realized they were supposed to be good friends, I would have just thought they were coworkers who didn't even really like each other. God I really hated Clerks 2.
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Oct 7, 2014 18:59
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The whole picklefucker scene might have worked better if it were scaled back down to something more realistic and natural. I worked food service, you run into people who you went to school with, and if they weren't friend you're still actively hanging around with or something it's uncomfortable. Even if the person on the other end of the counter is completely nice and friendly and cool, it's awkward. This is sort of hard to describe, but it almost feels like the whole exchange is painting Randall and Dante as being jerks to Picklefucker in high school to explain his disdain for them. He doesn't even get a comeuppance or anything. But I don't sort of buy that, I sort of see Randall and Dante as sort of so shiftless that they couldn't be bothered with contributing to that sort of thing on someone. Meanwhile, I could totally picture a Mallrats 2 where TS and Brodie bump into a Picklefucker-type character from school, that they were jerks to, TS discretely trying to apologize for their behavior and name calling from 5-10 odd years ago and Brodie being all hyped up on continuing to egg it on even after all these years.
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Oct 7, 2014 19:16
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For all its flaws, without Clerks 2, we wouldn't have Elias. That fact alone justifies its existence.
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Oct 8, 2014 02:43
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So today I learned there's a Kevin Smith biopic coming out in just a few months (In the UK at least): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_Clerks. Are you guys ready for the story of the making of Clerks?
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Feb 3, 2015 10:56
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Raxivace posted:So today I learned there's a Kevin Smith biopic coming out in just a few months (In the UK at least): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_Clerks.  It's not like the making of Clerks was fraught with drama or intrigue. Guy dropped out of film school, maxed out his credit cards and used locations for filming he had access to. Like a ton of other indie filmmakers from the '90s. As for Kevin Smith making movies, he's signed on for a segment in the anthology movie Holidays, which is a “collection of subversive holiday tales” (that aims to) “put a twisted spin on well-known and beloved holidays, including Christmas, Easter, Halloween, and Mother’s Day—to name a few.” Will Kevin actually get his segment done or will he drop out and make it its own movie?
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Feb 4, 2015 00:41
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I liked Tusk. It was the best thing Kevin Smith has done for 10+ years. Michael Parks rules. Probably should have cut most of Johnny Depp's stuff though.
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Feb 4, 2015 01:11
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FreudianSlippers posted:Probably should have cut most of Johnny Depp's stuff though. Just probably? Just most? The movie would have been fantastic if it had gone straight body horror, with no comedic elements. Michael Parks was creepy as poo poo, and the premise is a lot scarier than it sounds on the surface. Or at least, could be.
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Feb 4, 2015 01:48
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My issue with Tusk is that it is a body horror film but with your typical Kevin Smith characters. Like you could imagine the Wallace character popping up in Clerks or something before he was walrusificated. Smith tries to move away from this somewhat by expanding his reference pool slightly, but it doesn't come off as very genuine. Did anyone really believe for a second Wallace actually read anything by Hemingway? Or that Smith hadn't simply Googled The Rime of the Ancient Mariner while writing the script? As a result of all of this the movie seems really weird and tonally inconsistent, though I give Smith credit for trying something new and weird (For him at least) even if the final product wasn't completely successful.
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Feb 4, 2015 01:56
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As someone who doesn't care at all for Kevin Smith, even the cult favorite Clerks, Tusk was a surprisingly good film. Not merely competent, but actually good. I find it interesting that people felt it was tonally inconsistent, because the film itself is very explicitly not a comedy. Like, there are funny aspects of the concept, and Smith plays them appropriately, but from the moment Wallace and Craft are yucking it up over the viral video of the nerd who amputates his own leg, it's clear that we're not watching a Smithy comedy, but something closer to a Quentin Tarantino movie. (And unlike most people who rip Tarantino, Smith remarkably succeeds in juxtaposing gratuitous violence, pop culture fanaticism, and thoughtful visual metaphor.) This isn't anything like cleaning poo out of a baby girl's vagina, or debating rear end-to-mouth. Virtually all of the humor in Tusk is deliberately mean-spirited, directed either from Wallace outward to illustrate his thorough obnoxiousness and basic lack of moral fiber, or at Wallace to reinforce how easily people pick up on his disingenuous attempts at jokey social graces. The point is that Smith gives us very few reasons to laugh despite the absurdity of the scenario (as opposed to his traditional method of taking boring scenarios and shoe-horning malarky into them). The thing that's challenging about Tusk is that it's not a joke... Smith is deathly serious about the metaphor he has chosen.
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Feb 4, 2015 02:17
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How do you interpret the decision to include the podcast clips in the film's credits then, where Kevin Smith laughs his rear end off while coming up with the plot points beat for beat of the movie that we had just finished watching? The movie seems to be a black comedy to me, with occasional horror elements.
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Feb 4, 2015 02:42
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Raxivace posted:So today I learned there's a Kevin Smith biopic coming out in just a few months (In the UK at least): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_Clerks. Wasn't the one included on the tenth anniversary DVD set enough?
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Feb 4, 2015 02:44
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Raxivace posted:How do you interpret the decision to include the podcast clips in the film's credits then, where Kevin Smith laughs his rear end off while coming up with the plot points beat for beat of the movie that we had just finished watching? Lots of filmmakers conceive of and approach what they do with levity, no matter how serious the subject. Frankly, it's kind of inspired that Smith chooses to bookended a movie about a morally bankrupt, desperate-for-attention podcaster with an explicit reference to his own loving job. Smith's films are usually introspective or reflecting upon his current creative state at some level. Tusk is the first that escapes naval-gazing self-pity and actually manages a solid critique of basic social and moral apathy. It's the serious, compassionate Catholic answer to his thoroughly abysmal, secularized and diluted Dogma. People should watch it less like a straight comedy or horror movie and more like a Christian film.
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Feb 4, 2015 03:08
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And now apparently a sequel to Mallrats is in the works... http://www.imdb.com/news/ni58397643/?ref_=nv_nw_tn_2
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Mar 16, 2015 05:39
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K. Waste posted:This isn't anything like cleaning poo out of a baby girl's vagina, or debating rear end-to-mouth. Virtually all of the humor in Tusk is deliberately mean-spirited, directed either from Wallace I can't believe he named the character Wallace and gave him a mustache like that. Little too on the nose Smith
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Mar 16, 2015 05:52
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Yaws posted:I can't believe he named the character Wallace and gave him a mustache like that. It's basically Smith's version of Kafka's Metamorphosis. The gag is that in becoming the vermin/monstrosity (never an actual walrus, there's no magic going on here) Wallace has merely becomes what he already was, a blubbering beast desperate for attention but literally serving no purpose. He staffs a podcast called the "Not See Party," which barely even functions as symbolism because the characters have very consciously just chosen a name that was provocatively close to "Nazi Party." Wallace's ideology isn't as toxic as literal fascism or Aryan supremacy, but he believes fervently in the essential qualities of a 'rational' person, which allows him to comment and joke freely on the public embarrassments of others, no matter how greatly they suffer. He claims to have a sober vision of becoming economically successful and not falling into the same pit of anonymity as before, but really he believes in a 'just world,' that those who have, have for a reason, because they are the right ones to have it. But he literally can't see how much nothing he has.
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Mar 16, 2015 06:31
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Raxivace posted:And now apparently a sequel to Mallrats is in the works... So is it going to be Die Hard in a mall?
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Mar 16, 2015 07:02
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He should shoot it in one of those weird 90% dead malls that have like three stores selling knockoff handbags and a dollar theater showing movies as they come out on DVD. And a food court that's just completely empty but still lit up with half-working pink and teal neon lighting. Stan Lee appears in another cameo but dies on-screen while filming. They just leave it in the movie.
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Mar 16, 2015 08:17
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Kelp Plankton posted:He should shoot it in one of those weird 90% dead malls that have like three stores selling knockoff handbags and a dollar theater showing movies as they come out on DVD. And a food court that's just completely empty but still lit up with half-working pink and teal neon lighting. They actually did this in Mallrats 1. The lovely mall with the psychic, the Freehold Mall, was super lovely when they filmed there. Though the Seaview Square Mall was like the shittiest NJ mall of all time (your description fits it 1:1) at that point and I was shocked they didn't do the lovely mall scene there.
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Mar 16, 2015 08:45
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Neo Rasa posted:They actually did this in Mallrats 1. The lovely mall with the psychic, the Freehold Mall, was super lovely when they filmed there. Though the Seaview Square Mall was like the shittiest NJ mall of all time (your description fits it 1:1) at that point and I was shocked they didn't do the lovely mall scene there. Even the mall that most of the movie took place in was dead because they shot it in Minneapolis right after the Mall of America opened up.
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Mar 16, 2015 09:35
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I wish I liked Tusk more, but Smith is at the whim of so many bad decisions that it feels like he just has a lack of confidence in his work. His problem is always going to be that he has no desire to adapt or change. He still doesn't know anything about lenses and he's made how many movies now? His shortcomings worked fine for Clerks, but not for anything else. It's frustrating as well because Smith has a voice, and there are moments in Tusk where he genuinely grounds the concept with some real emotion, but he's simply unable to overcome his deficits, because it's now part of the Smith brand.
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Mar 16, 2015 12:00
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Star Man posted:Even the mall that most of the movie took place in was dead because they shot it in Minneapolis right after the Mall of America opened up. Yeah I'm pretty sure they picked that mall because there were a ton of empty stores they could use for production and also convert into fake stores like Rug Munchers.
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Mar 16, 2015 22:33
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Kevyn posted:Yeah I'm pretty sure they picked that mall because there were a ton of empty stores they could use for production and also convert into fake stores like Rug Munchers. This mall just got a giant renovation not too long ago. It didn't help. It's still dead as gently caress because why would anyone go there when the Mall of America is like 4 miles down the road?
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Mar 17, 2015 04:38
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DrVenkman posted:I wish I liked Tusk more, but Smith is at the whim of so many bad decisions that it feels like he just has a lack of confidence in his work. His problem is always going to be that he has no desire to adapt or change. EDIT -- Never mind: I can't even comment on the guy any more without feeling bad and sad. I hope he doesn't take what happens with his sequels as personally as he normally does. InfiniteZero fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Mar 24, 2015 |
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Mar 24, 2015 17:29
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Good timing with seeing this thread. I was just thinking about the movie Chasing Amy (which he directed, and has a small part in). That's actually the only Kevin Smith film i've seen, and I going to try to watch his other more popular movies.
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Mar 25, 2015 02:54
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I said come in! posted:Good timing with seeing this thread. I was just thinking about the movie Chasing Amy (which he directed, and has a small part in). That's actually the only Kevin Smith film i've seen, and I going to try to watch his other more popular movies. Aside from Clerks, the ones I've seen are pretty poo poo. And even Clerks only really gets away with it because its rawness mitigates its flaws.
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Mar 25, 2015 03:18
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I don't know a lot about this Kevin Smith guy aside from Clerks but it seems like every young adult self-described cinephile I've met has been erect and/or moist at the mention of Kevin Smith. Hell, one friend actually values part of her self-worth on having Kevin Smith reply to her on Twitter. Who is Kevin Smith and should I like him CineD?
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Mar 25, 2015 10:39
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Four Score posted:I don't know a lot about this Kevin Smith guy aside from Clerks but it seems like every young adult self-described cinephile I've met has been erect and/or moist at the mention of Kevin Smith. Really? Most cinephiles I've known either don't like the guy or find him just disappointing and never really living up to the "promise" he showed back in the early '90's.
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Mar 25, 2015 10:44
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Four Score posted:I don't know a lot about this Kevin Smith guy aside from Clerks but it seems like every young adult self-described cinephile I've met has been erect and/or moist at the mention of Kevin Smith. The crux of the problem with Kevin Smith is that his fans will invariably outgrow him. He's horrifically stuck in a mindset and time and his inability to grow as an artist hasn't been a case of "he does what he does" but rather "he refuses to let it go and move forward".
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Mar 25, 2015 19:17
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His lack of style and terrible dialogue skills are what bugs me the most about him as a filmmaker. However, I will always have a soft spot for him because he was the guy that got me addicted to movies and broke me out of just watching Adam Sandler movies. I've seen Little Nicky far too many times.
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Mar 25, 2015 19:20
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MacheteZombie posted:His lack of style and terrible dialogue skills are what bugs me the most about him as a filmmaker. That's pretty much how I feel too. Clerks was my gateway drug into independent film and opened the door for me to explore film deeper than I had. But I can't tolerate him much anymore. I still enjoy Mallrats and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and am not about to throw those DVDs out, but I have since moved on.
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Mar 25, 2015 19:59
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Star Man posted:That's pretty much how I feel too. Clerks was my gateway drug into independent film and opened the door for me to explore film deeper than I had. I really wanted to like Tusk, like many other Smith fans, but it felt like a step back from Red State which wasn't that great to begin with. I have no idea what he was thinking with that Depp character.
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Mar 25, 2015 20:07
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MacheteZombie posted:I really wanted to like Tusk, like many other Smith fans, but it felt like a step back from Red State which wasn't that great to begin with. I have no idea what he was thinking with that Depp character. I haven't seen it. I saw Red State a couple of years ago and it was okay right up until the ending monologue.
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Mar 25, 2015 20:10
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Star Man posted:I haven't seen it. I saw Red State a couple of years ago and it was okay right up until the ending monologue. Tusk is worth a watch on a boring/drinking night. However, you will cringe every time Depp is on screen, which is like all of the back half.  The walrus stuff and the villain (Michael Parks) are pretty top notch though.
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Mar 25, 2015 20:12
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MacheteZombie posted:I really wanted to like Tusk, like many other Smith fans, but it felt like a step back from Red State which wasn't that great to begin with. I have no idea what he was thinking with that Depp character. It's this idea of 'This'll be funny', without anyone to say 'well actually, it's really going to stop the movie dead in its tracks and tonally it's going to be a mess'. It's as out of place as the wacky cops in 'The Last House On The Left', but at least that was to genuinely offset the horror (And can be chalked up to Craven being completely inexperienced). I can't decide if Tusk is Smith trying to work out a tonal balance between horror or comedy or just genuinely not understanding his own material. It just feels like he can't commit to what he actually wants the movie to be and so settles on this weird middle-ground. There's a 'Cabin Fever' redux coming, where someone is using Eli Roth's original script and remaking the movie. I'd love to see someone do the same with Tusk, because he surprisingly grounds the motivation and drama behind it all, which is a feat in itself.
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Mar 26, 2015 11:33
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DrVenkman posted:It's this idea of 'This'll be funny', without anyone to say 'well actually, it's really going to stop the movie dead in its tracks and tonally it's going to be a mess'. It's as out of place as the wacky cops in 'The Last House On The Left', but at least that was to genuinely offset the horror (And can be chalked up to Craven being completely inexperienced). DrVenkman posted:There's a 'Cabin Fever' redux coming, where someone is using Eli Roth's original script and remaking the movie. I'd love to see someone do the same with Tusk, because he surprisingly grounds the motivation and drama behind it all, which is a feat in itself. I know this has been said in this thread before, but Tusk deserves an edit that removes almost all of Depp scenes. Sure the movie is like 20 minutes shorter, yet the improvement would be huge.
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Mar 26, 2015 15:18
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Removing the Depp scenes doesn't actually accomplish much except to make the plot incomprehensible. The complicated thing about Guy Lapointe (again, literally "Guy, the Point") is that, not unlike Agent Smecker in The Boondock Saints, he's this dynamic character that ultimately doesn't actually serve that great a purpose in the narrative. All he does is 'point' Ally and Teddy in the right direction and accompany them for protection, but he literally doesn't do anything. Add on top of this that the character is actually credited as Guy Lapointe, and we have something that Duffy's film doesn't have, which is the excuse of obvious contrivance. Nobody could possibly mistake Depp for this self-contained character, and he's barely even playing a character, but Smith expects the audience to accept him as such because he is literally 'the point' at which Tusk expresses what it truly is, which is not a straight horror comedy, but a bizarre cinema of cruelty. The irony is that the totally contrived, laboriously long stretch of rambling dialog between Howe (disguised) and the Point is actually just as if not more sadistic and cruel than Howe's ritualistic experiments. Because of this, however, the viewer is able to engage with Tusk purely as a speculative contrivance, which is, of course, how it began, as a weed-induced monologue on a podcast. The scene may be funny to any individual person, but the Point is not, per se, to be funny. The Point is that by appealing directly to his built-in fan base, Smith has given himself the excuse the break away from the cheap, generic comedies of his youth and experiment as a popular artist, whose works function as self-conscious artifice intended specifically for those who can read past his 'tonal failures' and enjoy the film as automatic and visceral. The mistake is in going in assuming that one has to make a decision between shock and laughter. Tusk is merely a particularly well-funded and polished piece of outsider, stoner culture art. But the obviousness that it's not really anything akin to the formulaic melodramas and gross-out comedies of Smith's past is established right in its opening moments with a dude lobbing his own leg off with a samurai sword while a couple of 'satirists' who compare themselves to the Nazis make fun of him. It's alienating, but this is appropriate for a film that is itself satirizing its characters emotional alienation from the world. Whether Smith is capable of effectively pandering to basic generic conventions is besides the point, because regardless Tusk avoids pandering in order to render self-evident the inglorious, vulgar artificiality of what's going on.
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Mar 26, 2015 16:27
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This would be good and all, aside from the fact that the name "Guy Lapointe" started as a joke in a Smodcast episode where they were joking about people stealing maple syrup. The name means nothing, it's an inside joke.
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Mar 26, 2015 17:41
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zandert33 posted:This would be good and all, aside from the fact that the name "Guy Lapointe" started as a joke in a Smodcast episode where they were joking about people stealing maple syrup. The name means nothing, it's an inside joke. Even if it started as an inside joke, that doesn't mean it still doesn't function/can't be read as the way that K. Waste argues. Raxivace fucked around with this message at 18:08 on Mar 26, 2015 |
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Mar 26, 2015 18:05
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