While watching Zack and Miri Make a Porno, it is possible to occasionally forget that you are watching a Kevin Smith movie. Mainly because he doesn’t show up in the film, a rare and appreciated move for the guy who has played “Silent Bob” in 6 out of the 8 theatrical releases he’s directed. Then there’s the cast that is involved, which makes Z&M seem like the offspring of Judd Apatow and John Waters. But there are a number of things that do make it clearly a Smith joint, such as the obligatory employment of Jason Mewes — in the role he was born to play, even moreso than “Jay” — and the potentially pitying use of Jeff Anderson, who may have been the only actor to agree to receiving that accidental Hot Carl.
And then there’s the most recognizable element: Smith’s inability let the poop jokes go in order to concentrate on his characters, and the relationships between them. It’s the filmmaker’s Achilles heel, and it’s one of five we at SpoutBlog have noticed are holding back the esteem of five would-be better directors.
Of the 8,500 or so filmmakers who receive an automated rejection email from Sundance’s Geoff Gilmore every year, usually the Tuesday or Wednesday after Thanksgiving, nearly none receive the sweet revenge Antonio Campos has been privy to. Both his 2005 NYU undergrad short Buy It Now and his 2008 debut feature Afterschool were rejected by the Redford Cabal. Both were accepted into Cannes however, the short making Campos the youngest man ever to win a prize on the Croisette, the feature cementing his reputation as one of the most promising young American directors of his generation. Hot off the heels of its American debut at the New York Film Festival, Afterschool still awaits stateside commercial distribution. I recently had the privilege, along with my colleagues at Filmmaker Magazine, of bestowing the film with a Gotham Award nomination for “The Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You”. It will wind its way back to New York screens fairly soon when it screens at MOMA as part of a program supporting the nominees. In the meantime, we caught up with Campos to discuss The Godfather, Steve Reich and why he isn’t reading nearly enough fiction. For more with Campos, check out this interview over at Cinema Echo Chamber. …Read more
Erin at Steady Diet of Film alerts us to the news (which we might have figured out for ourselves, except that we have a bad habit of being in bars at 11pm on weeknights––we swear, we’re working on cutting back on that) that Medicine for Melancholy star Wyatt Cenac is now a correspondent for The Daily Show. His first segment, in which he attempts to understand primary season through the rubrick of plot developments on Lost, is embedded above. We’ll give you a preview: “A polar bear on a tropical island? There are so many reasons why that’s AMAZING!”
Stacy Peralta’s was reproached for his lackadaisical sense of style by the gang member subjects of his doc Made in America. He tells Vulture: “These guys don’t step out the house unless they’re dressed really well. In fact, a couple of our subjects took me to task for how I looked. I’d be wearing a pair of Levis and a T-shirt, and they’d ask me, ‘Do you dress like that every day? You oughta think about how you dress more often.’”
The MPAA be damned, Ridley Scott might make an uncensored film based on Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, and the very prospect has filmdrunk oversharing. Concludes a post headlined “BONER ALERT”: “Like all really violent things, it makes me slightly sexually excited. That’s healthy, right?”
When the announcer dropped the name “92nd Street Y Tribeca” in the Jew-centric Juno spoof above, I thought it was another Jewish joke. But it’s actually a real place, where Daily Show writer Rob Kutner is throwing a party for Purim this weekend, featuring “a comedic retelling of the story of Esther, as seen through the lens of current TV hits like Lost, American Idol and Ugly Betty.” The invite doesn’t say whether or not Jewno will be screened in its entirety at the event, or (maybe better) if it’ll be performed live––the teaser is just attached as some kind of sampling of the self-mocking New York’s finest young Semitic comedy writers will have on offer Saturday night.
I’ve been keeping a vague log of Chris Matthews’ tendency to wedge non-sequitor movie references/analogies into his ostensibly hardcore-wonky political chat shows for awhile. Hands down the worse that I’ve seen: on the night of the Iowa caucus, Matthews tried to diagnose Mike Huckabee’s popularity thusly: “He appeals to a lot of people in the middle of the country, mostly because of I Heart Huckabees.” Really, Chris? Really?
When you consider that my minor obsession with this has required me to become a faithful viewer of Matthews’ god-awful, cheap McLaughlin Group-knockoff Sunday morning chat show, I probably deserve a medal. But give me the silver, because whoever put together the montage on last night’s Daily Show––proving that Matthews is not the only guilty party, but certainly the undisputed champion of the “This event is EXACTLY LIKE that one movie…” genre of political analysis––deserves the gold. Skip to about 4:25 on the above clip to go straight to the good stuff.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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