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Airbolt 
"teil mann, teil maschine"
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 Posted - 02/28/2007 : 01:12:14
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I have been on board the "View Askewniverse " since Clerks and have really enjoyed the ride . However since I am a self confessed fan , I am probably not the best person to offer an objective view ( no pun intended! )of Kevin Smith's output.
What would be interesting is to hear how other FWFR's feel about his films. Is he at sea outside his " Askew" universe ? Seeing as he is unlikely to make another "Askew " movie , what are his prospects?
Is he just a smut-meister? or is there more in his locker?
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GHcool
"Forever a curious character."
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Posted - 02/28/2007 : 02:11:00
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quote:
Originally posted by AIRBOLT
I have been on board the "View Askewniverse " since Clerks and have really enjoyed the ride . However since I am a self confessed fan , I am probably not the best person to offer an objective view ( no pun intended! )of Kevin Smith's output.
What would be interesting is to hear how other FWFR's feel about his films. Is he at sea outside his " Askew" universe ? Seeing as he is unlikely to make another "Askew " movie , what are his prospects?
Is he just a smut-meister? or is there more in his locker?
I think the younger you are, the more likely you will appreciate his work. I say that because the older I get, the less I appreciate it (and I used to absolutely love it). His better films are more than just smut-peddling, but less than the sum of their parts. I like how he makes movies about serious issues (religion, sexual history, fatherhood), but I don't like how his films are philosophically confusing. Dogma, for example, takes the premise that the entirety of Catholic theology is literal and infallable while at the same time taking the stance that Catholic theology is up to interpretation. Chasing Amy seems to take the view that a person's sexual history is (or should be) an insignificant factor in how one should judge somebody else as a possible romantic match. I am not sure I entirely agree with that point of view. |
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Sean
"Necrosphenisciform anthropophagist."
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Posted - 02/28/2007 : 04:28:16
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I liked his early movies, they were generally funny. And Dogma was clever as well as funny.  And Chasing Amy, although implausible was still entertaining. 
But I thought Clerks 2 was crap, it simply wasn't funny enough.  The scenes that were supposed to be funny weren't, and the supposedly dramatic scenes were at the B-grade soap level. The donkey scene was supposed to be funny, right? Perhaps I was in the wrong mood, but I found it as funny as a close-up of a dog turd. So perhaps I'm growing up, or Smith has run out of ideas. Hardly surprising, he's done pretty well for a young bloke, and can't be expected to be original forever. |
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Lindsey K 
"Hey, that's me."
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Posted - 03/02/2007 : 10:04:32
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The older I get the less funny I think he is too.
But Clerks will always hold a special place in my heart. Salsa shark.
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Beanmimo 
"August review site"
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Posted - 03/02/2007 : 10:13:07
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Watching his movies let's my inner teenager loose and I do appreciate his humour. But the teengaer also forbids me from reading into his movies any deeper rhan the bottom of my belly laugh.
I will expand further when I watch Clerks 2.
Hi Lindsey. |
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MisterBadIdea 
"PLZ GET MILK, KTHXBYE"
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Posted - 03/05/2007 : 05:59:40
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Clerks and Clerks II are the kinds of things he should be doing; they're personal films, and personal issues are things he understands. What he doesn't understand are deeper topics like religion, and he should stay away from them.
At the same time, he should stay away from pure comedies -- Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back could have been funnier if it wasn't so goddamn cynical -- there's a real sense coming from that film that he thinks his fans are morons. |
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duh
"catpurrs"
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Posted - 03/06/2007 : 01:57:13
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Dog is one of my all-time favorite films. 
EDIT LATER: geez I must really be getting senile. I meant to write "dogma". I've been making errors like that more and more often lately. Is that a normal consequence of aging, or is my brain turning into mush? |
Edited by - duh on 03/06/2007 04:24:23 |
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w22dheartlivie 
"Kitty Lover"
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Posted - 03/06/2007 : 03:18:22
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I like Kevin Smith's work. I first really appreciated his sense of humor with Dogma. I think that you have to look at the fundamental points he tries to make instead of attempting to assimilate a "message." Being born Catholic, I can agree when he says (via Salma Hayek) that we don't celebrate our faith, we mourn it. I didn't see that he said in this that the Catholic Church is infallible. What I took from it was that Smith sees God as infallible, but any church doctrine tends to subvert the truth of God while trying to espouse its viewpoint of it. But anyway...
I didn't truly appreciate Clerks until I did a stint in a convenience store and realized that therein, he knows of what he speaks. We had our own Milk Maids, and we actually did have customers as obsessive about things as the high school guidance counselors looking for the perfect dozen eggs. It seemed that every customer had an agenda.
As for Chasing Amy, I think he was saying that the past shouldn't be a factor, but it always end up being one. It did serve to remind me that everything is viewed through individual perception and biases and that we are hard pressed to get past those things.
I know he took a lot of flack for Jersey Girl, but I ended up really liking it. I'm pretty sure it wasn't because J-Lo was dead in the first 10 minutes (but that could have been a factor). In the end, it was a sweet love story that gave us a look at what he considers to be the most important things in life - family and love - and what we choose to sacrifice in order to keep those things. Plus I loved the Sweeney Todd show at the grade school.
Sure, Smith's work tends to be simplistic at times. But he never claimed to be an artist. He only does the world he knows, and that's okay. And I will always be indebted to him for his commentary on Greasy Reesy Witherspoon in his book, Silent Bob Speaks.
Then again, my ex was almost Jay, sans the dope dealing. Okay, well, he was DEEPER and more intelligent than Jay.
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Edited by - w22dheartlivie on 03/06/2007 03:20:54 |
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Kevin Smith
