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How do you like them apples?
Hunting for a good movie? >> Posted 12.05.12 by Chris -
The Independent Spirit Awards nominations are out and guess who isn't pleased?
With silent movie The Artist and apocalyptic drama Take Shelter receiving the bulk of the nominations, including Best Feature (along with cancer comedy 50/50, father-son drama Beginners, noir thriller Drive, and family dramedy The Descendants), director Kevin Smith questioned why his horror movie Red State got completely snubbed. Smith took his complaint to his Twitter, where he called out the Spirit Awards for ignoring his cast.
what choice words did smith offer? >> Posted 11.30.11 by Ryan -
One of the seminal comedies of the 1980s, Fletch, followed Chevy Chase as investigative reporter I.M. Fletcher, whose report on the drug-trafficking at the Los Angeles beach front takes a turn when a wealthy businessman (Tim Mattheson) asks Fletch to murder him. The 1985 movie, based on the first of late author Gregory MacDonald's 11-volume Fletch series, spawned a 1989 sequel, Fletch Lives, which, while it had its moments, didn't inspire more installments.
After years of development purgatory, THR reports that Warner Bros. has picked up the movie rights to all 11 of MacDonald's Fletch books, with the intent of "reimagining" the books into a more action-driven franchise. No writer or director has been attached so far, but the first step has been taken for those fans looking forward to another Fletch.
what took so long? >> Posted 02.04.11 by Ryan -
Writer-director Kevin Smith premiered his penultimate movie Red State at the Sundance Film Festival last month to mixed reviews; some good, some bad. THR called Red State "cleverly contrarian enough to get a rise out of almost any audience" while HitFix called it "a failure on almost every level". Red State marks Smith's first attempt at a horror movie and follows a group of friends who end up encountering a fundamentalist preacher (Michael Parks).
Smith is planning to distribute the movie himself, touring the movie to several cities before the it's released in October. However, despite the lack of studio pressure, Smith admitted to BleedingCool that he feels he wants to make some changes and plans to re-edit the movie.
what does Smith want to change? >> Posted 02.03.11 by Ryan -
The title of this piece, and others like it around the internet, is not exactly true. Writer-director Kevin Smith didn't exactly auction off the distribution rights to himself after his upcoming horror movie Red State after it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Producer Jon Gordon auctioned the rights to Smith instead, for the low price of $20. Additionally, it should be pointed out, one bid isn't exactly an auction.
The confusion stems from Smith's announcement last November where he discussed his auction. At the time, Smith said:
Here’s something that’s not so much news as my stated intentions for Red State: if it gets into Sundance, my plan is to pick the Red State distributor right there — IN THE ROOM — auction style. Might even bring up a professional auctioneer to make it fun and unintelligible. And if you’re a multi-millionaire who can’t make it to the first screening of Red State, fear not: maybe we’ll set up an eBay page for the post-screening bid-calling as well.
Th real event didn't turn out to be as fun as Smith had previously teased. After the screening, THR reported that Smith began a long tirade against the industry's current model for movie distribution.
smith defends his decision >> Posted 01.25.11 by Ryan -
Kevin Smith has released the first teaser trailer for his upcoming, independently-financed, horror movie Red State, which follows a group of teenagers who encounter extreme fundamentalism in Middle America. Unlike Smith's earlier foul-mouthed comedies, the teaser for Red State shows a more contemporary, hand-held camera style, similar to recent horror movies like The Last Exorcism and [REC]. Once Michael Parks delivers the trailer's final line, viewers will note that not a single laugh was included, though Smith joked about the trailer on his Twitter page.
The movie cost a hair under $4mil. The trailer cost a hair under 20mins of my time to edit
Watch the trailer >> Posted 12.25.10 by Ryan -
While indie filmmaker Kevin Smith's new movie, Red State, didn't make the list of official selections for the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, the writer-director-editor recently announced on his Smodcast for the movie that Red State will be shown at Sundance as a non-competition selection. Smith has been pretty secretive about the movie until now, only releasing a few behind-the-scenes pics and a teaser poster that was made in-house. Now four new still images from the completed movie have been released.
Red State, Smith's first foray into horror movie territory, follows a group of people who encounter extreme fundamentalism in Middle America. According to Smith, it's "inspired by" Westboro Baptist Church pastor Fred Phelps, who is notorious for his anti-gay propaganda. The movie stars John Goodman, Kevin Pollak, Melissa Leo, Michael Angarano, and Michael Parks. It has not yet been picked up for distribution, but Smith plans to use Sundance as a venue for auctioning off the movie.
Posted 12.03.10 by BrentJS -
Writer-director Kevin Smith announced the lead actor for his upcoming hockey movie Hit Somebody during his Hollywood Babble-on podcast (via Slashfilm). Originally Seann William Scott was thought to be cast, with Smith revealing in February that Scott had the right "voice" for the lead character Buddy. Instead, Smith announced he had cast Nicholas Braun (Sky High).
At one point it was Seann William Scott, and Seann William Scott apparently wanted to make a hockey movie real f**kin’ bad… So he went to do another one, which meant we were star-less for a while, which was totally OK by me. But then I found so much of my Hit Somebody cast while making Red State, so... the guy who’s going to play my lead, whose name is Buddy McKraken in the movie, is a fella who’s in our flick [Red State] and his name is Nicholas Braun. He’s this really great actor who I love to death and he is the perfect lead for this hockey movie, for this script, which is based on this Warren Zevon song.
With Red State wrapped, Smith is planning to shoot Hit Somebody next, starting sometime between July and September of 2011. Smith has previously revealed that he has nothing planned after Hit Somebody, but that doesn't mean he's retiring.
Posted 11.30.10 by Ryan -
Writer-director Kevin Smith recently finished shooting his upcoming horror movie Red State, but could the movie really be one of Smith's last? In a recent interview with The Boston Phoenix, Smith discussed his future.
Red State is done. Next step is the hockey movie, Hit Somebody. Then I'm done. There's possibly a Clerks 3. If I have something to say in my late 40s about being in my late 40s, I'll think of [Clerks characters] Dante and Randal. Shy of that, I don't have any more movies I want to make.
Several websites have reported this as Smith's intention to retire, but Slashfilm contacted the director, who responded with an irate response to the Boston Phoenix interview.
read Smith's Angry Response>> Posted 11.29.10 by Ryan -
Despite having written and directed eight feature-length movies, including Chasing Amy, which won two Independent Spirit Awards and helped launch the careers of Jason Lee, Joey Lauren Adams, and Ben Affleck, Kevin Smith still considers himself very much a man of the people, a Hollywood outsider. So, when Warner Bros. offered him the opportunity to direct his new movie, Cop Out, Smith told Moviehole that he was apprehensive about alienating his loyal fans.
I thought about it going in to it, in terms of trying to make the movie, because I'm like, "Well, I'm gonna take a bunch of sh*t from people that love Chasing Amy and don't see why I would make a movie like this." I don't know what to tell cats like that anymore, it's just like, "I can't make Chasing Amy every time, and you wouldn't want me to because I would be a very unhappy person." And I'm a very happy cat now, you know? I'm married, I've got a kid and if you want me to make another Chasing Amy, start getting my wife to try and cheat on me or something, so I have unrest in my life.
In a previous interview, Smith said that it took him a while to figure out how to work with Bruce Willis on Cop Out because Willis wouldn't take direction and was "very much the author of his own performance." In the Moviehole interview, Smith admitted that part of the difficulty was the fact that he was more than a little starstruck by Willis.
I went in directing [Willis' character] David Addison from Moonlighting, and I wasn't the adult, the 38-year-old Kevin Smith who had made a bunch of movies, I was the 12-year-old who would lay on my parents couch and watch David Addison on Moonlighting on Tuesdays. And Bruce was smart enough and had dealt with that personality before to be like, "If you're like this the whole movie, we're not going to get anything worthwhile accomplished."
Smith went on to say that he was such a big Willis fan that he had a hard time asking the actor to deliver the kind of performance that he wanted at times.
I'm sitting in my chair behind the monitor going, "I'm such a p*ss." Back in the day, I would've been like, "No! We're going to go again, because I've got something in my head, and we're going to get there," but I didn't do it because I'm scared, I'm scared of Bruce. And I was like, "You know what, I can't be scared of Bruce, I can't make a whole movie with Bruce and be scared at the same time.... I go over and I talk to Bruce, Bruce leaning on the wall by the set, just chilling out. I say, "Hey boss," and he goes, "Hey, what's up?" And I said, "I'm thinking about going one more on that," and he goes, "Why? What's the matter?" And I said, "It was good, nothing wrong, it was totally good." And he goes, "What are you looking for?" and I said, "Well I'm looking for something but I just don't want to tell you." And he goes, "What are you talking about?" And I was like, "I'm a little scared to tell you." He goes, "Kevin, don't be scared to tell me, just tell me." I was like, "I know, but you might get mad at me," and he was like, "I'm not going to get mad." And I was like, "I'm pretty sure you're going to get mad," and he goes, "I'm getting mad now, tell me." And I said, "I was looking for you to deliver this line in the way you delivered that line, a similar line, to Mattie Hayes in the second season of Moonlighting, in an episode called 'Every Daughter's Father Is a Virgin.'" And Bruce, f*cking, he just stared at me. And Bruce looks away, just so he can look back with that Bruce Willis look. He goes, "Did you just ask me to give a line reading from something I did twenty-five f*cking years ago?" ... I walk behind the monitor and apparently we were going to go one more anyway. So we do the take, and I'm sitting there watching it, and I'm scared that I was going to get yelled at when we move on to the next thing, because I still have that adult fear in me. And I'm watching the monitor and all of a sudden Bruce Willis disappeared and Jimmy Monroe, the character he plays in [Cop Out] disappeared. And for one, brief, shining moment, there was David Addison in frame. And I was just like, I welled up, it was like Christmas.
Cop Out was written by Mark and Robb Cullen and also stars Tracy Morgan, Seann William Scott, Kevin Pollack, Adam Brody, Michelle Trachtenberg, Jason Lee, and Ana de la Reguera.
Posted 02.27.10 by BrentJS