I hope I’m never murdered. A common sentiment, to be sure, but its one I’m having more often thanks to the spate of police procedurals on TV. I turned to my parents and expressed this sentiment out loud during a recent episode of CSI: Miami. See, our heroes needed to know what kind of weapon was used to crack the skull of our murder victim. And, in order to do that, they needed to see exactly how the skull was fractured. The coroner then severed the murder victim’s head, dropped it in a pot of water, and proceeded to boil off all the flesh. Of course, we didn’t actually see the head get severed and dropped into the water. What we saw on screen was one character enter the room, see the pot of water, and make a comment like, “Making soup?” The coroner then lifted out the severed head with the flesh half-boiled off and presented the explanation I just gave to you. Needles to say, it was rather disgusting.

Continue reading Blood & Guts →

Never Take a Shit While Stoned

In the interview with Kevin Smith in that morning’s paper, and even on the Evening with Kevin Smith DVD, Smith mentioned that one question he’s always asked in these shows that he’s getting really sick of being asked is, “Wanna go get high after the show?” And, lo and behold, he was asked. The guy who asked was booed with angry shouts of, “Don’t ask questions that he answers on the DVD!” But, you know, Smith politely declined, and then launched into a long, meandering tale of the last time he got not just high, but stoned out of his fucking mind.

Continue reading MY Evening with Kevin Smith – Part 4 →

Comic Book Miscellany

Given his much-publicized love of comic books and his occasional stints as a comic book writer, he was asked quite a bit about comic books. The first question asked was, “Will you ever do a comic book movie?”

Smith flatly said no. “At the end of the day, I can’t shoot action, and I have no desire to make an action film. You see here how it takes a whole week to film a 20-second fight scene. I look at that and say, ‘In one week, I could shoot 20 pages of dialogue.’”

And this led into his brief involvement with the Green Hornet. “they wouldn’t let me make it my way,” he joked. “In my version, you’d have the Green Hornet and Kato leaning against the Black Beauty – the most powerful automobile ever made – and they’d just be talking. Then, one would say, ‘Hey, looks like trouble over there,’ and they walk off camera, you hear a whole bunch of fighting sound effects, and then they walk back on camera doing this (brushes his hands together as though brushing of dust), and they’d go back to talking. ‘Your girlfriend actually sucked 36 dicks?’ ‘Yeah, and I’m 37!’”

Continue reading MY Evening with Kevin Smith – Part 3 →

The Return of Jay and Silent Bob

The next question was one that was sure to come up. “You said that Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back would be the last one. Why another Jay and Silent Bob film?”

Smith first countered by saying that, technically, Clerks II is not a Jay and Silent Bob film. He again re-iterated something he’s said on his website many times before: Jay and Silent Bob are in Clerks II for about the same amount of screen time they were in Clerks, maybe less.

“One of the popular rumours going around is that I promised [Jason Mewes] I’d do another Jay and Silent Bob film if he sobered up. That’s not true, but I’ll take credit for it. I’m actually quite proud to say that Jay has been clean and sober for three years this month.” That got a big round of applause from the audience, which drew jeers from Smith. “Oh, don’t bother, he’s not here to hear it.”

Continue reading MY Evening With Kevin Smith – Part 2 →

AUTHOR’S NOTE: My best friend is adamant that I should post this disclaimer, so here I go. It should be noted that, when I quote Kevin Smith, they are not his exact quotes. I wrote this a week after the fact, so they are his quotes as best I remember them. They’re not his exact words, but they capture the essence.

Way back in May of last year, it was announced that Kevin Smith was coming to Edmonton. As with every other concert in my life, I shrugged off all hope of ever going, as I was unemployed and could not afford tickets. But then fate, in the form of my parents, intervened. They gave me two tickets as a birthday present in July. I was going to see Kevin Smith!

Continue reading MY Evening with Kevin Smith – Part 1 →

It’s always kind of amazing to go back and re-visit an incredibly popular film. No matter how much loved they are in the time they are released…no matter how many awards they win…they soon fade from public consciousness, save for a few members of a fanatical cult following. And then, when you dig out your dusty old DVD that you bought in the last spurt of mania over the movie, it becomes a time capsule, reminding you of the time when the movie came out. I’ve been going through this quite a bit lately, as I’ve been buying a lot of brand- new special editions of these films. And the one I’m talking about specifically seems to sum up the 1990s and its times: Titanic.

Continue reading A Chick Flick Disguised as an Action Film →

I’ve said it many times before. One of my favourite aspects of the DVD phenomena is how those dead TV shows that barely lasted for 6 episodes soon get a super-special edition DVD boxed set preserving the series for the fans that became so dedicated to it. This is starting to become an accepted practice, as many studios see it as a way of recovering losses from a failed TV show. I, too, have fully embraced this practice, and have bought many DVD boxed sets that have the subtitle “the complete series.” So, I’m going to take a minute to rattle them all off and recommend them to you.

Continue reading Dead TV Show-Palooza →